Hell Hath No Fury

Chapter Twenty

"Now that's a sight for sore eyes, Sir. If you don't mind my saying so."

Platoon-Captain His Grand Imperial Highness Janaki chan Calirath drew rein as they topped out across the modest ridge line, then looked across at Chief-Armsman Lorash chan Braikal with a quizzical expression.

"I don't mind at all, Chief," he said mildly. "In fact, I agree. Although, to be honest, it's not my sore eyes I'm thinking about."

The chief-armsman's mouth twitched, but he'd been an Imperial Marine for seventeen years, and his expression had learned to behave itself … more or less.

"As the Platoon-Captain says, of course, Sir," chan Braikal responded after a moment. "Far be it from me to confuse the Platoon-Captain's anatomical parts."

"I should certainly hope not, Chief." Janaki's voice was admirably severe, but his eyes twinkled, and chan Braikal snorted. Then the noncom's expression turned more serious.

"All joking aside, Sir, I really am glad to see that," he said, waving one hand at the incredible energy raising the thick clouds of dust under the baking sun of the Queriz Depression. Black banners of smoke from the funnels of steam shovels and bulldozers mingled with the dust, hanging in a lung-clogging pall, and they could see the long, gleaming line of steel rails stretching out towards the southern horizon beyond it.

"I am, too," Janaki agreed, and uncased his binoculars. He raised them to his eyes, and the distant scene jumped into sharp focus as he turned the adjusting knob.

There had to be at least a thousand workers immediately visible down there, he reflected, and every one of them was as busy as an entire clan of beavers. Bulldozers and shovels chewed the roadbed out of the bone-dry, mostly flat terrain, rampaging through their self-induced fog of dust like steam- and smokesnorting monsters. Steam-powered tractors followed along behind them on caterpillar treads, dumping heavy loads of gravel for more bulldozers, scrapers, and steamrollers to level into place and tamp firmly.

Then more tractors followed behind, hauling heavy trailers stacked high with railroad ties and rails.

Workers balanced precariously atop the loads tossed ties and rails over the trailers' sides with the easy rhythm of long practice, and each balk of timber, each gleaming length of steel, landed precisely where it was supposed to be.

More workers moved forward, adjusting the ties, setting them into the waiting gravel ballast of the steadily advancing roadbed. Gangs of track-layers followed them, lifting the rails, swinging them into place on the heavy, creosote-soaked ties, holding them there while plate men fished the rail ends, then stood aside while flashing hammers drove the spikes.

The Crown Prince of Ternathia-who was well on his way to becoming the crown prince of all of Sharona-lowered the binoculars and shook his head. This was scarcely the first Trans-Temporal Express railhead he'd ever watched advancing across a virgin universe, but right off the top of his head, he couldn't remember ever seeing such a focused, frenzied, carefully choreographed boil of energy.

And just why should you find that particularly surprising, Janaki? he asked himself sardonically. You've never seen them laying track towards something that looks entirely too much like an inter-universal war, either, have you?

"That sore part of me that isn't eyes is really looking forward to parking itself in a passenger car's seat," he informed chan Braikal as he returned his binoculars to their case. "Of course, after this long in the saddle, my memory of what passenger cars are like has become a bit vague."

"I'm sure it will all come back to the Platoon-Captain," chan Braikal said. "And I hope you won't take this wrongly, Sir, but the main reason I'll be glad to see those passenger cars has more to do with speed than places to sit. The further and faster towards the rear we get these prisoners-and you-the better I'll like it."

Janaki grimaced and started to say something, then stopped himself and looked away once more. His own feelings at being bundled safely off to the rear, however important the job they'd found to give him as part of the bundling process, remained profoundly ambiguous. The part of him which had been trained as his father's heir recognized the logic in Company-Captain chan Tesh's decision to send him back to Sharona. Indeed, that intellectual part of him recognized that it would have been the height of insanity for chan Tesh to do anything else. But what his intellect recognized as sanity and what his emotions insisted he ought to be doing were two quite different things.

"Sir," chan Braikal said quietly, "I know this isn't really what you want, but you know it's the right thing for you to be doing."

Janaki looked back at the older man, and chan Braikal smiled sadly.

