My 'Ternathian optimism' and I can handle this.'
Banchu chuckled, shook his head, and headed off to see how much construction equipment they could load onto their available flat cars.
'What the-?'
Under-Armsman Verais lowered the field glasses for a moment, then shook his head and raised them once more.
'We've got three … horsemen coming down the valley, Armsman,' he announced.
'What?' Junior-Armsman Paras chan Barsak seemed to materialize out of the dusty earth at Verais'
elbow.
'There.'
Verais passed over the field glasses and pointed at the roadway far below. Chan Barsak raised the binoculars to his own eyes, adjusting the focus, then grunted as the image sharpened.
Verais was right. Three men mounted on something horse-sized and vaguely horse-shaped were cantering along the roadway at a preposterous rate of speed. Afternoon sunlight glittered on what were apparently long, spiral horns sprouting from their 'horses''thinspace'' foreheads, and chan Barsak had never heard of a 'horse' with what looked remarkably like a carnivore's tusks. Of course, the not-horses were just passing abreast of the shattered corpse of what was obviously a dragon, so he didn't suppose there was any reason they couldn't be equally preposterous.
His lips twitched at the thought, then his forehead creased in surprise.
'They're coming in under a parley banner,' he said.
'Parley banner?' Verais hawked and spat over the edge of the drop-off. 'How the fuck-pardon my Uromathian-would they know what a parley banner looks like? And if they did know, what makes them think we'd be stupid enough to trust anything they said?'
'I didn't say it was a proper parley banner,' chan Barsak said rather more patiently than he felt. 'But it's green, they're flying it, and there's just three of them. Whether we can trust 'em or not's really kind of beside the point, don't you think?'
Verais just scowled, and chan Barsak snorted, then shook his head and started calling for the Flicker assigned to his squad.
Rof chan Skrithik and Sunlord Markan stood side-by-side outside Markan's CP and watched the pair of Arcanan officers being escorted towards them. Both Arcanans were blindfolded, and their third companion had been held at the outer picket line where he could keep an eye on their peculiar horned horses … and couldn't see anything about the defenders' positions. Frankly, chan Skrithik was just as happy not to have those unnatural creatures any closer than they had to be.
Actually, he thought grimly, I'd just as soon not have these Arcanan fuckers any closer than they have to be, either.
He thought about the dead prince lying in Company-Captain Krilar's infirmary and the palm of his pistol hand itched.
The Arcanans were marched into the command post. Chan Skrithik and Markan watched them go by, then followed them silently into the sandbagged bunker. It was obvious from the Arcanans' body language that they weren't as calm as they would have liked to appear, yet chan Skrithik found himself feeling an unwilling respect for their sheer nerve. Riding in to parley with someone against whom you'd just launched a sneak attack while in the midst of negotiations in time of peace was not a task for the faint hearted.
The Arcanans were turned to face him and the blindfolds were removed. They blinked as their eyes adjusted to the dim light inside the command post, then one of them looked at chan Skrithik and Markan. His eyes narrowed as he saw the three gold rifles of chan Skrithik's rank insignia and the splinted forearm suspended in the sling tied around the regiment-captain's neck.
'May I crystal back?' the Arcanan said in heavily accented Ternathian, gesturing at the petty-captain who'd escorted him and his companion to the CP.
'You want one of your crystals returned to you?' chan Skrithik responded, and the Arcanan nodded vigorously.
'Can talk better with,' he said.
Chan Skrithik frowned for a moment, then glanced at the petty-captain.
'You took one of their rocks off of them?'
'Yes, Sir. We didn't find anything that looked like a weapon-not even a knife-but after everything else, I figured, well …'
The youngster shrugged, and chan Skrithik nodded.
'You did exactly the right thing, Son. On the other hand, I suppose if we actually want to hear what these … people have to say, we should give it back to them.'
The regiment-captain held out his hand for the crystal in question, then turned back to the more talkative Arcanan with it on his palm.
'Understand,' he said grimly, holding the other man's eyes with his own and letting him see the hate and barely leashred rage, 'if we think you're going to do anything with this hunk of rock except talk, I'll shoot you dead where you stand.'
'Understand,' the Arcanan replied. Chan Skrithik wasn't at all certain that the other man's comprehension of Ternathian was genuinely up to understanding what he'd just said, but he suspected that he hadn't actually needed to say it in the first place.
He stared into the other man's eyes for another moment, then handed the crystal across. The Arcanan murmured something, and the piece of rock started to glow. Then he looked across it at chan Skrithik.
'I am Commander of Five Hundred Dayr Vaynair, Army of the Union of Arcana,' he said crisply. Or, to be more precise, the crystal translated crisply. 'This,' he indicated the older man standing beside him,
'is Commander of One Thousand Klayrman Toralk.'
'I see.'
Chan Skrithik gazed back at them, his eyes hard, but his brain was busy behind them. He knew nothing about how the Arcanans organized their military. For that matter, he didn't know whether the rank titles this Vaynair had just rattled off had been literal or figurative interpretations of their actual ranks.
Nonetheless, he didn't doubt for a moment that these were the two most senior Arcanan officers any official representative of Sharona had yet encountered.
Or, a mental voice amended coldly, the most senior Arcanan officers any living, uncaptured official representative of Sharona has encountered.
The Arcanans gazed back at him equally levelly, obviously waiting for him to introduce himself in response. For a moment, he toyed with the notion of refusing to do so, but he brushed the petty temptation aside.
'Regiment-Captain Rof chan Skrithik, Portal Authority Armed Forces,' he said.
'Ah.' Vaynair nodded. 'May I assume I'm speaking to the senior Sharonian officer, in that case, Sir?' he inquired politely.
'At the moment,' chan Skrithik replied curtly.
'Very good, Sir.' Vaynair cleared his throat. 'Thousand Toralk and I have been sent as envoys by Commander of Two Thousand Harshu.'
'I see,' chan Skrithik repeated. 'So I suppose I should assume this 'Commander of Two Thousand Harshu' of yours is in command of this batch of cutthroats and murderers?'
Vaynair winced. His eyes tried to move sideways, towards his superior officer, but he stopped them. As for the superior officer in question, his expression didn't even flicker.
'I-' Vaynair began, then paused.
'You may assume that, Regiment-Captain,' the commander of one thousand said into his junior's hesitation. He met chan Skrithik's eyes steadily. 'Obviously, I would prefer some other description of the men under my command. Under the circumstances, however, I can appreciate how you might fail to grasp the distinction.'
Toralk's voice was firm, chan Skrithik noted.
'Nonetheless,' the Arcanan continued, 'Five Hundred Vaynair and I are here with a message. Two messages, in fact. Are you willing to listen to them?'
'The fact that you're here at all suggests to me that the last Sharonians who listened to what Arcanans had to
