Hell Hath No Fury: Chapter Seven

    "Any time now," chan Baskay murmured.

    The platoon-captain drew rein and turned in the saddle, gazing back the way they'd come. Not that he'd really expected to see anything.

    One of the things Company-Captain chan Tesh had insisted upon was the necessity of finding at least the nearer of the secondary portals in the Hell's Gate cluster. Thanks to Darcel Kinlafia's ability to sense the compass bearings of other portals, he'd at least been able to tell them roughly where to look before he left, and they'd been astonished to discover that there were no less than three more portals within less than sixty miles of Fallen Timbers. Two of them, in fact, were less than fifteen miles from the site of the massacre which had started this entire confrontation. Of those, one connected to what was obviously New Farnal, while the other connected to an open, rolling expanse of grassland—currently covered in the first snow of winter—which could have been the heart of New Ternath or any of a score of other places.

    At the moment, the thirty-odd men of what had become Dorzon chan Baskay's command were still about five miles from the New Farnal portal. They'd concentrated on speed, pushing their horses as hard as the terrain permitted, and their trail through the drifts of the forest's bone-dry leaves was painfully obvious.

    For now.

    Hulmok Arthag's suggestion about how to "conceal" that trail had horrified chan Baskay when he first heard it. Of course, chan Baskay had spent much of his youth on his family's estates in Reyshar. They were located in central Chairifon, in an area of endless forests where the primary local industries all relied on forestry products, and he'd spent most of his boyhood hunting, fishing, and hiking in woods very much like these. That youthful experience had left him with a deep reverence for trees . . . and a matching horror of forest fires.

    Arthag, on the other hand, was a son of the steppes. Forests held no special attraction to him, which had undoubtedly made it much easier for him to hit upon the idea in the first place. Once he had, despite chan Baskay's own emotional response to it, the Ternathian had been unable to come up with a logical argument against it.

    Except, of course, for insisting that we had to have enough of a head start before he started playing with matches, chan Baskay thought now.

    But Arthag had had an answer for that, as well. He and Chief-Armsman chan Hathas had quickly rigged a crude timer using several gallons of kerosene and a candle, and if his estimate of the candle's burning rate was accurate, it should be reaching the kerosene any minute now.

    So stop looking over your shoulder and get your attention back where it belongs, chan Baskay scolded himself. The last thing you need to do is hang around back here long enough for the fire to catch up with you!

    He snorted, shook his head, and put his mount into a canter to catch up with the rest of the column.

    Toralk's command dragon skimmed just above the treetops as it swept through into the next universe.

    With such a huge portal to play with, there was no need for them to make the crossing where anyone in the Sharonian fort could possibly see them. And thanks to the successful scouting mission the Andaran Scouts' chief sword had carried out, they knew precisely where that fort was, and its exact coordinates had been entered into their navigation units.

    That was the good news; the low cloudbase was the even better news.

    While the cloud cover would make the coordination of his strikes—especially with the air-mobile infantry and cavalry—difficult, it also offered the possibility of additional concealment. He'd covered this possibility in his original mission planning, although the casualties they'd taken in the initial attack had led him to make some fairly substantial adjustments in light of the demonstrated efficacy of the Sharonians' weapons. He wished that he'd had more time to work on those adjustments, but the Air Force had always emphasized an officer's need to think on his feet, and he'd discussed his new attack variants with his strike COs in their hasty conference before leaving the swamp portal behind.

    He'd been able to see how heavy the cloud cover was going to be well before he actually crossed the portal's threshold. In fact, the overcast was crowding through the portal into the Hell's Gate universe with the promise of at least some badly needed rain. He'd already fired the sequence of flares to indicate his chosen variant, and now he watched Hundred Geyrsof's strike disappear into the thick overcast ahead of his ponderous transports.

    Shansair Baulwan was still on top of the Fort Shaylar observation tower.

    It wasn't as if he had any other pressing duties he had to attend to, and one place was as good as another while he waited until Erthek would be Listening for him. In fact, this was a much better spot than most. He'd heard that Company-Captain Halifu liked to come up here to think about things, and leaning on the rail, looking out across the marvelous view, he could understand why. Like Hulmok Arthag, Baulwan was a child of the steppes, and all of the woods stretching out on either hand would have been bad enough even without the apparently inexhaustible and unending rain. Up here, he could get his head above the treetops, let his mind clear.

    He was beginning to think he'd done Halifu a disservice by lumping him with other Uromathians he'd had the misfortune to meet. It was hard to remind himself that Uromathians could be just as different from one another as anyone else, but a Voice ought to be more aware of that than other people. He'd have to make a point of keeping his mind open where Halifu was concerned, he decided.

    He straightened up, stretched, and checked his watch again. Fifteen more minutes before Erthek would start Listening.

