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 off guard. 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 to 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 covering the eastern aspect 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 spells 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 was 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's 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!"