"Of course you can, Five Hundred," Harshu said testily. "Unless my memory fails, that's why you're here, isn't it?"

The two thousand had a near-fetish for not "wasting time." Especially with what he considered pointless, unnecessary questions. Of course, he also had a reputation for cutting people off at the knees if they made mistakes because they were too stupid or too lazy to ask questions. Which could make things rather . . . difficult upon occasion.

"Yes, Sir," Neshok said, and moved quickly, uncasing his own crystal and bringing it swiftly on-line. He felt Two Thousand Harshu's impatient eyes on him while he made his preparations, but he found them far less intimidating than some of his fellow officers did. He had an even more powerful patron of his own, after all. Besides, he was far too well aware of the opportunities of his present assignment to worry about the two thousand's famed temper tantrums.

And that asshole Olderhan probably thought he'd spiked my career with his godsdamned shardonai, the acting five hundred thought with a mental sneer. Gods! He's even stupider than Two Thousand mul Gurthak told me he was.

Neshok hadn't enjoyed the reaming-out mul Gurthak had given him in front of Olderhan and the two diplomats. Nobody would have, and he'd labored under the additional suspicion that mul Gurthak intended to leave him swinging in the wind if Olderhan lodged any formal protests about Neshok's behavior when he got back to Garth Showma. But he'd wronged the two thousand. Mul Gurthak had simply been covering his own back, and Neshok's brevet promotion to his present rank and his assignment as Two Thousand Harshu's senior intelligence analyst was sufficient proof of mul Gurthak's continuing confidence in him.

And if it hadn't been for Olderhan's insistence on extending shardon to that arrogant little bitch and her husband-and "Magister Kelbryan's" backing him up-the two thousand's plan would have worked, he reflected. We didn't know she'd already managed to learn a civilized language, but that only would've made it easier to get her to talk. She'd damned well have told me anything I wanted her to by the time I got through with her.

He let the fingertips of one hand brush the unsleeping eye insignia of the Intelligence Corps on his collar. He'd taken that off, at mul Gurthak's instructions, before he ever went to "greet" Olderhan and his prisoners. Aping the part of a line officer hadn't been all that difficult, however distasteful it might have been, and the two thousand had hoped a fellow line officer might have found it easier to separate Olderhan from his prisoners. And once they'd been separated and "administratively lost" somewhere at Fort Talon, it would all have turned out to have been a completely honest case of confused orders at a junior officer's level. Most unfortunate, of course, but just one of those things. Neshok had never doubted that Olderhan would have been furious, even if he'd gotten his prisoners back with only minor damage, but his own Intelligence superiors would have been quick to protect him, if only behind the scenes, if he'd managed to extract vital information first.

Well, that hadn't happened, but mul Gurthak clearly recognized the debt he owed Neshok for having made the attempt. That was why he'd been promoted and assigned to his present duty, which should allow him to acquire at least as many career points with his superiors.

And one of these days, I'll be in a position to give that smug, sanctimonious prick Olderhan exactly what he fucking well deserves, he thought viciously. Yet even as he thought it, he felt a tingle of remembered fear as he recalled the cold, fleering contempt in Sir Jasak Olderhan's dark eyes. And the fact that Olderhan's precious Second Andaran Scouts flunkies had actually been willing to take on his entire detachment if he'd so much as laid a finger on that little bitch.

He pushed the thought aside with a fresh promise of vengeance . . . and wished he could push aside the memory of a crackling corona of combat magic ready to strike and the steely-cold promise in Gadrial Kelbryan's lethal almond eyes, as well. Unfortunately . . .

Behind him, Two Thousand Harshu cleared his throat in his patented "get on with it" style, and Neshok shook himself free of his brooding thoughts.

"Beg pardon, Sir," he said. "I'm ready, now."

"Good." Harshu's tone added an unspoken "and it's about time," and Neshok ordered the office's spellware to dim the lights. Then he tapped his PC with the stylus, and a moving, living image glowed into being above Harshu's desk. The fidgeting two thousand stopped fidgeting instantly, as his fiercely intelligent eyes darted from place to place, carefully comparing the present image to the ones he'd seen before. As always, once the keen intellect behind those eyes had a fresh task to engage it, most of the affected impatience and hyperactivity disappeared quickly.

