Hell Hath No Fury

Chapter Twenty-Nine

"Aruncas!" Tarnal Garsal, Windlord Garsal, muttered.

The second lord of horse stood in Sunlord Markan's command post, looking back at the smokestreaming PAAF fort behind them, and he had ample reason to invoke the Uromathian god of war. Both cavalry officers, like Rof chan Skrithik, were veterans of long service. And, like chan Skrithik, neither of them had ever seen or imagined anything like this.

Actually, Garsal found the smoke and flames almost comforting in their normality. At least they were much less disconcerting than the enormous beast-the dragon, he told himself, using the Ternathian Crown Prince's terminology as he looked back at it-which had crashed to earth less than sixty yards from the CP. It loomed like a scaly mountain of broken bone and flesh where it had landed, crushing a dozen of Garsal's cavalry troopers in its death plunge.

"Aruncas, indeed," a voice said at Garsal's shoulder.

He turned his head and saw Sunlord Markan gazing out across the sandbags at the same sight. The first lord of horse was the second ranking officer of the Salby garrison, which had made him the proper choice to command the infantry and artillery positions outside the fort itself. He didn't exactly look shaken … but his expression came far closer to that than anything Garsal had ever seen from him before.

"I didn't really believe him, you know," Garsal said. Markan glanced at him and raised one eyebrow. "I suppose I didn't want to believe him," Garsal admitted, and this time Markan snorted.

"I imagine most of us would have preferred not to," the sunlord said after a moment. "It's like something out of a child's fairytale about monsters, ogres, and magic spells."

Garsal nodded, and Markan turned his eyes back to the monstrous, broken-winged carcass sprawled across the mangled bodies of his men.

There was another reason Garsal hadn't wanted to believe Prince Janaki, the sunlord thought. Another reason he hadn't wanted to, for that matter.

Markan had his own very private reservations about his Emperor, but Chava Busar was still his Emperor, and-up to this moment, at least-Markan had found himself forced to agree with Emperor Chava on at least one point: far too many people in Sharona were reacting with far too much panic to the reports from the frontiers.

Stories about "magic" simply didn't belong in the everyday world of hardheaded, practical men. Oh, no one had questioned the fact that the Arcanans were actually there, or that they had massacred the Chalgyn Consortium survey crew with frighteningly unknown weapons. But Hell's Gate was forty-eight thousand miles from Sharona, and hard on the news of the massacre had come the word that less than four hundred men had taken the swamp portal away from the enemy with ludicrous ease. Sharonian weapons had been clearly and obviously superior to anything they had yet faced, and nothing else the Arcanans had demonstrated since that short, brutal battle had been especially terrifying. Surely not enough to justify the almost hysterical response of certain of Sharona's political leaders!

Whatever happened out on the distant frontier, there was no real chance of an enemy successfully fighting his way through the portals and all of the wearisome miles between them to actually reach Sharona. Even assuming that all of those arguing in favor of some sort of worldwide-hells, multiversewide-empire were genuinely sincere in their motivations and not simply seeking to manipulate the political equation for their own advantage (which seemed unlikely, to say the least), it would have been foolish to allow oneself to be caught up in the hysteria.

Now, smelling the smoke from Fort Salby, looking at the huge, broken body of a genuine dragon while he awaited the second assault from a force which had advanced four thousand miles in less than two weeks, Jukan Darshu, Sunlord Markan, knew those "hysterical" leaders had been right all along. If the Arcanans had dragons that breathed fire and spat lightning, if they could cover eight percent of the total distance to Sharona in only two weeks, then the gods alone knew what else they might have or be able to do. It was entirely possible that they could fight their way clear to Sharona, after all … and that Zindel of Ternathia and Ronnel of Farnalia had been dead serious from the outset. That whatever Chava Busar might think, Zindel had not been manufacturing and manipulating the crisis which had impelled him to the throne of a united Sharona.

Firsoma! he thought. If the Crown Prince Saw this in a Glimpse, what has his father Seen?

