"Good. It looks like this fort's about right square in the center, so even if this thing's as big as it looks from the sky arc, it can't be much more than fifteen miles from here to the far edge in either direction. It shouldn't take more than a day or so for one man to travel that far, so you'll be able to leave it on record the whole way."

"I could do it in less than-" Borkaz had begun, but Threbuch had cut him off.

"Maybe you could, but you're going to be operating solo, with nobody to watch your back, and we have to get this one right. We don't fuck up this time, understood? So you take your time, and you hole up somewhere at night, and you don't cross over to the other side until you're at least five miles from their fort. Is that understood?"

"Yes, Chief Sword," Borkaz had said, rather more formally than usual.

"Good. Then get moving. I'll meet you here tomorrow afternoon. If you don't turn up in three days-or if I don't-then we both head back to camp on our own. And for gods' sake, be careful!"

That had been three days ago, and Otwal Threbuch had cursed himself long, soundly, inventively, and viciously for that delay when he and Borkaz had discovered what else had come through that portal while they'd been elsewhere.

The sweep of the portal itself had gone well. Once they'd been away from the immediate vicinity of the other side's fort, they'd both crossed over into the rain-soaked forest on the far side. Neither of them had enjoyed their drenching, although they'd at least been able to withdraw back to the dry side for occasional rests, but the recon crystals attached to their helmets had faithfully recorded everything either of them had seen after they'd been activated. In fact, the crystals had undoubtedly seen things neither Threbuch nor Borkaz had realized they were looking at. The Intelligence pukes would be able to generate detailed topological maps of the area in the portal's immediate vicinity and for as much as a mile or two on either side of it, once they got their hands on those RCs.

Threbuch had very carefully backed up each crystal into the unused memory of the other. If something happened to him, Borkaz would have the complete record, and vice versa. Personally, the chief sword intended to see to it that no one needed his backup, but a man never knew.

That thought had come back to haunt him as he realized that the people for whom the fort's barracks had been intended had obviously been closer than he'd allowed himself to hope. The trail he and Borkaz had followed to reach the portal was beginning to look like a godsdamned highway from all the traffic passing over it. He hadn't been able to make any sort of hard estimate from the hoof-churned leaves and mud, but it had looked to him as if at least another couple of hundred horsemen must have followed the original column. They couldn't have been more than a few hours-a day, at the outside-ahead of the chief sword and his companion, but that had still put them between Threbuch and Hundred Olderhan.

And left Threbuch no possible way to warn the hundred what was coming.

So he and Borkaz had done the only thing they could do. They'd headed back through the forest in the ground-covering lope of the Andaran Scouts, despite their fatigue and the fact that neither of them had eaten very well over the past several days. Threbuch was no spring chicken these days, and that fact had been mercilessly ground home by the pain in his legs and the fire in his lungs. Yet he'd actually managed to set the pace for the much younger Borkaz, and-thanks to their personal navigation crystals-they'd been able to cut directly across country through the woods, avoiding the considerably longer trail everyone else was following.

It had been a nightmare run, but they'd almost won the race.

Almost, unfortunately, wasn't good enough, Threbuch thought.

He growled yet another mental curse, and only a lifetime of discipline prevented him from slamming his fist into the branch on which he lay with bone-breaking force. There had, indeed, been close to two hundred men-maybe more-in that second column . . . and every damned one of them was between him and Borkaz and the portal.

What the fuck is the Hundred thinking about? he demanded of himself. Where are the godsdamned sentries? Where are the pickets?

It didn't make any sense at all. The bastards out there in the woods between Threbuch and the portal were good, no question. The chief sword had almost walked right into one of them without even seeing him. Only the gods' own luck had saved him, when the fellow-whose uniform was as different from that of the cavalry troopers Threbuch had seen as the chief sword's own-turned his head and whistled a birdcall as good as any Threbuch might have produced himself. Any temptation the chief sword might have felt about picking the sentry off and slipping through the gap it would create had vanished when replies had come back from three different positions, all within easy sight range of the first.

But good as they might have been, they should never have been able to get this close to the portal, with their infantry deployed in what was obviously a well laid out skirmish line, without being spotted. They certainly weren't any better in the woods than the Andaran Scouts, and Threbuch couldn't imagine what sort of idiocy could have prevented Hundred Olderhan from posting pickets to prevent them from doing exactly that.

Yet something obviously had kept the hundred from taking that elementary precaution, and getting himself or Borkaz captured or killed wouldn't do any good at all. The sound of one of the enemy's weapons might alert the troopers on the other side of the portal. It might not, too, and there was no guarantee these people would be stupid enough to use their thunder weapons. If there were enough of them-and gods knew there were-they could take him and Borkaz without firing a shot.

Besides, in the cold, hard calculus of military reality, the information he and Borkaz were bringing back was worth more than Hundred Olderhan's entire company. That monster portal had to be reported, and the detailed terrain scans he and Borkaz had carried out would be literally priceless if it came to operations against the portal's defenders.