"As you can see, Sir, we're still getting very good imagery," he began.

"Yes, we are," Harshu agreed thoughtfully. "In fact, are we sure they don't know we are?" His eyes darted up from the small moving images of Sharonian soldiers to impale Neshok. "Could they possibly be setting all this up to show us what they want us to see?"

"No, Sir," Neshok said confidently, then snorted. "They're still pulling every boat up onto the island and turning it keel-up before they let anyone cross over into Hell's Gate." The Arcanans had adopted the Sharonian name for their contact universe. After all, as the Sharonian diplomat, Simrath, had pointed out at the time, it was grimly appropriate for both sides. "It's obvious Master Skirvon's observation is correct. The stupid, superstitious barbarians don't have a clue how magic works, so they aren't taking any chances . . . they think."

"It might not be a bad idea," Harshu said almost pleasantly, his eyes returning to the images before him, "to spend a little less time patting ourselves on our backs for cleverness and a little more time making certain we aren't underestimating the other side."

"Yes, Sir. Point taken," Neshok said just a bit more crisply. Harshu's notoriously short fuse with subordinates who he thought had screwed up might be as carefully cultivated as other parts of his reputation. Still, the stories about what had happened to people who'd really screwed up were ugly enough to dissuade even Neshok from relying upon his Intelligence patrons' protection.

"What I meant to say, Sir," he continued, "is that, as you know, we went to considerable lengths to convince them that the spell accumulators for the boats have to be attached to the keels. They haven't even looked inside the flotation tank under the after thwart, which-in the opinion of my staff and myself-strongly indicates that they don't have any idea we've hidden the real movement accumulator in there. And because they're still turning the boats upside down as a security measure, they're giving the recon crystals attached to their bottoms a three-hundred-sixty-degree field of view. It's not as good in terms of flexibility and total reach as we'd get if we could actually move them around, or as good as what a gryphon pass with an RC could give us, and their actual bivouac area is outside our zone from where they beach the boats. In other ways, though, it's actually better. The RC is close enough to get a good look at their fieldworks and their deployments, and it just sits there, which gives us an excellent opportunity to eavesdrop on anything they're saying within its scan area, as well."

Harshu glanced at him again, then nodded in grudgingly approving acceptance.

"Although the boat-mounted RCs never move," Neshok continued more confidently, "we have managed six RC walk-throughs." He smiled thinly. "Sending Master Skirvon's escort in dress uniform was a brilliant idea, Sir. I wish I'd thought of it myself." It never hurt to show a superior officer you knew how to give a subordinate credit for good ideas . . . especially when the superior officer in question already knew the idea in question had come from a subordinate. "They'd never seen our dress uniforms, so they didn't have any reason to suspect that the crystal mounted on that ridiculous horsehair crest on Fifty Narshu's helmet is actually a reconnaissance device, not just a particularly tasteless bit of decoration.

"At any rate, everything Narshu's RC has picked up only confirms what we're getting from the boat RCs."

"I see." Harshu frowned thoughtfully, leaning his folded forearms on his desk. "And is there confirmation about these two?" He twitched his head at the two Sharonians under the canvas sunshade at one end of the portal.

"Yes, Sir." Neshok nodded. "We're still not certain how they do what they're apparently doing, but thanks to the translation software Master Skirvon and Two Thousand mul Gurthak provided, we've definitely confirmed from their conversation and the chatter of their buddies that they're some sort of lookouts. And we've also confirmed that whatever it is they're doing, they can't do it through a portal any more than we could cast a spell through one. They rotate around the end of the portal on a quite rigid schedule, apparently to clear the blind spot the portal creates for them. We've watched them for days now, and they never deviate by more than a very few minutes from their set timing."

"I wish we had managed to determine exactly what it is they're doing," Harshu mused, and Neshok nodded.

