by David Weber
"Dragons, magical roses . . . Do you suppose what they used against us really was . . . magic? Honest to goodness magic?"
Jathmar raised one palm in a helpless "who knows" gesture.
"That doesn't make any logical sense," he said, "but neither does that rose." He shook his head. "There is no 'logical explanation' for that! Not any more than there's a logical explanation for what they hit us with in that clearing, or how they healed my burns. Until we know more, we'll just have to reserve judgment."
Halathyn, meanwhile, had produced a large crystal. It was clear as water, one of the most perfect specimens of quartz Jathmar had ever seen. The old man was fiddling with it, using a stylus to draw odd squiggles and shapes across its surface, which struck Jathmar as a fairly ludicrous thing to do. Ink wouldn't stick to a smooth crystal. Besides, Halathyn wasn't even using ink, just a dry stylus.
But then Halathyn angled the crystal so that they could see, and Jathmar leaned forward abruptly. The crystal was glowing. Or, rather, the strange symbols he'd drawn were glowing, squiggles and shapes that burned steadily down in the heart of the crystal. And there was something else strange about it, too. The crystal, large as it was, was no bigger than Jathmar's closed fist. Logically, anything contained inside it had to be quite small, yet those glowing symbols were clearly visible. He couldn't read them, because he had no idea at all what they might stand for, but when he focused his attention on them, they grew to whatever size they had to be for him to make them out in every detail.
"What is it?" he wondered aloud.
Shaylar leaned closer and "casually" rested one hand on the older man's arm as she peered over his shoulder. A familiar abstracted look appeared on her face, then she smiled wonderingly.
"It's a tool of some kind. Something to . . . store things in?"
She sounded hesitant, and Jathmar frowned.
"Store things in?" he echoed. "That looks like writing of some kind, but how could anyone store writing inside a rock?"
"Or light, for that matter," she said. "And that's what it looks like—light."
"I'm the wrong person to ask." Jathmar shook his head, baffled. "I can't begin to imagine how something like that works."
Whatever Halathyn was doing with the stylus, the squiggles of light shifted rapidly inside the crystal. It certainly looked like writing of some sort, and it did, indeed, look as if Halathyn were storing the words inside that water-clear rock. He glanced up, eyes twinkling, then he whispered something else, and the light faded.
He handed it to Shaylar, who took it with a deeply dubious expression. Then he spoke one word and tapped the crystal with his stylus, and the glowing text sprang back to life. It glowed deep inside, scrolling past at what would probably have been a comfortable reading speed, if they could have read it at all.
Shaylar stared, open-mouthed, then looked up to meet Jathmar's amazed gaze, and Halathyn chuckled. He looked inordinately pleased with himself as he retrieved his crystal, and the look he gave Gadrial was just short of impish. She responded by rolling her eyes, and handed over the mugs she carried.
They contained a beverage that smelled like tea. Jathmar took a hesitant sip and let out a deep sigh. It was tea, spiced with something wonderful. He blew across the surface, sipping with pleasure while Gadrial cradled her own cup in both hands and drank deeply. The Uromathian-looking woman glanced at Halathyn, then turned to Shaylar and spoke again. She pointed to Shaylar and Jathmar in turn, then to herself and to the dragon.
"Looks to me," Jathmar muttered, "like we're about to be taken out of here."
"Yes," Shaylar agreed. "And look at Jasak. He's paying awfully close attention to this conversation."
Jathmar glanced up and decided that Shaylar's comment was a distinct case of understatement.
"I'd say our friend in uniform sent Gadrial over as his errand-boy," he said. Then he glanced at Gadrial's figure, whose shapeliness was quite evident, despite her bulky hiking clothes, and smiled crookedly. "Well, maybe not errand-boy, exactly," he amended. "I find it mighty interesting that he sent her over, rather than telling us himself, though."
Shaylar gave him an unusually hard look.
