He ground his teeth together, bitterly aware that it would take a miracle to do that, given Olderhan's infernally good luck-not to mention his fucking birthright. But there was nothing he could do about that, either, and so he forced himself to stand there and listen to the bastard's voice.

"Remember," Jasak said, making his voice as calm and matter-of-fact as he could. "We want this situation contained. We know they're in there somewhere, and we need to make certain we don't lose any of them. But I want this settled without shooting, if it's at all possible."

He looked at Garlath, trying to will him to comprehend.

"Understand me, Fifty. We're responsible for the lives of our own people, but our overriding responsibility is to the Union. To preventing this from getting any further out of hand. You and your men will not fire unless and until you are attacked."

Garlath stared at him, face sweaty and eyes wide. Jasak could almost literally feel the protest just barely locked behind the other man's teeth.

"I understand your concern for your men's safety," he said, his voice as soft and reasonable as he could make it even as both of them knew whose safety Garlath was truly concerned about, "and no officer likes giving an order like that. But it's a direct order, and it will be obeyed, Fifty Garlath. On the other hand, I'll understand if you feel unable to order your men to obey my instructions under these circumstances. If you do, I will relieve you without prejudice and assume command of your platoon and responsibility for any casualties it may suffer."

He felt Gadrial stiffen where she stood beside Chief Sword Threbuch, but he kept his own gaze on Garlath's, staring deep into the fifty's eyes, almost begging the man to accept his offer. Jasak didn't feel any more eager than the next man to wade out into that tangled, torn mass of timber, but he was completely willing to offer Garlath a way out of the duty which obviously terrified him.

Shevan Garlath managed-somehow-not to glare back at the officious, sanctimonious bastard in front of him. Relieve him "without prejudice"! Oh, yes. Garlath believed that, didn't he? If he declined the "honor" of walking out into that maze, his career would be over. Whatever he might say now, Olderhan's official report would slam him for "cowardice in the face of the enemy," and his own request for relief would "prove" the charge.

Which was a capital offense, if a court-martial convicted.

Besides, he told himself, searching frantically for something to bolster his own courage, he knows perfectly well that whoever's actually in command when we finally make contact with these bastards-however it comes out-is going to be made for life. And if he has to relieve me for "cowardice" to take over command, it'll only make him look better!

"No, Sir," he grated. "It's my platoon, my job. I'll do it."

Jasak swallowed a vicious, silent curse as Garlath spurned the offer. But there was nothing he could do about it. Whatever he might suspect, or even know, about Garlath's terror, he had no overt evidence of cowardice, and Garlath was right. It was his platoon, and under both Union military law and the Andaran code of honor, Jasak had to leave him in command unless he requested relief or openly violated regulations or the articles of war.

"Very well, Fifty Garlath," he said frostily. "You have your orders. Good luck."

Garlath clenched his jaw so tightly it hurt all the way down his neck as he nodded to Gaythar Harklan. The Second Squad shield nodded back, and started forward, slowly and gingerly, with the squad's arbalestiers deployed in a skirmish line.

Garlath followed behind them, hands wet with sweat as he gripped his loaded arbalest. The squad advanced slowly, painstakingly searching every twisted pile of branches that offered a hiding place, and the fifty felt his heart battering against his rib cage like a hammer.

Whoever these bastards were, wherever they'd come from, they were not going to get the drop on Shevan Garlath.

Shaylar watched the advancing men from her hiding place through a screen of barren branches, long since deprived of their leaves.

These men meant trouble. Big trouble. They were dressed in military style uniforms, practical and suited to an active life in rough country. Yet their appearance was so incongruous, so odd, that it took a concentrated effort to focus on them and what they were doing, rather than what they wore and the anachronisms they carried.

Their bizarre, medieval weapons made them look like play actors . . . until you got a good look at their faces. Even at a distance of fifty yards, it was clear the men behind those grim expressions were capable of carrying out any kind of violence to which they might set their hand. Shaylar hadn't grown up around soldiers, but she'd seen a lot of them since joining the survey crews, and the tough air of dangerous competence which surrounded these men left her trembling.