He didn't much care for that question, for a lot of reasons.

Of course you don't. You're a Uromathian, and Uromathians don't like Ternathians, do they? But if the Arcanans have capabilities like this, then maybe the Conclave was right. Maybe we can't afford to be Uromathians or Ternathians any longer … even if it does mean putting another crown on Zindel chan Calirath's head.

"They're coming back."

Regiment-Captain chan Skrithik twitched as Janaki spoke for the first time in at least half an hour.

"Your Highness?"

"They're coming back," Janaki repeated in that same otherworldly tone. "They're using their dragons to circle around the other aspect of the portal in Karys. Then they're going to use the western aspect in Traisum and swing wide, try to keep us from seeing them while they put cavalry on the ground."

"Cavalry? In the open against dug-in infantry and artillery?" Chan Skrithik couldn't believe what he was hearing.

"Yes," Janaki said. He turned those daunting eyes on the regiment-captain. "It's not going to be that easy. They can put them on the ground east of us and avoid most of our covering positions, and their cavalry is a lot faster than ours. And they've got something else. Something to cover them. I can't quite See it yet. And they're loading up other dragons with infantry. They'll be coming at us, too, and I think they're going to use those eagle-lions this time, as well."

Chan Skrithik's jaw tightened. He would have been totally confident of his entrenched infantry's ability to deal with any Sharonian cavalry attack. But as Janaki had just reminded him, he wasn't dealing with Sharonians … as their ability to avoid his entrenchments demonstrated.

"Can you See how they'll come at us, Your Highness?" he asked.

"Not yet," Janaki replied, and a hint of frustration shadowed his voice even through its detachment.

"There are still too many possibilities. They're coming together … focusing. But they aren't there yet."

"Can you See where they'll land their cavalry?" Chan Skrithik asked, opening his map case.

"Here or here." Janaki's forefinger stabbed the map, and chan Skrithik looked up at Senior-Armsman Isia.

"Message for Company-Captain Mesaion. Give him these coordinates." Chan Skrithik read them off from the map grid. "Tell the Company-Captain I want chan Forcal to Watch both of them. And I want the howitzers ready to engage."

"Yes, Sir."

The Flicker had been writing quickly while the regiment-captain spoke. Now he read back his shorthand notations. Chan Skrithik nodded approval, and Isia Flicked the message canister to Mesaion's Flicker.

The artillerist's acknowledgment appeared on the parapet beside chan Skrithik less than two minutes later.

Commander of Fifty Delthyr Fahrlo was still trying to come to grips with what had happened to the initial attack as he and Deathclaw led the line of transport dragons out of the portal's western aspect.

The maneuver wouldn't have been very practical without dragons. The nature of the portals between universes meant that any traveler from Karys found himself confronting the same sort of enormous cliffs no matter which way he passed through the portal, but the westernmost cliffs were quite a bit higher than those to the east. Wind erosion had softened and grooved the tops of those sheer cliffs until the pressures between the two sides of the portals had equalized, but the palisade of stone remained steeply and starkly unscalable.

Facing east into Traisum, from the opposite side of the portal, the cliffs were much shallower, and the wind screaming down the slopes beyond the cliffs edges had carved deep ravines. The Sharonian construction engineers had taken advantage of that when they cut their road and "railroad" routes. As far as Fahrlo could see, they hadn't had very much choice about that, but the Expeditionary Force did, and Two Thousand Harshu and Thousand Toralk had decided to take advantage of that fact.

Too bad they didn't take advantage of it before, Fahrlo couldn't help thinking bitterly, even though he knew it was unfair. Nobody could have predicted what had happened to his fellow battle dragon pilots and their mounts before they'd actually seen it. He knew that. But he also knew that somehow he, a mere commander of fifty, had become the senior battle dragon pilot of the entire First Provisional Talon.

Of course, I'm a "commander of fifty" with only three dragons to command.

