Hell Hath No Fury

Chapter Thirty-One

Jukan Darshu, Sunlord Markan, climbed carefully down the loose, shifting slope of rubble which had spilled into Fort Salby from the breach in its eastern wall. It would have been easier to come in through the gate, but the gate was on the far side of the fort, and he was damned if he'd hike all the way back around just to use the front door.

He stepped off of the untidy ramp of wreckage and looked about him with a sense of disbelief. It didn't seem possible that so much carnage had been inflicted upon so many men-and so many … creatures-

in so short a time.

The surrendered, unwounded Arcanans were still being shoved and pushed, none too gently in most cases, into a semblance of order, then searched while hard-eyed men with bayoneted shotguns watched them like hawks. Those searches were extraordinarily thorough, and no more pleasant than they had to be. It was plain the prisoners didn't care for the harshness of their treatment, but it was equally plain that they didn't have to be Empaths to sense the hatred radiating from their captors in waves and realize it was time to be very, very meek.

Markan felt his lips twitch in a slight, bitterly amused smile at the thought. It was the only thing remotely like amusement he'd felt in what seemed an eternity, and it vanished quickly as he picked his way around the sprawled, untidy carcasses of eagle-lions.

He wasn't the only man moving out there. Casualty parties were busy searching through the wreckage, concentrating on finding and collecting the wounded. There'd be time enough to collect the dead later.

An occasional pistol shot cracked as the search parties discovered an eagle-lion that wasn't quite dead yet, and Markan wondered what they were going to do with all the carcasses.

Hells, he thought with a snort, why worry about them? What are we going to do with all the dragon carcasses?

He reached the steps leading up to the gun platform where he'd left Crown Prince Janaki and Regiment- Captain chan Skrithik six hours and half a lifetime ago. The climb seemed much steeper, somehow, and he shook his head in weary bemusement as he started up them, rehearsing the apology he had to make when he got to the top. He hadn't attempted to hide his skepticism when Prince Janaki started describing his Glimpse, and now that he'd seen the reality, it was time-

Sunlord Markan's thoughts chopped off with brutal suddenness and he froze in mid-stride as he reached the head of the steps. He felt as if a sledgehammer had just hit him squarely in the pit of the stomach.

Crown Prince Janaki chan Calirath lay on the gun platform where he had died. His body had been moved to a stretcher, but no one had been able to move him further, for painfully evident reasons. The two medical orderlies who'd brought the stretcher to the gun platform were backed up against the parapet, and the deeply bleeding gouges down the side of one orderly's face had obviously come from the talons and beak of the imperial peregrine falcon perched protectively on the dead prince's chest, wings half-spread and eyes blazing with battle fury. The bird's head snapped around as Markan stepped the rest of the way onto the gun platform, and its beak opened in a warning hiss of rage.

No one seemed to know what to do. Markan certainly didn't, and the stupefying shock of Janaki's death seemed to have shut his brain down entirely.

Then someone stepped past him, and his head turned to see Regiment-Captain chan Skrithik.

The Ternathian looked terrible. His left arm hung in an improvised sling which had been jury-rigged out of someone's pistol belt. His forearm was crudely splinted, and his filthy uniform tunic was torn in half a dozen places and covered with dust. An ugly, scabbed cut across the center of a livid bruise disfigured his left cheek, and dried bloodstains-most of them, obviously, from other people's blood-were spattered across both trouser legs.

But it was his face, his eyes, that truly struck Markan. The shock, deeper even than Markan's own. The loss. The pain … and the guilt.

Unlike Markan or the intimidated stretcher bearers, chan Skrithik didn't even flinch as Taleena hissed at him. He only walked straight across to her, slowly, holding out his good hand. That razor-sharp beak, fit to snap off fingers like a hatchet, opened as her head cocked threateningly, but then something seemed to flicker in the bird's golden-rimmed eyes. A memory, perhaps, Markan thought, recalling half-believed stories about the imperial falcons' fabled intelligence. Taleena's head swiveled toward the dead eaglelion sprawled in ungainly death at the foot of the gun platform. Then she looked back at chan Skrithik and made a soft, almost entreating sound.

