"Well, isn't this charming," Hulmok Arthag remarked.

It was quite astounding, Dorzon chan Baskay reflected, just how much disgust his fellow platooncaptain could put into a simple four-word sentence.

Not that he could really fault the Arpathian at this particular moment.

The Ternathian officer turned and gazed back the way they'd come. The portal through which they'd passed was far smaller than Hell's Gate. In fact, it measured barely three miles from side to side, which made it even smaller than the swamp portal. And at the moment, it was like a picture window into the very heart of one of the Uromathians' fiery hells.

The fire Arthag had created had rolled right up to the portal's very brink. The furious, heat-driven stormfront of wind had whirled bits and pieces of flaming debris through the portal as the bone-dry northern forest they'd left behind consumed itself in a vortex of searing devastation.

But there'd never been much chance of that fire pouring itself through this portal, chan Baskay reflected.

He could feel the fire's heat on his face even here, hundreds of yards away as he and Arthag stood sideby- side in the fork of a towering tree. Their chosen tree reared its impressive height—well over a hundred feet into the air, most of it far above their present perch—atop the same, sharp ridgeline over which Chief-Armsman chan Hathas was leading the other members of their tiny command. Other trees, thousands of trees, stretched away from this aspect of their arrival portal as far as they could see, and those trees were anything but "bone-dry."

As nearly as chan Baskay could estimate, they had to be deep inside the rainforest basin of the mighty Dalazan River, which drained the vast interior of the continent of New Farnal. That meant rain. Lots of rain, in daily, drenching doses. Rain measured not in inches, but in feet per year. In fact, it was raining right this moment, soaking the upper canopy of lush green foliage so completely that even entire flaming branches, borne through the portal in the grip of fire-born whirlwinds, simply hissed into extinction when they landed. When Arthag's holocaust had completed its work, this portal was going to thrust up out of a wasteland of ashes and soot like some surreal slice of verdant greenery.

A very visible surreal slice of verdant greenery.

"It may not be exactly 'charming,'"thinspace"" chan Baskay said now, in reply to Arthag's comment,

"but in my own humble opinion, it beats the hells out of the alternative."

"There is that," Arthag acknowledged. "That doesn't mean I have to like it, though.And I don't—like it, I mean."

Chan Baskay snorted, but he had no trouble understanding Arthag's viewpoint. If the Arpathian hadn't liked the northern forest of hardwoods and conifers they'd left behind, their present triple canopy rainforest had to be even worse. On the other hand, the advantages for a small band of fugitives were enormous.

Although equatorial rainforests were undoubtedly home to the most diverse collection of plant and animal life on any world in the multiverse, they were quite different from the image which the word

"jungle" evoked in most people's minds. They were composed primarily of trees, not vast, thick-growing thickets of fern-like vegetation. Instead, the surface of the ground tended to be marked by a layer of rapidly decomposing dead leaves, dominated by abundant tree seedlings and saplings. Most of those seedlings and saplings would never reach maturity, since only a minute fraction of the potential sunlight ever penetrated the upper tree canopies. The topmost layer of leaves reached heights of over a hundred and thirty feet, and additional, lower canopies intercepted any light that got past it. Visibility was still limited in a forest like that, of course, but not nearly so badly as the average Sharonian might have assumed.

But this particular portal sat in the middle of what the botanists would have called a "regeneration zone."

Something—possibly even the formation of the portal itself—had killed back enough trees to open an enormous hole in the overhead canopies. The light streaming suddenly into the dim, dark recesses which those canopies had hidden had unleashed an explosion of growth of more light-demanding species.

Herbaceous varieties had sprung up everywhere, creating something which truly was very much like the stereotypical idea of a "jungle." By now, the process was far enough along that the fastest-growing shrubs and trees were beginning to shade those varieties back out once more, but the transition was still far from complete. For the moment, the incredibly luxuriant masses of plant life made any line of sight much over ten or fifteen yards all but impossible to come by. The torrential equatorial rains were also able to get through, thanks to the thinner canopies overhead, and the combination of well over seventy inches a year of rain, plus the incredible rates of local plant growth, would quickly conceal any trail they might leave. Perhaps even more importantly, under the circumstances, the limitless possibilities for ambushes would force any pursuer to move with the utmost caution. And if anyone did manage to catch up with them, he would soon discover that not all of the Faraika I machine-guns had been sent forward to Company-Captain chan Tesh. Chan Baskay had only three of the weapons, but once they were dug in in properly concealed positions, they would wreak havoc on any opponent.