"So do I, Sir, but there's just no way of guessing how these 'Talents' of theirs work. From what we've been able to overhear, it sounds as if the Talent this one is using-" he indicated the smaller of the two Sharonians "-works sort of like one of our scrying spells. It isn't the same, obviously. For one thing, they don't need a crystal to gather the image. And, for another, they appear to be able to sweep a general volume, rather than needing to know exactly where whatever they're trying to observe is within that volume. And, for a third thing-and we're not certain about this one, Sir; it's based on a couple of fairly cryptic remarks we've overheard and translated-he appears to be limited to the ability to detect living creatures."

"I suppose that could make sense," Harshu said thoughtfully. "If these Talents of theirs are all some kind of weird mental powers, then perhaps what they're picking up on is some sort of vibration or mental wave. Wouldn't get much of that off of a rock, I imagine."

"No, Sir."

"And you've managed to confirm their detection range, have you?" Harshu inquired.

"Ah, no, Sir," Neshok admitted. Harshu slanted his eyes sideways, looking back up at the acting five hundred, and Neshok grimaced. "So far, they haven't actually referred to their maximum range-not, at least, where any of our RCs have overheard them."

"That's not so good to hear, Five Hundred," Harshu observed. "It could have a rather significant effect on our military options, don't you agree?"

"Yes, Sir." Neshok refocused his own attention on the display rather than continuing to meet Harshu's gaze. Then he cleared his throat.

"Actually, Sir, we do have at least an approximation. Or perhaps I should say a bottom limit at which we know they can't 'see' us."

Harshu unfolded his arms and made a "go on" gesture with his right hand.

"As you know, Sir, we've been taking pains to conceal the existence of our dragons from them. And while I'm on the subject, Sir, the recorded take from the boat RCs confirms that they've never even dreamed about any sort of aerial capability for themselves and don't seem to have a clue that we have one." Which, he didn't add aloud, just confirms what utter barbarians they are, doesn't it? "Apparently they'd been wondering for some time how we got people in and out from the Second Andarans' base camp through all that muck and mire. Now that they've seen our boats, they think they know."

"Well, that's certainly good to hear."

"Yes, Sir. It is. And the fact that they don't know about dragons or gryphons clearly indicates that their lookouts haven't 'seen' our diplomats or their escort being flown in. We've been landing our people on an islet about forty miles from the portal and sending them the rest of the way in from there in the boats. Partly, that was because we needed an excuse to get the boats' RCs right up to the portal. But, just as importantly, we wanted to keep our dragons safely out of sight. We hadn't realized at the time that they had whatever kind of Talent this lookout of theirs is using-somehow Hundred Olderhan's shardon neglected to mention its existence to us, for some odd reason-but Master Skirvon and Five Hundred Klian agreed that it would be best to err on the side of caution. Fortunately, it would appear.

"At any rate, at forty miles, they haven't seen our people arriving. If they had, I'm positive someone would have remarked on it by now where our RCs could hear it. That both suggests that the dragons have remained safely unknown to them, and gives us a limit-forty miles-beyond which we ought to be safe from detection."

"Forty miles," Harshu murmured. "Call it thirty minutes for a dragon-twenty minutes, minimum."

"Yes, Sir. On the other hand, as I say, that's a minimum safe distance. His actual range for spotting us may be quite a bit shorter than that."

"And it may not be, too," Harshu replied tartly.

"No, Sir. As you say," Neshok agreed. "On the other hand, there is one other point." He paused until the two thousand looked at him again, then shrugged very slightly. "From a couple of things our RCs have overheard, while this fellow appears to be able to . . . sweep, for want of a better term, an entire volume, and while we don't really know how large a volume that is, it would seem that he does have to define the volume pretty carefully. We've watched him while he's doing whatever it is he's doing, and he sits very still, with his eyes closed, but his head turns slowly from side to side, as if he's looking at something behind his eyelids."

"And?" Harshu prompted.

"And he never tilts his head back, Sir."

Harshu frowned at him for a moment, and then the two thousand's eyes narrowed slightly.

"So you're suggesting that since they don't know about dragons, he's not looking up, just out?"