Markan was an experienced falconer, but he'd never heard anything like that cry of avian heartbreak out of another bird. Chan Skrithik seemed to flinch, but he only held out his hand patiently until, finally, the bird just brushed it with that sharp, wickedly curved beak.

"I'm sorry, My Lady." Chan Skrithik spoke then, so quietly Markan could barely hear him. "I tried. Gods know, we both tried."

Taleena looked at him for one another long moment, and then, without warning, her wings snapped once as she leapt from Janaki's chest to chan Skrithik's good shoulder. The regiment-captain's uniform lacked the nonregulation, reinforced leather patches Janaki's tunics had boasted, but the pistol belt-sling gave his shoulder some protection, and the falcon's powerful talons were careful, gentle. She stood on his shoulder and bent to press her beak into his hair, and chan Skrithik reached up to touch her folded wings with equally careful gentleness.

The litter bearers started to move away from the parapet towards the fallen prince, but the regimentcaptain shook his head. They stopped again, and chan Skrithik went to his knees beside the stretcher. He knelt there, staring down at the face of a young man who would never grow old, and his own face was wrung with barely unshed tears.

Janaki's dead face was almost relaxed, Markan thought. The gray eyes were open, staring sightlessly into a void no Talent could See across. A trickle of blood had flowed from the corner of his mouth and dried, but there was no pain in that face … and no fear.

The Uromathian noble moved closer, and chan Skrithik laid his one working hand on Janaki's still chest and looked up at him.

"Sunlord," he said, and his voice was rusty and broken sounding.

"Regiment-Captain," Markan responded quietly.

"Thank you." Chan Skrithik had to stop, clear his throat. "Thank you," he repeated huskily. "Without your men-"

"My men would have been too late, if not for yours," Markan interrupted.

Chan Skrithik looked up at him for several seconds without speaking. Only his hand moved, the fingers stroking gently at the dead prince's tunic as if to somehow tidy it. Finally, the regiment-captain nodded, then looked down at his hand. He regarded it for a heartbeat or two as if it were a stranger's. Then he looked back up at Markan, and there was a strange, lost look in his eyes.

"My Crown Prince is dead."

Tears welled in those eyes at last, and his voice wavered. They were only five words, yet Markhan heard a universe of pain deep within them and felt his own eyes burn. Then the sunlord blinked once, hard, and looked away. Looked beyond the gun platform at the smoke, the bodies, the downed dragons and gryphons. It was a scene of carnage such as no Sharonian had ever imagined, and yet in his mind's eye, Markan imagined another scene. One in which there were no dead dragons, no dead gryphons, no Arcanan prisoners marching sullenly into confinement … only a fort in flames and a garrison taken unawares and slaughtered.

He stared into that vision of what had never been. The vision, he realized, that Janaki chan Calirath had Seen in the Glimpses he'd tried to describe. The thought of his own cynical skepticism while Janaki had offered the warning which had saved them all filled him with shame, and he looked back down at chan Skrithik.

The tears had broken loose at last, cutting startlingly white tracks through the dust and grime and blood on the regiment-captain's face, and Markan went to his own knees across Janaki's body from him, with chan Skrithik's last words still ringing in his in ears.

"No, my friend," the Uromathian said quietly, and shook his head as he reached out to touch chan Skrithik's upper arm. "No. Our Crown Prince is dead."

"Still nothing?" Olvyr Banchu asked, as he climbed up the last few rungs of the ladder and stepped up onto the freight car roof beside Platoon-Captain Selan Vuras.

"Nothing." Vuras shook his head, gazing off to the north as if he thought he should somehow be able to see across the eight hundred miles between him and the Traisum portal.

"You don't think it could be some sort of normal glitch?" Banchu's question sounded a lot more like a statement, and Vuras shook his head again.

"The Regiment-Captain didn't set up his communications schedule just so he could ignore it, sir," he told the TTE's senior engineer. "If he hasn't said anything, then it's because Prince Janaki was right."

Banchu discovered that he had very seldom wished anything in his life as fervently as he wished that Selan might be wrong. Unfortunately, he was certain the young Limathian wasn't. The question, of course, was whether chan Skrithik's silence resulted from an attack on Fort Salby or simply the cutting of the Voice relay between the railhead and the Traisum portal.