"He doesn't want to push you into starting something that one of his soldiers might decide to finish," she said sharply, and he nodded.
"You think I don't realize that? With you in harm's way," he added gruffly, "I won't be starting anything I'm not likely to win. But I'll admit it. If not for his trigger-happy soldiers, I might be tempted."
Her breath caught, and terror exploded behind her eyes. She took one hand from her mug of tea, reaching out to grip his forearm with painful force.
"Please, Jath," she whispered, "don't even think of trying that. I couldn't bear to lose you again."
That shook him, and he looked deep into her eyes, suddenly seeing that hideous fight from her perspective. When he remembered that ghastly fireball engulfing him, he remembered agony and terror, but they were his agony, his terror. When she remembered it, she remembered seeing him die.
Deep as that instant of consummate terror and pain had been as the fire took him, the memory which had followed his return to consciousness in this camp, before finding Shaylar alive beside him, had been far worse. For those few, ghastly moments, when he'd believed she was dead, the world had been an unbearable place, darker, deeper, and far bleaker than the far side of the moon. Yet even that, hideous as it had been, had been far less horrifying than it would have been to see her wrapped in the furnace heat of a fireball, burning to death before his very eyes.
"No," he choked out, pulling her close, burying his face in her hair. "Never. I'll never risk anything that would leave you here alone."
Her breath shuddered unsteadily against the side of his neck, but she held herself together, and when she finally sat up again, her courageous smile sent an ache of proud pain through his heart. He dried her face with gentle hands, careful on her bruises, but before he could speak again, they were distracted by a sudden shout.
Both of them slewed around in time to see another dragon come winging in from the east. Translucent leathery wings vaned and twisted, altering its flightpath and slowing its airspeed. There seemed to be something indefinably wrong about the way it braked, how quickly it lost velocity, but Jathmar reminded himself that he was scarcely in mental condition to make reliable hard and fast judgments about mythological beasts who couldn't possibly exist anyway.
Jasak Olderhan had turned with everyone else at the dragon's approach. Now he strode rapidly to meet it, his face set in grim lines, and Gadrial spoke to the dark-skinned man sitting beside them. She sounded worried, and Halathyn shrugged, peering with obvious curiosity of his own as the dragon backwinged with a thunderclap of its immense wings and settled with surprising delicacy at the edge of camp.
Jathmar frowned at the newcomer, and even more at the reactions he saw around him.
"Trouble?" he wondered aloud.
"Could be," Shaylar replied. "It's obvious that Jasak isn't rolling out the welcome mat for whoever's on that thing, anyway."
Chapter Fourteen
Jasak Olderhan reminded himself not to curse out loud as he shaded his eyes with one hand, peering up at the approaching dragon.
Muthok Salmeer had made the condition of Cloudsail, Windclaw's assigned wing dragon, abundantly clear. It would be weeks, at least, before Cloudsail could return to service, which hadn't exactly filled Jasak with happiness when he found out. The distance between the base camp and Fort Rycharn was just long enough to prevent a single dragon from flying a complete round-trip without pausing for rest. With only Windclaw, that was going to limit him to at most one and a half round-trips per day, which was going to put a decided kink into his plan to pull back to the coastal enclave by air.
Under the circumstances, the sight of a second operable dragon should have delighted him. Unfortunately, since it couldn't be the injured Cloudsail, it had to be one of the additional dragons they'd been promised for months. Given the
water gap between Fort Rycharn and Fort Wyvern, at the entry portal into this universe, it could only have arrived by ship. Which meant the next regularly scheduled transport from Fort Wyvern had also arrived.
Which almost certainly meant . . .
The dragon landed, and Jasak's mouth tightened as a stocky man in the uniform of the Second Andaran Scouts with the same silver-shield collar insignia Jasak wore climbed down from the second saddle. The newcomer turned, surveying the camp and the rows of wounded troopers with a hard, grim frown, and Jasak snarled a mental obscenity.
