by David Weber
Jathmar's stomach muscles clenched. So did his teeth, but he made himself give Shaylar's hand a gentle squeeze.
"Get some rest, love," he told her. "You need your beauty sleep."
His light tone didn't fool her. Their marriage bond was working at peak efficiency once more, and she knew exactly how scared he was. But she gave him a brave smile and touched her hair herself.
"If I can explain to Gadrial, maybe she can even find a comb and mirror somewhere so I can primp a bit before you get back."
He wanted to hold her close forever, so that nothing could ever harm her again. Instead, he gave her fingers one last squeeze, then stood up, squared his shoulders, and faced Jasak Olderhan.
"Lead the way," he said.
Jasak discovered a deep respect for Jathmar's courage as the other man faced him. Jathmar had already been hit with a variety of experiences which must have been utterly bewildering. Clearly, they'd shaken him to the core. Over the course of the day, his face had clearly revealed that he'd never seen anything like dragons, personal crystals, or Gifted healers. Yet he stood quietly, facing Jasak—and whatever Jasak had in store for him next—and if his eyes were understandably apprehensive, and if tension sang through his muscles, he met his captor's gaze unflinchingly.
Jasak wished there were some way he could tell Jathmar how much he respected him. But there wasn't, and so he simply bowed slightly and gestured for the other man to accompany him.
Jathmar followed him quietly, and their boots clattered hollowly across the rough boards of the hospital floor. Then they were out in the hot sunshine, with the breeze wandering in through Fort Rycharn's open gates. The tang of saltwater stung the nose, and the murky, thick scent of the swamp clogged the back of the throat, as they crossed the busy compound. Jasak headed for the commandant's office and wished he felt as brave as Jathmar looked. He wasn't looking forward to the coming interview. He'd sat through many a debriefing after firing shots in some brush with frontier bandits, but he'd never given a genuine combat debrief.
He discovered that the prospect became steadily more daunting as the moment approached. What had seemed the most reasonable course at the time seemed more and more questionable as he went over each step of the disastrous mission, trying to organize his thoughts. Doubts plagued him. Things he should've done, things he shouldn't, things he ought to have seen . . . but hadn't.
Then there was no further time to worry about it, because they were at the headquarters building.
"The Five Hundred is waiting for you, Hundred Olderhan," the adjutant at the outer desk said with a crisp salute, although he eyed Jathmar with open curiosity. Commander of Five Hundred Klian looked a bit taken aback, as well, when Jasak entered his office with Jathmar in tow.
"It's hardly standard procedure to bring a captured prisoner to an official debriefing, Hundred Olderhan. I trust you have a good reason?" he said after returning Jasak's salute.
"As a matter of fact, Sir, I have several reasons. Jathmar doesn't understand our language, so there's no risk of a security breach. And there's nothing in this office, Sir that could be even remotely considered classified. But my primary concern is for Jathmar's safety."
"His safety?" Klian echoed.
"My men are badly shaken, Five Hundred. Fifty Garlath's platoon outnumbered Jathmar's survey crew three-to-one, but we took massive casualties. Their weapons are devastatingly effective, and their rate of fire is considerably higher than even a dragoon arbalest's. Quite frankly, some of my survivors fear and hate him. They wouldn't try anything against his wife—they were properly horrified when they found out we'd nearly killed a woman—but I wouldn't care to leave Jathmar in the same room with any of them. Not without an armed guard to see that no one tried anything."
"I see. And you don't trust my men to do their jobs, either?" Klian's tone was biting.
"That's not at all an issue, Sir. My concern where your men are concerned rests entirely on Jathmar's state of mind, not theirs. He's been hammered by multiple shocks in a very short time. The slightest manifestation of sorcery shakes him to the core, and his wife is also our prisoner. That terrifies him, and I can't say I blame him for it. If our roles were reversed, I'd be damned worried about the interrogation methods my captors might intend to use."
Five Hundred Klian frowned, but it was a thoughtful frown, not an angry one.
"Go on," he said.
"I won't go so far as to say he trusts me, but I'm at least a somewhat known quantity, and I stood between them and Hundred Thalmayr when the Hundred expressed . . . dissatisfaction over my decision not to chain them."
Klian's frown deepened, but he said nothing, and Jasak wondered whether Fort Rycharn's CO's displeasure was directed at Thalmayr or at Jasak's decision.
"In a fort filled with soldiers," Jasak continued, "I'm the only known quantity from his viewpoint. In my considered opinion, leaving him alone under the guard of men he has excellent reason to fear, would constitute a serious risk. He's desperately shaken and afraid. I don't want to take even the slightest chance of someone inadvertently pushing him across an edge we don't want him to cross. There's been more than enough violence already, and we need him—what he knows, what we can learn from him that we couldn't learn from his wife. I don't want to see us lose all of that because someone he doesn't know accidentally pushes too hard."
Klian's expression relaxed a couple of degrees, and he tipped back slightly in his desk chair.