Not even a rabbit could have evaded their meticulous search. In fact, several didn't. Rabbits and chipmunks darted into the open several times, running in panic as men with swords-honest-to-goodness swords-poked them into hiding places into which no human being above the age of six months could possibly have shoehorned himself.

Each animal that exploded out of hiding tightened the thumbscrews on Shaylar's ragged nerves. From the reactions of the soldiers, particularly the man behind their advancing line, who seemed to be in charge, the strain was no less acute on their side. On an immature, emotional level Shaylar wanted to be glad these killers were afraid of them, but common sense and a chilling voice at the base of her skull told her how dangerous their fear could be.

Their advance narrowed the gap steadily, bringing them within thirty yards of her hiding place. They continued to search with methodical, terrifying thoroughness. It was only a matter of time before one of those grim-faced men thrust a sharp steel blade through a pile of branches and came sword-point-to-gun-muzzle with Shaylar or one of her companions. She didn't dare move her head even to look for Jathmar or Ghartoun chan Hagrahyl. She scarcely dared to breathe. Surely it couldn't be much longer now!

The same thought must have crossed chan Hagrahyl's mind. The nearest soldier was twenty yards out, and chan Hagrahyl stood up.

Without his rifle. Without even a handgun. He simply stood up, in the most stunning display of pure, cold courage Shaylar Nargra-Kolmayr had ever seen in her life.

"If you don't mind, that's far enough," he said in a voice that sounded like someone talking to his grandmother, not to a pack of armed strangers who'd already murdered a friend of his.

He held his hands out in the open, empty, nonthreatening, trying to show them he was no danger. The men in the clearing whirled at the sound of his voice, then froze where they stood, taking stock through wide eyes. They stared from chan Hagrahyl's empty hands to his tense but pleasant smile, and two or three of them turned uncertainly toward the trees behind them, rather than towards the man Shaylar had thought was in charge.

Then she realized that that man wasn't frozen in surprise.

The sound of a voice shouting alien gibberish sent terror scalding through Garlath even as his mind shrieked the word: Enemy! The jabbering stranger thrust himself violently out of hiding, ready to strike with some terrifying murder weapon, and the sorry-assed men of Second Squad weren't even moving.

Terror fluttered at the back of Garlath's throat, like a trapped basilisk, yet even as it strangled him, a sudden wild exultation swept through him, as well.

I've got him! He's mine! Not Jasak Olderhan's, not anyone else's, but mine!

Visions of glory, of promotions and the adoration of all of Arcana roared through him like dragonfire, spreading to his fingertips and toes, and his arm came up.

Jasak saw Garlath's arbalest twitch as the stranger stood up, calling out in a friendly voice. He saw the weapon start to swing up, start to track around towards the voice.

"Hold fire!" he shouted. "Hold fire, Fifty Garlath! Damn it, I said hold-"

Thwack!

The crossbow quarrel hit chan Hagrahyl directly in the throat.

Shaylar screamed under Jathmar's feet, echoing his own shock. Blood drenched the pile of wood, spraying hot and terrible over chan Hagrahyl's hands as he clawed at the shaft, choking on blood and steel. And then he was falling backwards, against the pile of wood.

Jathmar snarled and threw his rifle to his shoulder, but Barris Kasell beat him to the first shot. The ex-soldier's rifle cracked like doomsday, and the bastard with the crossbow staggered. Jathmar's shot slammed into him a sliver of a second later, and then the entire survey crew opened up.

Sir Jasak Olderhan stared in horror. Thunder shook the world. Crack after sharp, ear-splitting crack tore the air, and he couldn't even see the weapons, let alone the men using them. Puffs of smoke jetted from the toppled timber here and there, and blood fountained from his commander of fifty. The projectiles smashing into Garlath exploded out of his back, ripping it open, turning him into so much torn and shredded meat.

He went down, and before Jasak could react to the stunning, horrifying response, Shield Harklan's skirmish line returned fire. They brought their arbalests up, shooting at the puffs of smoke which were the only targets they could see, and then the entire clearing erupted.

Chapter Eight.

Darcel Kinlafia was worried.