"You'd have done just fine, Sir," the chief-armsman told him. "I've seen quite a few platoon-captains in my time. Brought along my share of 'em, for that matter, if you'll pardon my saying so. Some of them, to be honest, scared the shit out of me. Others … well, let's just say I wasn't too sure where I'd find them standing on the day it finally fell into the crapper on us. But you?" He shook his head. "You might've ended up screwing up-I don't think you would have, but anybody can. But if you had, at least I'm pretty sure all of the holes would've been in the front."

"Thanks, Chief … I think," Janaki said wryly.

"Don't mention it, Sir." Chan Braikal grinned at him, and Janaki snorted.

"Well, however that might be, I suppose we should get this show back on the road."

"Yes, Sir."

The chief-armsman turned in the saddle to bawl a few pithy suggestions to the other men of Janaki's platoon. The recipients of his requests responded promptly, and the ambulances containing the Arcanan POWs Janaki was responsible for escorting to the rear moved briskly forward.

Janaki watched them roll past him behind their double teams of mules, each ambulance flanked by its pair of assigned, watchful mounted Marines, and admitted to himself that he felt a profound sense of relief. Despite any ambiguity (and he was honest enough with himself to realize chan Braikal had put his finger squarely on the question which bothered him the most), he would be overjoyed to get those prisoners back to Sharona. And not just because he knew how vital their interrogation was likely to prove, either. From the reports he'd received down the Voicenet, it sounded as if his father had more than enough forest fires to put out. No doubt Emperor Zindel could find any number of useful things for his heir apparent to be doing as part of the extinguishing process. And according to those same reports, his sister Andrin had been forced to shoulder a huge share of the heir's responsibilities in his absence … and she wasn't even eighteen yet. It was time he got home and took that off her shoulders.

Of course, there was that bit about marriages.

Janaki grimaced. He'd never doubted that his eventual marriage would be carefully considered and weighed. It couldn't have been any other way for the heir to the Winged Crown of Ternathia, and there'd been no point pretending it could have been or whining about the factthat it wasn't. But given the … testy relations between Ternathia and Uromathia, he'd never anticipated being required to marry into the family of Chava Busar, and he couldn't say he found the idea very appealing.

The Voice reports he'd been able to monitor had been fragmentary and disjointed. He didn't have a Voice actually assigned to his platoon, and the Voice relay stations tended to be far enough apart to make it all but impossible for travelers passing between them to stay in any sort of steady touch, unless they were Voices themselves. From what he had Heard and Seen, though, it didn't sound as if his father was any happier about the prospect than Janaki himself was. Not that his father's unhappiness would change anything anymore than Janaki's might have. They were both Caliraths, after all, and Janaki felt an odd sort of pride in the realization that his father would make the decision on the basis of what had to be done, regardless of any personal costs, in the full confidence that Janaki would understand.

He looked up, at the graceful speck circling lazily against the blazing sky and raised his gauntleted left hand, then whistled shrilly. He rather doubted that the circling peregrine falcon could possibly have physically heard anything, but Taleena didn't need to. She caught the thought he'd sent with the whistle and folded her wings.

He watched the magnificent bird streak down out of the heavens, rocketing towards him, touched with the reflected fire of the sun. Then she struck his gauntlet with all the power and control of her breed. He lowered his hand, and she hopped from his leather-protected wrist to the frame mounted on his saddle, pausing only to press her wickedly sharp beak gently and affectionately against his cheek.

Janaki chuckled softly, stroking the sleek head with an equally gentle fingertip, and crooned to her.

"There, dear heart," he murmured. "Wouldn't want to lose you, would I?"

Taleena ignored the comment, just as it deserved to be ignored, Janaki thought with a smile. Imperial Ternathian falcons didn't get "lost."

Which is just as well, he thought as he urged his blue roan Shikowr forward after the last ambulance.

And if she doesn't get lost, I don't suppose I can, either. However tempting it might be. And I suppose the truth is that I'm still anxious to get home, marriage or no marriage. Whatever else happens-he snorted in amusement-I should at least get a long, hot bath out of it. Two or three days worth of soaking ought to be just about right, and the way I feel right now, that would be worth even having Chava Busar as a father-in-law!

Tayrgal Carthos watched the smoke curling up from the bonfire which had once been a pathetic excuse for a portal fort and tried to decide whether he felt more satisfaction or irritation.

It was a hard call to make, he reflected as his command dragon came in to a relatively smooth landing.