"Do you think they could have taken out the relay?" he asked, and Vuras snorted.

"I explained things very carefully to Voice Orma on our way through, sir. He understands, believe me.

And unless the Arcanans have some sort of Voice Sniffer, they aren't going to find him. Even if they might somehow have known where he was before our train came through, we moved him over sixty miles and dropped him off at his own private waterhole with a camo net and tarp. We even found him some trees to hide under." The platoon-captain shook his head again. "Whatever's caused the communications break, it's not because the Arcanans found him, Master Banchu."

"Well." Banchu stood there, but unlike Vuras, his gaze was directed towards the worksite around them.

He studied it for several minutes, then looked back at the PAAF officer.

"If you're right, I'm happy for Orma, Platoon-Captain, but it leaves us in a bit of a pickle, wouldn't you say?"

"Oh, I'd definitely say that, sir," Vuras agreed grimly.

"Then I suppose I'd better go see how our preparations are coming."

Banchu climbed down from the freight car and headed off in search of his assistants.

Platoon-Captain Vuras was the senior officer of the double platoon Regiment-Captain chan Skrithik had sent down to reinforce the railhead's security. Unfortunately, even after Vuras' arrival, that left Banchu with less than a company of regular troops to look after the better part of two thousand workers.

The good news was that at least a third of his labor force had at least some military experience. The Trans-Temporal Express had always given veterans preference when it came to hiring practices, and its personnel office vigorously recruited retired army engineers for its construction projects. And in this case, given all of the … uncertainties of the situation, Banchu had arrived with a freight car loaded with two thousand Model 10 rifles and a million rounds of ammunition. That was enough to issue virtually all of his workers-even those without actual previous military experience-a personal weapon, at least, and he'd put Foram chan Eris in charge of organizing them. Chan Eris was his senior assistant… and just happened to have retired from his first job as a company-captain in the Imperial Ternathian Army Corps of Engineers.

Unfortunately, neither Banchu, chan Eris, nor Vuras had very much in the way of heavy weapons to support those rifles, aside from the pair of Yerthak pedestal guns and single section of light machine guns Vuras had brought with him. There were no mortars, no field guns, no howitzers …

What they did have was ingenuity, lots of construction equipment, several hundred miles worth of stockpiled rails, and the mobile machine shops necessary to perform maintenance on millions of Ternathian marks worth of steam shovels, bulldozers, and tractors.

That thought carried Banchu over to the area where chan Eris and Platoon-Captain Harek chan Morak were overseeing the chief engineer's latest brainchild.

Sparks fountained from welding torches as sweating track layers and maintenance crews worked frantically on what had been standard freight cars up until a very few hours ago. Now the wooden sides of those freight cars were in the process of disappearing behind layers of steel rails. Banchu didn't know if a double layer of railroad iron would stand up to one of the "dragons" Petty-Captain chan Darma had described to Hersal Yoritam, Banchu's own assigned Voice. He doubted that anyone had any clear notion of exactly how powerful dragonfire or lightning might be. But his improvised armor ought to stand up to just about anything short of field artillery, and he'd been careful to leave enough loopholes to allow anyone inside the cars to bring at least a dozen Model 10s to bear in any direction.

"How's it coming, Foram?" he asked.

"Well as we could expect, I guess," chan Eris replied. "Mind you, I don't think we've got enough freight cars to put everyone into, even if we end up having time to stick rails on all of them."

"That's what I've always liked best about you, Foram-that sparkling Ternathian optimism of yours."

"What's to be optimistic about?" chan Eris responded sourly, although there was more than a hint of a gleam in his eyes.

"How about starting with the fact that we're all still alive, and we haven't seen any dragons diving on us?"

"Yet. We haven't seen any dragons diving on us yet," chan Eris said. "Of course, the day's still young, isn't it?"

"Yes, it is." Banchu thumped him on the shoulder, then cocked his head. "What about the locomotives?"

"I've got two of them just about ready. The cabs are protected at least as well as the freights, at any rate.

And young chan Morak's working on another pair right now. We've done the best we could about protecting the boilers, too, but that's a lot tougher."

