by David Weber
It wasn't the right size or shape for a crossbow quarrel. Nor was there any sign of a quarrel, or even an ordinary arrow. He'd seen what both of those missiles did when they entered flesh, and Osmuna's odd wound didn't look like that. Nor did it look like the sort of wound left behind when someone pulled a quarrel or arrow out again, either. The hole had drilled straight through Osmuna's camo uniform blouse as easily as a hot poker thrust through cheese. But the fibers hadn't been slashed through?not the way a knife would have cut them. They'd been stretched and ripped by the force of something which had driven bits of fabric into Osmuna's chest. A powerful enough arbalest might have produced that effect, but the wound would have been much larger. And it couldn't have come from a sharp-pointed blade, not even something like an ice pick, either, because a weapon like that wouldn't have stretched, ripped, and embedded those fibers into the wound.
Jasak balanced carefully on the rocks, moving around to look at Osmuna's back, and froze in sudden, ice-cold shock.
Graholis' bollocks! What the hell caused that?
Jasak abruptly understood the shaken look in the men's faces.
Osmuna's back had been blown open.
Literally.
The hole just to the right of Osmuna's left shoulder blade was almost the size of a human fist. In fact, Gadrial could probably have pushed her fist deep into that gaping wound without the slightest trouble. The flesh was mangled, looking as if someone had set off an explosive incendiary spell inside Osmuna's body.
Horror, sudden and total, crawled down Jasak's spine and lodged in the vicinity of his belt buckle. He'd never heard of any explosive spell that would penetrate human flesh like a crossbow quarrel, then blow up from the inside, and Sir Jasak Olderhan's education had been the finest any Andaran noble's son could have hoped to acquire. He'd studied the bloody history of Arcana, including its Wizard Wars?during which hair-raising atrocities had been unleashed on helpless, non-Gifted populations?but no one had ever come up with a battle spell that would do what Jasak was looking at right now.
Movement at his shoulder jerked his head around. Otwal Threbuch hissed between his teeth at his first sight of the victim's back, then lifted worried, deeply shocked eyes to Jasak's.
"Do you have any idea what did that, Sir?" he asked, clearly hoping Jasak's education might have the answer the chief sword needed to hear.
"No. I don't." Jasak shook his head, and Threbuch cursed foully under his breath.
"I was afraid you're going to say that," he muttered through clenched teeth. "What the fuck do we do now, Sir?"
Jasak looked pointedly at Shevan Garlath. The platoon commander was also staring at Osmuna's back, swallowing hard. Every few seconds he looked away, darting wild-eyed glances up the stream banks toward the ominous trees, but every time, that gaping wound dragged his unwilling eyes back to the corpse at his feet.
"Fifty Garlath?"
"Sir?" Garlath's voice sounded constricted, and his eyes were unsteady as they skated across to Jasak's.
"I would suggest you try to find the bastards who did this."
Garlath nodded, the motion choppy and strained. It took him three deep gulps of air to find enough of his voice?or courage?to begin issuing orders.
"Spread out. Look for any trace of the attackers. We're going to find the whoreson who did this."
Oh, yes, Jasak promised the slain man's ghost. We most certainly are.
Shaylar was busy filling in yet another new stream on her chart when a sudden sound broke her concentration. It was a hoarse, gasping cry, so faint it was almost inaudible in the background noise of the stream, and it came from very nearly under her feet.
"Shaylar!"
She jumped as though stung, her pencil skidding across the paper. Then she peered down the bank toward the creek and gave a sharp cry of her own. Someone was trying to crawl up the bank. Even as she realized who it was, the wiry scout slithered weakly back into the water with a mewling pain sound.
"Falsan!"
She cast one wild glance around the clearing, searching for Barris Kasell. He was a good fifteen yards further east along the bank, where Braiheri Futhai was poking into more bushes.
"Barris!" Her cry snapped him around in surprise. "Get Tymo!"