On the one hand, he'd been given independent command of one arm of the pincer punching into Sharonian-held territory. On the other hand, it was definitely the secondary arm, and he and the relatively light forces Two Thousand Harshu had seen fit to assign to him (little more than three thousand men and barely enough transports to move them) had an enormous journey ahead of them-a point the extensive flight they'd had to undertake just to get to their next staging point underscored quite nicely, he thought grumpily.

The portal between the previously Sharonian-claimed universes of New Uromath and Thermyn was located in the flat plains of northwestern Elath in Central Andara, but the portal between Thermyn and Nairsom lay a good twelve hundred miles south of there. That put it in a deep, narrow, inconveniently placed valley in the mountains near what should have been the city of Gerynth in the Kingdom of Yanko, where the connection between the continents of Andara and Hilmar began to neck down. And once he'd finished moving his entire command that far (and resting his dragons before beginning the next stage) he'd moved through into Nairsom only to discover that he'd also moved from the heat of Gerynth back into the late autumn chill of Elath within fifty miles of the city of Drekon, barely three hundred miles from his Thermyn starting point at Fort Brithik.

The good news was that it was only a little more than six hundred miles from Drekon to his next portal, located in the Kingdom of Lokan's Duchy of Kanaiya. The bad news was that it lay at the northern tip of Lake Kanaiya, and while the weather at Drekon was only pleasantly crisp, the temperature in Kanaiya was going to be quite another matter. And from Five Hundred Neshok's prisoner interrogation, it looked like a leg of well over three thousand miles once he'd crossed over from Nairsom to Resym.

Yet those were merely logistical details, to be taken in stride, he reminded himself as he climbed down from the dragon. To be sure, those "details" meant there was no way in any world that he could possibly hope to reach Traisum before Harshu. He'd simply had to accept that he'd been turfed out of any of the glory for the conquest of that universe and that that miserable Air Force puke Toralk was going to get credit for it, instead. Still, by the same token, he'd been given an independent command, whereas Toralk was going to be right under Harshu's eagle eye.

The question in his mind was why Harshu had arranged things that way. Several hypotheses suggested themselves to him, ranging from the possibility that Harshu had such unbridled trust in him that he was the only man suitable for the task (which Carthos rated as only a little less likely than holding the winning ticket in the All-Arcana Sweepstakes) to the possibility that Harshu had discovered just how deeply in debt to Two Thousand mul Gurthak Carthos actually was.

That was the possibility that worried the thousand. On the face of things, it wasn't very likely anyone knew, given how carefully both he and mul Gurthak had covered their tracks. But if Harshu had figured it out before he decided to send Carthos clear out here on the "flanking sweep," as he'd called it in his orders, then several thoroughly unpleasant possible futures presented themselves to Carthos' scrutiny.

The fact that it was illegal for a senior officer to cosign a loan for one of his subordinates could lead to ugly repercussions if Harshu reported it to the Inspector General. It happened from time to time, anyway, as everyone perfectly understood, but seldom if ever on the scale of Carthos' dealings with mul Gurthak. Or, rather, with the Central Bank of Mythal, upon whose Loan Board one of mul Gurthak's innumerable cousins happened to hold a permanent seat. CBM was the largest, wealthiest, and most powerful of all the Mythalan banks, as befitted the official state bank of the Mythalan Hegemony. It must hold literally millions of loans. But very few of them had been granted on such favorable terms or secured by such threadbare collateral, and the fact that CBM had been remarkably patient with his … spotty repayment record would also interest the IG, Carthos felt quite sure.

If it came to a formal investigation, Carthos would be lucky if he was allowed to resign his commission without additional (and probably painful) disciplinary action. Even prison time was entirely likely, if only as a horrible example to discourage others from following in his footsteps. He knew that. But what worried him even more than that was the possibility that a thorough investigation would also discover all the small favors he'd done mul Gurthak over the last few years. Although there'd never been anything quite so crude as an openly demanded quid pro quo, there'd also never been any question in Carthos'

own mind that those "favors" constituted the true interest on his past-due loans. He was quite certain the IG would see it that way, at any rate. And if the private memos mul Gurthak had sent to him at the same time the Mythalan two thousand had ordered him forward to join Harshu ever came under public scrutiny, things would get very, very ugly.

And if Harshu had already become aware of them … .

