One of the ones covering the northern aspect had been too close to the artillery pits. Its crew had died along with chan Talmarha and his gun crews, and he didn't know whether either of the other section's weapons remained intact. In fact, he didn't know anything about how the defense of the portal's other aspect was going, but he was afraid he could guess.

Whatever was happening over there, however, he had to worry about his own position, and his jaw tightened as someone shouted a warning. He turned back towards the portal, and his eyes were cold and bleak as he saw three more black dots plunging down out of the heavens.

Hundred Geyrsof led the attack personally.

By The Book, he should have let one of his two wingmen take the lead, but he was more experienced than either Mankahr or Yorhan, and the responsibility was his, anyway.

He pressed himself even closer to Graycloud's neck, hands gentle in the control grooves, fingertips moving with a slow, reassuring rhythm. He sensed Graycloud's determination, felt the dragon's own anger at what had happened to Cloudtiger and Skyfire. Dragons were far smarter than most non-pilots gave them credit for, and Geyrsof never doubted that Graycloud understood, at least in general terms, what had happened ... and who was responsible for it.

And, like his pilot, the yellow wanted vengeance.

Geyrsof laid his strobing crosshair directly atop the tight little cluster of men whose weapon had downed Cloudtiger.

They're going to be shooting at me anyhow, he reflected. I might as well take my best shot at them, too.

Graycloud was still building speed. Geyrsof had never taken the big yellow to such a velocity, and he wondered if even Graycloud's mighty pinions were equal to the strain he was imposing upon them. But the dragon never complained, never resisted. He only put his head down and flew straight at the enemies who had killed his strike mate.

Chan Tesh was at the far end of his improvised line from the machine-gun crew as the fresh attack came streaking down upon them.

"Steady, boys!" he called almost gently. "Steady!"

The three huge beasts spread out slightly, coming in on a somewhat broader frontage than the original attackers, and he watched the Faraika tracking the leader. The shot wasn't going to be quite as easy this time. These dragons were coming in more obliquely, not attacking directly head-on, which was going to make deflection trickier.

Rifles began to crackle once more, but the dragons held their course. Then the gunner began to turn the Faraika's crank. The twin barrels spewed flame and tracers, and the gunner traversed, swinging his fire to intersect the oncoming dragon. The stream of heavy, deadly bullets streaked upward ... and then one of the Marines helping to steady the tripod slipped.

It was a small enough thing ... or would have been, under other conditions. And it was scarcely the Marine's fault. Standing up to the brutal recoil of that heavy caliber weapon was no picnic, and his boots slid in the soft soil of the dirt pile. His companions tried to compensate, but they couldn't stop the cascade effect, and the machine-gun toppled over on its side.

The gunner was forced to cease fire while his assistants flung themselves on the weapon, wrestling it back into position, but they weren't quite fast enough.

Hundred Geyrsof's belly muscles had tightened convulsively as the fiery stream of ... whatever it was coming up from the ground reached for Graycloud. He saw it moving to intersect their course, knew that the heavily armored yellow would never be able to dodge it.

And then, suddenly, it simply disappeared.

His dragon's vision showed him the Sharonians struggling to hoist their heavy, awkward weapon back into firing position, and his lips skinned back from his teeth.

Not this time, you bastards, he thought harshly.

The range spun steadily downward. He felt Graycloud quivering as other projectiles hammered into his belly armor from below, but there was no indication that any of them were getting through his thick scales. Skykill and Windslasher held formation on Graycloud's flanks as if they'd been tied together by a single rope, and he felt a burning pride in their steadiness.

And then the crosshair stopped strobing.

"Larkima!" he barked, and the ancient Mythalan word for "strangle" released Graycloud's breath weapon.

Something came streaking downward from the dragons.

Chan Tesh's eyes narrowed as they tracked it. It was even slower than the first dragons' fireballs had been, but it was also bigger. And ... different. The fireballs had been like tiny, incandescent seeds when they were first launched, growing steadily until they were perhaps twice the size of a man's head. That was as big as they'd gotten until they hit the ground and detonated.

But these "seeds" were bigger from the outset, without the fiery glare of the fireballs. They were darker, dingier, and they grew rapidly. They were three times the size of the fireballs, at least, by the time they reached the ground, and they didn't explode the way the fireballs had. Instead, they splashed. There was no concussion, no savage flare of heat. It was almost like watching a bucket of water hitting, spreading out, washing over everyone in its vicinity as it spread wider and wider like some green-yellow fog.

