The Road to Hell

Chapter Three

November 30

Commander of One Thousand Klayrman Toralk glowered at the report in his personal crystal. It was neatly organized and illustrated by half a dozen color-coded graphs and charts-obviously, the intelligence types had figured out how to get the best out of their word-processing spellware-but it made grim and ugly reading.

We are so screwed, he reflected glumly, and paged ahead to the latest dispatch from Commander of One Hundred Faryx Helika.

Helika’s 5001st Strike had been the weakest of the First Provisional Talon’s three strikes when the Arcanan Expeditionary Force set out on this nightmare journey. That had made it easy enough to dispense with it and assign it to the purely secondary advance up what the Sharonians called the Kelsayr Chain, but that had changed. In theory, an Air Force talon should have consisted of three full strength strikes of twelve fighting dragons each. In fact, Toralk’s talon consisted of-or would consist of, after Helika’s arrival-the 5001st’s three reds and three blacks, the three blacks which were all that survived of the 3012th Strike, plus the single black survivor of the 2029th. Of course, there no longer was a 2029th; Toralk had officially disbanded it and assigned its survivors to the 3012th.

Ten, he thought bitterly. A whole ten out of the thirty-six I ought to have, and not a yellow among them. Not that anyone this side of a lunatic would send yellows in against Sharonian defenses that know they’re coming!

They’d paid a savage price to discover what alert Sharonian artillery could do to strafing dragons, and Toralk blamed himself for it. They’d captured Sharonian “field guns” and “machine guns” in their advance from Hell’s Gate, and that loathsome bile toad Neshok had actually experimented with them and sent the results of his experiments forward. Toralk could tell himself-honestly-that Neshok’s experiments had been far from complete. That Neshok had both underestimated the range their “field guns” could attain, and provided no information at all about “shells” that exploded in mid-air and threw out hundreds of smaller projectiles. He suspected those were probably the “shrapnel shells” which had turned up in the intelligence summaries with a question mark behind them, so perhaps a fair-minded man (not that Toralk had the least desire to be fair-minded where Alivar Neshok was concerned) would have to admit the interrogator had at least given him the best information available. But Neshok hadn’t warned him at all about the weapons the Sharonians called “pedestal guns.” Not, Toralk admitted bitterly, that it would have made any difference. The thousand wanted to think that if he’d realized there was a weapon which could fire explosive shells at such a high rate he would have re-thought his plan to attack Fort Salby. Unfortunately, he knew better. He’d allowed himself-and the late Five Hundred Myr-to not simply expect the element of surprise but to make their entire attack plan depend upon it.

And it didn’t help anything when Myr took it upon himself to throw good money after bad. Toralk felt his jaw muscles tensing again and forced himself to relax them. If the idiot-

He made himself let go of the thought. He’d been a strike dragon pilot himself in his day. He knew the breed, knew how their minds worked. And because he had been, and because he did know, he understood exactly what Cerlohs Myr had been thinking-or not thinking-after the Sharonians somehow managed to ambush his dragons on their way to the target.

Toralk still couldn’t see how the Sharonians could have known where to dig in those machine guns on either flank of the approach valley he and Myr had chosen from their maps, yet he’d come to the conclusion they must have known. There was no other possible explanation for why those machine guns had been positioned on those hot, dry hillsides so far away from the line of the Sharonian “railroad” and the road running beside it. They’d been in exactly the right spot, and nothing Neshok’s interrogation teams had wrung out of their prisoners explained how the Sharonians had gotten them there in time. So far, at least, there’d been no mention of any of the bizarre Sharonian Talents which could have predicted Myr’s approach route with the necessary precision.

Toralk wasn’t ready to conclude that that meant there wasn’t such a Talent, and Shartahk knew Neshok’s interrogation methods were unlikely to encourage anyone to volunteer information that wasn’t dragged out of him. If there was such a Talent, however, and if it operated with any degree of reliability, the implications were terrifying. How could anyone defeat an enemy who literally knew when, where, and how he was coming? But if that sort of Talent existed, how had the Sharonians been so surprised by the AEF’s initial attacks? And even assuming it had only come into play after the attack began, he came back again and again to the Sharonian possession of their Voice communications system. If anyone had possessed a Talent capable not simply of realizing an attack was coming but of predicting its exact route accurately enough-and far enough in advance-to dig in heavy machine guns on either side of exactly the one of several valleys the leading dragon strike might have followed, then surely the Voices could have passed that warning farther down-chain, as well. For someone without arcanely aided combat engineers, it must have taken the better part of at least three days’ hard labor to prepare the defenses of Fort Salby as thoroughly as they’d been prepared. So if some bizarre Talent farther up-chain from Traisum had managed to predict the attack in time for them to accomplish that much, why hadn’t the warning been passed still farther in that ample time window?