"As far as I can make out, these people don't have anything like rifles or machine guns," Banchu told him. "I don't know that they're going to be able to punch through the boilers with anything they've got."

"Maybe not. But all they really have to do to strand us is tear up the track, you know," chan Eris pointed out.

"They can tear up track if they want to," Banchu said more grimly. "Unless they're a lot more experienced with railroads than I think they are, though, they probably don't realize how quickly our people can put the track back together again."

"Assuming we've got enough firepower to keep the bastards off our people while they put it back."

Chan Eris might have sounded as if he were objecting to what Banchu had just said, but he he wasn't, and he snorted when Banchu quirked an eyebrow at him.

"I don't know how many troops these people brought with them, Olvyr, but they'd better have a lot if they want to stop us and simultaneously take and hold Fort Salby-especially with Division-Captain chan Geraith as close as he is. I'm not too sure about these armored freight cars of yours. Mind you, I think they're a good idea-I just don't know how good an idea. But I do know that if the other side is stupid enough to spread its forces to thin, it's gonna get reamed."

""thinspace"'Reamed,'"thinspace"" Banchu repeated. "Is that one of those technical military terms a civilian like me wouldn't be familiar with?"

"Probably."

Chan Eris squinted up at the crew working on the current freight car, then looked back at Banchu.

"I've got this part of it pretty much under control, Olvyr. Why don't you go worry about something else?

My 'Ternathian optimism' and I can handle this."

Banchu chuckled, shook his head, and headed off to see how much construction equipment they could load onto their available flat cars.

"What the-?"

Under-Armsman Verais lowered the field glasses for a moment, then shook his head and raised them once more.

"We've got three … horsemen coming down the valley, Armsman," he announced.

"What?" Junior-Armsman Paras chan Barsak seemed to materialize out of the dusty earth at Verais'

elbow.

"There."

Verais passed over the field glasses and pointed at the roadway far below. Chan Barsak raised the binoculars to his own eyes, adjusting the focus, then grunted as the image sharpened.

Verais was right. Three men mounted on something horse-sized and vaguely horse-shaped were cantering along the roadway at a preposterous rate of speed. Afternoon sunlight glittered on what were apparently long, spiral horns sprouting from their "horses'"thinspace"" foreheads, and chan Barsak had never heard of a "horse" with what looked remarkably like a carnivore's tusks. Of course, the not-horses were just passing abreast of the shattered corpse of what was obviously a dragon, so he didn't suppose there was any reason they couldn't be equally preposterous.

His lips twitched at the thought, then his forehead creased in surprise.

"They're coming in under a parley banner," he said.

"Parley banner?" Verais hawked and spat over the edge of the drop-off. "How the fuck-pardon my Uromathian-would they know what a parley banner looks like? And if they did know, what makes them think we'd be stupid enough to trust anything they said?"

"I didn't say it was a proper parley banner," chan Barsak said rather more patiently than he felt. "But it's green, they're flying it, and there's just three of them. Whether we can trust 'em or not's really kind of beside the point, don't you think?"

Verais just scowled, and chan Barsak snorted, then shook his head and started calling for the Flicker assigned to his squad.

Rof chan Skrithik and Sunlord Markan stood side-by-side outside Markan's CP and watched the pair of Arcanan officers being escorted towards them. Both Arcanans were blindfolded, and their third companion had been held at the outer picket line where he could keep an eye on their peculiar horned horses … and couldn't see anything about the defenders' positions. Frankly, chan Skrithik was just as happy not to have those unnatural creatures any closer than they had to be.

Actually, he thought grimly, I'd just as soon not have these Arcanan fuckers any closer than they have to be, either.

He thought about the dead prince lying in Company-Captain Krilar's infirmary and the palm of his pistol hand itched.

The Arcanans were marched into the command post. Chan Skrithik and Markan watched them go by, then followed them silently into the sandbagged bunker. It was obvious from the Arcanans' body language that they weren't as calm as they would have liked to appear, yet chan Skrithik found himself feeling an unwilling respect for their sheer nerve. Riding in to parley with someone against whom you'd just launched a sneak attack while in the midst of negotiations in time of peace was not a task for the faint hearted.