He grimaced behind his helmet visor at the thought, then shook his head. He had other things to be concentrating on at the moment.

"The dragons are landing at the second location, Sir," Chief-Armsman chan Forcal told Company- Captain Mesaion.

"Too bad, Mesaion grunted, then turned to his own Flicker. "Inform Regiment-Captain chan Skrithik that the enemy is landing at the second location and that we can't bring it under fire."

"Yes, Sir."

"Damn it," chan Skrithik muttered as Isia read him Mesaion's terse dispatch.

He'd been afraid of that when Janaki indicated the landing areas on the map. The one in question would have been out of range for the mortars, anyway, although the howitzers had the reach. He doubted these Arcanan bastards had any way of knowing that, but they'd lucked out and chosen a landing site in the dead ground beyond a steep, intervening ridgeline.

"Tell Company-Captain Mesaion I want chan Forcal to keep them under observation. Let me know the instant they begin to move out."

"Yes, Sir."

"Five Hundred Urlan's in position, Sir," the hummer-handler announced.

"Good." Harshu turned to Toralk. "I suppose that means it's time, Klayrman."

"Yes, Sir. It is." Toralk nodded, then looked at the hummer handler. "Send Hundred Kormas the release order, Senior Sword."

"Yes, Sir!"

The hummer-handler opened the smaller cage in which he had set aside the hummer with the release order already recorded. Now he took the small, fiercely aggressive little creature in his hands, whispered something to it, and tossed it into the air. Its wings blurred into invisibility, and it turned like a questing hound, hovering in midair. Then, sudden as a snapping arbalest string, it flashed away.

Toralk watched it disappear and fought down an urge to inhale deeply and surreptitiously. He remained far from certain that continuing the attack was the right move, but that no longer really mattered. First, because it wasn't his decision; secondly, because everyone was committed now. Commander of One Hundred Surtel Kormas would release his gryphons five minutes after he received Toralk's dispatch, and the gryphons' onslaught would be the signal for the rest of the assault.

Graholis, I hope this works, the thousand thought fervently. Please let this work!

"Regiment-Captain!"

Rof chan Skrithik turned quickly back to Janaki. Something had changed in the prince's voice. The fort's commander couldn't quite identify what that change was, but whatever it was, it sent a fresher, deeper surge of anxiety through him.

"Yes, Your Highness?"

"It's starting." Janaki turned to look at him, and the distant focus in his eyes was deeper and darker than ever. "Listen to me," he said, and there was a stark edge of command in his voice. "I don't know how much time there'll be. It won't be enough, however much of it there is. So it's important. Listen to what I tell you."

"Of course, Your Highness." Chan Skrithik was puzzled. Of course anything Prince Janaki had to tell him was "important." Did Janaki think chan Skrithik would have allowed him to stand up here, Chief- Armsman chan Braikal or not, if it wasn't important?

"I can't tell yet," Janaki sounded far more frustrated. "I can't tell which is the real attack yet."

He wheeled back around, staring out across the parapet. Then his head tilted back. He looked up into the sky above the fort, his head swinging from side to side.

"Not yet," he told the bright, cloudless heavens in a strange tone which mingled command and entreaty in almost equal measure. "Not yet!"

For a moment, nothing else happened. Then his falcon launched from his shoulder with a high, fierce cry, and he sucked in a deep breath.

"They're coming!" His arm shot out and he pointed sharply to the northwest. "There!"

Fifty Fahrlo watched the strike gryphons go streaking past the transports and his escorting battle dragons. The gryphons were far smaller, tiny, compared to the dragons, but there were over a hundred of them, and he was delighted that they were at least a thousand feet higher than his own formation. Fahrlo had a lively respect for the men who worked as gryphon-handlers. He trusted their professionalism implicitly, yet he'd seen what gryphons could do, and he wanted no part of it. If the compulsion spells failed, or if those spells misidentified the gryphons' target, enough of them could swarm even a dragon out of the heavens.