"Very well, Hundred. Your solution may be a bit unorthodox, but your reasons seem sound enough, both militarily and politically. I would have expected no less of an Olderhan. Now, though, would you be so good as to explain exactly how this cluster-fuck occurred?"
Jasak drew a deep breath, looked Sarr Klian straight in the eye, and explained it. All of it. When he described Fifty Garlath's last action, the five hundred swore so sharply Jasak paused. Klian clamped his jaws, cutting himself off in mid-oath, and motioned for him to continue, and he did, right through the thunderous disagreement between himself and Hundred Thalmayr over the evacuation of the forward camp at the portal.
When he'd finally finished, Five Hundred Klian sat back, steepled his fingers, interlaced his fingers across his hard-muscled abdomen, and exhaled a long, slow breath.
"I appreciate your candor, Hundred. And your thorough analysis. I'll be frank with you—in my opinion, you were handed one hell of a mess when we handed you Shevan Garlath. It wasn't my idea to transfer him into your company. From what I saw of him, you showed remarkable restraint in dealing with his . . . inadequacies. I wish I could say I'm surprised he shot an unarmed man who was clearly calling for a parley of some sort, but I can't. I'm appalled, not surprised." He shook his head. "In my crystal, Garlath's clearly at fault. But . . . "
Yes. Jasak gave a mental sigh. But . . .
"You realize, Olderhan, that your career may end over this?" Klian said almost gently, and Jasak met his eyes steadily.
"I do, Sir."
"Yes, I'm sure you do. Not all officers would."
Frustration colored Klian's last words. He hated to see a good officer caught in the jaws of a dragon this nasty, and he had a sinking feeling that Arcana was going to need good officers badly in the not-too-distant future. If he'd been sitting at a fort commandant's desk on the other side, and news like this had hit his desk, there'd have been hell to pay, with interest due.
"It isn't fair to you, son," he said quietly, "but it looks to me like we're staring a potentially ugly war right in the face, and politicians like to blame somebody for their wars. Military tribunals are supposed to be above that, but the men who sit on them are fully aware of political repercussions. Half the officers sitting on them have their own political ambitions, too. And Garlath's dead; you're not. They're going to want somebody they can point at, somebody they can look in the eye and see 'It's your fault, Mister!' Once they've got him, they can tell the politicians 'See? We found the guilty party, and we punished the guilty party.' It's ugly, it's bruta
l . . ."
He paused and looked into Jasak's eyes.
"And you knew all of that before you ever walked into this office, didn't you?"
"Yes, Sir." Jasak's lips twisted in what some people might have called a smile. "I did indeed."
"I'm sorry, son." Klian leaned forward. "I'll send my own sealed report back with you, along with some other official dispatches. It might do some good."
"Thank you, Sir."
"A lot will depend on the officers available for the tribunal when it's called. If you get a good board, it could still come right."
"Yes, Sir," Jasak agreed, but his voice was dry and not particularly hopeful. Then he sat forward. "If I might ask, Sir, what are your intentions regarding the portal camp?"
Klian sighed and sat back again, pinching the bridge of his nose.
"Could they have gotten a message out?" he said finally, glancing at Jathmar.
The prisoner said very quietly, hazel eyes intent as he listened to the conversation he couldn't understand and tried to glean anything he could from their faces, their voices, their eyes. Olderhan was right, Klian thought. This was a deeply frightened man, and a dangerous one. One Sarr Klian wouldn't have cared to push too far without a truly urgent reason.
The five hundred met Jathmar's eyes, then turned back to Jasak, very carefully keeping his own expression impassive. The younger officer was pulling absently at his lip, frowning ever so slightly.
"I don't know if they got a message out, Sir," he said finally. "I don't think they could have, but we know as little about them and about their capabilities as they know about ours."
"So you're not sure?"
"No, Sir. We searched for any sign that someone might have headed back independently of the rest of their party, or the possibility that someone might have made a break for their portal during the fighting. My people know their jobs, and I had Chief Sword Threbuch available to help make sure they did them. I'm fairly confident no one carried a message physically back, and we didn't find anything remotely like hummers in their gear, either. Logically, every indication says they didn't, but there's no possible way to guarantee that."
Klian drummed lightly on his desktop, which was basically a rough plank supported by two on-end wooden chests that served as storage bins for data crystals, maps, and all the miscellany of command at a fort this size.
"One would assume they took the most direct route from their fortified camp to their portal," the five hundred said, thinking aloud. "But we can't assume they were traveling at their top speed. Which means a messenger could have gone on ahead of them, possibly even bypassed the fallen timber completely. For that matter, they could have sent someone by a completely different indirect route. I'm sure your people did search diligently, but suppose they thought about that possibility ahead of time? I'm not sure I'd have been smart enough to think of it in the middle of something like this, but the smart thing for them to do would have been to send someone further up the streambed, where he wouldn't have left any trail. Let him get another four or five miles from camp, then head cross-country by a completely different route, and you'd have needed a special miracle to cut his trail."