"That's what I think he's doing, Sir," Neshok said, and this time he chose not to mention that it was one of his noncommissioned analysts who'd actually first spotted the Sharonian lookout's head movements. "If they don't have any flight capability of their own, it would make a lot of sense for them to be concentrating on surface threats. After all, they wouldn't know there was any other kind, would they?"

"No, they wouldn't," Harshu agreed slowly.

His eyes were focused on something else, something only he could see, and they stayed that way for the better part of two minutes. Then they refocused on Neshok.

"Anything else? Anything new?" he asked.

"That's most of the new information, Sir. I've prepared a complete download for you, of course. Shall I transfer the file to your PC?"

"Yes, go ahead."

"Yes, Sir."

Neshok arranged the transfer with brisk efficiency. As he did, he noticed the headers for the documents Harshu had been working on when he arrived. Troop strengths and arrival schedules, the acting five hundred noted without very much surprise.

"There you are, Sir," he said as the little icon that indicated the file transfers were complete appeared in both crystals.

"Thank you." Harshu considered him for a moment or two, then nodded. "Aside from a certain tendency to denigrate the enemy, that was an excellent brief, Five Hundred," he said. "Keep up the good work . . . and try like hell not to let the fact that you dislike these people lead you into making the sorts of mistakes contempt produces. Am I clear?"

"Yes, Sir! You are, Sir!" Neshok said, bracing quickly to attention.

"Good. Carry on, Five Hundred."

"Yes, Sir."

Neshok turned with rather more than normal military precision and marched out of Harshu's office. The compliment on the quality of his work had felt good . . . which, of course, only made the sting of Harshu's admonition sharper.

Well, the two thousand was good at that sort of thing. It was one of his hallmarks. Everybody got a zinger from him every so often, Neshok reminded himself; far fewer got the compliment which had gone in front of this one.

He decided to concentrate on that as he stepped out onto the Fort Rycharn parade ground.

Rycharn wasn't much of a fort, he thought. About right for that broken down ass-kisser Klian to command. At the moment, though, it was crowded to the bursting point and beyond by the scores of dragons thronging its improvised dragonfield. There were more transports than Neshok had ever seen in one place in his entire life. The heavy transports' cargo pods were parked as neatly as possible around the field's perimeter, but there wasn't room to be very neat about it. The tactical transports and the battle dragons were based on the western side of the field, as far away from the fort's palisade and the troop encampments as they could get. Three of Two Thousand mul Gurthak's planned four reinforcement waves had arrived already, and the fourth was due within the next week.

And what happens then, I wonder? Neshok mused, listening to the sounds of the immensely overcrowded encampment. Everybody's still being very careful to insist that no final decision's been made yet. I wonder just how true that actually is?

He snorted wryly at the thought. From what mul Gurthak had said to him in his own private briefing before he was sent out here, especially about the importance of not allowing the enemy to tighten his grip on Hell's Gate even further, he was fairly certain what the Fort Talon commander had in mind. Of course, he could be wrong, and even if he wasn't, circumstances might have changed-depending on what Skirvon and Dastiri had been able to accomplish diplomatically-since Neshok had been sent forward himself. And there was also the problem that Harshu was the commander actually on the spot. Mul Gurthak couldn't push Harshu too hard without being rather more direct than Neshok was pretty sure the Mythalan two thousand wanted to be.

Which, of course, is the reason he sent me out here, isn't it? A military commander's decisions are always based on the intelligence available to him. Which means that the fellow who provides him with that information has a better chance than most to . . . shape his probable command decisions.

Commander of Five Hundred (Acting) Alivar Neshok smiled thinly as he gazed out across the ranks of dragons, the cargo pods, the white canvas tents of the waiting troopers, and the rows of field-dragons lined up so neatly in the artillery parks, and reflected upon the influence which had come to rest in his hands. It was a heavy responsibility, he told himself. One which had to be discharged carefully, thoughtfully.

And the fact that it put him in a position to help kick that sanctimonious, cowardly son-of-a-bitch Olderhan's gutless plans to just hand the biggest, most important portal cluster in history over to the enemy right in the balls was totally beside the point.

Chapter Fifty.

"You look unhappy, Five Hundred."

