Heirs of Empire

“That many?” Tibold was surprised. “I wouldn’t have expected Ortak to allow that much traffic out of Erastor.”

“Most of them seem to be trying to get as far from Erastor as they can,” Sean snorted, “and I sort of doubt Ortak even knows they’re doing it. Two-thirds of them are deserters, as a matter of fact.”

“There are always some,” Tibold said with a curled lip.

“I imagine there’s even more temptation than usual if you believe you’re up against demons. On the other hand, they might just think they could convince Ortak not to shoot them if they hustled back to tell him we’re coming. Once the main body gets up here, have them sent back to Malz and kept there till Yuthan and his boys pull out. After that, they can do whatever they want.”

“I don’t envy them,” Tibold said, almost against his will. “With Terrahk coming up the road, the best they can hope for is to take to the hills before he gets his hands on them.”

“That’s their problem, I’m happy to say,” Sean grunted back. “I’ll settle for making sure Terrahk doesn’t get his hands on us.”

High-Captain Ortak reread the message with enormous relief. Terrahk had set a new record for the march from Kelthar, the capital of Keldark, if he was already at Malz! He’d shaved another three days off his estimated arrival, and Ortak wondered how he’d done it. Not that he intended to complain. With those fifty thousand well-armed and (hopefully) unshaken men to reinforce it, Erastor would become impregnable. Better yet, Terrahk outranked him. Ortak could turn the responsibility over to him, and he was guiltily aware of how terribly he wanted to do just that.

“Any reply, Sir?” his aide asked, and Ortak leaned back in his chair, then shook his head.

“None. They’re obviously already moving as fast as they can. Let’s not make them think we’re too nervous.”

“No, My Lord,” the aide agreed with a smile, and Ortak waved him out of the room and bent back to his paperwork. Three more days. All the heretics had to do was hold off for three more days, and their best chance to smash their way out of Malagor would be gone forever.

For all its self-inflicted technical wounds, Pardal was an ancient and surprisingly sophisticated world, Sean reflected, and its road network reflected it. He’d wondered, when they first spotted the Temple from orbit, how a preindustrial society could transport sufficient food for a city that size even with the canal network to help, but that was before he knew about nioharqs or how good their roads were. They’d developed some impressive engineers over the mille

He drew up and watched his men march past. Like the Roman Empire, Pardalian states relied on infantry, and the excellence of their roads stemmed from the same need to move troops quickly. Of course, come to think of it, the same considerations had created the German autobahns and the United States interstate highway system, hadn’t they? Some things never seemed to change.

Whatever their reasoning, he was profoundly grateful to the engineers who’d built this road. After their nightmare cross-country journey, the men moved out with a will, relieved to be out of the mud and muck, and they’d made over thirty kilometers today despite the hours spent crossing the Malz fords.

They’d also nabbed three more semaphore towers without raising any alarms. He was a bit surprised by how smoothly that part had gone, but Juahl had devised a system that seemed to work perfectly. He sent an officer and a couple of dozen men on ahead of the main body in captured Guard uniforms, and they simply rode straight up to each tower and asked the station commander to assemble his men. The semaphore crews belonged to the civil service, not the army. None of them were going to argue with Guard dragoons, and as soon as the Malagorans had them out in the open, they suddenly found themselves looking down the business ends of a dozen rifled joharns at very short range. Since the signal arms were controlled from the ground, it didn’t even matter if the men ma

In the meantime, neither Ortak nor Terrahk seemed to harbor any suspicion an entire heretic army corps 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 gri

“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.