For a heartbeat or two, that was all that happened. Then the first of chan Tesh's men staggered. He went to his knees, clutching at his throat with both hands. One of his companions turned towards him, as if to offer assistance, then went down beside him, writhing, choking.

Balkar chan Tesh's eyes widened with a horror even the fireballs hadn't awakened. Perhaps that was because for all their unnatural origin, the fireballs weren't all that different from the artillery with which he was familiar. This, though—he'd never seen, or imagined, anything like this.

More and more of his men went down. Everyone trapped in the area covered by those obscene breath weapons collapsed, strangling, vomiting, coughing up blood from rupturing lungs while they writhed convulsively, twisting in agony.

The dragons which had spawned that horror streaked overhead, climbing once again, and despair closed upon Balkar chan Tesh's heart like a vise of frozen iron.

That single pass had covered over two-thirds of his exposed personnel, and at least a quarter of the bunkers. Even as he watched, strangling, dying men clawed their way out of two of the bunkers, only to collapse in their own vomit as they reached the "open air" outside their position.

No one—not even Imperial Ternathian Marines—could be expected to face something like that. Not when it came at them cold, with absolutely no warning. He looked at the handful of men—there were only five of them—clustered around him, upwind from the killing clouds of vapor. There was still time, he thought. Still time to run, to put distance between himself and the dying, spasming men behind him before the dragons came back. He saw the same thought, the same recognition, in the eyes around him.

And, like Balkar chan Tesh, not one of them ran.

"All right, boys," he said quietly, looking past them, tracking the dragons with his eyes as they swept back up into the heavens. "They'll be back in a few minutes. It doesn't look like rifle bullets bothered the bastards very much, either."

He turned his head, taking his eyes off the dragons, and looked at the men around him.

"Whatever those people are doing, and however they're doing it, they had to come in close before they fired or whatever," he said.

"Yes, Sir," one of the others agreed. "And they opened their mouths, too," he added.

"Good point." Chan Tesh patted him on the shoulder, then gestured at their Model 10s.

"You've all got grenade launchers," he said.

Hundred Geyrsof studied the ground below through Graycloud's eyes as Skykill and Windslasher formed up on them once more.

The initial strike had succeeded even more completely than he'd hoped. The vast majority of the enemy was already down, dead or dying, and aside from minor damage to Graycloud's and Windslasher's wing membranes, all three of his yellows were unwounded.

He should have felt nothing but satisfaction. He knew that—and he did feel satisfied. But that wasn't all he felt. Graycloud's vision brought it all too close, made it all too clear. He saw the men he'd just killed, even though they weren't all dead yet. He saw them twisting, convulsing in agony, jerking like landed fish drowning in poisonous oxygen, and for the first time, he truly understood why some people had fought for so long to have the yellows banned. It was ugly ... unclean.

Oh, fuck "ugly!" he told himself fiercely. Dead is dead, Horban. There aren't any good ways to die, and better it should be them than us!

He knew that was all true ... and it didn't make him feel any better.

However he might feel, it didn't change his responsibilities, though, and he watched the other two yellows settling into formation once again behind and to either side of Graycloud. He waited until they were both in place. Then his hands moved in the control grooves, and Graycloud slanted downward once more.

"Here they come," chan Tesh said quietly.

One of the Marines had found the company-captain a Model 10 whose owner would never need it again.

Like the others, he'd mounted the grenade launcher and loaded the special blank ammunition that fired it. Now the six of them stood waiting, watching their executioners sweep towards them.

There were other Sharonians still standing, somewhere beyond the swirling haze of green-yellow vapor.

Chan Tesh heard their rifles beginning to crack, and his heart swelled as he realized his men were still there, still fighting back, despite everything.

He took his own eyes from the oncoming dragons for just a moment, let them sweep across the Marines around him.

"Gentlemen," he said, "it's been an honor. Thank you."

No one replied. There was no need.

Chan Tesh looked back at the oncoming dragons. Only one of them—the one on the extreme left of the Arcanan formation—was going to come into the grenade launchers' range, he realized. Well, at least that guaranteed concentration of fire.

Onward, closer and closer. They weren't coming in as quickly this time, a detached corner of his brain observed. Was that overconfidence? Or were they just slowing down to improve their accuracy? Or was it simply that they'd started from a lower altitude, hadn't had the opportunity to build the same velocity?