And so there was nothing he could do but lie here, less than a thousand yards from the portal, and pray that the earthworks he could see on the other side might actually give the Andaran Scouts enough of an edge to survive.

Hulmok Arthag stood with Balkar chan Tesh in the ravine he'd told the company-captain about while two sections of the mortar company set up their heavy weapons behind them.

There were four of the ugly, deadly weapons in the ravine, and Platoon-Captain Morek chan Talmarha, the company's commanding officer, was personally overseeing their emplacement. He'd sent the two tubes of the company's third section to set up farther to the east, under Senior-Armsman Quelovak chan Sairath, his senior noncom. The terrain was less suitable there, but the weapons had a range of over six thousand yards, and chan Talmarha had managed to find a suitable spot to emplace chan Sairath's weapons out of sight of anyone on the other side. Chan Tesh would have preferred not to split them up, but he couldn't cover both aspects of the portal from a single firing position.

Arthag had been surprised when he saw the mortars attached to chan Tesh's column. The acting platoon-captain had expected the three-inch weapons which were the norm for mobile units of the PAAF; what chan Tesh had actually brought along was the heavy four-and-a-half-inch version. The three-inch weighed only a tad over eighty pounds in firing position; the four-and-a-half-inch weighed almost three hundred, and it was a pain to pack into position on mule back. Pack animals couldn't carry as many of the far heavier rounds, either, so the bigger weapon was more likely to be used from a fortified position, or when it was possible to move using wheeled transport. In fact, that was the role intended for them when they'd been sent along with chan Tesh in the first place.

There was no question which was the more effective weapon in action, though. Mortar rounds were thinner-walled than conventional artillery shells, which meant a higher percentage of their total weight could be given up to explosive filler. The three-inch mortar's round weighed less than seven pounds, with an explosive filler of only one and a half pounds; the four-and-a-half-inch round weighed twenty-seven pounds, with five and a half pounds of filler. Both were designed to fly apart along prefragmented lines when they exploded, but whereas the three-inch had a lethal radius of about twenty-five feet, the four-and-a-half-inch's lethal radius was forty feet.

Under the circumstances, and given the horrific effect of the other side's inexplicable weapons, Arthag didn't blame chan Tesh a bit for his choice of support weapons.

The mortar crews were busy leveling the base plates, using the spirit levels built into the weapons' bipods, while the Marines chan Tesh had detailed to support them unloaded the mule-packed, finned, base-fused rounds and stacked them neatly in place. Arthag watched them, then looked up as Petty-Armsman Loumas slithered down the side of the ravine and saluted.

"You wanted me, Sir?" he said to chan Tesh.

"Yes." Chan Tesh nodded. "What can you tell me?"

"Not much, I'm afraid, Sir," Loumas replied. "This close, the portal energies are playing hell with my Talent." He grimaced. "I could probably actually give you a better Plot from a half-mile back or so. I don't think there's anyone out there, but what I'm Seeing is way too 'foggy' for me to guarantee it. And," he admitted, "I may be feeling that way because there wasn't anyone the last time I Looked."

"I'm inclined to think you're probably right," chan Tesh said, making a mental note of the Plotter's awareness of the danger preconception posed. It wasn't every man, Talented or not, who could keep that in mind. And in chan Tesh's experience, it was even less common for a man to admit that it might be happening to him.

"If they'd been going to put sentries out at all, they'd have already done it," chan Tesh continued, thinking aloud.

"They did send those work parties across this morning, Sir," Arthag pointed out, and chan Tesh nodded in acknowledgment.

"There's not exactly very much firewood on their side," he pointed out. "I'd be sending out wood-cutting parties, too, in their place. But Chief-Armsman chan Hathas kept a close eye on them, and according to his count, all of them are back in camp. They didn't leave any of them behind on our side."

"True enough, Sir," Arthag conceded. "All the same, I wish they hadn't done it. I'd give half a month's pay if chan Hathas had been able to get a better look at whatever the hells that thing was!"

"Me, too," chan Tesh admitted.

The timing on the enemy's wood-cutting expedition couldn't have been worse. With only a handful of men to keep an eye on things, Chief-Armsman chan Hathas had been forced to spread them out if he wanted to keep both sets of fortifications under observation. The virtually simultaneous emergence of work parties from each aspect of the portal had forced him to pull back in obedience to his orders to avoid contact until chan Tesh could bring up the main body. Chan Hathas had managed the maneuver flawlessly, as was only to be expected out of a noncom of his experience, but he'd had to give up his initial, carefully chosen vantage points. Which meant he'd had only the most frustrating glimpses of some huge, metallic-colored creature which had apparently both arrived and departed in the course of no more than an hour or two. His angle of vision through the portal had been too acute for him to see more, but it was fairly obvious from his report that it must have been whatever they'd already used to evacuate their more critically wounded.

