Voice was killed in the initial strike on the fort.'
'So there's something to be said for overkill, after all,' Carthos observed with a desert-dry smile. Then he shrugged. 'To be honest, Pahkrys, I'm just as glad Hundred Halika's opening strike leveled the place.'
He twitched his head at the demolished fort. 'I was never too happy about the distance to the next portal.
I know there was a relay station, but it's only about six hundred miles. If the information we have on these Voices is accurate, quite a few of them could reach that far without a relay.'
'I know, Sir.' Eswayr seemed to relax just a little.
'Well, then!' Carthos said, straightening briskly and planting his hands on his hips. 'I suppose it's time I had a few words with Five Hundred Mala and we started getting the troops forward again.'
'Yes, Sir,' Eswayr said once more. Then he seemed to hesitate for a moment. 'Uh, Sir, I did have one other question.'
'Question?' Carthos looked back at the infantry officer, one eyebrow arched.
'Yes, Sir. We have a few prisoners, Sir. I was just wondering what you wanted me to do about them.'
'Prisoners?' Carthos repeated with a frown. 'What sort of prisoners? How many of them?'
'There are only about fifteen of them,' Eswayr said. 'Three of them are pretty badly burned.'
'Any officers?'
'No, Sir. Mostly enlisted, with a couple of noncoms.'
'I see.' Carthos gazed unseeingly into the crackling flames consuming the fort for several heartbeats, then returned his gaze to Eswayr.
'Has anyone questioned them?'
'Yes, Sir. They … didn't seem to know very much.'
'And you believed them?'
'According to the verifier spells they were telling the truth, Sir.'
'Then they're not very useful, are they?' Carthos observed.
'Apparently not,' Eswayr agreed. 'On the other hand, Five Hundred Neshok might be able to get more out of them by asking the right questions.'
'But Five Hundred Neshok is the better part of three thousand miles from here with Two Thousand Harshu,' Carthos pointed out. 'It would take us just a while to get the prisoners to him. And by the time any information he got out of them got back to us, it would probably be hopelessly out of date.'
Eswayr nodded, and Carthos' nostrils flared. He didn't much care for these Sharonians. He wouldn't have under any circumstances, but even if he'd been inclined to, there were those memos from mul Gurthak to consider.
'I don't see any point tying up a transport on that sort of useless shuttle mission, Five Hundred,' he said.
'It's not like we have all that many of them to spare, after all.'
'No, Sir,' Eswayr agreed.
'And if they don't have any useful information for us, then I don't really see much point in hauling them along with us, either.'
Carthos looked levelly into Eswayr's eyes. For a moment, he thought the five hundred was going to balk.
But then the Inkaran drew a deep breath.
'Yes, Sir. I'll … take care of it.'
'Good.' Carthos patted the smaller man on the shoulder with a smile. 'I'll leave it in your hands, then.
Now, where can I find Five Hundred Mala?'
Chapter Twenty-One
'Come in Klayrman! Come in.'
Klayrman Toralk obeyed the invitation and stepped into Two Thousand Harshu's command tent. He'd half- expected a summons like this one. In fact, he wondered what had taken so long. More than two days had passed since the revelations of his supper with Harshu. Tayrgal Carthos had been sent upon his way forty-eight hours previously, but Harshu had yet to move towards his own next objective, and so far, at least, Toralk had no idea why he hadn't.
Hopefully, that's about to change, he told himself as he approached the map table floating in midair at the center of the outsized tent.
Aside from himself and Harshu, the only other person present was Commander of Five Hundred Herak Mahrkrai, Harshu's Chief of Staff. Mahrkrai-old for his rank, with iron-gray hair and oddly colorless eyes-was the sort of officer who seemed to have specialized in unobtrusiveness throughout his entire career. Toralk had worked with him enough in planning the Expeditionary Force's operations to know he was a highly competent, even an imaginative man, but he didn't project that. His apparent … blandness, for want of a better word, was the most striking thing about him, and Toralk wondered why. He supposed it might have owed something to the fact that Mahrkrai's less showy personality was simply lost in the shadow of Harshu's far more extroverted and aggressive impact on everyone about him.
Of course, it's always possible Harshu picked him expressly because he has that sort of personality. But if he did, the question is whether it was because Harshu was smart enough to know he needed a balance wheel like Mahrkrai? Or was it because he wanted to make sure his chief of staff wouldn't challenge him for the spotlight?
'Thank you for getting here so promptly, Klayrman,' Harshu continued, reaching out to offer the Air Force officer his hand.
'I'd say you were welcome, if there were any particular reason why I shouldn't have come promptly, Sir,' Toralk replied, and Harshu snorted.
'What a polite way of saying we've been sitting here on our arses too long!' the two thousand said.
Toralk opened his mouth, but Harshu shook his head before he could speak. 'No, that's a perfectly reasonable thing for you to be thinking, actually. Especially given how heavily all of our preliminary planning emphasized the need to move quickly once we got through the initial Sharonian defenses.
Unfortunately, Five Hundred Neshok has turned up some intelligence which Herak and I have been kicking around for the better part of twelve hours now.'
'What sort of intelligence, Sir, if I may ask?' Toralk said cautiously.
'According to two or three of our prisoners, there are Arcanan prisoners being held in our next objective, Sir,' Five Hundred Mahrkrai answered for his boss.
'What?' Astonishment startled the question out of Toralk. The instant it was out of his mouth, though, he wondered just why he was surprised. They'd known all along that the survivors of the Second Andarans had been taken prisoner, which meant, logically, that they had to be being held somewhere.
I suppose I simply assumed they'd have done the same things with their prisoners that we did with ours-
gotten them moved to the rear for proper interrogation as quickly as possible. Except, of course, that we haven't been doing that since we launched this attack, have we?
That last thought suggested some potentially grim reasons for holding prisoners closer to the front, so he decided not to think about it any more just at the moment.
'We've confirmed it,' Harshu told him. 'At least, the verifier spells have confirmed that the prisoners giving us the information believe it's accurate. According to the best information Neshok's been able to put together, the worst wounded of our people were held at this Fort Ghartoun,or Fort Raylthar, or whatever the hells it's named these days.'
'It makes sense, Sir,' Mahrkrai put in. 'As far as we can tell, they don't have anything like our magistrons. They're pretty much limited to natural healing times, and transporting badly wounded men without even dragons must be a nightmare. So they probably parked the most badly hurt of our people at this Fort Ghartoun. Since they didn't know a thing about our aerial capability, they must have figured Ghartoun was far enough from our point of contact to be secure.'
'But you see our problem, don't you, Klayrman?' Harshu said, waving one hand at the sketch map on the table. 'We can't exactly use the yellows-or even the reds-in a surprise attack if our own people are being held inside the