The initial message from Shaylar-terse, shaken-had been too wild to believe, too threatening to grasp with anything but cold horror, and yet too vividly accurate to doubt. She'd sent him not only the message from chan Hagrahyl, but also the images of herself splashing down into the creek, watching Falsan die under her hands. Darcel had felt everything she'd felt, and he wanted to do murder. He wanted his hands around the throat of whoever had killed Falsan and put Shaylar through something so horrifying.

Worst of all, there was absolutely nothing Darcel could do to help. Even if Company-Captain Halifu emptied the entire half-built fort and set out now, Shaylar and Jathmar, Barris and Ghartoun-all of the people who'd become his family over the past several years were simply too far away.

And so he paced his solitary camp, not wanting even the company of Halifu's soldiers, since anyone's presence would rub him raw, like sand in a open wound.

My fault, he thought bitterly, even though he knew-in his saner moments-that it was a lie. He wasn't responsible for whatever was happening out there, but he was the one who'd sent them to meet it, because Darcel Kinlafia wasn't just a Voice; he was also a Portal Hound.

That wasn't the technical name for his secondary Talent, but it was the one everyone associated with the Portal Authority used. No one had yet found a way to actually detect and pinpoint the locations of portals, but a Hound had a special affinity to whatever disturbance in the fabric of creation brought them into existence. No Hound could reliably quantify what he sensed, he couldn't pluck distances and classifications out of thin air, and yet Darcel simply "knew" the compass bearing to the nearest portal. He had absolutely no way of knowing how far away it might be, but he knew which way to go to find the closest one.

Well, that wasn't entirely correct. A larger portal might appear to be closer than a smaller one which was actually much nearer to a Hound's physical location. But the Hounds, who were even rarer than Mappers of Jathmar's strength, were utterly invaluable to any exploration team.

It was Darcel who'd found the immense portal which had first admitted them to this universe. It was Darcel who'd realized that they'd stumbled upon yet another lobe of the cluster which had brought them here.

And it was Darcel Kinlafia who'd sent his dearest friends towards the nearest/strongest portal he'd been able to "scent" . . . and directly into the horror which had been awaiting Falsan.

Stop that! he snapped at himself. Ghartoun's one of the most experienced people in the game. He knows how to handle himself and a crew. They'll be all right. Surely they'll be all right.

Shalana's mercy, please let them be all right.

He'd already relayed Shaylar's message. Even now, it was rushing back along the transit chain, Voice to Voice, portal to portal, universe to universe, through dozens-hundreds-of telepathic Voices, all passing along the frantic message.

Warn the homeworld!

The Portal Authority wasn't designed to meet this kind of emergency. Oh, the notion had been bandied about, but not seriously. Not in the eighty years mankind had been exploring through the portals. There were-thank all the gods-forts at every portal, and larger military bases at central nodes, even this far out. But that was entirely to police the homeworld's own portal traffic and to provide security for settlers and survey crews threatened by bandits. The possibility of something like this had been only a theoretical one, and one which had become increasingly less likely seeming as exploration spread further and further outward with absolutely no sign of any other human civilization.

When Shaylar's warning had come in, he'd gone back through the portal to relay, then found Company-Captain Halifu and delivered the disturbing message to him in person. Grafin Halifu had dispatched Platoon-Captain Hulmok Arthag and half his cavalry platoon-the only one assigned to him-to find the civilian crew and escort them safely back, if they could only make rendezvous with one another in time.

Darcel had asked-almost begged-for permission to accompany that platoon, but Halifu had denied it. And rightfully so, Darcel admitted, however grudgingly. He was the only Voice Halifu had. If anything happened to him, Halifu would have no one to relay his own reports farther up the chain.

And so, Darcel could only stay here, pacing, worrying, wondering if Arthag and his men would reach Shaylar and the rest of his family in time. But that, he knew, was up to the unknown adversary, to the faceless person or persons who'd killed poor Falsan. Blood had already been shed, but surely it wouldn't come to open warfare? Only madmen would want to provoke that kind of- We're under attack!

The scream was a knife, tearing into his brain.

