Heirs of Empire

had nipped in between them. The towers Sean now controlled relayed all normal message traffic without alterations, but they were intercepting every dispatch either Guard officer sent the other. It was almost more delicious than what Sandy’s and Brashan’s stealthed remotes could tell him, for he was actually reading his enemies’ mail, then dictating the responses he wanted them to receive. It looked like it was already having an effect, as well. Sandy reported that Terrahk had slowed his headlong pace just a bit thanks to the more confident tenor Sean had been giving Ortak’s messages. But, of course, Ortak didn’t know that, now did he?

Sean grinned wickedly, but then he looked up at the sky and his grin faded. The sun was sinking steadily in the west, and it was about time to bivouac, but what worried him was the growing humidity. Another front was coming through, and Brashan was still figuring out Pardal’s weather patterns. The mountains made prediction even harder, and Sean suspected the front was moving faster than expected. But they should still have enough time, he told himself as he urged his branahlk back into motion. All he needed was two more of Pardal’s twenty-nine-hour days.

* * *

“Two more days,” Tamman murmured. He leaned back in a camp chair in his tent, eyes closed while his neural feed linked him to Israel and Sandy’s remotes through the com in the stealthed cutter permanently parked in hover above “the Angel Harry’s” commodious tent. He replayed the day’s scan records at high speed and watched mentally as Sean’s column sped up the high road towards Erastor. They were really moving, and they were still a good four days in front of High-Captain Terrahk. The way the relief column was easing up would open the gap a bit further, but sometime the day after tomorrow the Guardsmen were going to reach Malz and find out what had actually been happening.

They’d have no way to warn Ortak, and he wondered what Terrahk would do. Would he hustle on forward as fast as he could? If he knew how many men Sean had, the high-captain might figure he could take him in the open, but he’d be too far behind to overtake before Sean reached Erastor, and he’d know it. Just as he’d know that if Sean blew Ortak out of the way, his own column would be hopelessly inadequate to face the two hundred thousand screaming heretics the Temple now assumed the Angels’ Army had.

It all came down to a guess, Tamman mused. Unlike Sean and himself, Terrahk was totally reliant on mounted scouts, and with the towers between him and Erastor in Malagoran hands, he’d have no way to know what was happening ahead of him. All he’d know was that if Ortak had somehow figured out what was coming at him and managed to throw up any sort of an east-facing defense, he’d need all the help Terrahk could send him to hold it. Or, conversely, that if Ortak had already been waxed, the only chance for his own troops’ survival would be to run as hard as they could in the other direction.

Under the circumstances, Tamman suspected Terrahk would retreat. Abandoning Ortak might cost the Guard seventy or eighty thousand men, but if he lost his own command throwing good money after bad, the Temple would also lose its last field force. It was a pity Sean couldn’t ambush Terrahk first and then take on Ortak, but too many things could go wrong, including the possibility that Sean would find himself trapped between enemies who outnumbered him by more than five to one. With room to maneuver and unlimited ammunition, odds like that might be workable; trapped between the Mortan and the valley’s northern rim and with only the ammo his troops could carry, the situation would have all the ingredients for a MacIntyre’s Last Stand.

Nope. The best outcome would probably be for Terrahk to keep coming and arrive a couple of days after he and Sean had crushed Ortak. If they could reunite their own army, they’d make mincemeat out of Terrahk— assuming they could catch him. At the very least, they should be able to stay close enough on his heels to keep him from settling into the prepared positions around Baricon. But Terrahk would know that as well as they did, which was why Tamman expected the Guardsman to fall back the instant he figured out what was happening.

He straightened and opened his eyes. One thing was certain, whatever Terrahk did, he reminded himself. Before he and Sean could get back into contact, they had to take Erastor, and he shoved up out of his chair. There was just enough light left for him and Ithun to make a last recon of Ortak’s lines before darkness fell, and if it turned out that they had to storm those entrenchments to save Sean’s posterior, he wanted all of his officers to know everything they could about their target.

* * *

More rain swept up the Keldark Valley, and High-Captain Ortak glared sourly at the clouds. The valley was always damp, of course. It was the only real opening in the Shalokar Range, and wet air from the east poured through it like a funnel as it swept up towards the Malagor Plateau. Some of the Temple’s experts argued that as the air moved higher and grew thinner, the moisture fell out of its own weight. Ortak didn’t fully understand the theory behind it, but all he really needed to know was that it rained in the valley—a lot—and that it was starting to do it again.

He growled a soft curse, then shrugged. Rain was his friend, not the heretics’. Their musketeers outnumbered his tremendously, and if God was kind enough to soak their priming powder for them, Ortak had no intention of complaining. Let them come in and take him on with cold steel!

* * *

“How long is this going to last?” Sean asked fretfully.

He and Sandy stood fifty meters from the nearest Malagoran and conferred over their coms with Brashan.

“At least another two days,” the Narhani said soberly. He sat alone on Israel’s command deck, and his long-snouted, saurian face was grave. “I am sorry, Sean. We thought—”

“Not your fault,” Sean interrupted. “We all knew it was coming. We just expected it to hold off longer, and then we lost all that time in the swamps. Our window should have been big enough, Twinkle Hooves.”

“True, but it’s not only coming in faster, it’s going to rain harder than we’d predicted.” The Narhani sounded worried. Sean was less than one day’s march from Erastor, and the rain—only a drizzle now—would be a downpour by evening. What that would do to flintlock rifles hardly bore thinking on.

“Can we hold off till it clears?” Sandy gazed up at Sean, and her voice was anxious.

” ’Fraid not.” Sean sighed. “Ortak expects his ‘reinforcements’ by nightfall. If we suddenly stop moving, he’s going to wonder why and send someone to find out. And if he does that—” He shrugged.

“But you can’t fight him without your rifles!” Sandy protested. “You don’t have any pikes at all!”

“No, but we do still have surprise.”

“Surprise! Are you out of your mind?! There are eighty thousand men up there, Sean! There’s no way you can take their position away from them before they figure out what’s happening!”

“Maybe yes, and maybe no,” Sean said stubbornly. “Don’t forget the confusion factor. The rain’s going to cut visibility. We should be able to get a lot closer before they figure out we aren’t really Guardsmen, and there’s a good chance they’ll panic when their ‘reinforcements’ suddenly attack them. They don’t have the kind of communication net a modern army would have, either. It’s going to be mighty hard for them to get themselves sorted out when they have to rely on messengers to carry orders.”

“You’re crazy!” she hissed. “Tamman, Harry—tell him!”

“I think Sandy’s right, Sean,” Harriet said quietly. “It’s too risky. Besides, even if he does figure out what’s happening, Terrahk’s already falling back on Baricon. Wait till the rain stops. Ortak’s not going anywhere, and maybe he’ll surrender when he realizes he’s trapped between you and Tam.”

“Wrong answer, Harry,” Tamman put in unhappily. “Ortak’s not the surrendering kind, or he wouldn’t have stopped at Erastor.”

“What else can he do?” Harriet demanded hotly.

“He can come out after us,” Sean answered. “He knows as well as we do that it’s our rifles that give us the edge. You think he wouldn’t take his chances on hitting us in the open if the rain knocks them out of the