David Weber - Hell's Gate

"Loumas took our scouts right up to the portal," Arthag continued, opening the dispatch case and removing a carefully executed sketch map. "Chief-Armsman chan Hathas sketched the actual maps. He's out with the advance picket, keeping an eye on them, at the moment."

He handed the map across to chan Tesh, who unfolded it quickly. Darkness had finished falling while he and Arthag were talking, and there was insufficient light to make out details. He started to walk across to one of the campfires, but Loumas produced a bull's-eye lantern and opened the slide, letting its light fall across the map.

"Thank you, Petty Armsman," chan Tesh said courteously, then bent his full attention to the sketch.

"You didn't pick up any sentries on our side of the portal, Petty Armsman?" the company-captain continued as he studied the map.

"No, Sir," Loumas replied. "Picked up quite a few deer, and even a couple of bears, but couldn't find hide nor hair of anyone else. Proper idiots they are, if you don't mind my saying so."

"I don't mind at all, Petty Armsman," chan Tesh said, glancing up from the sketch map. "As long as we all remember that these people can obviously do things we can't. It's possible they have some way of keeping an eye on things that we've never heard of. Maybe they didn't need sentries."

"Yes, Sir," Loumas said just a tiny bit stiffly. Then he grimaced. "Sorry, Company-Captain. It's just seeing what these bastards did, knowing where they are?"

He broke off with a shake of his head, and chan Tesh nodded. Not necessarily in agreement, but in understanding. He'd already seen exactly the same reaction in the men of his own column. The news that a civilian survey crew had been cut down like animals would have been bad enough under any circumstances. The fact that Shaylar Nargra-Kolmayr had been caught in the middle of it, and that Darcel Kinlafia hadn't been able to pick up even a whisper of her Voice since, made it much, much worse. His men wanted payback, and, to be completely honest, so did chan Tesh.

The company-captain returned his attention to the sketch and shook his head mentally as he absorbed the details.

Maybe I was just a bit hasty there, he thought as he studied the drawing. If this sketch is as accurate as I think it is, then Loumas damned well has a point about what these people use for brains!

"You say your chief-armsman made the sketch?" he asked Arthag, never looking up from the map.

"Yes, Sir." Something about Arthag's voice made chan Tesh look up. The Arpathian acting platoon-captain was actually grinning, and chan Tesh raised one eyebrow.

"Chief-Armsman chan Hathas is a much better sketcher than I am, Sir. When Loumas and his scouting party got back and described what they'd seen, I decided I needed to take a look for myself. I did, but I didn't feel my own artistic abilities could do justice to it, so I got the Chief-Armsman to do the job. As nearly as I can tell you from my own observation, he got the details just about perfect."

"Vothan," chan Tesh muttered. "Maybe they really are all idiots."

Whoever was in command on the other side clearly wasn't very well versed in portal tactics. To be fair, portals?even relatively small ones like the one on the map in chan Tesh's hands?were always difficult to defend. The bizarre physics involved made that inevitable. On the other hand, there were intelligent ways to go about defending one, and then there was … this.

The chief-armsman had sketched the portal from both aspects, which the combination of the portal's relatively small size and the other side's failure to picket this side had made much simpler for him to do. And from the sketch, it appeared that the opposing commander was either terminally overconfident or else incredibly stupid.

Unless, chan Tesh conscientiously reminded himself, he really does have some kind of god weapon over there.

Which, given the fireballs and lightning bolts he'd already used on the Chalgyn Consortium crew, certainly wasn't impossible. But still …

The enemy had thrown up fieldworks?palisades, with what were obviously firing loopholes, protected with shallow earthen berms?to cover both aspects of his side of the portal. Because the portal itself separated them, he'd been forced to dig in two totally separate forces which were hopelessly out of visual contact and support range of one another, despite the fact that they were less than a hundred yards "apart." That much chan Tesh could readily understand, since every portal defender faced the same problem.

But the earthworks themselves puzzled him. They looked like something left over from the days of muzzleloading muskets and smoothbore cannon, he thought, except that they seemed a bit flimsy even for that. He didn't see a single bunker, and it was obvious from chan Hathas' sketch that there were no dugouts, either. In fact, chan Tesh didn't see any overhead cover.

"These ramparts of theirs don't look very … substantial," he commented. "You got a good enough look to confirm the berms are really that shallow?"

"Yes, Sir." Arthag shrugged. "I'm not sure, but I think Voice Kinlafia may have come up with an explanation for why everything over there looks so insubstantial."

"Indeed?" chan Tesh looked up from the sketch once more, turning his attention to the one man in civilian clothing.

He hadn't ignored Kinlafia up to this point out of discourtesy, but rather because the Voice looked so bad. His face was tightly clenched around a mixture of anguish, fury, and gnawing impatience which chan Tesh needed no Talent to recognize. Kinlafia's eyes were like burnt holes in his face, and chan Tesh wondered if the man's jaw muscles had truly relaxed even once since the rest of his crew was butchered. chan Tesh had no desire to intrude upon the man's obvious pain, but if Kinlafia had a theory to help explain what chan Tesh was seeing in this sketch, he wanted to hear it.

"You have a theory, Voice Kinlafia?" he asked courteously, and Kinlafia nodded. It was a jerky, almost convulsive nod, and his expression was taut as he waved back towards the fallen timber chan Tesh hadn't actually seen yet.

"I'm not sure what they use for 'artillery,' Company-Captain," he said, "but whatever it is, it isn't anything like ours. I know Voice Traygan has relayed Whiffer Parcanthi's and Tracer Hilovar's reports about the odd residues they've picked up to you. We still don't have any sort of explanation for what could have created them, but during the time Voice Nargra-Kolmayr?" his voice went flat and dead for a moment as he used Shaylar Nargra-Kolmayr's formal title, chan Tesh noted "?and I were linked, I Saw their heavy weapons in action. They have a lot of blast effect, and the … 'lightning bolts,' for want of a better word, they throw seem to affect targets in a remarkably deep zone. But neither of them seems to have very much in the way of penetrative effect."

"No?" chan Tesh cocked his head, one eyebrow raised, and Kinlafia shrugged.

"They seem to rely entirely on the direct effect of the heat or lightning they generate. The 'fireballs,' in particular have a pronounced blast effect, but I think it's actually secondary. And they seem to … detonate the instant they encounter any sort of target or resistance, even if it's only a tree limb or a screen of brush."

"Obviously, none of us?" Arthag's micrometric nod indicated the troopers of his platoon "?actually saw the battle, Company-Captain. But after examining the damage patterns out there, I'd have to say I think Voice Kinlafia's onto something. There's no sign anywhere of the sort of punch-through effect you'd get from our own artillery. And no shell splinters or shrapnel, either. Their artillery seems to be spectacular as hell, and it's certainly devastating to anyone actually caught in what Voice Kinlafia calls its 'zone of effect,' but that zone is smaller than we originally thought, and I don't believe their 'guns' are going to be able to punch through very much in the way of serious cover."