The Arcanans were turned to face him and the blindfolds were removed. They blinked as their eyes adjusted to the dim light inside the command post, then one of them looked at chan Skrithik and Markan. His eyes narrowed as he saw the three gold rifles of chan Skrithik's rank insignia and the splinted forearm suspended in the sling tied around the regiment-captain's neck.

"May I crystal back?" the Arcanan said in heavily accented Ternathian, gesturing at the petty-captain who'd escorted him and his companion to the CP.

"You want one of your crystals returned to you?" chan Skrithik responded, and the Arcanan nodded vigorously.

"Can talk better with," he said.

Chan Skrithik frowned for a moment, then glanced at the petty-captain.

"You took one of their rocks off of them?"

"Yes, Sir. We didn't find anything that looked like a weapon-not even a knife-but after everything else, I figured, well …"

The youngster shrugged, and chan Skrithik nodded.

"You did exactly the right thing, Son. On the other hand, I suppose if we actually want to hear what these … people have to say, we should give it back to them."

The regiment-captain held out his hand for the crystal in question, then turned back to the more talkative Arcanan with it on his palm.

"Understand," he said grimly, holding the other man's eyes with his own and letting him see the hate and barely leashred rage, "if we think you're going to do anything with this hunk of rock except talk, I'll shoot you dead where you stand."

"Understand," the Arcanan replied. Chan Skrithik wasn't at all certain that the other man's comprehension of Ternathian was genuinely up to understanding what he'd just said, but he suspected that he hadn't actually needed to say it in the first place.

He stared into the other man's eyes for another moment, then handed the crystal across. The Arcanan murmured something, and the piece of rock started to glow. Then he looked across it at chan Skrithik.

"I am Commander of Five Hundred Dayr Vaynair, Army of the Union of Arcana," he said crisply. Or, to be more precise, the crystal translated crisply. "This," he indicated the older man standing beside him,

"is Commander of One Thousand Klayrman Toralk."

"I see."

Chan Skrithik gazed back at them, his eyes hard, but his brain was busy behind them. He knew nothing about how the Arcanans organized their military. For that matter, he didn't know whether the rank titles this Vaynair had just rattled off had been literal or figurative interpretations of their actual ranks.

Nonetheless, he didn't doubt for a moment that these were the two most senior Arcanan officers any official representative of Sharona had yet encountered.

Or, a mental voice amended coldly, the most senior Arcanan officers any living, uncaptured official representative of Sharona has encountered.

The Arcanans gazed back at him equally levelly, obviously waiting for him to introduce himself in response. For a moment, he toyed with the notion of refusing to do so, but he brushed the petty temptation aside.

"Regiment-Captain Rof chan Skrithik, Portal Authority Armed Forces," he said.

"Ah." Vaynair nodded. "May I assume I'm speaking to the senior Sharonian officer, in that case, Sir?" he inquired politely.

"At the moment," chan Skrithik replied curtly.

"Very good, Sir." Vaynair cleared his throat. "Thousand Toralk and I have been sent as envoys by Commander of Two Thousand Harshu."

"I see," chan Skrithik repeated. "So I suppose I should assume this 'Commander of Two Thousand Harshu' of yours is in command of this batch of cutthroats and murderers?"

Vaynair winced. His eyes tried to move sideways, towards his superior officer, but he stopped them. As for the superior officer in question, his expression didn't even flicker.

"I-" Vaynair began, then paused.

"You may assume that, Regiment-Captain," the commander of one thousand said into his junior's hesitation. He met chan Skrithik's eyes steadily. "Obviously, I would prefer some other description of the men under my command. Under the circumstances, however, I can appreciate how you might fail to grasp the distinction."

Toralk's voice was firm, chan Skrithik noted.

"Nonetheless," the Arcanan continued, "Five Hundred Vaynair and I are here with a message. Two messages, in fact. Are you willing to listen to them?"

"The fact that you're here at all suggests to me that the last Sharonians who listened to what Arcanans had to say didn't make out very well," chan Skrithik replied coldly, and this time Toralk's eyes seemed to flinch ever so slightly.