    Horban Geyrsof had never been more grateful for clouds in his entire life.

    No dragon pilot really liked flying through soup this thick, especially in formation. Midair collisions between dragons were almost always ugly, particularly if battle dragons were involved. They were always touchy, and they seldom extended the benefit of the doubt to someone who ran into them in flight.

    But, after his experiences at the swamp portal, Geyrsof was delighted to take the 3012th and its sister strike, the 4016th, into the clouds. The dragon-healers had patched up Graycloud's and Windslasher's wing membranes, but both of the remaining yellows were still proddy. They'd not only lost wingmates, but they'd found out that Sharonian weapons hurt. They were going to be much happier if they didn't get shot at again . . . which summed up Geyrsof's own attitude quite nicely, actually.

    As for the reduced visibility, all of the 3012th's and 4016th's pilots were experienced formation flyers, and all of them understood the necessity of tightening their intervals and holding their positions relative to one another when visibility fell into the crapper this way. And they were all experienced instrument flyers, too, putting their trust in their navigation units' position and altitude figures rather than trying to rely upon their fallible human senses.

    And, best of all, the bastards in that fort aren't going to have enough warning to get their damned heavy weapons into action, he told himself grimly.

    He kept one eye on his own nav unit and the other on his single remaining wingman as both strikes crossed over the boundary between the universes well to the east of its objective. Then they turned west, following the preplotted waypoints programmed into their navigation units, until they were sweeping steadily towards the back side of the Sharonian fort.

    Petty-Captain Baulwan took one more look at his watch, then nodded in satisfaction. Erthek would be starting to Listen for him sometime in the next couple of minutes, and Baulwan began preparing himself to contact the other Voice. He closed his eyes, concentrating on his Talent, letting it flow up from the depths of his mind like a crystal-clear water welling up from the throat of a mountain spring. At moments like this, he knew the shamans were right about the wondrous touch of the gods.

    He felt himself relaxing, and breathed slowly and deeply, preparing, getting ready to reach out—

    No one in Fort Shaylar saw them coming.

    Hundred Geyrsof's pilots, guided by their navigation units, had arrived at precisely the right spot at precisely the correct momen and tipped over into their attack dives when all they could see was the wet, soaking interior of the clouds through which they were flying. It was risky—they didn't know exactly how low the cloudbase actually was, or what obstacles might be hiding in it if their navigation was even slightly off—but it also meant they had perfect cover all the way down. Even if anyone in the fort had suspected the existence of Arcana's dragons for a moment, it would have done them no good under those conditions.

    In fact, the lumpy gray ceiling was at barely twelve hundred feet. At that low an altitude, the attack dragons were already starting to pull out when they broke clear of the clouds. They were going to have time for only a single attack each, and they had mere seconds to find their targets for it, but seconds were enough.

    Sixteen fireballs exploded in the interior of Fort Shaylar almost as one.

    Grafin Halifu had just signed the report about the triumphant relocation of those incredibly irritating cavalry mounts when the first explosions began.

    He lunged up out of his chair, snatched up his pistol belt, and charged out his office door.

    By the time he reached Farzak Partha's desk, the entire parade ground was a roaring holocaust.

    There couldn't be that much to burn, a shocked, horrified corner of his mind insisted while the shrieks and screams ripped through his very soul. The shrieks and screams of his men—his men—burning like living torches in that impossible inferno. There'd been no warning, no preparation. One instant, everything was orderly, normal; the next instant, devastation was upon them all.

    Partha leapt up from his own desk just in time to tackle Halifu. The outer surfaces of the fort's log structures were already smoking and charring under the incredible heat radiating from the red dragons' fireballs, but they still offered at least some protection to the people inside them, and Partha's quick thinking saved Halifu's life at least briefly.

    The company-captain hit the rough floor hard. Hard enough to shake him back into a semblance of rationality. He squirmed free of Partha's grasp and climbed back to his feet as the initial wave of fireballs exhausted their power and dissipated.

    He moved forward again, then, this time with Partha at his heels. The admin block's door was jammed, warped in its frame by the brutal heat, and he had to kick it open. Then he stepped out into a scene of nightmare.

    The lucky ones were already dead.

    Everywhere he looked, it seemed, there were bodies. Twisted, contorted, charred dead men, smoldering with an intolerable stench of burning flesh. Here and there among the corpses were the screaming, writhing bodies of hideously maimed troopers who were still alive. He knew those men, knew most of them by their first names, and he couldn't even recognize them.

    He advanced onto the parade ground, and half the fort's buildings were on fire around him. The observation tower blazed like a huge torch, soaked in oil, and a seared scarecrow of a human figure hung over the platform rail like a shriveled, blazing mummy. His mind refused to absorb the reality, couldn't find a way to process the information. He needed time for that, and there wasn't any time.

