The question flickered behind his eyes even as both arbalest bolts hissed past its flashing hind quarters. They missed by scant inches as the rider dropped like a stone and vanished behind the horse's side. He simply vanished … but he hadn't hit the ground. He was hanging off the side of his saddle, completely hidden by his mount, as the horse took off like a fiend. It whipped back into the trees, and Thalmayr swore again, viciously, as he saw the rider twist himself back up into the saddle.

Godsdamn it! That's torn it wide open! When that son-of-a-bitch gets home he'll?

The hundred looked up suddenly as he heard a brief, abbreviated fluttering sound.

Balkar chan Tesh had his field glasses back to his eyes. He'd breathed a huge sigh of relief as Arthag thundered safely back into cover, but his attention was on the murderous bastard who'd just tried to have the Arpathian murdered.

That pretty well answers the question of whether or not the first massacre was an accident, doesn't it? chan Tesh thought viciously.

The idiot was still standing there, fully exposed, staring after Arthag, and chan Tesh bared his teeth in contempt.

You're not up against civilians this time you miserable bastard!

The fluttering sound ended in an abrupt, thunderous explosion behind Thalmayr, and the furious hundred's heart seemed to stop.

He'd never heard an explosion quite like it. It wasn't the sizzling, hissing crack of an infantry-dragon's lightning bolt, or even the thunderclap of a fireball. This explosion was … different, somehow. Deeper-throated, more hollow and yet louder. He heard screams of pain, shock, and terror as it erupted well behind the earthworks, and terror smoked through him.

They can shoot through a portal!

Disbelief warred with his terror as he whipped around, staring at the fountain of fire and dirt and the sudden crater at its foot. Even that was wrong! It was as if the explosion had erupted underground, and that was flatly impossible for any artillery spell!

That was his first thought. But then he realized something else, something almost as terrifying as the fact that these people's artillery spell's did work across a portal interface.

That explosion had been behind his parapet. Somehow, they'd projected it through the parapet before it exploded!

"A little long, Sir!" a noncom reported to Platoon-Captain chan Talmarha as he opened the dispatch case which had suddenly appeared and pulled out the hastily scrawled note. "Not much?about thirty yards."

"Down thirty!" chan Talmarha barked, pointing at his number two mortar crew. An instant later, the big weapon gave its distinctive throaty cough and the second ranging shot went whistling off.

Hundred Thalmayr cringed as a second explosion roared. The first had erupted well behind his fortifications, among the neatly arrayed lines of tents. The second exploded right in the heart of his artillery positions, and this time the shrieks were shrill and sharp with agony. Something whined past him, and one of the sentries, still standing beside him, as stunned as he was, went down with a bubbling scream.

Thalmayr turned towards him and realized yet another horror. The impossible artillery explosions clearly weren't as powerful as a field-dragon could have produced, although they were far more powerful than the ones his infantry-dragons could generate. But unlike any infantry or field-dragon Thalmayr had ever heard of, this artillery hurled out some sort of secondary weapon, something that slashed outward from the heart of the explosion to claw down men as much as fifteen or twenty yards away!

"That's got it, Sir!" the noncom reading the incoming dispatches announced jubilantly, and chan Talmarha showed his gunners his teeth.

"Pour it on, boys!" he shouted. "Ten rounds rapid, fire for effect!"

"Take that bastard down!" Platoon-Captain chan Dersal barked as the mortar bombs began to land. He and his men were within less than two hundred yards of the portal. Woodland like this gave all the concealment a skirmish line of Imperial Marines needed, and his people had crept carefully, patiently, into position, waiting for the order.

Now it came, and two hundred yards was no challenge at all to men trained by the Imperial Marines' Pairhys Island firearms instructors.

Something smashed into Hadrign Thalmayr's hips. It slammed him savagely to the ground, with a scream of agony, an instant before the remaining sentry went down without a sound. Even through his anguish, the hundred heard sharp, vicious whip cracks of sound coming from the woods, heard the spiteful hiss of something tiny and invisible sizzling through the air.

He managed to heave himself up onto his elbows, but his body was totally nonresponsive from the hips down, and any movement was agony. He started to shout an order. Even he had no idea what it was going to be, but it didn't matter. Before he had his mouth fully open, the overture of the first two explosions were replaced by a horrendous crescendo.

Balkar chan Tesh's lips skinned back from his teeth as the heavy mortar bombs exploded. There was nothing to protect the men behind those earthworks from the full fury of chan Talmarha's fire. No bunkers, no overhead cover, not even any slit trenches! The splinter-spewing explosions marched across the enemy position in hobnailed boots of flame and turned the fortifications which had been supposed to protect their occupants into an abattoir.

Thalmayr eyes bulged with horror as he watched the massacre of Charlie Company, Second Andaran Scouts. The "protected" area behind the parapet had become a killing ground, and his men couldn't even see the artillery slaughtering them. It couldn't simply shoot through a portal, or project its effect through solid objects, it was invisible, as well!

But, unfortunately for Charlie Company, its men refused to go down without a fight.

chan Tesh's eyes widened in astonishment as the enemy's infantry swarmed up and over the parapet. They'd already taken hideous casualties?he knew they had?but they came on anyway. Armed only with crossbows, most of them, they charged straight into the face of concealed riflemen. Here and there he saw one of them carrying one of those strange, glittering weapons which spat fireballs, but his Marines had been briefed on those, and deadly accurate rifle fire brought them down.

Then the machine-guns opened up.

The Faraika I was a crank-operated, twin-barreled weapon, firing the same basic .40-caliber round as the Model 10 rifle. The barrels were mounted side-by-side, each with its own breach mechanism. Effectively they were two complete individual rifles, and rotating the crank chambered and fired each of them in rapid alternation.

Firing belted ammunition, the Faraika I had a sustained rate of fire of almost two hundred rounds per minute. It couldn't keep it up indefinitely, of course, without overheating, but there were five of them covering each aspect of the portal.

"No!" Hadrign Thalmayr screamed as an inconceivable avalanche of fire swept over the Scouts. Blood flew in grisly sprays, and his charging men went down as heads and chests exploded under the impossible sledgehammer blows of the enemy's thunder weapons.

It was too terrible to call a massacre.

"Cease-fire! Cease fire!" chan Tesh shouted. "Tairsal, order the mortars to stand down?now!"

The Flicker sent the order as quickly as he could, but the big four-and-a-half-inch projectiles continued to smash down for another several seconds.

The moment they stopped falling, Hulmok Arthag's cavalry, as previously planned, led chan Tesh's own company in a thundering charge through the portal to secure the objective before the enemy could recover.

Hundred Thalmayr watched sickly as at least a hundred mounted men erupted from the forest. They rode straight over his own men, but even in his agony and despair, the hundred realized they were more intent on getting through the portal and into his camp then they were in massacring his troopers. They completely ignored his wounded, and they seemed almost equally willing to ignore the unwounded, as long as no one offered resistance to their passage.