Hell's Gate m-1

by David Weber

  And there's another factor, here, Janaki thought grimly. Of all the prisoners chan Tesh took, this one undoubtedly has the most useful information of all. We need to keep him alive … whether he makes my skin crawl or not.

  "If you 'shut him down,' will we be able to feed him and care for him properly all the way back to Fort Raylthar?" he asked.

  "That shouldn't be a problem, Sir. Or, at least, not any more of a problem than dealing with any other patient with his spinal injury would present."

  "In that case, write up your recommendation. I'll endorse it and ask Company-Captain chan Tesh to approve it."

  "Thank you, Sir." Yar shook his head. "I hate to do it, but I just don't see a way to avoid it. Gods, I wish at least one of their Healers had made it!"

  "None of them did?" Janaki frowned. "How did that happen?"

  "It was just one of those godsdamned things, Sir," Yar said heavily. "It looks like they'd set up an emergency aid station in that pathetic redoubt of theirs, and one of the four-point-fives landed right on top of them." The Healer shook his head, his eyes dark. "One or two of them survived for a while, but they were too badly wounded for us to pull them through. I hate to lose any Healer, but I have to wonder what would have happened if they made it. Or if even just one of them had made it!"

  "Why?" Janaki was surprised by the Healer's obviously genuine frustration. It showed, and Yar gave him a very crooked smile.

  "Let's just say their Healers obviously know at least a few tricks we don't, Sir."

  "Such as?" Janaki quirked an eyebrow, and Yar chuckled harshly.

  "Once we'd taken their encampment, we discovered that most of their wounded from the previous fighting seemed to have been evacuated before this round. Or that's what we thought at first, at least. We captured less than half a dozen people who were still undergoing treatment, and all of them seemed to have only minor wounds. But then Junior-Armsman Hilovar and Petty Armsman Parcanthi went to work. They'd managed to Trace quite a few of the enemy's most badly wounded from Fallen Timbers, and it turned out a lot of them were still here. The very worst hurt obviously really were evacuated?somehow; we still haven't figured that part out. But the next most badly hurt were still right here, and they'd already been returned to duty. The ones still undergoing treatment were the ones who were least badly hurt in the earlier fighting."

  "Excuse me?" Both of Janaki's eyebrows went up this time, and Yar chuckled again.

  "Believe me, Sir, you aren't any more surprised?or confused?by that than I was when they told me! But as nearly as we can tell, these people's Healers can literally force healing. Some of our strongest Healers can work what seem like miraculous cures, don't get me wrong about that. But as nearly as I can determine from what Hilovar and Parcanthi have been able to pick up, these people must have some technique which promotes extraordinarily rapid healing of physical traumas. I'm guessing that it's either very expensive or somehow debilitating to the Healer, because it looks to me as if they applied it first to the most badly injured?the ones who might not have made it at all without intervention?and then worked their way down the list through the men with the next worst wounds. The ones who weren't in danger, or who were injured lightly enough to recover fairly rapidly with less drastic treatment, were the ones still in their sick tents when we took the camp."

  "You think one of these … magical Healers of theirs might have been able to repair this man's injuries?" Janaki couldn't quite keep a hint of incredulity out of his voice, and Yar snorted.

  "I doubt that, Sir. Neither Hilovar nor Parcanthi is a Healer, of course, so they can't give me the kind of information another Healer could, however good their Traces or Whiffs are. From what they've told me, though, it sounds as if what they these people were doing was forcing the accelerated healing of wounds which would have healed anyway, in time. I'm not saying they weren't serious, life-threatening injuries. Don't get me wrong about that, either. But we're talking about tissues healing and bones knitting?things that would have happened with the passage of time, assuming the patient survived at all. Actually … regenerating something like destroyed nerve tissue, or treating a serious brain injury?" for a moment, Yar's voice darkened and his eyes met Janaki's grimly, dark with the memory of who had apparently suffered a serious head injury at Fallen Timbers "?would require an entirely different order of ability. I'm not prepared to say it's flatly impossible, but I'd say it's very unlikely. Unfortunately."

