Hell's Gate-ARC

by David Weber

  A humpback, he realized through numb shock. One of the singing whales. Only that was no whalesong bursting from it. That was rage. Pure, distilled, and terrible rage.

  Gods, Kinshe realized. Shaylar's mother was broadcasting what she saw. She probably didn't even realize it, but the cetaceans did, and he jerked his gaze back to her. She was shuddering, eyes clenched tightly shut, her sounds like those of some small, trapped animal. Then she stiffened, and her eyes flew wide.

  "Shaylar!" she screamed, and her husband flinched so violently he nearly went to the floor. Then Shalassar collapsed. She sagged in her chair, her head falling forward in merciful unconsciousness.

  Kinshe stared at her, his eyes burning, and took a single step forward.

  "Stay away from her!" Thaminar snarled.

  His eyes were burnt wounds in his face, and he bent over his wife, stroking hair back from her wet face and murmuring her name over and over. Fragile eyelids fluttered. Opened. For long moments, there was no sense in Shalassar's eyes at all. Then remembrance struck like a crack of thunder, and she began to weep. She sobbed, the sound deep and jagged, while her husband cradled her close looking utterly bereft.

  Kinshe could only stand there, feeling a tear trickle down his own cheek, wondering what to do. What anyone could do. And then—

  "You men, out," Alimar Kinshe said firmly to her husband, her Crown Prince, and Samari Wilkon, and it was an order, not a request. "Go. Find something to do—I don't care what. Just go."

  She didn't even look at them. She simply marched across the tiny office, gathered Shaylar's mother into her arms, and turned to Shaylar's father.

  "Go and get some brandy, if you have any," she commanded. "Wine, if you don't. She needs it."

  To Kinshe's infinite surprise, Thaminar rose without a sound of protest and left the office, like a ghost walking through terrain it can no longer see or touch. Kinshe watched him go, and then he understood.

  He needed to feel useful. Needed to do something for his wife. He just didn't know how.

  Halidar Kinshe's respect for his wife, already high, soared to dizzying heights, and he tiptoed very softly from the room, beckoning the others to follow.

  Alimar clearly understood what needed to be done far better than he did, so he left her to do it.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chief Sword Otwal Threbuch moved through the darkness like a ghost.

  He felt like a ghost must feel—cold, empty inside, and incredibly ancient. He shouldn't have been alive, and after what he'd seen, there was a part of him which wished he wasn't. He told himself that was exactly the kind of thinking he'd spent decades hammering out of raw recruits who'd heard too many stupid heroic ballads, but that did nothing to soften the pain. Or his sense of guilt.

  He'd lain on that limb, watching, helpless to intervene as the portal defenders were cut to pieces. He'd been as surprised as anyone when the enemy artillery opened fire through the portal, and he had no doubt that the shock of that totally unanticipated bombardment explained how quickly Charlie Company—his company—had been slaughtered. But it wasn't the full explanation, and deep in his heart of hearts, Otwal Threbuch cursed Hadrign Thalmayr even more bitterly than he had Shevan Garlath.

  He'd known what was coming the instant that idiotic, incompetent, stupid excuse for a hundred opened fire on someone obviously seeking a parley. He'd recognized Thalmayr, of course, and the moment he'd seen the other hundred, he'd also recognized the answer to his questions about Hundred Olderhan's apparent lapse into idiocy. Not that his relief over the fact that Sir Jasak's brain hadn't stopped working after all had made what had happened to Threbuch's company any less agonizing.

  Every ounce of the chief sword's body and soul had cried out for him to do something as the debacle unfolded. But the steel-hard professionalism of his years of service had held him precisely where he was, because there'd been nothing he could do. Nothing that would have made any difference at all to the men cursing, screaming, and dying in front of him. It might have made him feel a bit better to try, might have spared him from this crushing load of guilt at having survived—so far, at least. But that was all it could have accomplished, whereas the information he already possessed might yet accomplish a great deal, if he could only report it. Besides, as far as he knew, he was the only uncaptured survivor from the entire company, which meant he was also the only chance to report what had happened to Five Hundred Klian.