Stop beating your head against that particular wall, Klayrman, he told himself again. Maybe you were just lucky in Karys. Maybe they did send a warning to Fort Mosanik but they had too little advance notice for it to get there before you hit it and took out its Voice. File this one under the “Never, Never, Ever Take Liberties Against Sharonians Again Just Because You Think You Have The Advantage of Surprise” heading and get on with where we go from here.

He grimaced, wondering if one reason his mind insisted on fretting itself against the question of how the Sharonians had managed it was because of how little he wanted to contemplate the options available to the AEF in the aftermath of Fort Salby. Helika’s strike would arrive within the next eighteen to twenty hours, but there wouldn’t be any more battle dragons for at least another two or three months. Nor were there any replacements for the eighteen transport dragons who’d been killed or too badly wounded for the dragon healers to return to service. That left his 1st Provisional AATC Aerie with only a hundred and seventy transports, and that was too few for a field force operating the next godsdamned thing to thirty thousand miles beyond the nearest sliderhead.

A single transport could carry loads weighing up to about a quarter of its own mass, which on average came to about fifteen tons of cargo. For short hops that could be boosted to as much as twenty or even twenty-five tons, but the cost in endurance and operational range was high. Levitation spells could double normal capacities, but spells with that sort of power requirement was magister-level work, and the military never had enough magister-level Gifts to meet its needs. The Army Air Transport Command belonged to the Air Force, despite its name and despite strenuous efforts by the Army to hang onto it, and Toralk had put in his own time as a junior officer commanding transport strikes and even talons. As a result, he was well aware of the acute limits on the uniformed personnel who could charge levitation accumulators, especially once they got too far forward to tap the power nets established in more heavily inhabited universes. There were very good reasons the AATC operated from nodal bases where it could assemble its most strongly Gifted techs to charge as many accumulators as possible. It kept such valuable personnel safely out of harm’s way, rather than parceling them out in tenth-mark packets, working in isolation too close to the sharp end of the stick, and it was generally simpler and more efficient to ship the charged accumulators-which weighed barely two pounds each, after all-forward to where they were needed.

Except that no one in his worst nightmares had dreamed anyone might ever need to supply such a force this big out at the arse-end of nowhere, and Commander of Two Thousand mul Gurthak had been forced to strip the dozen closest universes of transports to give Toralk what he had. Anything mul Gurthak had left was absolutely essential to maintaining the Expeditionary Force’s rear area transport requirements, not to mention the forts and sparse civilian populations scattered through those universes. That cupboard was bare, and there wouldn’t be any more dragons popping out of it anytime soon.

That was bad enough, but there’d never been enough accumulators, either. Still worse, the nearest real stockpile had been in Ucala, at the end of the slider net from New Arcana, 24,300 miles behind Arcana’s first encounter with the Sharonians, and they’d advanced over four thousand miles since then. That was the next best thing to two hundred and fifty hours’ flight time for a transport dragon, and a transport needed periodic breaks in flight and at least several hours rest per day, not to mention downtime for things like eating. All of which meant it was a sixteen-day trip-one way-between Ucala and Toralk’s tent here in the universe Sharona had christened Karys. Even more unhappily, the Ucala stockpile had been completely depleted by the heavy transport demands required to build up the AEF’s main logistic base in Mahritha and keep moving this far forward. Commander of Five Hundred Mantou Lyshair, the acting CO of Toralk’s AATC detachment, was down to an accumulator inventory far below the minimum level specified by The Book, and that was another situation that wasn’t going to get better anytime soon.

And because it isn’t, the transports Lyshair does have are forced to fly without accumulators, which is exhausting the dragons faster and hauling half the tonnage to boot. And then there’s the little problem of fodder and dragon feed, he reminded himself glumly.