He had been looking forward to his replacement's arrival, or, at least, to going home himself for a well-earned bit of R&R. But that had changed the moment Shevan Garlath sent the situation crashing out of control by killing an unarmed man. His men were shattered and demoralized, and the thought of turning his command over now was thoroughly unpalatable.
"Hundred Thalmayr." Jasak saluted the newcomer.
"Hundred Olderhan." Hadrign Thalmayr returned Jasak's salute with a flip of the hand which which turned the ostensible courtesy into something one thin inch short of a derisive insult. Then he reached into his tunic pocket and extracted an official message crystal. "As per the orders of Commander of Two Thousand mul Gurthak, I relieve you."
Jasak's jaw muscles knotted as he saw the contempt in Thalmayr's dark eyes. The man knew nothing about what had happened out here, but it was obvious he'd already made up his mind about it. Jasak's temper snarled against its leash, but he couldn't afford to release it. Not yet.
"Very well, Hundred Thalmayr," he said formally, instead, accepting the crystal. "I stand relieved."
"Good," Thalmayr said. "In that case, pack your prisoners onto your transport, Hundred Olderhan. There's nothing to delay your immediate departure.
"On the contrary," Jasak said, more sharply than he'd intended to do. "I have men in the field, on a reconnaissance mission. They haven't returned yet, and we can't possibly evacuate until they do."
"Evacuate?" Thalmayr repeated incredulously. He stared at Jasak for an instant, then curled his lip contemptuously. "You can't possibly be serious!"
"I'm deadly serious," Jasak snapped. "These people have devastating weapons we can't even comprehend, Thalmayr. Less than twenty of them—apparently civilians—killed or wounded two thirds of a crack Scout unit. That's over eighty-five percent casualties to First Platoon's combat element. Until we know more about them, the last thing we can afford is another armed confrontation. We need to make that impossible—pull back to the coast and establish a buffer zone they can't track us across until we get a team of trained diplomats in here."
"We wouldn't need diplomats," Thalmayr said icily, "if you hadn't totally botched the first contact! I may not have been an Andaran Scout—" a not-so-faint edge of contempt burred in the last two words "—as long as you have, but even a straight infantry puke knows standing orders are clear, Olderhan. In the event of discovery of any non-Arcanan people, every precaution must be taken to insure peaceful contact." He swept an angry gesture across the wounded waiting for medical treatment. "Obviously, your idea of 'peaceful' isn't exactly the same as mine, is it?"
Muscles jumped along Jasak Olderhan's jaw. He could hardly tell this pompous oaf that Fifty Garlath had been ordered to stand down. It would have sounded like a lame excuse, and the last thing he was prepared to do was sound as if he were making excuses to Hadrign Thalmayr. Eventually, there would be a board of inquiry. The odds were at least even that the board's conclusions would send his career into the nearest toilet, whatever else happened, but at the moment—
"That doesn't change the current tactical situation," he said instead. He made his voice come out levelly, as non-confrontationally as possible, but Thalmayr's eyes blazed.
"Yes," he bit out, "it does. You may want to cut and run, but your actions have made it imperative—imperative!—that we remain firmly in control of this portal. First, because the Union Army will never yield an inch of Arcanan soil. Second, because it's the smallest bottleneck in three universes, which makes it the best possible spot to hold our ground if we have to. And third, because your own initial report to Five Hundred Klian makes it clear that the universe on the other side of that portal—" he jabbed an angry gesture at the swamp portal "—is a fucking cluster. Only the second true cluster ever discovered! We are not going to give up access to a cluster the size of this one. Especially not when somebody's already been stupid enough to start a fucking war with the people we'd be giving it up to!"
Jasak knew his face had gone white, and Thalmayr sneered at him.
"We'll get your 'diplomats' in here, all right, Olderhan. They'll shovel the shit and clean up your mess for you. But in the meantime, if the bastards who did this—" the same angry hand jabbed at the rows of wounded "—want to pick a fight, they'll get no further than that slice of dirt." The finger jabbed again, this time at the portal. "If they want Arcanan soil, we'll give them just enough of it to bury them in."
