He and Silkash looked at one another, and Velvelig saw the mirror of his own response to the sight of a magically-literally-restored Hadrign Thalmayr walking around Fort Ghartoun. Of course, it was probably even more complex for Silkash than it was for Velvelig. After all, Silkash was a Healer. His oath, as well as his natural personality, required him to want to see any of his patients fully recovered.
However stupid, frustrating, detestable, and just plain infuriating the patient in question might be.
'Well, that's certainly interesting,' Silkash said after a moment.
'That's one way to put it. On the other hand, I'm considerably less interested in Thalmayr than I am in what else has been going on.'
'I don't know everything that's happened,' Silkash replied slowly, and Velvelig's spine stiffened at the bleakness which suddenly infused the surgeon's voice. 'What I do know hasn't been good, though.'
'In that case,' Velvelig said, in a tone whose evenness might have deceived anyone who didn't know Arpathians, 'I suppose you'd better tell me about it.'
'I'm worried about the horses, Dad,' Syrail Targal said.
'So am I,' his father said, patting him on the shoulder. 'They'll just have to look after themselves for a while, though. Just like we will.'
Syrail nodded, and his father ruffled his hair the way he'd done when Syrail was much younger. The youngster managed a smile, and Kersai gave him a gentle nudge in the direction of the carefully hidden tent.
'Go help your mother with supper,' he said quietly.
'Yes, sir.' Syrail nodded again and headed obediently towards the assigned chore.
His father watched him go, doing his best to hide the depth of his own concern. It had been just over twelve hours since the fall of Fort Ghartoun, and given the strength of the Voice talent Syrail had been showing for the last several months, there wouldn't have been a lot of point trying to deceive the boy into thinking his parents weren't frightened. But no father wanted to add to his child's fears. Especially, Kersai thought, his expression turning hard and bleak, when that child had already Seen what Syrail had Seen in Folsar chan Tergis' last moments of life.
A part of the worried father was furious at the Fort Ghartoun Voice for inflicting that sort of trauma on his son. And an ignoble part of him was even angrier at chan Tergis for having bragged about Syrail's remarkable Talent to other members of the fort's garrison. If the Voice had just kept his big mouth shut, then Kersai Targal wouldn't be hiding in the early-winter woods praying that the cold-blooded butchers who shot Voices out of hand wouldn't catch up with his son!
But most of him knew it was totally irrational to be angry with chan Tergis. There had been no possible way for the Voice to anticipate what had happened, to even guess that his pride in his protegee might prove dangerous to Syrail. And if his final Voice message to Syrail had been traumatic, it had also been the only thing that had warned Kersai and Raysith to flee.
The man warned us with literally the last seconds of his life. Told Syrail to run and hide when he knew he was about to be murdered, Kersai thought. Gods-while he was being murdered! How could anyone be angry with someone who did that?
He knew all of that intellectually; it was just his emotions which couldn't quite catch up with the knowledge. Which was stupid … which, in turn, was one reason he was as irritated with himself as he was. He could actually understand that, although there wasn't anything he could do about it. Not yet. Not when his son might very well already be under sentence of death by the same barbarian butchers who had massacred the Chalgyn Consortium crew and now, apparently, launched a vicious, unprovoked attack on all Sharonians even while they were officially 'negotiating for peace.'
He grimaced, gazing up at the sky, wondering if one of those eagle-lions Syrail had tried to describe to him might already be circling high overhead, spying on them. He'd hidden his encampment as carefully as he could, and he'd used his surveys of the surrounding terrain to pick a spot which offered at least three separate avenues of escape. But if these bastards could literally fly … .
He grimaced again and reached into his coat pocket to squeeze the bronze falcon he'd taken out of Syrail's dresser drawer. Then he turned and made his own way towards the tent.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Senior Sword Barcan Kalcyr pulled out his navigation unit and glowered at it as his unicorn picked its way through the unforgiving terrain.
The hammering these mountains had taken when this universe's portal formed was more extreme than most. It must have been exciting as hell, but Kalcyr was delighted he hadn't been here to see it. The way it had battered the mountainsides, stripping away trees and soil, leaving naked stone cliffs which rose like ramparts and piling up the wind-driven equivalent of silt behind any sheltering windbreak, had made a complete farce out of the normal maps for this particular piece of terrain. And the fact that the tree cover had been given time to fill back in after the carnage finally tapered off only made things even worse. Or that was the way it seemed to Barcan Kalcyr, at least.
Remember to thank Hundred Worka for this when we get back to base, he told himself.
The navigation unit took a moment to think about his demands. It usually did when it had to coordinate itself with the take from a gryphon-borne recon crystal. The spellware that translated the airborne reconnaissance data for a ground-based unit's navigation requirements always seemed to have a glitch or two running around in it. After a few moments, though, the display settled itself, and he snorted with a certain degree of sour amusement.
So, there you are. Or there you were, at least, he thought at the red icon glowing in the the display's depths.
He wished-not for the first time-that there were some way to send the recon crystal's imagery direct from a gryphon to a ground unit while the gryphon was still in the air. Unfortunately, no one had ever come up with one. The gryphon still had to return to base, the crystal had to be extracted from its harness, and then whatever had been recorded had to be downloaded to the units which actually needed it, which meant it was always at least a little out of date by the time it got to the sharp end.
Still, it's one hell of a lot better than anything these Sharonians have, he reminded himself, and his mouth tightened.
He hadn't much cared for anything about the Sharonians even before the invasion actually kicked off.
Just listening to the intelligence briefings had told him what sort of barbarians they were, and then there was Magister Halathyn's cold-blooded murder. That was one crime no one was ever going to forgive, and Kalcyr's attitude towards Sharona hadn't gotten one bit better when they found the seared and burned bodies of Fifty Narshu and his men. He knew Narshu had to have gotten at least a few of the other side, but there'd been no sign of any Sharonian bodies.
Left our men to fry in their own fat while they took their own with them. Kalcyr felt a familiar stir of rage and clamped his jaws tight. It had taken them quite some time to identify Uthik Dastiri's half-consumed body. When they did, though, it was obvious he'd been shot right between the eyes at very close range.
Which strongly suggested that the Sharonians had continued their practice of shooting their prisoners out of hand.
Kalcyr's teeth grated, and he forced himself to make his jaw muscles relax. It wasn't easy. It especially wasn't easy when he found himself wondering what the Sharonians had done-or, perhaps, were even now continuing to do-to Rithmar Skirvon and the two missing members of his military escort.
Well, they made the rules, Senior Sword Kalcyr told himself grimly. Now they can just take the consequences.
'All right,' he told the rest of the half-troop of cavalry Hundred Worka had assigned to him. 'According to this,' he waved the navigation unit at them, 'we're getting damned close. In fact, I think they're probably up there, under that overhang.'
Kersai Targal swallowed a curse.
He'd hoped to escape discovery entirely, but it didn't look like things were going to work out that way.