The terrain between portals in both Karys and Failcham was hot, dry, and arid. There’d been little Sharonian civilian presence in either of them, which meant there’d also been little farmland to provide fodder for the cavalry’s horses or fresh food to vary the men’s diet, and there’d been neither domesticated animals nor large herds of wild animals to provide meat for the dragons or the cavalry’s unicorns. The wicked losses Gyras Urlan’s heavy dragoons had suffered in the final lunge at Fort Salby had reduced the number of horses they had to feed, but there were plenty of the hungry creatures left, and transporting enough food for all of the Expeditionary Force’s draft animals-and humans; let’s not forget them, Klayrman, he reminded himself-only increased the workload on the pilots and beasts of Lyshair’s exhausted aerie still further.

We don’t have a choice, he decided. I’m going to have to rotate the transport talons at least as far back as Thermyn to hunt.

That would be better than two thousand miles, but the portal between Thermyn and Failcham was in central Yanko, and a relatively short hop from there would take them to the vast, rolling plains of western Andara with its endless herds of bison. The hunting would be good, the game would be plentiful, the talon he rotated back would have good eating while it was there, and hunting parties could take enough additional bison to be shipped forward to Karys when it returned.

Of course, it’s going to cost me a quarter of my transports, he reflected glumly. And given the number of carnivorous mouths we have to feed, I’ll have to authorize Lyshair to dip into his levitation accumulators to haul the meat back. At least we’re in good shape for food preservation spells, so it won’t rot before it gets eaten. That’s not going to help with the fodder, though.

He frowned unhappily, then sighed. Two Thousand Harshu wasn’t going to like it, but they’d have to send the horses back along with the transports. A winter on the Western Plains of Andara would be no picnic, even for the arcanely enhanced cavalry mounts, but it would be better than trying to graze them here.

Sure, it’ll be better, but that’s sort of like saying amputation’s better than gangrene! Our biggest single advantage over the Sharonians is our mobility, and that’s oozing away from us while we sit here. Thank Trembo Fire Heel for the Traisum Cut! At least without dragons of their own those bastards aren’t going to be coming down it after us anytime soon. Unfortunately…

He sighed again and paged to the brief report he was going to have to discuss with Harshu. Until that unmitigated bastard Carthos got here from the secondary advance Harshu had recalled, Klayrman Toralk, for his sins, remained the second ranking officer of the AEF. That made him Mayrkos Harshu’s senior officer, and that made it his unwelcome job to share his staff’s estimates-guesstimates, really-of Sharonian transport capabilities with his superior. Frankly, he was half convinced those guesstimates were wildly pessimistic, but only half. And if they weren’t, if the Sharonians really could pack two or three dragonweights of freight into a single one of their railroad cars…

If they can, they may be slower than we are, but they’ve got the godsdamned railroad built all the way to the portal. Once whatever they have in the pipeline starts arriving in Traisum, they’ll be able to build up quickly-probably even more quickly than we could if we had as many levitation accumulators as we wanted! Each load’ll take longer to make the trip, but a single “train” as long as the work trains that pulled out of Karys after the prisoner exchange can carry as much as all my transports together. And that’s assuming the transports have the accumulators to double up!

That, he decided, was a very unpleasant thought indeed.

* * *

Commander of Five Hundred (acting) Alivar Neshok looked up from the report in his PC as Shield Lisaro Porath knocked once, opened his office door, and stepped through it. The one good thing about the abrupt check in the AEF’s advance was that there’d been time for the engineers to throw up quarters a bit more substantial than tents. The chansyu huts, named for the legendary immortal Ransaran two-headed, winged lion which died and was reborn in a flash of lightning, couldn’t be erected quite as quickly as their name suggested, but now that the AEF looked like spending at least several months in one spot, more durable quarters were in order.

Neshok didn’t like the fact that their advance had come to such a screeching halt, but he was grateful for the solid roof and walls-and the warmth-the chansyus provided. The privacy that came with walls less permeable to sound than canvas was also welcome, and so was the rather more comfortable set of quarters attached to the chansyu which housed his office.

Now the shield braced to attention in front of his field desk and touched his chest in salute.

“Sorry to disturb you, Five Hundred, but Thousand Gahnyr is here to see you,” he said.

Porath-a black-haired, brown-eyed Hilmaran with a thin mustache-was a solid, chunky, broad shouldered fellow whose hard face hinted at the flinty soul of the man who wore it. He’d been Javelin Porath up until about last week, when Neshok had finally managed to get him the promotion he’d so amply earned. It was a mark of the way Two Thousand Harshu and Thousand Toralk were busy pushing Neshok into obscurity now that they felt they no longer needed him that it had taken so long for Porath’s promotion to come through.