  He was silent for a few seconds, brooding on what might have been if the other side's Healers had been capable of that sort of true miracle, then shook himself and continued.

  "At the same time, though, if we had one of their Healers, we could probably get this man as recovered from his physical injuries as he's ever going to get before we started trying to transport him. In that case?if all we had to worry about was his mental and emotional state?I wouldn't be anywhere near as concerned as I am about his prognosis."

  "I understand. And, like you, I hate to lose any Healer, whoever's uniform he's wearing." Janaki shook his head. "For that matter, to be honest, if they really do have that sort of a healing technique, we need to figure out what it is and learn to duplicate it as quickly as we can?for a lot of reasons."

  "Agreed, Sir," Yar sighed. "Agreed."

  The Healer stood a moment longer, gazing down at the stone-faced, totally nonresponsive man in the cot, then shook himself.

  "Most of the rest of their wounded are in far better shape for transport," he said more briskly. "If you'll follow me, I'll show you what I mean, and then we can discuss?"

  He led the Crown Prince towards the other side of the hospital tent, and Janaki followed after one more glance at the rigid, dead-eyed man responsible for so much suffering and death.

  "Darcel Kinlafia?"

  Kinlafia jerked as the unfamiliar voice spoke from directly behind him. He whipped around, and found himself staring at a man who was decidedly on the tall side, even for a Ternathian, in the uniform of an Imperial Marine platoon-captain.

  Jumpy as a flea on a hot griddle, Janaki thought, reaching up one hand to reassure Taleena as the falcon bridled on his shoulder. Then he realized why the other man was that way. Post combat stress burned in the haunted eyes of the sun-browned man with shaggy hair that needed a barber's shears. Kinlafia was probably no more than ten years or so older than Janaki himself, but he looked far older than that at the moment.

  "Yes." Kinlafia cleared his throat, easing his elbow back from its desperate clamp on the butt of his holstered pistol. "I'm Kinlafia. And you're … ?"

  "Platoon-Captain chan Calirath," Janaki said, and the Voice's eyes widened.

  "Good gods." He swallowed. "How can I help you, Sir? Your Highness? Your Grand Highness?"

  His face had gone red as he stumbled over the correct form of address for a Ternathian imperial crown prince, and Janaki grinned.

  "Platoon-Captain chan Calirath is fine. In fact, in light of how closely the two of us will be working together on this project, you might even opt for Janaki." Kinlafia gaped at him, and Janaki shrugged. "I don't stand on a lot of formality out here. In fact, I hate it. And, let's face it?I'm a pretty damned junior officer when all's said and done, after all."

  Kinlafia's jaw was still scraping the ground, and Janaki sighed. It was always the same, although at least the military seemed to have figured out how to take it more or less in stride. No doubt because the military had its own chain of command and rules of seniority, which gave it a convenient pigeonhole marked "officer, junior, one" rather than "ruler after the gods, future, one." Still, he'd had more than enough experience even with fellow Marines, much less civilians, to understand how it worked. Occasionally, though, he wished his conversations with people he hadn't met before could be as ordinary as everyone else's conversations seemed to be.

  "Look, just think of me as the officer assigned to escort our prisoners to the rear while simultaneously cleverly extracting politically and militarily critical information from them. Try to
forget about the rest of it, would you? It's a damned nuisance, frankly, having people trip over their feet and stumble over their tongues every time I show up somewhere or run into someone new. And bad as it is here, it's even worse back home. I've just about made up my mind to stay in the Corps as long as they'll let me hide out here."

  Kinlafia blinked at him. Then, all at once, he relaxed and actually managed a grin. It wasn't much of a smile, not on that grief and anger-grooved face, but it was genuine. And, as he saw it, Janaki also had a Glimpse of the warmhearted, humorous man who'd once lived behind that face . . and how important that man might prove to be. And not just to Sharona, the prince realized as his sister's features wavered through the same Glimpse. What in the names of all the gods, he wondered, did this man have to do with Andrin? But the Glimpse had vanished almost as quickly as it had come. Its echoes hummed and quivered down inside him, with a deep, burning sense of true urgency and buzzing about in his bones with a familiar sense of frustration. He couldn't pin it down, couldn't take it by the throat and make it make sense, yet he knew it had been a true Glimpse. Something that would come to pass, not merely something which might.