"Regiment-Captain," he said after a moment, "I'm an officer in the Union Air Force. Policy decisions are made at a higher level than mine. I say that not in any effort to suggest that the anger you obviously feel is unreasonable, but because there's nothing I can do-or could have done-about the cause of that anger. I was sent here with a proposal based upon the situation in which we currently find ourselves. So, again, I ask you, are you willing to listen to my superior officer's messages?"

Chan Skrithik felt an unwilling flicker of sympathy for this Toralk even through the cold, bitter fury of Janaki's death. He wouldn't have cared to be sent on a mission like this one.

"Very well," he said finally, flatly. "Speak your piece."

"Five Hundred Vaynair," Toralk said quietly, looking at the other officer, and Vaynair cleared his throat again.

"Regiment-Captain chan Skrithik," he said, "I am Two Thousand Harshu's senior magistron-his senior medical officer. We realize that some Sharonians have what you refer to as the Healing Talent. What we've been able to discover about it so far, however, suggests that its primary functions are pain management and the enhancement of the natural healing process. A magistron like myself, however, has the healing Gift, which differs from your people's Talent. With proper training, that Gift can repair damages your own people's Talent can't. For example, a sufficiently powerful magistron can actually regenerate damaged nervous tissue."

Chan Skrithik managed to keep his eyes from widening and simply cocked his head, waiting, when Vaynair paused.

"The reason I, specifically, am here, Regiment-Captain," the commander of five hundred continued after a brief silence, "is to propose that my medical staff and I make our healing Gifts available to the wounded from both sides."

"Why?" chan Skrithik demanded.

"For several reasons, Sir. One of them, frankly, is to ensure the best possible treatment for the Arcanan prisoners currently in your hands, many of whom must have been wounded." Vaynair made the admission unflinchingly. "A second, which you may find more difficult to believe, is that magistrons swear an oath very similar to the one your Healers swear. The use of our Gift is supposed to be determined by our patients' needs, not by who those patients might happen to be or theuniform they might happen to wear. And a third is because we couldn't reasonably expect you to allow us access to our own wounded if we were to refuse to treat your wounded, as well."

"I see," chan Skrithik said for a third time. Somewhat to his own surprise, he was inclined to believe Vaynair was sincere about this magistron's oath. And whether the Arcanan was sincere about that or not, the other points he'd made were certainly reasonable enough.

And the least these whoresons can do is save a few godsdamned lives for a change, he thought bitterly.

It was hard, but he managed to keep his voice level. Straining the hate and fury out left it curiously flattened, but there wasn't much he could do about that.

"I'll certainly take your proposal under advisement," he said after several seconds. "Of course, before I could accept it, I would have to ask you to repeat it in the presence of a Sifter."

"That would be someone with your people's Talent for recognizing when someone is lying?"

"It would. Why?" chan Skrithik's eyes narrowed "Would you have some objection to that?"

"We would have no objection at all, Regiment-Captain," Toralk replied for the commander of five hundred, "so long as the questions we were required to answer were limited to the discussion of the proposals before us."

Chan Skrithik considered that, then shrugged.

"I suppose that wouldn't be unreasonable … assuming I feel inclined to consider those proposals in the first place. However, you said you have two messages."

"Yes," Toralk agreed. "At the moment, you have in your possession several hundred Arcanan prisoners.

Two Thousand Harshu would like to propose an exchange-the prisoners you currently hold, for the free passage of your work crews in Karys back to Fort Salby."

"Our work crews?" chan Skrithik said. "Are you saying you've captured them? Or have you simply rounded up the survivors after massacring most of them?"

"We haven't 'massacred' any of them, Regiment-Captain. We bypassed them on our way to Fort Salby.

However, they'are now behind our lines, and it's necessary for us to do something about them." Toralk looked straight into chan Skrithik's eyes. "We can either go back and demand their surrender-and use force to compel them to surrender, if they refuse-or we can attempt to arrive at some other arrangement."

"Are you suggesting that you might hold them hostage for the return of your personnel?" chan Skrithik asked in a considerably icier voice.

"I suppose it might sound that way," Toralk conceded. "However, the point I'm trying to make is that at the moment there's been no contact between our forces and the civilian workers on your 'railroad.' What Two Thousand Harshu is offering you is an opportunity to protect them, in exchange for the return of his own personnel."