That thought sent a familiar trickle of resentment through the five hundred, and his lips thinned as he recalled how different Harshu’s attitude had been when the AEF’s advance had begun. No one had expressed any qualms then about how Neshok and his handful of interrogators got the intelligence Harshu needed to plan his movements or Toralk needed to plan specific attacks. Oh, no! All that had mattered then was that the information continue to flow!

He treasured the heat of his anger for a moment, warming the hands of his soul’s bitterness above the furnace of his fury, then made himself take a mental step back. The truth was that Toralk had always looked down that long, Andaran nose of his at Neshok. In fact, he’d protested to Harshu about the five hundred’s methods several times. Hadn’t kept him from making use of the information Neshok and Porath and the others like them had obtained for him, though, had it? But now that the brilliant tacticians like Harshu and Toralk were bogged down in front of a bottleneck they couldn’t find a way through, now that they might have to start answering awkward questions from their own superiors, now they were ready to throw the despised “intelligence puke” who’d brought them this far to the dragon to cover their own arses. They weren’t even accepting personal briefings from Neshok any longer. Instead, they sent middlemen like Commander of One Thousand Faildym Gahnyr to see if Neshok had obtained any additional intelligence that might let them somehow crawl out of the pit into which their advance had fallen.

The five hundred squared his shoulders, inhaled deeply, and nodded to Porath.

“Show the Thousand in, Lisaro.”

He was rather pleased with how calmly the sentence came out, and he shut down his PC, climbed out of his chair, and straightened his tunic. He caught a glimpse of himself in the mirrored surface of the PC and allowed himself a brief lip twitch of satisfaction. As an intelligence officer, he theoretically ought to have worn the Office of Army Intelligence’s gray trousers and maroon tunic with the OAI’s unsleeping eye shoulder flash. Instead, he wore the standard camouflage pattern tunic-still the mottled green, black, and brown of summer-of a line Infantry or Cavalry officer. That was more than sufficient to frost the chops of any hard-nosed operational type like Toralk, and Neshok took a certain degree of pleasure in rubbing those aforesaid hard noses in it. He’d been instructed by Two Thousand mul Gurthak himself to avoid OAI uniform, and there wasn’t much anyone could do about it as long as he was following the governor’s instructions.

He looked up from the reflection and came to attention as Thousand Gahnyr followed Porath back into Neshok’s workspace.

“Thousand,” he said, saluting briskly, and Gahnyr nodded back with rather less formality.

“Five Hundred,” he responded, and accepted Neshok’s gestured invitation to seat himself in the chair floating in front of the desk.

Neshok dismissed Porath with a flick of his head, then resumed his own chair and leaned back in it ever so slightly, regarding Gahnyr with an attentive expression.

“How can I help you, Sir?” he inquired as the door closed behind Porath.

“I’m on my way to a meeting with Two Thousand Harshu and Thousand Toralk,” Gahnyr said. “It’s mostly just a routine base-touching, but I wondered if you’d had time to go over those dispatches from Thousand Carthos? If you’ve turned up anything new, I thought I’d take it along with me.”

“Of course, Sir.” Neshok’s reply was as crisp as the nod which accompanied it, despite a fresh stab of resentment. Of course Gahnyr would “take it along” with him. It wouldn’t do to have Alivar Neshok’s pariah presence cast its shadow across Commander of Two Thousand Harshu’s latest meeting, would it? Why, if that happened, somebody might actually think Harshu had authorized Neshok’s actions!

“There isn’t really anything new-certainly not anything earthshaking-in Thousand Carthos’ reports, Sir,” he continued. “I could wish there were more prisoner interrogations”-his opaque eyes flicked up to meet Gahnyr’s briefly-“since that’s proven our best source of intelligence, but apparently not many prisoners were actually taken. On the other hand, he’d only gotten about halfway across Resym before he was recalled to join us here, and aside from the fort at the Nairsom-Resym portal, he hadn’t encountered anything remotely like resistance, so he probably had less opportunity to secure prisoners than we’ve had.”

“Probably not,” Gahnyr agreed in a neutral tone.