Stop it, Tayrgal! the thousand told himself sharply. If he knows, he knows. And if he did know, he probably wouldn't have settled for just sending you off to the backside of nowhere.

"Sir! Welcome to Nairsom!"

"Thank you, Five Hundred Eswayr." Carthos returned Commander of Five Hundred Pahkrys Eswayr's salute. Eswayr-a wiry, fair-haired Inkaran-was his senior ground forces battalion commander.

Carthos found his accent rather hard to follow (the islanders seemed to take a perverse delight in massacring the pronunciation of Andaran), but the five hundred seemed a reasonably competent sort, if a bit on the overenthusiastic side.

"I see Hundred Helika's reds were reasonably effective," Carthos continued dryly, looking past Eswayr at the blazing wreckage Commander of One Hundred Faryx Helika's 5001st Strike had left where the small Sharonian portal fort used to be.

"Yes, Sir." Eswayr turned to survey the same scene, and grimaced. "I know you wanted it intact, Thousand. I'm afraid it was just a bit more flammable than our pilots assumed it would be."

"I see." Carthos hid a grimace of his own. Somehow, he doubted the Air Force would have made the same mistake if Toralk had been here to ride herd on them. On the other hand, to be fair (not that he particularly wanted to be), Carthos himself had emphasized to Five Hundred Karth Mala, his senior Air Force officer, that it was essential that the fort be taken out fast and hard. And since Harshu had retained both of Toralk's yellows … .

"May I assume the Voice chain has been cut?" the thousand asked after a moment.

"Yes, Sir. The strike teams located the relay station and took it out last night. And it appears that the portal Voice was killed in the initial strike on the fort."

"So there's something to be said for overkill, after all," Carthos observed with a desert-dry smile. Then he shrugged. "To be honest, Pahkrys, I'm just as glad Hundred Halika's opening strike leveled the place."

He twitched his head at the demolished fort. "I was never too happy about the distance to the next portal.

I know there was a relay station, but it's only about six hundred miles. If the information we have on these Voices is accurate, quite a few of them could reach that far without a relay."

"I know, Sir." Eswayr seemed to relax just a little.

"Well, then!" Carthos said, straightening briskly and planting his hands on his hips. "I suppose it's time I had a few words with Five Hundred Mala and we started getting the troops forward again."

"Yes, Sir," Eswayr said once more. Then he seemed to hesitate for a moment. "Uh, Sir, I did have one other question."

"Question?" Carthos looked back at the infantry officer, one eyebrow arched.

"Yes, Sir. We have a few prisoners, Sir. I was just wondering what you wanted me to do about them."

"Prisoners?" Carthos repeated with a frown. "What sort of prisoners? How many of them?"

"There are only about fifteen of them," Eswayr said. "Three of them are pretty badly burned."

"Any officers?"

"No, Sir. Mostly enlisted, with a couple of noncoms."

"I see." Carthos gazed unseeingly into the crackling flames consuming the fort for several heartbeats, then returned his gaze to Eswayr.

"Has anyone questioned them?"

"Yes, Sir. They … didn't seem to know very much."

"And you believed them?"

"According to the verifier spells they were telling the truth, Sir."

"Then they're not very useful, are they?" Carthos observed.

"Apparently not," Eswayr agreed. "On the other hand, Five Hundred Neshok might be able to get more out of them by asking the right questions."

"But Five Hundred Neshok is the better part of three thousand miles from here with Two Thousand Harshu," Carthos pointed out. "It would take us just a while to get the prisoners to him. And by the time any information he got out of them got back to us, it would probably be hopelessly out of date."

Eswayr nodded, and Carthos' nostrils flared. He didn't much care for these Sharonians. He wouldn't have under any circumstances, but even if he'd been inclined to, there were those memos from mul Gurthak to consider.

"I don't see any point tying up a transport on that sort of useless shuttle mission, Five Hundred," he said.

"It's not like we have all that many of them to spare, after all."

"No, Sir," Eswayr agreed.

"And if they don't have any useful information for us, then I don't really see much point in hauling them along with us, either."

Carthos looked levelly into Eswayr's eyes. For a moment, he thought the five hundred was going to balk.

But then the Inkaran drew a deep breath.

"Yes, Sir. I'll … take care of it."

"Good." Carthos patted the smaller man on the shoulder with a smile. "I'll leave it in your hands, then.

Now, where can I find Five Hundred Mala?"