"What if I suggested that if he wants his people back he should return all of our people? Everyone you've captured from the moment you attacked us during the middle of the 'peace negotiations' you people proposed?"

Chan Skrithik watched the other man's expression narrowly and found himself wishing he'd had at least some experience in reading Arcanan body language. Not that he was certain it would have helped a great deal. Watching Toralk, he suspected that the Arcanan would have been a formidable opponent across the gaming table.

"Two Thousand Harshu thought you might make such a counter offer," Toralk said. "He instructed me to tell you that he doesn't have the authority to agree to such a broad exchange. He instructs me to point out to you that, as he's sure you'll appreciate, having transported at least some of the prisoners your people took when you attacked us beyond our reach, the prisoners in his hands represent an invaluable intelligence asset. He lacks the authority to surrender that asset until and unless both sides are in a position to discuss the return of all prisoners."

"Does he?"

There was something about Toralk's reply that bothered chan Skrithik. Something about the careful word selection. He couldn't put his finger on exactly what it was, yet it sent a chill through him, and he found himself hoping it was only because his bone-deep anger at Janaki's death had made him hypersuspicious of anything an Arcanan said or did.

"Very well," he said, hoping his flicker of apprehension hadn't been obvious to Toralk and Vaynair,

"suppose I make a different counter proposal. If he wants his soldiers back, I want not simply my civilians, but their construction equipment."

Toralk blinked. Clearly, chan Skrithik had managed to surprise him at least a little for the first time. The Arcanan frowned, cocking his head slightly while he considered what chan Skrithik had said, then shrugged.

"I can't say how Two Thousand Harshu would react to that suggestion," he admitted. "I would have to return and discuss it with him. Would that be acceptable?"

"Possibly." Chan Skrithik smiled thinly. "Your 'Two Thousand Harshu' is the fellow who first proposed the exchange. I hadn't even considered it. Obviously, I'll have to think about it, as well, won't I?

However, at the moment, I'm … disinclined to settle for anything less. And I suppose I should point out to you that what we're talking about is a couple of thousand 'civilians' equipped with the same weapons which blew your first batch of butchers into dog shit at Fallen Timbers. You might find an effort to

'compel them' to surrender rather more expensive than you'd like."

Toralk's face tightened slightly at the words "first batch of butchers," but he had himself well under control. Instead of some angry response, he simply nodded.

"You might be right, Regiment-Captain. That doesn't mean either side would be happy about the expense involved, however."

"True enough," chan Skrithik agreed with a thin smile.

"I would like to add one more thing, Regiment-Captain," Vaynair said, and chan Skrithik swung his gaze back to the magistron.

"What?"

"The two proposals aren't necessarily linked, Sir. The offer of our medical personnel for the wounded of both sides is independent of any agreement on exchanging prisoners."

Chan Skrithik nodded.

"I understand. And, to be honest, we've got some men-on both sides-who probably aren't going to make it without the kind of Healing you seem to be describing."

"I thought that would probably be the case, Sir." Vaynair's expression was grim. "In fact, with your permission, I've already requested Two Thousand Harshu's permission to remain here and offer my own Gift for the immediate treatment of the most critically injured while you and he make up your minds about the other aspects of his proposals."

"And did 'Two Thousand Harshu' give you that permission?" chan Skrithik asked. "After all, you say you're his senior medical officer. Is he willing to effectively add you to our bag of prisoners if the negotiation of his 'proposals' falls through?"

"I'm sure he hopes that in that eventuality, you'll allow me to return to him," Vaynair said levelly. "In fact, he told me to ask you for assurances to that effect. However," Vaynair looked chan Skrithik straight in the eye, "he also authorized me to remain whether you gave that assurance or not."

Chan Skrithik's eyebrows rose.

"That was very generous of him," the Sharonian said. "Or else he's a lot more worried about the care his wounded are likely to receive. In either case, I'm prepared to accept your offer-subject, of course, to that Sifter I mentioned. And," chan Skrithik added grudgingly, "if the Sifter passes you, I'm also prepared to guarantee your safe return whatever happens to the rest of our 'negotiations.'"thinspace""