The infantry thousand wasn’t as imaginative as Klayrman Toralk, his Air Force counterpart, but he couldn’t have missed the implication of Neshok’s remarks, and the intelligence officer felt a flicker of satisfaction. They’d find it a bit more difficult to dodge the crap Carthos’ lack of prisoners was going to splash all over everyone in sight. None of Carthos’ reports said so in so many words, but it was obvious he hadn’t bothered to take any prisoners, and it was difficult to believe every single Sharonian he’d encountered had died fighting.

Not going to be able to sweep that under the rug, are you? the five hundred thought coldly. And Carthos is a regular Infantry officer, not one of those Office of Intelligence types you can shove all your own responsibility off onto, isn’t he?

Indeed Carthos was, and-like Neshok-he enjoyed the protection of no less a patron than Two Thousand mul Gurthak, himself. That was a reflection which brought Neshok quite a lot of comfort upon occasion. Harshu and Toralk might think they’d be able to use him as the sacrificial goat if the time came that some bleeding heart from the Commandery or Inspector General’s Office decided to look into any irregularities where the Kerellian Accords were concerned. In fact, he was quite sure now that Harshu had had that in mind from the beginning. He’d throw up his hands in horror when the investigators arrived and tell the multiverse he’d had no idea what his “out of control” subordinates were doing. Of course he hadn’t! But, after all, what could anyone have expected? It wasn’t as if the Office of Army Intelligence was one of the combat arms with a properly developed sense of honor, was it?

But that wasn’t going to fly when Neshok and Carthos testified under truth spell that their actions been authorized every step of the way. Especially not when their testimony would implicate not simply Harshu but also mul Gurthak, who was a far larger and more influential fish.

“As for the other material in the Thousand’s reports,” the five hundred continued after a moment, “his reconnaissance gryphons and dragon overflights have confirmed what we were able to deduce from the captured Sharonian maps, at least as far as everything within a thousand miles or so of the Nairsom-Resym portal is concerned. There’s virtually no sign of human inhabitants and the only ‘roads’ are little more than dirt trails hacked out of the undergrowth. There’s no way anyone without dragons could operate in that sort of terrain.”

“Good,” Gahnyr said. “Can you shoot a summary of his reports to my PC before supper?”

“Of course, Sir.”

“Then I think that’s about everything.” The infantry thousand stood: he did not, Neshok noticed, offer to clasp forearms with him. “I’d best be going if I’m going to make that meeting on time. Thank you, Five Hundred.”

“You’re welcome, Sir,” Neshok replied pleasantly, and came to his feet respectfully as Gahnyr nodded, turned, and left the office.

Oh, you’re very welcome, the five hundred thought as the door closed. And I’ll be sure to emphasize all those little…irregularities Thousand Carthos has been up to. You and Two Thousand Harshu may think you can feed me to the dragon without getting your lily-white hands dirty, but it’s not going to be that easy. I may be a stinking little intelligence puke, not a proper combat officer, but you’re playing on my turf when it comes to information control. By the time I’m done, there’s going to be enough evidence tucked away in official records and documentation to lead any IG investigators straight to all of the rest of you, too.

It might not be enough to save his neck, but at least he’d have the satisfaction of taking all the others down with him.

And the thought of all those smoking dragons hidden away in the files ought to help motivate Two Thousand mul Gurthak to keep his promises about protection and promotion, as well. Because if he doesn’t, I’m godsdamned sure I won’t be going down alone.

* * *

“You realize Thalmayr would send us both to the dragon if he realized what you and I were talking about,” Commander of Fifty Jaralt Sarma observed almost whimsically, arms crossed over his broad chest as he tipped back in his chair and balanced on its rear legs. He was a relatively short, stocky, heavyset young man with unruly brown hair and dark eyes which Therman Ulthar suspected had gotten a lot harder in the last couple of weeks.

“Probably,” Ulthar agreed after a moment. “Assuming he didn’t just throw us into a cell along with the Sharonians and beat the hells out of us every other day along with them.”

Sarma’s lips tightened, but he didn’t disagree. In his own considered opinion, Hadrign Thalmayr was a sociopath. Whether he’d always been one or whether it was a recent development, following his catastrophic showing at the Mahritha portal, was more than the fifty was prepared to say, but it didn’t really matter. Regulations, the Articles of War, and the Kerellian Accords were very, very clear and explicit about the proper treatment of POWs. And even if they hadn’t been, there were some things Jaralt Sarma wasn’t prepared to stomach.

