Hell's Gate

Chapter Nineteen

"You be careful out there, Hulmok," Darcel Kinlafia said quietly as Acting Platoon-Captain Arthag swung gracefully back into the saddle.

"Oh, I will be," Arthag said with a smile. Then he clicked gently, and Bright Wind stepped daintily forward.

"Look at him!" Kinlafia muttered to chan Tesh, watching the Arpathian officer's ramrod-straight spine. "I'd be scared to death; he looks like he doesn't have a care in the world!"

"He doesn't," chan Tesh said simply. The Voice turned to stare at him, but chan Tesh, too, was looking after the single horseman riding straight towards their dug-in enemies.

"Hulmok Arthag," the Ternathian officer continued softly. "Fifth son of Sept Chieftain Krithvon Arthag." He glanced at Kinlafia finally. "I've never served with him before, but I know his reputation. And after ten months under Regiment-Captain Velvelig, I've learned a bit about Arpathians, too. They've got so many hells full of demons to worry about, if they've been stupid enough to live the way they shouldn't have, that there's not a thing any mere mortal can do to scare them. And if they have lived the way they ought to, why, there's nothing here that can tempt them to stay on earth, given the rewards waiting for the courageous in the afterworld. Hulmok's less fatalistic about it than a lot of septmen, but it's still in there. Which doesn't mean it takes an ounce less of guts to do what he's about to do.

Hulmok Arthag asked Bright Wind for an easy trot as he moved forward through the trees. The breeze of their passage was just enough to spread the traditional green banner of parley he carried, and he glanced up at it with a wry snort. He didn't expect the enemy to know what a Sharonian parley banner looked like, but it seemed likely that a lone horseman showing up with any banner in his hand was less likely to draw instant fire than a lone horseman without one.

Besides, as Company-Captain chan Tesh had pointed out, if he went out under a parley banner and they shot at him, anyway, there would be absolutely no question about the legal justification for unlimbering everything chan Tesh was prepared to throw at the people on the other side of that portal. When it came to starting a war?or trying to avoid one?such details mattered, and Arthag admired the way chan Tesh's mind operated.

He thought about the careful preparations the company-captain had made, and his lips twitched in an evil grin. He didn't really want a war any more than anyone else did, but that didn't mean he'd be particularly upset if the bastards gave chan Tesh's people an excuse.

He approached the portal and brought Bright Wind down to a dancing walk as he rode through the positions of the carefully hidden Marines. The stallion worried at the bit. The horse was aware of Arthag's battle-ready tension and ready for a fight himself, fretting against the restrained pace to which Arthag held him and so primed for instant combat that sweat darkened his neck.

Arthag saw two sentries on the far side of the portal. They should have seen him already, he thought, but they weren't looking in his direction at the moment. He walked Bright Wind steadily forward, waiting for them to notice him, and grimaced in exasperation as he got within eighty yards of the portal. Admittedly, the thick forest stretched right up to the portal, and chan Tesh's decision to send him in from the west meant the sentries had the blinding light of the afternoon sun shining straight into their eyes, but still … !

Close enough, he thought as the range fell to barely fifty yards, and let out a shrill whistle.

Their heads jerked up as if he'd poked them with a heated poker, and both of them whipped around towards him. They saw him, sitting his horse, just outside the treeline on his side of the portal, and one of them gave a startled shout and started to bring up his crossbow.

"Halt!" Arthag called out sharply, even as Bright wind screamed in warning and lifted his front hooves off the ground. But the second sentry shouted something urgent at his companion, and the man with the weapon aborted the movement and stood frozen in place.

Then others began stirring behind the sentries. Arthag couldn't make out details, since the earthworks which had been thrown up blocked his view, but he had the distinct impression of purposeful movement. Well, that was to be expected, although the thought that the other side was busy manning its inexplicable?unnatural, he thought, smiling to himself as he used Soral Hilovar's favorite word?artillery didn't exactly fill him with joy.

After several tense moments, someone else turned up. A tall man, whose uniform was subtly different from that of the sentries. The newcomer was an officer, Arthag decided. The uniforms these people wore were too unfamiliar for him to explain why he was sure of that, but he was. And as he watched the other man, he suspected he was looking at the portal camp's commanding officer.