Sarr Klian looked up. Two Thousand Harshu sat across the table from him, holding his wine glass loosely cradled in his right hand. That table was covered with a white cloth and empty plates, for the two of them had just finished dining in what had been Klian's sitting room before Harshu arrived to take command of the steadily growing military power which had come to be based here at Fort Rycharn. Klian didn't resent giving up his quarters to the two thousand. Not precisely, at any rate. He did rather resent giving up his office space, but he knew that was silly. Harshu was the senior officer present. He needed the best facilities available, and it was inevitable that he should have them.

"Unhappy, Sir?" Klian repeated, and Harshu smiled.

"Sparring for time, are we, Five Hundred?"

His voice was almost gentle, at odds with his normal public persona, and he shifted his hand slightly, tilting his wine glass. The gleaming light elements of the wall-mounted lamps had been turned down, reducing their normal brilliance to a level more comfortable for dining, but they were bright enough to light a red glow in the heart of the glass.

"I suppose I am, Sir," Klian admitted levelly. He looked across the table into Harshu's eyes. "It's been my experience that when a superior officer makes that sort of statement, it's often the prelude to a . . . counseling session, shall we say?"

"Ah." Harshu's smile grew broader, and he cocked his head to one side. "I suppose that's a fair enough observation, Five Hundred. In this case, though, I'm genuinely curious about your thoughts. You've been sitting out here at the sharp end longer than anyone else. I don't say that automatically gives you any sort of special insight none of the rest of us can share, but I'm very well aware that I've come waltzing in and taken over your territory with less than three weeks' experience on the job, as it were."

"Curious about my thoughts about what, precisely, Sir?" Klian asked. "If you mean about being effectively superseded, I don't suppose any commanding officer worth his salt is ever happy to see that happen. But I'm certainly not sitting here nursing a sense of resentment over it. That would be pointless, at best, and stupid, at worst. I'm a five hundred, and what we're looking at out here right now is a five thousand's command-maybe even a ten thousand's. Exigencies of the service or not, there's no way I'd be fitted to command a force that size, even if I were the senior officer present."

"I think you actually mean that," Harshu observed. He sipped a little wine, then shrugged. "I'm relieved to hear it, too. After all, you're going to be in command of our logistics node here, no matter what happens. I can think of very few things better suited to trip someone up in a field command than having his logistics . . . creatively tangled, shall we say, by a resentful subordinate."

"I can assure you, Sir," Klian said just a bit stiffly, "that it never crossed my mind to-"

"I didn't mean to suggest it had," Harshu interrupted. "In fact, I meant to suggest rather the opposite. However," he set down his wine glass, plucked a roll out of the breadbasket between them, and began tearing it into small pieces and piling the fragments on the rim of his plate, "that wasn't the question I meant to get at earlier. It seems to me, Five Hundred, that you don't really approve of our contingency planning. I'd like to know why."

Klian sat very still for a moment, then drank from his own wine glass, mostly to buy a little more time to marshal his thoughts. Then he cleared his throat.

"Two Thousand," he said, "you're in command. Whether I 'approve' of your contingency planning or not is really beside the point, isn't it? Since you've asked, though, there are aspects of your plans-as I currently understand them, at any rate-that do cause me some concern."

"Specifically?" Harshu invited.

"Well," Klian sat back in his chair, folding his hands neatly on the tablecloth and wishing he didn't feel quite so much like an officer cadet who'd just been handed a trick question in his third-year tactics class, "I can't fault anything I've heard about your defensive planning, Sir. I think you're entirely right that without any equivalent of our dragons-and while I haven't seen Five Hundred Neshok's reports to you, I'm inclined to agree that the evidence clearly suggests they don't have any aerial capability-they'd be at a hopeless disadvantage trying to fight their way out of that swamp. They'd have to have a simply enormous advantage in manpower to slog through that kind of mud and muck-especially without any sort of spell-powered boats of their own-while fighting off continuous air attacks, no matter how good their weapons are.