  "Really?" Kinlafia said, obviously oblivious to Janaki's Glimpse. "I guess I hadn't thought of it that way. All right, I'll do my best to forget who you are?and who you're related to."

  "Thanks," Janaki said dryly, suppressing any outward sign of his Glimpse with the thoroughness of long practice. "Actually, if the Corps would let me, I'd probably go ahead and trade on a bit of that familial fame after all, if it would let me spend an extra day or so right here instead of heading straight back. Trust me, even a Calirath's imperal arse gets damned tired of a saddle after a week or two! Unfortunately, they want these people?and you?back up the chain as quickly as we can get you there."

  "Me?" Something almost like suspicion flared at the backs of Kinlafia's eyes.

  "Of course you." Janaki snorted. "I'm almost positive that a direct order for you to report to First Director Limana ASAP is headed back down the Voice chain to you right this minute. You're the closest thing we've got to an actual eyewitness of the original attack, and you accompanied Platoon-Captain Arthag's column all the way back here. And you were part of the fight here at the portal; you were one of the first men into their encampment; and you're the only Voice?and the only observer of any sort who also happens to have perfect recall?who was here for all of that. You think, perhaps, the Powers That Be might be just a little interested in your offhand impressions of those events?"

  Kinlafia blinked again, and his expression changed from one of suspicion to one of comprehension … and fear.

  "I don't?"

  "Stop," Janaki interrupted. "Don't say it."

  "Don't say it?" Kinlafia repeated, and Janaki shook his head.

  "You were about to say that you didn't see how your impressions could be all that important," he said almost gently. "You were about to point out that you're not a trained military man, that Company-Captain chan Tesh and Platoon-Captain Arthag are much better information sources on the actual fighting here, and on the enemy's tactics. And you're about to say that Petty Captain Yar's had much more contact with the prisoners, especially the wounded ones, than you have. Right?"

  "Something along those lines," Kinlafia said slowly, and Janaki shrugged.

  "All of which is beside the point," he said. "As, I'm afraid, is how much I know it's going to hurt to answer all the questions people have for you."

  This time there was no mistaking the gentleness in his voice. Yet it was a stern, inflexible gentleness. One that admitted that the owner of that voice understood how much pain even the most gentle interrogation would inflict, yet never backed away from the necessity of that interrogation. And one which somehow managed both to acknowledge the pain and Kinlafia's fear without in any way diminishing them. To sympathize with them in a way that offered the strength to overcome them rather than simple commiseration.

  Kinlafia stared at the young officer who'd asked him to call him by his first name and realized that whether Janaki chan Calirath recognized it or not, that endless line of imperial ancestors stood behind him. There was, Kinlafia realized, not an ounce of arrogance in the young man who would one day wear the Winged Crown in the imperial throne room in Estafel. But the blood of Erthain the Great still flowed in his veins, and the mysterious magnetism which had led men and women to follow the Caliraths straight into the fire?and into the pages of legend?for over five thousand years glowed inside him.

  Balkar chan Tesh and Delokahn Yar had been trying to get Kinlafia to face the inevitable for almost a week now, ever since the portal attack, and they'd failed. Now, in two short sentences, Crown Prince Janaki had succeeded.

  And he's not even my Crown Prince, the Voice thought with a strange mix of despair, amusement, and surrender.

  "All right, Your Highness," he said finally. "You're right. I know you are. But it's not going to be easy. Not at all."

  "I realize that," Janaki acknowledged, then glanced up at the afternoon sun. "Look," he said, "it must be about time for supper. Why don't we let this rest until after we've eaten? If you're agreeable, we'll drop by my tent after we eat, drag out a bottle of Bernithian whiskey, and get down to it."