Even from fifty yards away, Arthag could clearly see the surprise?amounting to shock?on the officer's face. The man looked as if he couldn't believe his own eyes, although Arthag couldn't imagine what he found so difficult to accept.

Commander of One Hundred Hadrign Thalmayr stared in disbelief at the single horseman.

He was positive Commander of Two Thousand mul Gurthak would be funneling forward every reinforcement he could find, and every day Thalmayr remained in possession of the portal was one more day for those reinforcements to reach him. And after almost six days, Thalmayr had concluded that the enemy's total inactivity indicated that the murderous scum who'd massacred so many good Arcanan soldiers hadn't gotten a message out before that blunderer Olderhan managed to kill or capture all of them after all.

He'd never had much use for those over imaginative sorts who fretted themselves into panics over events no one could control. Indeed, he'd always prided himself on his own levelheadedness. Yet he suddenly realized that he'd been allowing himself to become if not complacent, at least … increasingly optimistic. If the other side didn't know what had happened, it might be weeks?even months?before they got around to coming looking, and he'd been settling more and more into the belief that that was what was happening.

The appearance of the man on that golden horse was like taking a bucket of cold water in the face. Not only had "someone" turned up, but one look at the someone in question told Thalmayr it wasn't another civilian.

The hundred swept the trees behind the mounted man through narrow eyes, shading them with his raised hand and cursing the blinding sunlight. The stranger was more than a bit difficult to make out, in his dark tunic and breeches, and Thalmayr was uneasily aware that he couldn't see very much through the light glare. Still, if there'd been more of these people around, surely his people would have seen them! The wood-cutting parties he'd sent out that morning hadn't seen any sign of them, so they couldn't have been here very long … however many of them there might be.

In fact, he thought slowly, it was possible this fellow was all alone. Thalmayr had already decided Olderhan was right about at least one thing; the people he'd encountered had been just as surprised as Olderhan had been. They hadn't expected to run into another trans-universal civilization, either, so there was no reason for their superiors to think that was what had happened to them. But they hadn't been far from their entry portal, either, so even if they hadn't gotten a message back?and there's no fucking way they could have, he told himself?it was possible whoever had sent them out had finally missed them and sent out search parties. And in a virgin universe, those search parties would have been thinking in terms of some sort of accident or natural disaster, not hostile action, so it would have made sense for them to split up their available manpower to cover as much area as possible.

A corner of Thalmayr's mind warned him against grasping at straws, but standing here on top of his parapet dithering wasn't going to accomplish anything, and he started forward.

Arthag watched the enemy officer, wondering what was running through the other man's brain. Whatever else the fellow might be, he didn't seem to be an extraordinarily quick thinker, the Arpathian decided with biting amusement.

But then, finally, the other man started forward, as if he intended to climb down from his earthwork. Arthag didn't want that. He wanted all of these bastards right where he could see them until he was confident they hadn't planned some sort of ambush his own scouts simply hadn't been able to spot.

"Stop!" he called out in a voice trained to carry above the din of battle, lifting his hand in a universal "halt" sign. "Stand right there!"

Thalmayr stopped as the horseman raised his hand. The other man's voice was authoritative, the words harsh and alien-sounding, and the hundred felt his face darken with anger. He didn't much care for the notion of having a single stranger giving him orders in front of his men! Besides, who the devil did this godsdamned fellow think he was, giving orders to an Arcanan officer!

"What do you want?" he barked back, hands on hips. "This portal is Arcanan territory!"

Arthag watched the enemy officer stop where he was. Then the other man shouted something that sounded belligerent. That might simply have been the difference in languages, he reminded himself conscientiously, but there was still something about the other man's body language that rubbed Arthag the wrong way.

"You've attacked my people!" Arthag shouted back, sweeping one arm around to point toward the distant battlefield. "And you've taken prisoners." That was still a shot in the dark, of course, but the other man wouldn't understand a word he was saying anyway. "I want to see Shaylar! Shaylar Nargra-Kolmayr!"