There'd been no sign of it at all since shortly after midday, and that had been enough to tighten Darcel Kinlafia's mouth into a hard, grim line. Chan Tesh understood that, but the truth was that if the other side had decided to send any prisoners somewhere else, they would probably have done it long before this.

Of course, they may not have decided to move them elsewhere at all, the company-captain mused.

Platoon-Captain Parai chan Dersal, the senior of his two Marine platoon commanders, came trotting down the ravine and saluted.

"We're in position on both sides, Sir," he said.

"Good." Chan Tesh smiled slightly. "May I take it from the lack of gunfire, shouts, and screams that you managed your deployment without anyone on the other side noticing?"

"I believe you can take that, Sir, yes," chan Dersal replied, absolutely deadpan, and chan Tesh heard Arthag chuckle slightly, despite the tension hovering in the ravine.

"There is one thing, though, Sir," chan Dersal said. "I was talking to Chief-Armsman chan Hathas. I wanted his advice on the best positions for my sharpshooters. In the course of the conversation, he mentioned that one of his men had reported seeing a civilian in the camp."

Darcel Kinlafia stirred slightly behind chan Tesh, but the Marine officer went on before the Voice could say anything.

"He said it was a man, definitely not a woman, and that he seemed to be moving about freely, which a prisoner wouldn't have been."

"That's right," Arthag said. "He didn't get a very good look at the fellow, but whoever he was, he definitely wasn't in uniform."

"Well, I think I got a better look at him when I was moving my people into position," chan Dersal said, touching the field glasses cased at his side. "He's a civilian, all right. Looks like a Ricathian. Unlike anyone else I saw in there, he's not armed, either, and he's old, Sir. Quite old, I'd say."

The Marine gazed at chan Tesh expressionlessly, but the company-captain knew what the man was really saying. They were both Imperial Ternathian officers, trained in the same tradition, after all.

"I take your point, Platoon-Captain," chan Tesh said, speaking a bit more formally. "And if you saw one obvious civilian in there, there may be more we haven't seen. I take that point, as well." He turned so that he could look at both Arthag and chan Dersal. "Pass the word to all of our people that there are probable civilians in that camp. No one is to take any unnecessary chances, but we're also not out here to butcher noncombatants."

"They did," Kinlafia muttered in a barely audible voice, and chan Tesh looked at him sternly.

"Perhaps they did. But we aren't them, and neither the PAAF nor the Ternathian Empire massacres civilians." Kinlafia still looked rebellious, and chan Tesh frowned. "I understand your point, Darcel," he said firmly, "but I also have to point out that your people most definitely were not unarmed. Civilians, yes, but not unarmed, and all the evidence is that they gave at least as good as they got until the artillery opened up. We're not going to do anyone any good if we kill people who are neither armed nor shooting back just for the sake of vengeance. More than that, I'm not going to let my people turn into the very thing I'm out here hunting down. Is that clear?"

Kinlafia glowered, and chan Tesh cocked his head to one side.

"I asked if that was clear, Darcel. I want your word on it. If you can't give it, I'll have you disarmed and held at the horse lines."

"It's clear," Kinlafia said, after a moment. "And you have my word." He grimaced. "Probably a good thing you do, really. I'd like to still like myself a few months from now."

"I'd like for you to, too," chan Tesh said with a little smile, but then his smile faded and he turned his attention back to Arthag.

"You're sure you want to be the one who does this, Hulmok?" he asked quietly.

"Sir, you're the one who said we have to give them a chance to deal fairly with us." The Arpathian shrugged. "I happen to agree with you, for several reasons. But if we're going to try for a peaceful contact, it ought to be an officer, and Bright Wind and I are the best team for it, anyway. With all due modesty, I'm the best rider you've got, and Bright Wind is the best horse you've got."

"All right." Chan Tesh sighed. He wasn't happy about picking anyone to take on this particular duty, but as he'd told Arthag, it had to be done. What had happened to the Chalgyn Consortium team could have been an accident. That sort of thing wasn't supposed to happen with properly trained and disciplined troops, but chan Tesh had seen enough monumental fuck-ups in Ternathian and PAAF service to know it could happen anyway, even to the best outfit in the multiverse. So it was time to see what happened under more controlled conditions, when panic couldn't be blamed for the other side's reactions. Which, unfortunately, meant sending someone in harm's way, and Arthag was right about the logical choice.

The company-captain looked at Arthag and chan Dersal, then up at the sky. The sun was settling steadily towards the western horizon, but there were at least a couple of hours of daylight left. There was time enough, he judged, and he couldn't count on these people to stay fat, happy, and stupid forever.

He gave his mortar sections one last glance. Chan Talmarha gave him a pumped fist sign, indicating readiness, and he nodded to himself.

"All right, Parai," he said. "Get back to your platoon. Hulmok, you come with me. I think we'll send you in from the west. At least that way they'll have the sun in their eyes if they decide to do something outstandingly stupid."

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!"