"It's certainly a possibility, Sir," Jasak conceded. "From the look of their camp, I'm inclined to think it didn't occur to them. I think they were thinking almost exclusively in terms of clearing out and avoiding additional contact with us completely. Which," he added a bit bitterly, "I certainly managed to prevent them from doing."
"Yes, you did. Which was exactly what you were supposed to do," Klian said. He frowned some more. "You say their ages varied?"
"Yes, Sir. Considerably. The youngest was probably in his early twenties; the oldest was in his fifties, at least."
"Where they soldiers?"
Klian looked at Jasak intently, and the younger officer paused before he answered.
"I'm almost certain they weren't, Sir," he said. "A survey crew, obviously, but a civilian one. They weren't in uniform, didn't even all have the same sorts of boots or trousers. They had the kind of gear you'd expect portal surveyors to have, but none of it was stamped or painted or embroidered with unit insignia, or any sort of military identification marks. And they had an awfully broad assortment of weapons, too. Most of them carried the same sort of hand weapon, but their shoulder arms differed a lot. I don't think any military unit would have accepted something as unstandardized as that. Spare parts and ammunition differences would play hell with the Quartermaster Corps, if nothing else." He shrugged most unhappily. "When you mix all of that together, I can only come up with one answer, Sir. Yes, they were civilians."
And we blew them to hell, Klian thought darkly. May your worthless soul burn in hell forever, Garlath.
"I see," he said aloud. "And I'm tempted to agree with you. Especially given the presence of that girl. Granted, you had Magister Kelbryan with you, but their young lady's situation would appear to be very different from the magister's, if she's married to one of the crewmen." He gave Jasak another keen glance. "You're sure they're married?"
"Yes, Sir. Magister Kelbryan concurs. In fact, she suggested it first, and everything I've seen only strengthens that assessment."
Klian nodded again, sitting back with pursed lips as he went over everything Jasak had said.
"It's possible they got a message out," the five hundred said finally, slowly. "On the whole, though, I think I agree with you that it's not likely. Magister Kelbryan's equipment put the portal you went out to find at no more than, what—thirty miles?"
"About that, Sir. I sent Chief Sword Threbuch ahead to confirm that," Jasak reminded him.
"Yes. The thing is, I'm trying to weigh risks. We don't know their protocol for handling portals. A civilian team in an uncharted universe suggests a radically different approach from ours, though, which leads me to wonder whether there's likely to be any military presence of theirs out this way."
"Is that a risk we can afford to assume, Sir?" Jasak asked quietly.
Klian met the younger officer's eyes. There was no challenge, no criticism, in his expression or tone. Just quiet worry. Deep worry. Gods and thunders, what had it taken to put that look in Jasak Olderhan's eyes? Jasak's expression brought home to the five hundred the fact that even having heard the description of the battle, even adding up the admittedly shocking number of casualties, he couldn't imagine what it had been like standing under those trees while some totally unknown form of weaponry cut down men all around him.
"You tell me, Hundred," he said abruptly. "You were the one who faced them out there."
Jasak sucked in air, then straightened in his chair.
"Sir, I've already said that remaining at that portal is a grave risk, in my opinion. Not only are my men badly shaken, but there's no military reason to remain, and a great many political reasons to pull out. Eventually, someone from their side's going to come looking for that crew. If they find an empty portal, with seven hundred miles of swamp between them and Fort Rycharn, they can't possibly reciprocate with a return assault. And unless something's changed in the last four days, I'm afraid we're too short of available manpower to reinforce Thalmayr."
He looked a question at Klian, who shook his head with a grimace.
"I'm supposed to have a full battalion out here already," the five hundred said sourly. "Did you happen to notice a thousand men or so out there on the parade ground, Hundred? No? Well, I haven't seen them either."
"So, basically, all Hundred Thalmayr will have is Charlie Company's second and third platoons, and what's left of First Platoon." Jasak shook his head. "With all due respect, Sir, that's not very many men to hold a portal three and a half miles across."
"No, it isn't. But at least the terrain would favor him. It's mostly flat as my mother-in-law's bread out there. He'd have the best sightlines we're going to get for his infantry-dragons, and I've got half a dozen field-dragons I could send forward to him by air. That's a lot of firepower, Hundred."
"Yes, Sir, it is." Jasak's t
one was deeply respectful. Which, Klian noted, wasn't exactly the same thing as agreement.
"There's another point to consider," the five hundred said, even as a part of him wondered why he was explaining himself this fully to so junior an officer. "As you say, your company is really all that's been sent forward to my command area right now. Oh, I've got the supports for an entire battalion, but under normal circumstances I'd be surprised if I saw more than another company or so any time in the next couple of months. Under these circumstances, I'm sure my dispatches are going to have sort of the same effect a well-placed kick has on an ant hill, of course. Give Two Thousand mul Gurthak a few days to react, and he's going to the reaching for every warm body he can find and shoving them in here. But that's going to take time, and until it happens, that swamp portal is the only place I can hope to hold with the combat power I've already got. I hate to say it, but Thalmayr's right about that."