  He clenched his jaw, eyes burning, as he reflected on everything he had to report, including the death of Emiyet Borkaz.

  Borkaz had been unable to force himself to sit out the fight. When the desperate survivors had launched their hopeless charge in a despairing bid to get their own support weapons to this side of the portal, Borkaz had left his cover and run madly towards them, screaming and cursing. He'd managed to get most of the way through the trees before he was spotted, and Threbuch thought he'd managed to kill at least one of the enemy on the way through (which was more than Threbuch had managed), as well. And then at least three of those hideous thunder weapons had struck him almost simultaneously. He must have been dead before he hit the ground, Threbuch thought grimly.

  But at least the enemy could make mistakes, too. The fact that Borkaz had obviously come from behind them ought to have set off a search for whoever else might be behind them, as well. On the other hand, perhaps he was being too hard on them. Given the nature of the terrain, they might not realize where Borkaz had come from at all. They might think he'd come from the swamp side of the portal and simply gotten further than any of the rest.

  The chief sword froze abruptly. Something had moved, and he stood motionless, straining his eyes and ears. There!

  The enemy sentry hadn't moved very much at all. Probably nothing more than easing a cramped limb. But it had been enough, and Threbuch slid silently, silently to his right, giving the other man a wider berth.

  Part of him was intensely tempted to do something else. His arbalest would have been all but inaudible under cover of the night wind sighing in the trees. For that matter, he probably could have gotten close enough to slit the other man's throat. It was something he'd done before, and the thought of managing at least that much vengeance for Charlie Company burned within him like a coal. But his job wasn't to kill one, or two, or even a dozen enemies, however personally satisfying it might have been. His job was to get home with the most deadly weapon in any universe—information—and if he left any dead bodies in his wake, the enemy would know at least one Arcanan had gotten away. They'd also know how important his report might be, and a dead sentry would set off a relentless search he might well fail to evade.

  He felt the moment of transition as he belly-crawled across the portal threshold, moving instantly from autumnal chill into steamy tropical heat, and he fought down a sudden sense of release, of safety. Any soldier with an ounce of competence—which, unfortunately, these bastards certainly appeared to have—would have sentries on both sides of the portal.

  He kept going, easing forward, working his way cautiously through the dense swamp grass and mud at one edge of the portal and praying that he didn't startle some nesting swamp bird into sudden, raucous flight.

  Somehow, he managed to avoid that, and to creep silently behind the one additional sentry he did spot on the swamp side of the portal, silhouetted against the moon. It took him almost three hours to cover a total distance of little more than another eight hundred yards, but he made it. And once the wrecked base camp was a quarter-mile behind him, he rose to his feet at last, got out his PC, activated the search and navigation spellware, took a careful bearing on Fort Rycharn, and started walking. The thought of hiking seven hundred-plus miles across snake and croc-infested swamp, without any rations at all, was scarcely appealing, but he couldn't think of anything better to do.

  Just over an hour later, Threbuch stiffened in astonishment. He froze instantly, listening to the night, and looked down at his PC. The crystal's glassy heart glowed dimly, its illumina
tion level deliberately set low enough to keep anyone from seeing it at a distance of more than a very few feet, and the chief sword's eyes widened as he saw the small, sharp-edged carat strobing at one side of the circular navigation display.

  He stood very still for several more moments, watching, but the carat was equally motionless. After a moment, the noncom turned towards his right, rotating until the strobing carat and the green arrowhead indicating his own course lined up with one another. Then he moved slowly, cautiously, forward through the currently knee-deep swamp.

  The carat strobed more and more rapidly, and then, abruptly, it stopped blinking and burned a steady, unwinking green.