    Something made him look up at the sky just in time to see a final pair of huge, impossible creatures hurtling suddenly out of the clouds. They streaked down towards the flame-wracked abattoir which had once been Fort Shaylar, and Grafin Halifu found his H&W in his hand.

    The heavy, long-barreled revolver rose, his thumb cocked the hammer, and he began to fire.

    He was still firing when the gas cloud enveloped what was left of his command.

    Commander of One Hundred Sylair Worka looked at his chronometer and grimaced in disgust.

    It wasn't his fault, but that didn't make him any happier to be running well over two hours behind schedule. Those damned Sharonian booby traps had imposed a delay out of all proportion to their actual effectiveness, and he wished Fifty Narshu had at least been assigned a hummer handler.

    But, no, Worka thought sourly. We couldn't risk the Sharonians finding out about the hummers, could we? Of course not! So what if it makes it impossible to communicate when it all hits the fan?

    His expression grew briefly even more disgusted, then he shook his head. Part of the problem was that neither side knew what it ought to be concealing from the other, he reflected. So Arcana had wound up hiding just about everything . . . even when it was an operational pain in the arse.

    He supposed it all made sense, but it would have been far more convenient—and, undoubtedly, more reassuring to Narshu—if Worka had been able to send him a message to explain the delay.

    Well, we're only thirty minutes or so out now. In fact, the point ought to be—

    "Sir!"

    Worka looked up from his chronometer as one of his troopers came towards him at a stiff canter. A light cavalry unicorn could manage speeds of up to forty miles an hour and maintain a gallop for ninety minutes at a time in decent terrain . . . which, of course, this mass of trees most definitely was not. Still, Lance Ranlak was moving at a good clip.

    The trooper drew up beside his company commander and saluted.

    "What is it, Yurain?" Worka asked.

    "Sir, Sword Kalcyr's respects, and he thinks we've got a problem."

    "Problem?" Worka stiffened in the saddle. Senior Sword Barcan Kalcyr was the company's senior noncom. He'd been everywhere and done everything, and he didn't use the word "problem" lightly.

    "Yes, Sir. He said to tell you he smells smoke. Lots of smoke."

    Worka gazed at the trooper for a few moments, then pressed with his heels, and sent his mount galloping forward.

    The constant coming and going of the diplomats who'd been negotiating with the Sharonians—not to mention all of the Sharonian traffic between the swamp portal and the Class Eight—had produced a well-worn, surprisingly broad trail, and Worka's troopers crowded aside to let him pass. He made good time, and well before he reached Kalcyr's position, he'd come to the conclusion that the senior sword had, if anything, understated the situation. The hundred's unicorn snorted uneasily, tossing its horned head, as the first sharp-smelling banners of smoke came flowing through the woods.

    "What do we have, Barcan?" Worka asked as he drew up beside the noncom.

    "According to my nav unit, we're only about five miles out, Sir," Kalcyr replied. "I don't think we're getting through that, though."

    He pointed, and Worka's jaw tightened as he looked in the indicated direction. The stiff breeze was blowing across the trail at the next best thing to right angles. Now, as he gazed ahead, he realized that the smoke he'd smelled on his way forward had been only outriders, only the stray tendrils of the massive wall of smoke rolling steadily westward ahead of them.

    "Where there's smoke, there's fire, Sir," Kalcyr observed in a tone which sounded as disgusted as Worka felt.

    "Yes, there is, Senior Sword," Worka agreed. "In fact—"

    He broke off, gesturing, and Kalcyr grunted as they both saw the first, abrupt crackle of flames coming towards them through the smoke. One of the towering forest giants went up like torch in a glare of crownfire, little more than two hundred yards further along the trail.

    Worka's unicorn flattened its lynx-like ears, and he felt the sudden tension quivering in its augmented muscles.

    "Time to go, Senior Sword," the hundred said.

    "You've got that right, Sir," Kalcyr agreed feelingly as a second tree flared up, and he blew his whistle.

    The point men responded instantly—after all, they were even closer to that oncoming inferno than Kalcyr or Worka. The hundred and the senior sword waited until they were sure everyone had heard the signal, then turned their own unicorns and headed back the way they'd come—rapidly.

    Worka knew he'd made the right decision, but he didn't like the implications one bit. He supposed it was remotely possible a random lightning strike out of the cloudless sky might have just happened to start a forest fire in this particular place at this particular time. It wasn't very likely, though. Unfortunately, he couldn't think of any good reason for Fifty Narshu to have been starting any fires. Which meant that if it wasn't the result of some sort of accident—which Worka strongly doubted was the case—someone else must be responsible.

    Which probably meant things hadn't gone quite as well as everyone had been assuming, after all.