Jasak stared at him, too aghast even to feel his own white-hot rage.
"Are you out of your mind?" he demanded. "If you invoke Andaran 'blood and honor' now, you'll have a first-class disaster on your hands! And you'll get more of my men killed, you—"
"My men!" Thalmayr snarled back. "Or have you forgotten the orders in that crystal?"
Jasak started a fiery retort, then made himself stop. He sucked in an enormous breath, promising himself the day would come when Hadrign Thalmayr would face him—briefly—across a field of honor. But not today. Not here.
"Yours or mine, Hundred Thalmayr," he said as calmly as he could, "it's unconscionable to put these men back into the path of combat again when there's no need, and when another violent confrontation would be the worst political disaster we could come up with. Sitting here rattling our sabers and daring the enemy to cross our line in the mud isn't the way to resolve this situation without further bloodshed."
"Contact's already been botched." Thalmayr's eyes were volcanic. "Thanks to that—thanks to you—these people now represent a clear and present danger to the Union of Arcana. My job is to safeguard Arcanan territory—"
"Your job is to defend Arcanan citizens from further danger," Jasak hissed, "not to haggle over the ownership of a patch of mud!"
"—and I'll rattle as many sabers as it fucking well takes to defend it!" Thalmayr snarled, as if Jasak hadn't spoken at all. "Your job—assuming you can do it—is to transport your passengers back for interrogation. I suggest you get started. It's a long, long way to Army HQ on New Arcana."
Before Jasak could open his mouth again, Thalmayr shoved past him and strode directly toward the campfire, where Jathmar and Shaylar had risen to their feet and stood watching the heated exchange tautly. Jasak stalked after the idiot, shoulders set for another confrontation. He got it when Thalmayr reached the campfire and turned with another snarl.
"They aren't restrained!"
"No," Jasak said icily. "They aren't. And they won't be."
"You're out of line, Soldier! Those criminals—" the finger he was so fond of jabbing with jerked at Jathmar and his wife "—have slaughtered Arcanan soldiers—"
"Who butchered their civilian companions!" Jasak discovered that he suddenly didn't much care how Thalmayr responded to the flaming contempt in his own voice. The man might be technically senior to him, but he was also a complete and total idiot. A part of Jasak actually hoped he could goad Thalmayr into taking a swing at him. His own career was already so far into the crapper that the charge of striking a superior—especially if the superior had struck the first blow—could hardly do a lot more damage. And the resultant chaos would probably force Five Hundred Klian to put someone—anyone—else in command of Charlie Company while he sorted it out.
"Soldiers who slaughtered their civilian friends in a battle Shevan Garlath started against direct orders!" he continued, glaring murderously at the other officer. "We're in the wrong, Hundred—not them! All they did was defend themselves with courage and
honor. That girl—" it was his turn to point at Shaylar "—that civilian girl—is braver than any soldier I've ever commanded! Her husband was so badly burned by our dragons he was barely alive, she was badly injured herself, and she was all alone in the face of the men who'd killed all of her friends, but she faced us with courage. With courage, damn your eyes! She even managed to hold herself together during field rites for every friend she had in that universe. Don't you dare call these people criminals!"
Hundred Thalmayr paled. Field rites were enough to give even hardened soldiers nightmares. But then the color flooded back into his face, which went brick-red with fury.
"I'll call these bastards whatever I fucking well want, Hundred," he said in a voice of ice and fire. "And I am in command here now, not you! You, Sword!" he barked to Sword Harnak. "I want field manacles on these . . . people. Now, Sword!"
"Stand fast, Sword Harnak!" Jasak snapped. Thalmayr whipped back around to him with an utterly incredulous expression. Jasak matched him glare for glare, and the other hundred leaned towards him.