“Actually,” Ulthar went on, “if he threw us into a cell with Regiment-Captain Velvelig, he wouldn’t get an opportunity to beat the shit out of us. Velvelig would do it for him. In fact, he’d probably reach right down our throats and rip out our hearts with his bare hands.” The wiry, red-haired fifty shook his head, his expression even grimmer than Sarma’s. “That’s a hard man, Jaralt, and I’ve been watching him. Anyone who can drop a dozen gryphons all by himself-and put a bullet into the last one’s eye after he was down with an arbalest bolt in a shattered hip-is not someone I want pissed at me. He’s already decided what he’s going to do. He’s just waiting until he has the best chance to take some of us with him before he tries it.”

Sarma nodded. He hadn’t spent as much time as Ulthar had in Fort Ghartoun’s brig-whether as a prisoner himself or since the survivors of the fort’s Sharonian garrison had been imprisoned there-for several reasons. The most important of them was his lack of desire to draw Thalmayr’s attention to himself, but his own sense of shame was high on the list, as well. On the other hand, he’d never been Velvelig’s prisoner. He didn’t have the personal, searing sense of obligation Ulthar felt. No, his shame was for the way in which Thalmayr degraded and dishonored the entire Andaran officer corps by his actions. Not that Thalmayr was alone in that…which presented its own thorny problem.

“The question before the house is what we do about all of this,” he said. “We’re very junior officers, Therman. Whatever we do is probably going to put us over our heads in dragon shit by the time it all hits the wall.”

“I’d already be there if you hadn’t stopped me,” Ulthar replied. “In case I didn’t already say it, thanks.”

He looked across at the shorter man, his eyes level and his tone somber, and Sarma unfolded his arms to wave one hand in a brushing away gesture.

“Couldn’t let you get yourself killed before I had a chance to come along with you,” he responded, and the lightness of his own tone fooled neither of them. If he hadn’t intercepted Ulthar on his way towards the fort’s office block, Commander of One Hundred Hadrign Thalmayr or Therman Ulthar-or both-would be dead by now.

“Maybe you couldn’t,” Ulthar said, “but this is a lot more on me than it is on you. The bastard’s my company commander, and I’m the one Velvelig and his healers did their dead level best to take care of. That makes it personal, Jaralt.”

“I know that. But you won’t do anyone any good if you try to storm his office. While I’ll agree Thalmayr’s dumber than a rock, there’s a reason he’s doubled the sentries on the HQ block. And if I had to guess, I’d guess that reason is named Therman Ulthar.”

“Probably,” Ulthar agreed.

“No ‘probably’ about it. You have noticed none of those sentries are Scouts, didn’t you?”

“Of course I have.”

Ulthar sounded irritated, although Sarma knew the irritation wasn’t directed at him. Ulthar and Thalmayr were both officers in the 2nd Andaran Scouts, one of the Union of Arcana’s elite units. The 2nd Andarans were famous for their high standards, proficiency, discipline…and unit loyalty, and Hadrign Thalmayr had been a member of the 2nd Andarans for less than a month before he got two of its platoons blown into dog meat by the Sharonians. Worse yet, he’d accomplished that by systematically rejecting the advice of Hundred Olderhan, who’d commanded C Company for the better part of two years and whose father happened to be the 2nd Andarans’ hereditary commander. There couldn’t be much love for Thalmayr among the unit’s survivors, and an outfit with the 2nd Andarans’ elan and history-with their battle honors and their sense of who and what they were-wasn’t going to take well to the dishonor they knew his actions were heaping upon them.

And they’re a lot more likely to back someone like Therman Ulthar then they are to obey Thalmayr, if it comes down to it, Sarma thought grimly. Unfortunately, there’re only five of them-six, counting Therman-and Thalmayr’s got most of a company of regulars under his command.

Regulars who didn’t have the personal investment of the 2nd Andarans…and who still believed the lies they’d been fed by their own intelligence officers.

“If we were closer to home, we could go to the JAG,” he said out loud.

“And if crocodiles had wings they’d be dragons,” Ulthar replied sourly. “I’d rather go through channels myself, but from what Iftar said, ‘channels’ wouldn’t give a rat’s arse.”

“Not anyone we could reach, at least.” Sarma puffed out his cheeks in exasperation. “You’re brother-in-law’s right about that, I’m afraid. I told you what happened when I tried to report Neshok’s violation of the Accords to Thousand Carthos.”

