The column flowed past him, not without difficulty given the thickness of the ground cover. Even the floating wagons found the going difficult. The vegetation was dense enough-and tall enough-to catch at their wheels as they floated over it, and even if it hadn’t been, the draft animals had to work hard to force their own way forward, far less haul the wagons with them. Velvelig was trying very hard not to glower at the column’s glacial progress when one of Platoon-Captain Zynach Larkal’s men trotted up to him.
“There’s some sort of game trail to the east, Sir,” Armsman 1/c Shalsan Thykyl reported, and Velvelig wasn’t even tempted to ask how he could be so sure of that in the dark. Thykyl was the best of the 127th Regiment’s scouts and the finest hunter Namir Velvelig had ever seen anywhere. If he said there was a game trail, there was a game trail.
“Is it wide enough for these damned wagons?”
“’Pears to be, Sir.” Thykyl turned in the saddle to point back the way he’d come. “Wouldn’t be if they had to run on their wheels, but on the Arcanans’ crystals the unicorns should be able to get ’em through. There’s a nasty steep ridge up there ahead of us, too. Trail looks like our best way up it.” He turned back with a smile. “Always trust animals to find the easy way, I say, Sir.”
“Or the easiest way, at least,” Velvelig agreed. “All right. Go find Master-Armsman Karuk and tell him we’re changing course. Then show him this trail of yours.”
“Yes, Sir.” Thykyl saluted and sent his unicorn in search of the master-armsman singular while Velvelig moved back to the very edge of the portal to halt the rest of the column until they got its head straightened out.
* * *
“Well thank Hali Thykyl found that trail,” Therman Ulthar said with profound gratitude.
He rode once again at Regiment-Captain Velvelig’s side, as the weary column reassembled itself back into a semblance of order behind them. There’d been times while they wrestled the wagons through the undergrowth-even with the game trail, that had been no picnic-when Ulthar had entertained serious doubts about the practicality of using this universe as their refuge. Dense jungle might be as ideal for evading pursuers as Velvelig said it was, but one had to get to it first and it had seemed unlikely the wagons would let them do that.
The game trail had made it possible, but no one in his right mind would have called the task easy. Once or twice, he’d been tempted to suggest simply abandoning their vehicles. The thought of leaving behind all of the Sharonian weapons and ammunition they’d hauled with them-especially the mortars and machine guns-had been unpalatable, but they probably could have packed the truly essential supplies on unicornback. Of course, leaving the wagons just inside the portal would also have been a dead giveaway to anyone looking for them who happened to glance this way, and there were plenty of things in those wagons which might not be truly essential but were certainly very good to have along. So it was fortunate they hadn’t had to abandon anything after all.
“Agreed,” Velvelig said now. “Of course, it’s fairly obvious which way we went, for now, at least. The one good thing about jungle like that, though, is how quickly it grows back. Give us a few days-a couple of weeks at the outside-and somebody would have to look really, really closely to see that anyone had passed through.”
He sounded, Ulthar thought, like a man trying to convince himself he was being clever rather than a man who didn’t care to admit how much he hated this kind of terrain.
“You’re right about that, Sir,” he said helpfully, then shook his head. “I never would’ve thought of heading this way on my own, but Jaralt was right. If you’re looking for a place to hide from dragons and recon gryphons, this kind of jungle takes some beating.”
“I know.” Velvelig’s tone was undeniably sour. “I know, but the rain and the humidity are going to play hell with our equipment.”
“They won’t do ours any favors, either,” Ulthar admitted. “We don’t have as many moving parts to rust solid as you do, but sarkolis doesn’t really like this kind of sustained heat and humidity, either. The crystals issued to the Army are as climate-proofed as anybody can make them, but we still have to take Graholis’ own extra precautions. And you don’t want to see what the gearing on an arbalest looks like after a couple of weeks of this kind of weather. As for sword blades-!”
He rolled his eyes, and Velvelig chuckled.
“Probably not any worse than what it does to our bayonets,” he suggested. “Axe blades and machetes, too, for that matter. But at least it gives the noncoms something else to keep the men busy with!”
“I think that’s what they call finding a bright side to look on, Sir,” Ulthar said dryly, and Velvelig chuckled again, harder.
“Oh, I don’t know. When you come to it-”
CRRAAAACK!
Namir Velvelig froze, his head jerking around in astonishment, as the single rifleshot set twice a hundred birds into raucous, terrified flight. The racket was deafening, but that wasn’t what froze him in place. No, what stopped him dead in his tracks was the fact that the shot had come not from any of his men but from somewhere in the jungle ahead of them.
“Column, halt!”
Halath-Shodach headed their column at the moment. His bellowed command stopped their entire party as effectively as the gunshot had already stopped Velvelig, and the regiment-captain nodded in approval. Then he sent his own unicorn cantering-except, of course, that unicorns didn’t “canter;” they loped-to the front, Ulthar at his side. By the time they reached the column’s point, Halath-Shodach had dismounted and was peering through his binoculars.
“Can’t see a damned thing, Sir,” he confessed, looking up as Velvelig halted beside him. “Has to be out there somewhere, though. And whoever it is, it’s sure as hell not an Arcanan, unless he’s acquired a Model 10 somewhere.”
“What it sounded like to me, too,” Velvelig agreed. He was staring intently into the dim, shadowed depths of the jungle while his mind raced. Was it possible someone had survived the destruction of Balkar chan Tesh’s Copper Company after all? But if they had, how in Kreegair’s name had they gotten here? They were the better part of fifty miles from the swamp portal! Besides-
“Regiment-Captain Velvelig! I certainly didn’t expect to see you here!”
The voice-raised to carry but almost conversational in tone-floated out of the jungle. It was a voice, Velvelig realized incredulously, that he recognized…and speaking Arpathian.
“It seems you’re an even harder man to kill than I thought, Platoon-Captain Arthag!” he shouted back after a moment in the same language, and it was difficult to maintain a proper Arpathian imperturbability. “Would you care to come out and talk to me, or should I come in and talk to you…wherever the hells you are?”
“Oh, I imagine I can come out. And I hope you won’t take this wrongly, Sir, but until we’re sure you’re in charge, the rest of us will just stay out here with our rifles and keep an eye on things.”