Thalmayr twitched. Most of the words the horseman had spouted were only so much more arrogant-sounding gibberish, but not all of them. He shouldn't really have been surprised?if this was a member of a search party, presumably he would have known who he was searching for, after all?but it still took him offguard. Perhaps the name had taken him by surprise simply because it was the only part of the other man's unintelligible speech he'd been able to recognize.

His mind flashed back to the confrontation with Olderhan, the tiny, beautiful woman with the brutally bruised face standing behind the other hundred, and remembered fury whipped through him. It stiffened his shoulders, and his eyes flashed angrily as his head came up.

Arthag's breath hissed as the name struck the other man with visible force.

That bastard knows Shaylar's name! He recognized it!

There was only one possible way for the enemy officer to have recognized Shaylar's name. She'd survived. Survived at least long enough to tell her captors who she was. Whether or not she still lived, though …

Despite the remembered flare of anger, Thalmayr made himself think. The woman?Shaylar?had been the only woman in the other party. No doubt the search parties would be especially concerned about her, so it made sense for this fellow to mention her name. But the fact that he was sitting out here talking strongly suggested he had no notion there'd already been shooting. He seemed far too calm, too unconcerned over his own safety. So if he didn't know?or even strongly suspect?that this Shaylar had been captured, the thing to do was to bluff, play for time. Besides, Thalmayr couldn't have produced the woman even if that was what the other man had demanded.

The hundred composed his expression into one of confusion, then shook his head and raised his hands, shoulder-high and palms uppermost in a pantomime of helpless incomprehension.

"I'm afraid I don't understand a single word you're saying, you stupid bastard!" he called back.

"Wrong answer," Arthag growled under his breath as the other officer shouted back something unintelligible. Then he raised his own voice, louder than before.

"Shaylar! Bring me Shaylar right now!"

Thalmayr's jaw clenched. He still couldn't understand what the other man was saying, but the repeated use of Shaylar's name in what certainly sounded like an increasingly angry tone, worried him. The mounted man wasn't asking general questions, wasn't following the sort of "take me to your leader" approach one might have expected from a first-contact situation. Whatever he was saying, he was being specific?very specific. And he kept using the woman's name.

"I can't understand you!" Thalmayr shouted back. "I don't have any idea what you're talking about!"

Arthag listened not to the words?which wouldn't have meant anything to him, anyway?but to the tone, and his eyes were narrower than ever as he studied the other man's body language.

Whatever this bastard's saying, he's lying out his ass, the Arpathian decided. He was fully aware that he knew nothing at all about the other's cultural template, the gestures his people routinely used among themselves. But Arthag's Talent was at work. Like any Talent, it couldn't penetrate the interface of a portal, but after so many years, so much experience of knowing what was behind a gesture, a shift in expression, a change in tone, he was prepared to back his own ability to read the hearts of others across any imaginable cultural divide.

"You're lying!" he shouted. "You know perfectly well who I'm asking for! You bring me Shaylar?Shaylar Nargra-Kolmayr?now! I want to see her here?right here!" His left hand pointed at the ground in front of Bright Wind. "Shaylar, now! Or we come in there, kick your cowardly, murdering ass, and pull her out ourselves!"

He knows, Hadrign Thalmayr realized abruptly. He knows what happened!

The other man's anger was painfully obvious, and the jabbing of that accusatory index finger could not be mistaken. He wasn't asking if they'd seen the little bitch; he was demanding that they produce her.

The hundred still couldn't imagine how anyone could have gotten word back, but they obviously had. Yet whatever they'd gotten back must've been garbled, or partial, he thought, his mind whizzing along at dizzying speed.

They know something happened, he told himself, fighting to stay calm, but if they really knew what, they'd've come loaded for dragon, and they wouldn't have started out asking questions. And this bastard's here all by himself … probably.

Thalmayr's brain hurt as all the possibilities and ramifications spun through it. He didn't know that this single cavalryman really was here on his own. It seemed possible, although it was obviously far from certain. But even if he'd brought friends along, they were all still on the far side of the portal. Those shoulder weapons of theirs might be able to punch through the interface, just as arbalest bolts from Thalmayr's own men could, but artillery would be useless, and not even artillery could knock down his fortifications. So unless there were hundreds of the bastards out there in the woods, Thalmayr's positional advantage was still overwhelming.