Ulthar grunted unhappily. The Kerellian Accords were the bedrock of the Andaran Army’s honor, deep in the bone and sinew of what made Andara Andara. Violating them was a capital offense, but if Sarma and his own brother-in-law, Iftar Halesak, were right, Hadrign Thalmayr wasn’t the only one ignoring them. In fact, Ulthar doubted Thalmayr would have had the courage to violate them if they weren’t already being violated with the connivance-or at least the knowledge-of officers far senior to himself. No. Thalmayr was a carrion eater, a jackal gorging on the stinking leftovers of someone else’s kill. And given the lies the Expeditionary Force had been told-the lies about who’d shot first not just at Toppled Timber but at the Mahritha portal, and, far worse, the lie about Magister Halathyn’s death-that someone else was very highly placed.

Under normal circumstances, it was an officer’s duty to report any evidence of a violation of the Kerellian Accords to the Judge Advocate General’s office. He had no choice about that, and the Articles of War specifically protected him against retaliation even if his suspicions were later deemed unfounded. Of course, what the Articles promised and what practice delivered weren’t always the same thing, but at least Sarma and Ulthar could have expected their allegations to be rigorously investigated and that anyone who was the subject of that investigation would be very careful to avoid any open appearance of retaliation afterward.

Under normal circumstances. Under these circumstances it was entirely possible that a pair of nosy, holier-than-thou junior officers who dared to rock their superiors’ boat might simply disappear. It sickened Ulthar to even think such a thing, but if Thousand Carthos, Two Thousand Harshu’s senior infantry officer, and Five Hundred Neshok, who reported directly to the two thousand, were guilty of violating the Accords, why should they hesitate over a few more murders simply because the victims wore the same uniform they’d already befouled? And if those violations were being winked at in the field, and if there was anything to Iftar’s belief that the lies the AEF had been told were part of a deliberate disinformation policy designed to whip up the troops’ fury, they had to assume Harshu’s immediate superiors knew about it, too. So any attempt to report their suspicions up-chain to Two Thousand mul Gurthak or his superiors was likely to be…poorly received, as well.

“I think,” Sarma said slowly, “that whichever way we jump, there’s going to be hell to pay. If you or I try to…relieve Thalmayr, you know damned well he’s going to call it mutiny. Probably mutiny in the face of the enemy, given everything that’s going on. And if he does, and if someone farther up the food chain”-even here, and even to Ulthar, he carefully didn’t mention any names like “Harshu” or “mul Gurthak” out loud-“really is involved, we could end up looking at a field court-martial.”

A field court-martial, he did not point out, whose sentence would almost certainly be death.

“I know.” Ulthar’s face might have been beaten iron for all the expression it showed, and his voice was colder and even harder. “But if we don’t do something, if we don’t at least try to stop the rot, then we’re complicit in it. I don’t know about you, Jaralt, but I can’t let that happen. I just can’t.”

“Well, in that case, I don’t suppose we have a lot of choice.” To his own surprise, Sarma actually smiled ever so slightly. “On the other hand, I hope you won’t object to trying to at least do something effective about it. If we’re going up against the dragon with a slingshot, I’d at least like to do it in a way bastards like Thalmayr and Neshok can’t just sweep under the carpet afterward.”

“Oh, I think I can promise you that much, whatever happens,” Ulthar said grimly. “I’ve already sent an outside-channels message home that nobody’s going to be able to ignore when it arrives.”

“You have?” Sarma let the front legs of his chair thump back to the floor and leaned forward, eyes narrow. “How?”

Ulthar smiled crookedly and shook his head.

“It wasn’t that hard, really. Thalmayr wasn’t with the Company long enough to figure out that Valnar Rohsahk isn’t just our platoon RC specialist; he’s also our hacker. He didn’t even work up a sweat hacking Fifty Wentys’ spellware.”

“You had him hack the censor’s spellware?” Sarma asked very carefully.

“Of course I did.” Ulthar’s smile was considerably broader than it had been. “It’s a pity Thalmayr lost the Company files when the Sharonians kicked our arse. If he hadn’t, he might know Valnar was honor graduate in the Garth Showma Institute’s counter-spellware course. If he’d been willing to transfer to one of the regular regiments, they’d have made him a sword or even a senior sword in their recon section on the spot. Wentys never had a chance after I turned him loose.”