Then the connection deepened, and the images thundered like a runaway freight train into his shocked senses. He staggered, actually went to his knees. Men in uniforms were shooting at him-shooting with crossbows. A quarrel thudded into thick wood two feet from his head. Gunfire cracked everywhere. Men screamed. A hail of bullets mowed down the uniformed soldiers standing out in the open. Only one of them survived long enough to drop and disappear in the tangled timber about him, and Darcel gasped as his gaze swung to another pile of shattered trees.

Ghartoun!

Dead, sprawled obscenely across a tangle of broken branches. Sightless eyes widened, shocked, face twisted in pain and terror.

"Reload!" Barris Kasell was shouting from somewhere just to his right. "There's more of them back in the trees, trying to work around! Rilthan, watch our flank!"

"Shaylar." It was Jathmar, his voice choked with fright. "Shaylar-are you all right?"

"Yes. Yes, I'm-Here they come!"

Three men appeared, carrying . . . something. A strange object, perhaps four feet long and two or three inches in diameter, made out of what looked like glass. No, not glass. Rock crystal? It didn't seem to be either, but it certainly wasn't metal, and- Crossbow fire screamed out of the woodline to their right. Somebody shrieked in agony behind him. Darcel-or Shaylar, if there was a difference-jerked around and saw Braiheri Futhai writhing on the ground. A steel shaft protruding from his chest, high and to the right. Blood pooling, foaming on his lips, and- Flame erupted from nowhere at all.

A huge, incandescent fireball ripped into the toppled trees. Smoke blinded him. Someone else was screaming.

"Shoot the gunners!"

It was Barris, shouting through the smoke and confusion, and Darcel's eyes whipped back to the men with the not-crystal tube. It was mounted on a tripod, now, pointed in their direction, like some sort of weird fieldgun.

"Shoot the gunners!" Barris bellowed again.

Darcel felt his hands move as Shaylar snatched up the rifle. It shook wildly.

Steady! he told the portion of his mind that was Shaylar. Better . . . Yes, much better . . . Brace it . . . That's right. Sight picture-front sight-center it-NOW!

The rifle kicked, the bullet cracked, and one of the enemy gunners jerked, screamed, and went to one knee.

Again!

Others were shooting, too, picking off the gunners steadily.

"They're coming in from the right!" Elevu Gitel shouted, and Jathmar spat curses above Darcel's head and twisted around, shooting at the fresh crossbowmen coming in along their vulnerable flank. Two men went down . . . three . . .

"How many of them are there?" the Mapper gasped. A quarrel thwacked wood two inches from his cheek, buried in the tree trunk he crouched behind. "Bastards!"

He fired at them again, cursed, and ducked down to reload, shoving the cartridges into the loading gate while all the universe roared and screamed madly about him.

Another fireball erupted from somewhere. Dried leaves and twigs burst into flame. Someone was screaming-high and mindless, on and on.

"Where's it coming from?" Jathmar demanded hoarsely.

There were two of the not-artillery things out there now, and the original one had acquired a new crew. The other was fifty yards from the first one, identical to it. And pointed almost dead at Darcel. It started to glow, like eldritch fire, or the northern lights at midwinter, and- Flame was everywhere.

Darcel flung himself to the ground. Heat seared its way past, just above his back. He didn't dare breathe. He squeezed both eyes shut. Heard ghastly howls that belonged to human beings in mortal agony . . .

Blessed cool air rushed in. He gulped down, coughed on smoke and the acrid stench of burnt wood and what smelled sickeningly like roasting meat. The tree trunk above him was smoking, bark blasted off in places.

"What the fuck was that?" It was Jathmar's voice. Thick, terrified.

"DOWN!" Shaylar screamed.

Another fireball ripped across them. Someone was still shooting. Cursing monotonously and shooting, mindless with terrible rage. Darcel grabbed for the rifle he'd dropped, shouted at Shaylar's stunned mind.

They're coming in a mass! Shoot!

Infantry erupted across the smoldering wreckage of the clearing. Fifteen, maybe twenty of them. Shaylar snatched the rifle to her shoulder, pulled the trigger. Worked the lever, took another shot . . . worked the lever . . . took another shot.