  Threbuch stopped, as well, standing in a dense, dark patch of shadow in the lee of a cluster of scrub trees growing out of the swamp. The combination of moonlight, shadow, and swamp grass rippling in the wind created a wavering sea of eye-bewildering movement, and he cleared his throat.

  "Who's there?" he asked sharply.

  "Chief Sword?" a hoarse voice gasped. "Gods above, where've you been?"

  "Great thundering bollocks—Iggy?"

  "Yes, Chief."

  Threbuch watched in disbelief as Iggar Shulthan crawled cautiously out of the scrub trees. The other Scout's silhouette looked misshapen, and Threbuch's eyes went even wider as he realized what Shulthan had strapped to his back.

  "Gods!" the chief sword half-whispered in the reverent voice of the man who'd suddenly discovered there truly were miracles. "You've got the hummers!"

  The company's hummer handler reached out. Threbuch extended his hand, and Shulthan gripped it so hard the bones ached. The younger noncom's face was muddy, and even in the uncertain moonlight, Threbuch could see the memories of the horror Shulthan had witnessed in his eyes. Or perhaps he couldn't, the chief sword reflected. Perhaps he simply knew they had to be there because he knew they were in his own eyes.

  "I-I ran, Chief." Shame hovered in the javelin's voice. "I grabbed the hummers, like Regs said, and ran with 'em. I ran, Chief!"

  Tears hovered in Shulthan's voice, and Threbuch released his hand to grip both of the younger man's shoulders hard.

  "Son, you did exactly the right thing," he said. "Don't you ever doubt that! Those regulations were written for damned good reasons. You're the Company's link with the rest of the Army. When the shit hits the fan, and the bottom falls out, somebody's got to get word back. The hummer handler's the only man who can do it."

  "But the Hundred never gave me the order," Shulthan whispered, blinking hard. "He went down so fast, and they were dropping us like flies, and—"

  "I know, Iggy," Threbuch said more gently. "I was trapped on their side of the portal. I had to sit there and watch it all, because my recon report for Five Hundred Klian is every bit as critical as yours." Threbuch found it abruptly necessary to swallow hard a few times. "That was the hardest thing I've ever had to do—ever. So don't think for a minute I don't understand exactly what you're feeling right now, Iggy."

  The younger man nodded wordlessly, and the chief sword gave his shoulders another squeeze before he released them, stood back, and cleared his throat roughly.

  "So, do you think anyone else got out?"

  "No, Chief." Shulthan shook his head. "I haven't seen anyone. Not even them."

  "I haven't seen any signs of pursuit, either," Threbuch said with a nod, although that wasn't exactly what he'd asked. He'd already known Shulthan was alone. Unlike the hummer handler's PC, the chief sword's carried specialized spellware which could give him the bearing to any of his company's personnel within five hundred yards. Bringing up the S&N spellware had automatically activated the locator function, thank the gods! But because of that, he'd known none of their other people were within a quarter mile of his current location. He'd simply hoped—prayed—that Shulthan might have seen someone else get out. Someone else who might be hiding out here, beyond the spellware's reach, trying to make his own way back to the coast.

  "Where's Borkaz, Chief?" Shulthan asked after moment, and Threbuch's jaw tightened.

  "Didn't make it." He shook his head and started to explain, then stopped himself. Shulthan's anguish at having cut and run while his friends died behind him was only too obvious. He didn't need to be told how Borkaz had died running in the "right" direction. Not, at least, until he had enough separation from his own actions to realize just how stupid Borkaz's had been.

  "All right," the chief sword continued after moment. "Have you already sent back a hummer?"

  "No, Chief." Shulthan shook his head. "I've just been running and hiding," he admitted in a shamefaced tone.

  "Don't think I've been doing anything else since it happened," Threbuch said, shaking his head. The chief sword looked at the sky. The night was at least half over, he reflected.

  "We need to send one back now, though," he continued. "It's going to take the rest of the night just to reach the coast, and we need to let Five Hundred Klian know what's happened. Come to that, we need to set up an LZ for them to pull us out of here, too."

