maps said it should be. He looked through Graycloud's eyes, moving the crosshair while he prepared to climb high enough to gain a clear line of fire onto the fort's parade ground. But then something jabbed at the corner of his attention, and his eyes moved back to the shadows below the fort's wall.
What the hells? That's not supposed to be there … whatever the hells it is. It's-
He was still peering into the shadows, using Graycloud's vision to try to figure out what those dimly visible shapes and scars on the earth were, as the two yellows and their accompanying reds entered the final stretch of their approach valley … and the four Faraika II machine guns dug in on either side, just below the summit, opened fire.
Janaki chan Calirath had been standing on the raised gun platform between the gate bastions with Taleena on his shoulder for the last two hours. He'd stood there, almost motionless, gazing steadily into the west, and Rof chan Skrithik had stood equally silent at his other shoulder, with Senior-Armsman Orek Isia, Fort Salby's senior Flicker, by his side.
The regiment-captain felt … uncomfortable. Which, he reflected, was a pitifully pale word to describe his emotions at this moment. Part of him wished desperately that he'd gone ahead and ordered Janaki to the rear. Another part of him-the part charged with defending twelve hundred civilians, including his own wife-was desperately glad the prince and his Talent were here. And yet another part wondered if Janaki would have gone, even if he'd been ordered to.
And just who the hells would you have used to make him go if he'd refused, Rof? he asked himself wryly, glancing at the Marine standing respectfully behind the two officers. Chief-Armsman chan Braikal looked most unhappy, but chan Skrithik had no doubt whose orders the Marine would have followed if it had come to a choice between him and the Crown Prince of Ternathia.
Besides, when it came right down to it, Rof chan Skrithik was a Ternathian himself. He knew how valuable Janaki's life was. He also recalled the Caliraths' motto … and the quotation attributed to Emperor Halian over fifteen hundred years ago, when he'd rejected all of the arguments in favor of withdrawing from the defense of his Bolakini allies.
'It takes twenty years' training to make an Emperor,' Halian had said. 'It takes twenty centuries to make an Empire the world can trust.'
Janaki chan Calirath understood what his ancestor had said all those centuries ago, chan Skrithik thought.
'What's that?' chan Braikal said suddenly. 'There-above the southern hilltop?'
Chan Skrithik couldn't make out what the Marine was talking about, but Janaki answered him. The prince didn't even turn his head to look. He didn't have to … just as chan Skrithik didn't have to look into Janaki's gray eyes to see the shadows moving in their depths.
'It's starting, Chief,' the crown prince said quietly.
'Still think it's a stupid place to put a machine gun?!' Paras chan Barsak shouted in Kardan Verais' right ear.
'Fuck, no!' Verais shouted back.
They had to shout, even though their heads were barely a foot apart, and even then they could scarcely hear one another. The cacophonous bellow of four .54-caliber machine guns tended to make it difficult to carry on a conversation. The heavy Faraikas couldn't sustain maximum-rate fire for very long without overheating catastrophically, but they didn't have to, either.
Each of the four machine gun emplacements on each side of the valley poured at least two hundred rounds at the monstrous beasts leading that airborne onslaught, and none of their targets even tried to dodge.
Cerlohs Myr watched in utter horror as both his remaining yellows ran straight into the massed fire of the Sharonian weapons which shouldn't have been there. Geyrsof and his wingman had been concentrating on their assigned target, not looking for machine guns on the tops of mountains a good mile and a half short of the target that didn't know they were coming. Myr had no idea what those guns were doing there. Indeed, he could hardly even find them! The brilliant flames of their muzzle flashes illuminated the shadows wrapped around their positions like chain-lightning, but they were so solidly dug-in, with so many sandbags and so much earth piled on top of their positions, that the muzzle flashes were all he could see.
Well, that and the consequences of those muzzle flashes.
Graycloud and Skykill seemed to stagger in midair. The fire wasn't even coming in from below, where their scales were thickest, and the massive bullets punched through their sides like white-hot awls. One of them-Myr had no idea which-managed to scream in mortal agony, and then both of them went smashing down out of the heavens in bloody, shattered ruin that bounced and skidded onward along the valley floor like toys that flailed broken wings like pitiful, tattered banners.
The three reds behind them went the same way before their pilots could react. The rest of the attack flight responded instinctively, rocketing steeply upward. But the deadly flanking fire tracked them as they climbed, and another red and one of the blacks went down, as well, before they could clear the threat zone.
Myr looked back from his own dragon as Razorwing bounded upward, and saw the broken bodies of seven- seven!-of his precious dragons and their pilots sprawled grotesquely across the valley floor.
The cheers were deafening.
Rof chan Skrithik found himself shouting right along with the rest of his men, bellowing his triumph, and he knew he was shouting even louder because of his reaction to the sheer size of the Arcanans'
winged monstrosities.
But Janaki wasn't cheering.
The crown prince reached out and caught chan Skrithik by the front of his uniform tunic. The regimentcaptain's eyes widened in surprise at the strength with which Janaki grabbed him and literally yanked him forward. He started to say something, but then Janaki turned his head to look at him, and chan Skrithik's mouth closed with a click.
He'd thought there were ghosts in his crown prince's gray gaze before; now he saw the reality.
Janaki's eyes were huge, the pupils far too dilated for the strengthening morning light, unfocused on anything of this world. They didn't seem to be looking at anything about him, and yet chan Skrithik had the eerie sensation that Janaki didn't simply see him; he Saw right through him.
'They aren't going to give up that easily,' the Crown Prince of Ternathia said in the clear, distant voice of a Calirath in fugue state. 'They'll be back-soon.' He pointed directly overhead. 'There.'
Chan Skrithik nodded, and looked at Senior-Armsman Isia.
'Overhead watch,' he said harshly. 'Alert everyone.'
'Yes, Sir!'
Isia saluted sharply, then closed his eyes, and one of the small stacks of message canisters on the parapet beside him began to disappear with the preplanned dispatches, written well ahead of time against this very moment.
Almost simultaneously, the canisters began to appear at their destinations. Company-Captain Mesaion glanced at his copy, and began shouting orders of his own.
Cerlohs Myr counted noses with a sense of total disbelief as his remaining dragons circled well to the west of those murderous machine guns.
After transfers and rearrangements to make up for his earlier losses, the 3012th had headed into action this morning with eleven dragons. Now it had only four … and both of his precious yellows were gone, simply blotted away.
He lay in his cockpit, forcing himself to think as clearly as possible despite the shock and white-hot rage blazing within him. The loss of seven battle dragons-seven!-before any of them had even fired a shot was far worse than merely devastating. It represented almost half of his total available combat strength … and a third of all the battle dragons deployed to this entire chain.
The long-term implications of that level of losses, especially in light of the Air Force's low total inventory of battle dragons, were something he resolutely refused to contemplate. Not yet. There would be time to think about that later, and he wasn't looking forward to it.
The short-term implications were something he couldn't avoid thinking about, however. His entire battle plan had been built around bringing the maximum possible weight of fire to bear on Fort Salby as quickly as possible. The yellows were supposed to have been the opening salvo, blanketing any exposed defenders in a lethal,