I need more information, he told himself. And I need to keep the other side guessing as long as possible. And these people's weapons are supposed to be noisy as hell, whereas our arbalests aren't, and he's well within my people's range. So if they have split up their search parties to cover more ground …

The decision made itself. Perhaps, if he hadn't been trying to juggle so many unknowns, so many imponderables, simultaneously, he would have thought it through a bit more clearly, realized just how many optimistic assumptions he was still allowing himself.

But perhaps not, either.

Arthag watched angrily as the other man shook his head again, forcefully. Then the lying bastard made a mistake.

He snarled something low … and the sentries both whipped up their crossbows.

"All right!" Thalmayr shouted at the other man. "That's enough of this silly shit! You're my prisoner, godsdamn it!"

It was his turn to point at the ground with one hand while the other made a peremptory "get your ass over here!" gesture.

"Get over here now! Or, by all the gods, I'll nail you do that fucking saddle!"

"You must be as crazy as you are stupid," Hulmok Arthag said conversationally, although there was no way in any of the hells the other man could have heard him. Then he raised his voice.

"I don't think so!" he shouted back, his voice firm but calm, and shook his head.

"Fine!" Thalmayr snarled.

The horseman had obviously understood the surrender demand, but he didn't even seem to care. He only sat calmly in the saddle, exactly the way he had been, ignoring the arbalests aimed at him, and Hundred Thalmayr's simmering anger?and uncertainty?turned into pure, distilled fury at his failure to impose his will on the situation. And at that single, arrogant prick sitting out there as if he didn't have a care in the world. As if Hadrign Thalmayr were a threat too insignificant for him even to deign to notice.

"Have it your own way!" he shouted at the other man.

"They've fired on Platoon-Captain Arthag!" Balkar chan Tesh snapped.

He'd been peering through his field glasses from his own position on a tree branch fifteen feet off the ground. Now he raised his head and turned to look at the wiry noncom sitting on the branch above his and hugging the trunk for dear life.

"Instruct Platoon-Captain chan Talmarha and Senior Armsman chan Sairath to open fire!"

"Yes, Sir!" Junior-Armsman chan Synarch replied, grateful for anything to distract him from his fear of heights. He closed his eyes for a brief instant, and one of the small metal dispatch cases he wore at his waist, on what looked for all the world like an outsized cartridge belt, disappeared from its loop. An instant later, a second dispatch case vanished as he Flicked it to Senior Armsman Quelovak chan Sairath on the far side of the portal.

The dispatch cases reappeared almost instantly. chan Talmarha and chan Sairath snatched them up, opened them, and found the written orders chan Tesh had prepared for this very contingency before ever sending Arthag out. chan Talmarha glanced at the order, then turned to his gunners.

"Time to open the ball, boys!" he barked.

Hadrign Thalmayr cursed as the golden horse twisted on its tail and lunged sideways. He'd never imagined an unenhanced animal could move that quickly. Had he been wrong in his original assessment of it?

The question flickered behind his eyes even as both arbalest bolts hissed past its flashing hind quarters. They missed by scant inches as the rider dropped like a stone and vanished behind the horse's side. He simply vanished … but he hadn't hit the ground. He was hanging off the side of his saddle, completely hidden by his mount, as the horse took off like a fiend. It whipped back into the trees, and Thalmayr swore again, viciously, as he saw the rider twist himself back up into the saddle.

Godsdamn it! That's torn it wide open! When that son-of-a-bitch gets home he'll?

The hundred looked up suddenly as he heard a brief, abbreviated fluttering sound.

Balkar chan Tesh had his field glasses back to his eyes. He'd breathed a huge sigh of relief as Arthag thundered safely back into cover, but his attention was on the murderous bastard who'd just tried to have the Arpathian murdered.

That pretty well answers the question of whether or not the first massacre was an accident, doesn't it? chan Tesh thought viciously.

The idiot was still standing there, fully exposed, staring after Arthag, and chan Tesh bared his teeth in contempt.