Then she flung herself down the bank, skidding through damp leaves and a slick spot of clay. Falsan was struggling doggedly to get his hands under himself, trying to stand back up. She reached him, braced him with one arm as she tried to help him up, and?
Pain struck with a brutal fist. It caught her right in the chest, robbing her of breath even as a ghastly sound broke through Falsan's lips. He collapsed again, sliding sideways, away from her, down the bank. He splashed into the stream and rolled almost prone in the icy water. He came to rest on his back?which let her see the dreadful red stain on his shirt. It had soaked the whole front, spreading outward from something that had penetrated cloth and flesh.
"Ghartoun!" she screamed in a voice edged with knife-sharp horror.
Falsan clutched at her blouse with one blood smeared, shaking hand. He whispered through grey lips, his thready voice almost too weak to catch.
"Man … shot me … stayed in … water … no trail … can't foll?"
His breath wheezed away to nothing. His eyes didn't close. They remained open. Horribly, sightlessly open.
She felt him go. Felt the unseen force that was Falsan chan Salgmun vanish like smoke in her hands, even as she searched frantically for the wound. Her fingers touched metal. Stupid with shock, she stared down at it, found a thick steel shaft protruding nearly two inches from his flesh. Her hands were hot with his blood, but the rest of her was frozen. She sat half immersed in ice-cold water, shaking violently and trying to focus her spinning mind on the impossibility of what he'd just said.
A man had shot him.
A man …
Theirs was the only team anywhere in this universe. That meant?
Barris Kasell, Tymo Scleppis, and Ghartoun chan Hagrahyl plunged down the bank, literally on one another's heels. chan Hagrahyl cursed horribly as he splashed into the water beside her. Their healer slithered down next, took one look, and groaned.
"Too late," Shaylar heard him say. "He's gone."
She lifted her head. It took forever, that simple effort, like lifting a mountain with her bare hands. She met Ghartoun's stunned gaze.
"Somebody shot him." Her words came out like ax blows on solid ice. "He said a man shot him."
chan Hagrahyl wrenched his gaze away from her face and stared at the ghastly metal shaft buried in Falsan's flesh.
"My gods," he whispered.
Suddenly the whole stream was looping and rolling in wild gyrations. Shaylar felt rough hands on her shoulders, heard somebody saying her name, and fought the roaring in her ears and the black tide trying to suck away her consciousness.
I will not faint like a schoolgirl! a small, hard voice grated somewhere deep inside her, and she shook off the hands trying to drag her up the bank. She went to her knees as they released her, but she forced her wildly spinning senses to steady.
She found herself kneeling in a tangle of tree roots, panting and trembling, but in control once more. She raised her head, and a worried pair of dark eyes swam into focus. Barris was crouched beside her, one hand bracing her so she didn't slide back down the bank.
"That's better," he said softly. "For a minute there, I thought you were going to collapse."
Her face tried to heat up. But she was still too shocky and pale to flush with humiliation, and his next words eased some of the shame which had wrapped around her like a blanket.
"You've had a nasty psychic shock, Shaylar, and you're not combat trained."
"Combat trained?" she parroted, appalled by the hoarse croak which had replaced her voice, and Barris nodded.
"When a Talented recruit joins the military, he's trained to handle something as brutal as combat death shock, especially at point-blank range. Nobody teaches that to civilian survey scouts."
When that realization sank in, some of her own shame eased. The abrupt loosening of her grip on her shuddering emotions was followed almost instantly by a flood of tears and violent tremors. She struggled grimly to hold them back, but without much success. Barris took her by one elbow and Tymo took the other. They helped her to climb to the top of the bank, and Tymo slipped an arm around her.
"Let them come, Shaylar. Let the shakes run their course. That's the way emotional shock will drain, as it should, not fester in your mind and poison your body."
That almost made sense. The fact that it didn't make complete sense, when it should have, rang faint alarm bells. But Tymo knew what he was talking about, if anyone did, so she sat there in the warm sunlight and waited for the tremors to ease up. When they did, she drew down a final, ragged gulp of air and looked up again.