This sodden, mucky, overgrown, dimly lit jungle was going to be hard on their horses, which undoubtedly helped explain Arthag's aversion towards it. It was also going to literally rot the clothes off their backs and the boots off their feet, and what it would do to improperly maintained firearms scarcely bore thinking upon. But they'd managed to bring along quite a bit more ammunition than chan Baskay had realized Arthag had managed to squirrel away at Fallen Timbers, and they had almost twice as many rifles as they had troopers to fire them ... not to mention half a squad's worth of slide-action shotguns.

"Do you think they're really likely to follow us in here?" Arthag asked after a moment.

"Hard to say." Chan Baskay shrugged. "If it were me, I'd probably forget about us, at least for a while.

They know there can't be very many of us, and from what Skirvon's told us, their emphasis has to be on getting as far forward as they can before they run into Division-Captain chan Geraith. Of course, they'll probably figure out we have Skirvon with us, and they may decide to mount some sort of rescue attempt." Chan Baskay snorted harshly. "From what I've seen of him, I wouldn't want him back in their place! They may have different standards, but even so, Division-Captain chan Geraith has to be their number one worry right now."

"Do they really know the Division-Captain is coming?" Arthag asked. Chan Baskay looked at him, and it was the Arpathian's turn to shrug. "I was just a little busy while you were talking to him," he pointed out mildly.

"Fair enough," chan Baskay conceded. "And the answer is that they do, and they don't, assuming Skirvon really knows what he's talking about. Apparently, they'd managed to plant 'reconnaissance crystals' on us. I suppose if they can record sounds and images in the 'personal crystals' they let us see, there's no reason they couldn't use other crystals and their godsdamned magic to record tactical information, too.

"At any rate, Skirvon obviously knows we've been expecting a substantial reinforcement. I don't think he knows exactly how substantial, or exactly when it's about to arrive, though. And from some of the other things he's said, it's even more obvious to me that they've significantly underestimated the firepower chan Geraith is going to be bringing with him."

"Nice to know we're not the only ones who've fucked up completely," Arthag observed in a conversational tone, and chan Baskay grimaced.

"I take your point," the Ternathian said. "And I wish there were some way we could get what we know—

or get Skirvon, at least—to the Division-Captain before he runs straight into these bastards."

"Maybe somebody else will manage to get the word out," Arthag suggested.

"I hope so, but they've thought about that, too." Chan Baskay's voice was heavier, and Arthag quirked an eyebrow at him.

"They know about the Voices, Hulmok," chan Baskay said. "And they've come up with a plan for dealing with them. It's the same one they used to deal with Rokam and chan Treskin. According to Skirvon, they intend to shoot every Voice they encounter out of hand."

Arthag's nostrils flared, and his eyes went so bleak and cold that for just an instant, chan Baskay was frightened of him. Then the Arpathian drew a deep breath.

"I suppose that's one way to deal with the problem." His voice was matter-of-fact, almost thoughtful, but the eyes which went with it were carved from the heart of an obsidian glacier. "Still, eventually they're going to miss one somewhere."

"No doubt they are. But remember, the one big weakness of the Voicenet—aside, of course, from the fact that we don't have nearly enough Voices out here in the first place—is the fact that no Voice can reach another one through a portal, and Skirvon says they know it. That's the weak spot in the chain, and these people plan to exploit it and get as far up-chain as they can before anyone manages to pass the word that they're coming."

"And at the same time, they're going to be looking for someplace they can dig in against counterattack,"

Arthag said. "Someplace with a small enough portal to make defending it practical."

"That's the idea," chan Baskay acknowledged, impressed not so much by Arthag's ability to figure that out as by the Arpathian's ability to figure it out so quickly. "If they can't find one, though, they're planning to use their godsdamned dragons to devastate our supply lines in a running campaign."

This time, Arthag only nodded, and chan Baskay chuckled grimly. If there was anyone in the multiverse who'd understand the niceties of cutting an over-extended opponent off from his logistics base, it would have to be an Arpathian.

"You know," Arthag said after a moment, "this really and truly sucks, doesn't it?"

Five Hundred Neshok watched in profound satisfaction as the remaining prisoners were dragged out of his presence. They had to be dragged; at least two of them wouldn't be doing any unassisted walking until he'd finally gotten the Healers to attend to them. Not that there was any particular rush about that.