  "Yes, Chief."

  Threbuch looked down at his PC again, trying to decide on the best spot. He didn't want a dragon within miles of the base camp. Gods alone only knew how far those bastards could throw whatever they'd used for artillery!

  His empty stomach rumbled painfully while he was thinking, and he glanced at Shulthan again.

  "You wouldn't happen to have anything to eat on you, would you, Iggy?" he asked, and blinked as Shulthan actually chuckled.

  "Matter of fact, Chief, I managed to grab my whole pack. I've got a couple of blocks of emergency rats."

  "Iggy, it's too bad you're not a woman," Threbuch said with the fervor of a man who hasn't eaten in well over twenty-four hours. "Or maybe it isn't. If you were, I'd have to marry you, and you're ugly as sin." The chief sword looked back down at his PC, picked the coordinates he needed, and then glanced back up at Shulthan. "Let's get that hummer on its way. Then lead me to those rations and stand back."

  "Is a . . . unicorn," Shaylar said in slow, carefully enunciated Andaran.

  "Yes, exactly!" Gadrial replied in the same language with a broad smile. She leaned closer to the breathtakingly life-like image displayed above the gleaming crystal on her tiny desk and indicated the booted and spurred man standing beside the beast in an anachronistic-looking steel breastplate. "And this?"

  "Is a war-rider," Shaylar said firmly. Gadrial nodded once more, and Shaylar smiled back at her. Then she glanced at Jathmar, sitting beside her on the unused bed in the quarters which had been assigned to Gadrial, and felt her smile fade around the edges as she tasted his reaction to the imagery Gadrial was showing them through the marriage bond.

  The coal-black creature Gadrial had just informed her was called a "unicorn" was unlike anything either of them had ever seen before, yet it was close enough to familiar to make it even more disturbing than something as totally alien as a dragon. The beast was roughly horse-sized and shaped, except for the legs, which were proportionately too long, and the improbably powerful looking hindquarters. But no horse had ever had those long, furry, bobcat-like ears, or that short, powerful neck, or the long, deadly-looking tasks—like something from some huge, wild boar—and obviously carnivorous teeth. Or the long, ivory horn which must have been close to a yard in length. And then there were the eyes. Huge green eyes with purple irises and catlike slitted pupils.

  Jathmar, she decided, had a point. Compared to that bizarre, opium-dream improbability, the half-armored cavalry trooper standing beside it with his lance and saber looked downright homely.

  "Your words?" Gadrial asked, and Shaylar looked back at the images and shrugged.

  "No word," she said, pointing at the 'unicorn' and grimacing. Then she pointed at the man standing beside it. "Cavalryman," she said, and watched the squiggles of Gadrial's alphabet appear briefly under the image.

  "Good. Thank you," Gadrial said, and touched the small wand-like stylus in her hand to the crystal-clear sphere of her "PC
." The image changed obediently, and this time it showed something Shaylar and Jathmar recognized immediately.

  "This," Gadrial said "is called an 'elephant.'"

  Gadrial watched her "students" studying the floating picture of the elephant and tried to keep her bemusement at their rate of progress from showing.

  She'd almost forgotten that she had the language spellware package with her. It wasn't something she'd ever used before, but it had come as a standard component of the "academic" package an enterprising vendor had managed to sell the Garth Showma Institute a year or so before. Gadrial had been perfectly happy with the previous package's general capabilities—most of the spellware she used in her own work was the product of her own department at the Academy, or at least so highly customized that it bore very little relationship to its original form—but the Academy had insisted on providing the new and improved spellware to all its faculty members. She'd been more than mildly irritated at the time, since she probably would never use more than twenty percent of the total applications and the changeover had required her to become familiar with the new package's idiosyncrasies (which were, as always, many). But she'd long since learned not to waste energy fighting over the little things, and it wasn't exactly as if the bundled spells providing all the useless bells and whistles she'd never need were going to use up a critical amount of her PC's memory.