This time, though, there was no mistake. The gryphons swept onward, driving towards the smokegouting fort like a plague of pony-sized locusts, and Fahrlo smiled thinly behind his visor.

Should've let them swarm the bastards in the first place, he thought, even though he knew precisely why it hadn't seemed necessary. I bet they won't like this one little bit!

"Sir, I think-yes!" The lookout floating on his levitation spell at the end of the long tether to his saddle shouted down to Commander of Five Hundred Gyras Urlan. "The gryphons are in position!"

"Good!" Urlan barked. "Now get your ass back down here!"

"Yes, Sir!"

"Bugler!"

"Yes, Sir?"

"Blow 'Walk'!"

"Yes, Sir!"

The bugle began to sound, and the big, heavily augmented horses of the Seventh Zydor Heavy Dragoons stirred into movement. They had a long way to go, and so they moved without haste. The time for that would come, but it wasn't here yet. Not yet. They were bigger-much bigger-then the light cavalry's unicorns, and despite their augmentation, that meant they were slower, with less endurance, as well.

Their speed and strength had to be conserved for the final dash to their objective. But that was all right.

The gryphons wouldn't attack immediately. The compulsion spells directing their strike had been carefully structured to give Urlan's cavalry time to get into position.

The heavy horses' larger size meant each of them could carry not one rider, but two, and two of Urlan's hundred-and-twenty-strong companies were configured as standard heavy dragoons. Each horse bore a two-man saddle, with the rear rider armed not with a saber or lance but with a cutdown version of an infantry-dragon. It was much shorter ranged than the infantry weapon, but longer ranged than any arbalest and far more deadly.

Each horse in Commander Of One Hundred Orkal Kiliron's Charlie Company, on the other hand, carried only a standard saddle, instead of the two-man heavy dragoon version. In place of the normal second rider, a smaller version of the standard dragon cargo pod had been harnessed to each horse. Its comparatively diminutive size was small enough for an augmented horse to handle without too much trouble, but still big enough to carry a full twelve-man infantry squad. A quarter of those pods were occupied by Gifted engineering specialists; the others contained over a thousand picked infantry. And one basis for their selection was that at least half of them had at least some Gift.

Enough, at any rate, for them to be armed with daggerstones for the assault.

"Activate the glamour," Urlan said to the Gifted commander of fifty at his side.

"Yes, Sir."

"That's it."

Janaki's voice was suddenly calm, almost quiet, and chan Skrithik jerked his eyes away from the small dots, circling above Fort Salby with a hungry eagerness he could sense even from here. They seemed very close, those dots, but if they were the size the prince had described, then they were much higher than they looked.

"I beg your pardon, Your Highness?"

"I See now," Janaki said, and turned his back on the circling dots to face the regiment-captain with a strangely serene little smile. "I didn't think there was going to be enough time."

"Your Highness?" Something about Janaki's voice, the way his body language had somehow relaxed, worried chan Skrithik.

"Listen." Janaki put his hands on chan Skrithik's shoulders, pulling the older man so close to him their foreheads almost touched. "The eagle-lions are going to attack in just a few minutes. They'll come in from the west. When they do, we'll see the dragons coming in behind them."

The prince's words came quickly, with a sort of distant urgency. Chan Skrithik might have been fooled by their quietness, but he saw something behind the ghosts in those gray eyes. He saw ferocious purpose, determination, and his own eyes narrowed with the intensity of his concentration on what Janaki was saying.

"They'll have infantry on the dragons. Some of the dragons will be spitting fire or lightning. They'll have more infantry on lines, ready to drop over the parapet. They'll use the eagle-lions to try to suppress our fire. But the dragons aren't the real threat. They're a diversion, Regiment-Captain. They want us looking at them while the real attack comes in from behind us, from the east. Do you understand? The dragons and their infantry are the diversion, not the cavalry. Do you understand?"

Chan Skrithik nodded, and Janaki looked past him for a moment at Senior-Armsman Isia.