You're not up against civilians this time you miserable bastard!

The fluttering sound ended in an abrupt, thunderous explosion behind Thalmayr, and the furious hundred's heart seemed to stop.

He'd never heard an explosion quite like it. It wasn't the sizzling, hissing crack of an infantry-dragon's lightning bolt, or even the thunderclap of a fireball. This explosion was … different, somehow. Deeper-throated, more hollow and yet louder. He heard screams of pain, shock, and terror as it erupted well behind the earthworks, and terror smoked through him.

They can shoot through a portal!

Disbelief warred with his terror as he whipped around, staring at the fountain of fire and dirt and the sudden crater at its foot. Even that was wrong! It was as if the explosion had erupted underground, and that was flatly impossible for any artillery spell!

That was his first thought. But then he realized something else, something almost as terrifying as the fact that these people's artillery spell's did work across a portal interface.

That explosion had been behind his parapet. Somehow, they'd projected it through the parapet before it exploded!

"A little long, Sir!" a noncom reported to Platoon-Captain chan Talmarha as he opened the dispatch case which had suddenly appeared and pulled out the hastily scrawled note. "Not much?about thirty yards."

"Down thirty!" chan Talmarha barked, pointing at his number two mortar crew. An instant later, the big weapon gave its distinctive throaty cough and the second ranging shot went whistling off.

Hundred Thalmayr cringed as a second explosion roared. The first had erupted well behind his fortifications, among the neatly arrayed lines of tents. The second exploded right in the heart of his artillery positions, and this time the shrieks were shrill and sharp with agony. Something whined past him, and one of the sentries, still standing beside him, as stunned as he was, went down with a bubbling scream.

Thalmayr turned towards him and realized yet another horror. The impossible artillery explosions clearly weren't as powerful as a field-dragon could have produced, although they were far more powerful than the ones his infantry-dragons could generate. But unlike any infantry or field-dragon Thalmayr had ever heard of, this artillery hurled out some sort of secondary weapon, something that slashed outward from the heart of the explosion to claw down men as much as fifteen or twenty yards away!

"That's got it, Sir!" the noncom reading the incoming dispatches announced jubilantly, and chan Talmarha showed his gunners his teeth.

"Pour it on, boys!" he shouted. "Ten rounds rapid, fire for effect!"

"Take that bastard down!" Platoon-Captain chan Dersal barked as the mortar bombs began to land. He and his men were within less than two hundred yards of the portal. Woodland like this gave all the concealment a skirmish line of Imperial Marines needed, and his people had crept carefully, patiently, into position, waiting for the order.

Now it came, and two hundred yards was no challenge at all to men trained by the Imperial Marines' Pairhys Island firearms instructors.

Something smashed into Hadrign Thalmayr's hips. It slammed him savagely to the ground, with a scream of agony, an instant before the remaining sentry went down without a sound. Even through his anguish, the hundred heard sharp, vicious whip cracks of sound coming from the woods, heard the spiteful hiss of something tiny and invisible sizzling through the air.

He managed to heave himself up onto his elbows, but his body was totally nonresponsive from the hips down, and any movement was agony. He started to shout an order. Even he had no idea what it was going to be, but it didn't matter. Before he had his mouth fully open, the overture of the first two explosions were replaced by a horrendous crescendo.

Balkar chan Tesh's lips skinned back from his teeth as the heavy mortar bombs exploded. There was nothing to protect the men behind those earthworks from the full fury of chan Talmarha's fire. No bunkers, no overhead cover, not even any slit trenches! The splinter-spewing explosions marched across the enemy position in hobnailed boots of flame and turned the fortifications which had been supposed to protect their occupants into an abattoir.

Thalmayr eyes bulged with horror as he watched the massacre of Charlie Company, Second Andaran Scouts. The "protected" area behind the parapet had become a killing ground, and his men couldn't even see the artillery slaughtering them. It couldn't simply shoot through a portal, or project its effect through solid objects, it was invisible, as well!