"I heard his rifle," she said. "That must've been when … "
"Yes, I heard it, too." Barris nodded, his voice bitter with self-condemnation. "To think he'd been struggling all that time, trying to make it back, and we didn't do anything?"
"It's not your fault, Barris!" Ghartoun's voice interrupted sharply, and Kasell looked up at the team leader.
"I used to be a soldier, curse it!" he snarled almost defiantly. "I should've?"
"Done what?" Ghartoun chan Hagrahyl demanded, his own expression angry and shaken. "Snatched the truth out of thin air? You're not Talented. Neither was Falsan. Shaylar's a Voice?the best telepath in the five nearest universes?and she didn't feel a thing. There's not a Voice that's ever been born who could have picked up something like that from a non-telepath. So just stow the frigging guilt, right now!"
Kasell's jaw muscles clenched for a moment. Then he nodded and relaxed a fraction.
"Yes, Sir. You're right, of course. It's just … "
"I know. Triad, but I know. And I'd like to know where his rifle is, too. It's not with him."
Kasell swore one filthy, ugly word.
"Fanthi," Ghartoun called to a rugged hulk of a man who'd always given Shaylar the impression that every stretch of ground he walked across was a potential battlefield, "set sentries in a perimeter fifty yards out in all directions. We don't know where these bastards are, or how close they might be, let alone how many of them there are."
Fanthi chan Himidi, who'd served a double stint in the Ternathian infantry before signing on with Chalgyn Consortium, nodded sharply and organized the rest of the survey crew with swift, efficient dispatch. They had eight men with at least some military experience, who took charge of the others, sending their cook, their drovers, their smith?even Ghartoun's clerk?out to form a circular guard around their little camp. Shaylar felt better just watching the process chan Himidi had set in motion.
Ghartoun hesitated, looking unhappily into her eyes, then crouched down beside her.
"Shaylar," he said gently, "I have to ask. Did Falsan say anything?"
"He?" She drew an unsteady breath and made herself repeat those pitiful few words, then added, "I'm pretty sure he started to say 'They can't follow,' there at the last. But he didn't get the whole thing out before he?"
She stopped and swallowed hard.
"They?" Ghartoun asked, his voice sharp. "You're sure of that? Not 'he'?"
"No," she said slowly. "I'm not sure. He said 'can't follow,' but the impression I got was 'they.' I don't know if that means he saw several of them, Ghartoun, or if he was simply afraid there might be more of them nearby."
The expedition's leader exchanged grim glances with Barris Kasell. Then he looked back at Shaylar.
"Did you pick up anything else? Anything at all that could help us figure out what in the gods' names really happened out there?"
Shaylar drew another deep breath and shook her head to clear it, then held up one impatient hand when he misconstrued her meaning and started to speak. She closed her eyes and sorted through every impression she'd been able to catch during those fleeting seconds of contact. Falsan hadn't been Talented, but Shaylar had been touching him, which helped. She couldn't See anything that he'd seen, but the emotions behind those gasped-out words of warning had slammed their way into her awareness, along with the words themselves. If she could just get a solid grasp on them …
"I don't think there was more than one when he was actually shot, Ghartoun," she finally said. "I'm not picking up a sense of 'me versus them'. It's more a 'me versus him'. I think he was just afraid that there would be others who could follow a blood trail back to us."
"Which is why he stayed in the water," Ghartoun muttered.
"Where there's one, there are bound to be more," Kasell said with quiet intensity. "And did you get a good look at what killed him?"
"Oh, yes. A crossbow bolt."
"Crossbow?" Shaylar stared at the expedition's leader. "But that's?that's medieval!"
"So are clubs and rocks," Ghartoun snapped, his eyes crackling with suppressed fury. "And they'll still kill a man just as dead as a rifle will. Crossbows were weapons of war in our history for damned near a thousand years, come to that, until we finally figured out how to make gunpowder. These people don't have to be our technological equals to kill us."
"That's a fact," Kasell muttered in a voice of steel, and Ghartoun chan Hagrahyl glanced back at Shaylar.