Sarma just looked at him for several seconds while his own mind raced. He’d seen Shield Valnar Rohsahk here at Fort Ghartoun, but he hadn’t paid him much attention. Rohsahk was probably a year or two younger even than Sarma, with light brown hair and unremarkable features. Like Ulthar, he’d been severely wounded in the Sharonian attack on the Mahritha portal. That was true of all the 2nd Andarans here at Fort Ghartoun; they’d been left by their captors to spare them the additional pain of being transported across such rough terrain by someone who didn’t have dragons. He seemed to keep to himself quite a bit, but now that Sarma thought about it, the shield always seemed to have a game or some other app running on his personal crystal. Or at least that was what Sarma had assumed Rohsahk was up to…

“And just what, if I might ask, did Shield Rohsahk do to Fifty Wentys’ spellware?” he asked with a certain trepidation.

“He just hid a file in the letter I sent my wife to tell her I was alive after all,” Ulthar said. “It’s keyed to the standard extraction code Arylis uses to unpack all my letters, but it won’t activate until it hears the code in her voice.” He shook his head. “If Wentys could find his arse with both hands we’d have had to think up something a lot more sophisticated.”

“What if someone farther up-chain is better at his job than Wentys is?”

“They could hardly be worse at it,” Ulthar pointed out. “I mean, do you really think Five Hundred Isrian left his best commo officer here in Thermyn with the gods only know what waiting for the AEF when it finally hits a Sharonian position that’s too tough to take?”

That was a valid point, the other fifty reflected. Commander of Fifty Tohlmah Wentys was a Chalaran who’d somehow ended up in the Army instead of the Navy, and he was unlikely to rise much above his present rank. He was a stolid sort-an officer who did what was required of him without imagination, drive, or ambition. He was sufficiently Gifted to perform adequately as a communications specialist in peacetime, but as Ulthar had just suggested, he was hardly the pick of the litter.

And he was also one of the officers who’d swallowed the official version of Sharonian “war crimes” and what had happened to Magister Halathyn. Sarma doubted Wentys would have had the nerve to beat one of the Sharonian POWs, but he would certainly have held Thalmayr’s truncheon for him between blows.

“Well, no. Not if you put it that way,” he conceded.

“Wentys officially cleared the file for transmission and sealed it with his personal cipher,” Ulthar said. “It’s unlikely anyone up-chain’s going to go to the trouble of breaking it just to double check. They can’t do it openly without leaving tracks I doubt anyone involved with some kind of cover-up wants to leave, and if they do it clandestinely, it’ll be almost impossible for them to hide the fact. And whether they do it openly or covertly, Valnar set the file to self-destruct if anyone other than Arylis tries to access it. Of course, Arylis won’t know she’s accessing it until it pops out at her. At which point,” his smile turned very, very cold, “she goes straight to the Duke with it.”

“You’re sending your wife directly to Duke Garth Showma?” Sarma blinked.

“He’s the hereditary commander of the Second Andarans,” Ulthar replied simply. “If she takes it to him, he’ll read it. And when he does, and when he realizes what one of his officers has been doing, hell won’t hold what’ll come down on Hadrign Thalmayr’s head.”

“Or anyone else’s, I imagine,” Sarma said slowly.

“Or anyone else’s,” Ulthar agreed, but then he shrugged. “Unfortunately, it’s going to take over a month for that letter to reach Arylis, and Velvelig’s healers’ll be dead long before that happens. For that matter, once he actually beats a couple of them to death, I’m pretty sure Thalmayr’ll decide all the Sharonian POWs were shot trying to escape. Dead witnesses don’t tend to dispute live witnesses’ version of what happened.”

“No, they don’t. And you’re right about what’s going to happen to them if someone doesn’t stop it. It’s nice to know the Duke’s going to bring the hammer down eventually, but I’m afraid it’s still up to you and me to do something about Thalmayr in the short term.”

“Yes, it is. And I’m glad you stopped me from going after him all by myself, Jaralt. I hadn’t thought about involving anyone else, especially what’s left of my men. In fact, if I’m going to be honest, I’m so frigging furious I wasn’t really ‘thinking’ at all. Now that you’ve jogged my brain back into functioning, though, I’d really prefer to work out a solution where anybody who gets killed is one of the bad guys. And it occurs to me that you and I probably aren’t the only members of this garrison who loathe Thalmayr and his toadies. If we’re going to be charged with mutiny, we might as well go the whole dragon, don’t you think?”