But, unfortunately for Charlie Company, its men refused to go down without a fight.

chan Tesh's eyes widened in astonishment as the enemy's infantry swarmed up and over the parapet. They'd already taken hideous casualties?he knew they had?but they came on anyway. Armed only with crossbows, most of them, they charged straight into the face of concealed riflemen. Here and there he saw one of them carrying one of those strange, glittering weapons which spat fireballs, but his Marines had been briefed on those, and deadly accurate rifle fire brought them down.

Then the machine-guns opened up.

The Faraika I was a crank-operated, twin-barreled weapon, firing the same basic .40-caliber round as the Model 10 rifle. The barrels were mounted side-by-side, each with its own breach mechanism. Effectively they were two complete individual rifles, and rotating the crank chambered and fired each of them in rapid alternation.

Firing belted ammunition, the Faraika I had a sustained rate of fire of almost two hundred rounds per minute. It couldn't keep it up indefinitely, of course, without overheating, but there were five of them covering each aspect of the portal.

"No!" Hadrign Thalmayr screamed as an inconceivable avalanche of fire swept over the Scouts. Blood flew in grisly sprays, and his charging men went down as heads and chests exploded under the impossible sledgehammer blows of the enemy's thunder weapons.

It was too terrible to call a massacre.

"Cease-fire! Cease fire!" chan Tesh shouted. "Tairsal, order the mortars to stand down?now!"

The Flicker sent the order as quickly as he could, but the big four-and-a-half-inch projectiles continued to smash down for another several seconds.

The moment they stopped falling, Hulmok Arthag's cavalry, as previously planned, led chan Tesh's own company in a thundering charge through the portal to secure the objective before the enemy could recover.

Hundred Thalmayr watched sickly as at least a hundred mounted men erupted from the forest. They rode straight over his own men, but even in his agony and despair, the hundred realized they were more intent on getting through the portal and into his camp then they were in massacring his troopers. They completely ignored his wounded, and they seemed almost equally willing to ignore the unwounded, as long as no one offered resistance to their passage.

Here and there, one of the Andaran Scouts, carried away by battle rage, or hatred?or duty?did offer resistance. But every one of those charging cavalrymen had one of their deadly hand thunder weapons in his fist, and Thalmayr groaned as still more of his men went down.

The golden stallion which had first ridden out of the woods led all the rest. Its rider put it across the parapet in an effortless, soaring leap, and the rest of the horsemen followed on his heels.

There were still a few dragon gunners on their feet, standing amid the mangled bodies of their fellows. Thalmayr saw one of them swinging his weapon around, saw him actually get a shot off. The fireball enveloped three of the charging cavalry troopers, and he heard someone screaming. But then a crackle of hand-weapon thunder cut down the gunner and his assistant, alike.

Half the cavalry spread out, sweeping along the parapet's inner face. The rest thundered straight ahead, heading for the tents.

Many of the riders flung themselves off their horses, storming into the tents, hand weapons ready, and Thalmayr felt horror grip him by the throat. He still had wounded men in those tents, less-critically injured and yet to be evacuated to the coast. Men unable to defend themselves. What if??

Then a fresh blur of motion caught his eye. Magister Halathyn crashed backwards through the opening of his tent. He staggered, clutching at one visibly wounded arm, then went heavily to his knees on the muddy ground. An enemy trooper exploded out of the tent on his heels, shouting at him, holding one of those ghastly hand weapons and pointing it directly at the aged magister.

Magister Halathyn was gasping out something, pointing frantically towards the east, then jabbing the same hand at the tents full of wounded. The dismounted cavalryman glared at him for an endless instant, still pointing his weapon at the magister's head. Then he lowered it, holding it by his side, and reached out his free hand to help the wounded Halathyn to his feet.

Thalmayr gasped in relief?only to scream in useless denial a heartbeat later as a lightning bolt lashed out from his own parapet. It caught two more of the enemy horsemen … and slammed through them to catch Magister Halathyn and the man helping him to his feet, as well.

They went down, writhing in the actinic glare. Lightning lifted and twisted their bodies, then slammed them down into the mud. They lay hideously still.

"Magister Halathyn! Oh, gods … "

It took Hadrign Thalmayr a moment to realize the voice was his own. And then, finally, the merciful darkness pulled him under.