  "Of course," Kinlafia said. And to his credit, Janaki thought, he actually managed to sound as if he thought it was a good idea.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  "I need to know everything," Janaki chan Calirath said.

  He sat crosslegged on his bedroll, having surrendered his single camp stool to his guest, despite the visitor's obvious discomfort at accepting it. But that discomfort over seating arrangements disappeared abruptly, devoured by something far worse, as the civilian's eyes met his, dark with memory.

  "Everything?" Kinlafia asked hoarsely, and Janaki nodded.

  "Believe me, I'm not asking this lightly. I've read Company-Captain chan Tesh's reports. I've spoken to Company-Captain Halifu, and Voice Traygan. I know what happened out here, but I can't begin to imagine what it must have been like to live through it, and?"

  "No," Kinlafia agreed harshly. "You can't."

  "I know that. But if we're going to protect others," Janaki said very gently, "we have to understand these people."

  "What's to understand?" The demand was bitter, full of gritty rage, the pain feeding the white furnace of his hate. "They blew my crew to hell without a shred of mercy. They shot down Ghartoun chan Hagrahyl while he stood there with his hands empty, in plain sight. They attacked an unarmed man under a parley banner! They're butchers. You want to protect our people? Then send in a division or six and wipe 'these people' off the face of the earth. Off every frigging earth we find them on!"

  Janaki sipped air slowly. This man was even more bitter than he'd feared, and the prince wondered if he'd been wise after all to wait until after supper. Perhaps if he'd charged straight ahead earlier, before Kinlafia had had time to anticipate this moment?to finger through his dreadful memories and cut himself on their sharpnesses all over again?it might not have been so painful.

  But Janaki had wanted time to chew on the strange little flash of Glimpse he'd had earlier, and so he'd waited. He hadn't been able to refine what he'd Seen, but he was even more convinced that it had been a true Glimpse. That narrowed his own options considerably, and while the Voice had every right to be bitter, he had to be made to see the larger picture, as well. And not just because of the information he might provide.

  "Voice Kinlafia," he began again, "I understand?"

  "No, you don't!"

  "If you would be so good as to let me finish speaking before assuming you know what I'm about to say," Janaki said levelly, "we'd get through this agonizing conversation faster."

  The man seated on his camp stool glared at him, breathing hard for a long, dangerous moment. Then Kinlafia's shoulders slumped suddenly. He sat back with a weary sigh and pinched the bridge of his nose.

  "I'm sorry, Your Highness. That was … out of line."


  "Yes, it was," Janaki agreed calmly. "What I was going to say is that I understand that you've been through a very personal hell which no one else?certainly no one who isn't himself a Voice and can't experience it directly himself?will ever be able to fully comprehend. I recognize that, and I regret the necessity of dragging you back through it all over again. But you have to understand that you're going to have to go back over it again and again. Not just for me, but for all of the analysts waiting to debrief you, to try to get some feeling about, some handle on, just what in all the Arpathian hells we're really up against out here.

  "And what that means for you, is that somehow you've got to move forward. Not 'put it behind you.' Not 'let go of it.' I'm neither coldhearted nor arrogant enough to tell a grieving man something like that."

  Suspicious brilliance touched Kinlafia's eyes. Eyes which blinked rapidly while their owner looked briefly away.

  "But you do need to move forward," Janaki continued with that same gentle implacability, drawing Kinlafia's gaze back to him. "You have to decide what you're going to do about it. Not what the Army or the Corps is going to do. What you're going to do."

  "What can I do?" Kinlafia lifted his hands in a helpless, frustrated gesture. "Other than join the Army and shoot as many of the bastards as I can line up in my sights, that is?"

  Even to himself, that carried an edge of something that was almost … childish. Petulant, perhaps. Somehow, he felt vaguely ashamed to be sitting here in front of the heir to the throne of Sharona's most powerful and ancient nation whining about his own sense of helplessness. As if the entire multiverse revolved around or depended upon his personal exaction of vengeance for his dead.

  But even as that thought crossed his own mind, Janaki surprised him by smiling.

  "You'd be wasted in the Army, Kinlafia!"