"And no one could deny your legitimate responsibility to plan for possible offensive operations, either." The five hundred shrugged. "We're both soldiers, Sir. We both know that, ultimately, battles and wars are won by taking it to the enemy, not simply sitting still and letting him bring it to us. I guess what concerns me is the feel I'm picking up from the majority of your officers that they're actually anticipating offensive operations."

He paused, still looking levelly at Harshu, and the two thousand gazed back in silence for perhaps twenty seconds. Then it was Harshu's turn to shrug.

"I don't doubt that they are," he admitted calmly, and showed his teeth in a thin smile. "The bottom line, Five Hundred, is that the most important quality any soldier can have as he goes into battle is the offensive spirit. Even if we wind up standing totally on the defensive, having the troops thinking in terms of 'taking it to the enemy,' as you just said, won't hurt a thing. If we do go on the offense, on the other hand, there won't be time to turn everyone's thinking around if all we've been planning for is digging in and holding our ground."

"I can see that, Sir," Klian said in a neutral tone, and Harshu's smile grew wider.

"But you're still concerned," he observed. Klian started to say something else, but the two thousand waved it away. "No, that's all right, Five Hundred. I asked for your opinion, and I really want it. And I don't think your concerns are limited to the troops' attitude."

"Sir," Klian leaned forward slightly, "I guess I'm worried on two levels.

"First, however good our intelligence on their tactical dispositions right at the swamp portal, or even between there and Fallen Timbers, may be, we know literally nothing about these people's real military power. We don't have any clear indication of what their heavy weapons' capabilities may be, how close to the point of contact their major military bases may be, or how big they are. I know the current intelligence assessments are that they're not anticipating reinforcement within the next several weeks, but what does that actually tell us? We don't know anything about how big the reinforcement they are expecting might be, or what might be in the pipeline behind it. Even if we managed to punch right through everything they've got in the immediate vicinity, what happens when we run into their reserves? How does the fact that we'd presumably have better reconnaissance capabilities, thanks to our dragons and gryphons, play off against the superior communications these Voices of theirs give them? And how do these 'Talents' of theirs-including any we can't evaluate at all, because we've never seen them in action-play off against the capabilities our Gifts give us?

"Second, if Hundred Olderhan is right, and I believe he is, then all of this started out of a misunderstanding. A monumental fuck-up by Olderhan's second-in-command, followed by a bad judgment call on my own part, and what looks like terminal stupidity on the part of Hundred Thalmayr. If that's what it was, if neither side deliberately set out to create the situation, then surely the possibility of negotiating our way out of it really exists. I don't want to see that thrown away. And, if I may speak completely frankly, I'm concerned about how the other side would perceive any further offensive military action on our part. Especially after we initiated the diplomatic contact between us."

"It may surprise you to hear this, Five Hundred, but I think your concerns are well taken," Harshu said. Klian felt his eyebrows inch upwards, despite himself, and the two thousand chuckled harshly.

"I know I'm considered a loose dragon," he said. "And there's probably some truth to that, if I'm going to be honest. But I'm not blind to the risks and the potential costs you're talking about. The problem is that I have my instructions from Two Thousand mul Gurthak, and I can't allow myself to be paralyzed by all of the perfectly good arguments for doing nothing.

"The tactical concerns you've just put your finger on have given me the odd sleepless night since mul Gurthak handed this particular hot potato to me," he continued. "Trust me, I've thought about them a lot.

"At the moment, I'm inclined to think that the combination of our mobility and reconnaissance advantages would more than compensate for their Voices. We don't know how many of these Voices they've actually got, how far down through their formations they'd be available. Do they have them only at the battalion level? Or at the company level? I find it difficult to believe that they have them all the way down to the platoon level, and as I understand it, it takes a Voice at either end for the whole system to work. So in an actual combat situation, I suspect that our ability to see farther and more clearly, and the information that makes available to our commanders, would give us what amounted to a shorter command and control loop, even if we did have to send physical messages back and forth. Now, in a strategic sense, that certainly wouldn't be the case, and they'd probably have an edge in orchestrating troop movements at the operational level, as well. But how important would that be if we dominated in the tactical zone? How much use is a communication advantage, if you simply don't know what the other side is doing . . . and the other side does know that about you?"