"Can you pick anything else out of those impressions?"
She tried, but nothing else came.
"I'm sorry," she whispered miserably. "I only touched him for just a few seconds, and …" Her voice went unsteady. "I'm sorry. I just can't get anything more."
"I'm grateful you got as much as you did," chan Hagrahyl told her, squeezing her shoulder with surprising force, as though he'd forgotten she was barely the size of a half-grown Ternathian child.
"All right." He stood up, hands curling around the butt of his handgun and the hilt of his camp knife, both sheathed at his wide leather belt. "We don't know exactly who or what we're up against, but we do know they're nasty tempered and don't like company." He met Barris Kasell's gaze, his own hard and grimly determined. "We may have some time, especially if Shaylar's impression is right and there really was only one of the bastards. If Falsan hadn't nailed him with his first shot, we'd probably have heard at least two. And if Falsan got him, it may be a little while before his friends figure out he's not coming home. But we have to assume that there were others of them fairly close by, and that they'll at least be able to backtrack him to camp. And they will, too, after something like this. So we've got to get back to the portal before these bastards overrun us, and it's been a while since we heard that rifle shot."
Shaylar's breath caught. She hadn't thought about that, and the thick woods, so hushed and lovely, suddenly menaced their little party from every shadow, every movement of sun-dappled leaves in the breeze. In a single blink of her eyelashes, the entire forest seemed to be in sinister motion, tricking the eye and confusing the senses. And somewhere out there, well over two miles east of their camp, Jathmar was alone and unaware of what had just happened. She started to make contact when Elevu Gitel's voice jolted her out of her reverie.
"We've got to warn Company-Captain Halifu. Shaylar has to send a message. Immediately."
Shaylar looked up, and chan Hagrahyl nodded, meeting her gaze.
"Contact Darcel. Let him know what's happening. Have him take the message to Company-Captain Halifu, then come back to our side of the portal to listen for additional messages from you. Then try to contact Jathmar. I know you can't talk to him, but we've got to warn him to break off the survey and rendezvous with us."
"Rendezvous?" Braiheri Futhai's voice was incredulous. "Don't you mean return to camp?"
chan Hagrahyl met the naturalist's astonished gaz
e.
"No, I do not mean return. We're abandoning this camp as fast as humanly possible. I want everyone to pack up the absolute essentials and be ready to march in ten minutes."
"We can't possibly be ready to leave in only ten minutes!" Futhai protested.
"If you can't pack it that fast, leave it," Ghartoun snapped. "And if you can't carry it at a dog-trot from now until we reach the portal, abandon it. Is that clear enough?"
"But?but what about Falsan?"
"Falsan's dead! And it's my job to make sure none of the rest of us join him!"
Futhai's eyes widened at the harshness in the expedition's leader's voice. But his jaw muscles clenched, and he gave chan Hagrahyl the obstinate glare Shaylar had come to associate with the naturalist at his absolute worst.
"We are not leaving this camp until that poor man is properly buried!"
"We don't have time." chan Hagrahyl's voice was a glacier grinding up boulders.
"We are civilized people, sir, and civilized people bury their dead," Futhai shot back, and Kasell's nostrils flared as he rounded on the naturalist.
"Not when the godsdamned natives are shooting at them!" he snarled in a voice of withering contempt.
"Nobody is shooting at us." Futhai pointed out in maddeningly reasonable, patiently courteous, patronizing tones. "And since we're not in immediate danger, we can at least behave with respect for that poor man's death."
Barris Kasell's right hand clenched into a white-knuckled fist around the carrying sling of his rifle. From his expression, he would have vastly preferred to have the naturalist's neck in that fist's grasp, instead.
"If you're that nonchalant about the danger," he grated, "you stay behind to bury him. But don't, by all the gods, expect the rest of us to hang around here waiting for a pack of murdering bastards to follow Falsan's trail back to us!"
"He stayed in the water, so there isn't a trail to follow," Futhai pointed out almost pityingly. "You said as much yourself, and?"