"Warn Company-Captain Mesaion. The cavalry have some sort of … spell. It's like a smokescreen, but different. It'll look more like a mirage-like heat shimmer. But the cavalry will be behind it. Most of the men won't be able to see through it, but chan Forcal can. He's got to get Mesaion's first rounds on target

– on the ranks around their standard. It's a wind sock, like one of the Arpathian dragon-standards. That's where their commander is-where the spell will be coming from. Do understand?"

Isia darted a look at chan Skrithik. The regiment-captain nodded, and the Flicker swallowed hard, then produced a jerky nod of his own.

"Yes. Yes, Your Highness!"

Janaki's head swiveled back to chan Skrithik while Isia's frenzied pencil started scribbling the message to Mesaion. The black dots overhead were beginning to widen their circle. Chan Skrithik was vaguely aware of them, sensed the way they were straining at some immaterial leash, but most of his attention was focused on Janaki chan Calirath and the prophetic fire burning in his eyes.

"They've got those fire-throwers on some of the horses. And some of the others are towing carriers-

floating carriers, like hot-air balloons-with more infantry in them. They'll try to get the carriers in close enough to assault the parapet-use them like scaling ladders. And if they can't get over the wall, they'll go through it. They've got people with spells that can open breaches-like blasting charges, but different. They'll have to reach the wall to actually use them. They'll try for the dead spot at the southeast corner, where the fire will cover them and none of the machine guns or pedestal guns will bear. You have to get men with grenades over there now. Do you understand?"

Chan Skrithik felt himself nodding again as Janaki repeated the three-word question like some sort of mantra.

"See to it, Chief," he said to chan Braikal. The Marine stared at him for one instant, then turned almost agonized eyes to Janaki. He hesitated a heartbeat longer, but the crown prince gave him a smile and twitched his head, confirming chan Skrithik's order, and chan Braikal thundered off, shouting for the other members of his platoon.

"Some of the infantry have the same sort of smaller fire-throwers," Janaki went on, the machine-gun words coming with almost impossible clarity yet simultaneously seeming to trip and fall over one another. "If the ones with the blasting charges touch the wall, they'll blow through it. The fire-throwers have less range than a revolver, but they'll kill anyone they hit and each of them is good for several shots. And they've got other people with them-people with spells like a Lifter's, only better. They can actually Lift people up over the parapet without using ladders or the carriers if they can get close enough."

The circling dots were plunging downward now. Rifles began to crack. The surviving machine guns on the parapet began to fire, as well, but the gryphons were smaller, faster, and far more agile targets. The men Janaki had insisted on arming with the more rapidly firing Model 7s were going to be far more effective than riflemen, but the shotguns were also much shorter ranged. The men armed with them had to wait for the gryphons to come to them.

"Remember, Sir." Janaki's eyes burned into Roth chan Skrithik's soul, and his hands slid down from the regiment-captain's shoulders to grip the front of his uniform tunic. "Remember-the dragons are the diversion. They won't risk them in close. They've lost too many. It's the cavalry. You've got to stop the cavalry. If you stop it, they'll break off the attack. They won't take additional losses-not this far from home. But if the cavalry gets through, gets inside the walls, it's over. You can't-"

He broke off suddenly, and his eyes dropped abruptly back into focus. They were suddenly once again the clear, gray eyes of a young man, not the eyes of an avatar of legends.

"It's here."

His voice had changed, too. It was almost-almost-normal again.

"Good luck, Sir," he said, and his hands locked on chan Skrithik's tunic. The regiment-captain's eyes just had time to begin to widen, and then Janaki picked him bodily up and threw him off the gun platform.

Chan Skrithik landed so hard, so awkwardly, he broke the bones in his left forearm into gravel.

He scarcely noticed the white-hot agony of those snapping, shattered bones. It was so small, so unimportant, in comparison.

Janaki chan Calirath never even turned his head. He was still looking at chan Skrithik when the gryphon he'd never seen with his physical eyes at all hit him from behind and killed him instantly.