Hell's Gate m-1

by David Weber

  "Yes. Meet at Fallen Timbers, honor brave Sharona." Then he gave the soldier a concerned look. "No bad anger, meet at Fallen Timbers?"

  "Will we be so angry we won't negotiate?" chan Tesh shrugged. "I can't say. I don't have the authority. Meeting there to honor our murdered civilians will help, but it won't be easy to set aside our anger. We didn't start this."

  Skirvon cocked his head and smiled gently.

  "Arcana no start," he said. "Who start? Two men dead, no man see. Who start?"

  chan Tesh blinked, then grimaced.

  "So that's your story? You didn't start it because no one saw who killed Falsan? I find that profoundly interesting."

  He gazed at Skirvon thoughtfully, but, to Skirvon's surprise, the uneducated rube didn't continue. He neither badgered Skirvon in an attempt to forcibly change his mind, nor pointed out?as they certainly could have?that it was Arcana who had run a party of civilians to ground and then slaughtered them. Skirvon kept smiling, gently, and revised?just a tad?his opinion of this particular provincial rube in uniform. At least the man was intelligent enough to leave that chore to the diplomats.

  "When meet?" Skirvon asked.

  "Stay here," chan Tesh replied. "We'll send a message. Wait here until the answer to that question comes back."

  Either chan Tesh didn't know where the nearest diplomat was, Skirvon reflected, which was an interesting piece of information. Or he didn't want to admit how far away he was, which would be another interesting piece of information.

  "We'll feed you while we wait," chan Tesh added stiffly. "We'll give you water and loan you blankets, if they're needed."

  If they were needed? Could these thought messages, which Skirvon still found almost impossible to credit, really travel that fast? Or was a diplomat that near? The lack of information was maddening, but at this stage in the negotiations, their best was all they could do.

  "We wait," Skirvon agreed.

  chan Tesh nodded sharply and turned on his heel as smartly as any Andaran aristocrat on a parade ground. That was interesting, as well. Out in the middle of the godsforsaken wilderness, this company-captain?the equivalent of a mere commander of one hundred, assuming Kelbryan's primer had gotten it correct?was as spit-and-polish formal as some self-important, blue-blooded Andaran.

  Either these people were as virulently militant as Andara itself, or else he was putting on a show for them, exaggerating his militancy for effect. Either answer would present its own possibilities, once Skirvon managed to figure out which one applied. It would, he realized with a slowly building emotion almost akin to relish, be a very interesting little exchange all around, wouldn't it?

  The possibilities, he thought, licking his mental chops, were boundless.

  Chapter Forty-Six

  Dorzon Baskay, Viscount Simrath, had dropped the "chan" from his name for his new role. It was possible that the Arcanan diplomats had discovered that the word indicated military service, and Platoon-Captain Simrath wasn't being a member of the military just now. After all, a diplomat as young as he was wouldn't have had time to become a military veteran, as well, so he couldn't be one, either, because right this minute he had to be a diplomat. A very convincing diplomat.

  He wasn't at all happy about that, but he didn't have much choice. Sharona didn't have a real diplomat within less than three months' travel, and no one was prepared to admit that to the other side. They'd already delayed for the better part of two days while Company-Captain chan Tesh had conferred by Voice with Regiment-Captain Velvelig, but chan Tesh and Velvelig had both been aware that the possibility offered by the Arcanan contact might well be fleeting. If it wasn't seized now, it could slip away and never be offered again. Neither of them wanted to lose any possibility of avoiding an all-out war, and so Velvelig had finally made the decision which had led to chan Baskay's present unhappiness.

  "We don't have an official diplomat, and we don't have time to get one," chan Tesh had told chan Baskay bluntly. "I don't have any idea whether or not these people are sincere. Even if they are, they've made it fairly clear that they're at the end of a long?and slow?communications chain. So whatever they may want doesn't necessarily mean a damned thing about their superiors' or their government's ultimate intentions. But I agree with Regiment-Captain Velvelig that we can't afford to let this possibility slip away if they are sincere. That means we don't have time to sit around, literally for months, with our thumbs up our arses while we wait for a 'real' diplomat?from whatever government we finally wind up with?to get all the way out here to Hell's Gate. Which brings us to you, Platoon-Captain."

  chan Baskay had nodded, although he hadn't cared at all for where chan Tesh was obviously headed. chan Baskay was no diplomat; he was a cavalry captain, even if he had been born into the aristocracy, and a cavalry officer was all he'd ever wanted to the. He might be the son of an earl, with a lineage of political service to the Ternathian Empire that could have stretched from Hell's Gate clear back to Estafel, but he'd never wanted that part of the family tradition.

  He'd hoped that he'd managed to dodge it when he'd been assigned to the PAAF. Unfortunately, it appeared his bloodline had caught up with him after all.

  "According to your personnel file," chan Tesh had continued, "you've served in the House of Lords. Is that right?"

  "Not exactly, Sir," chan Baskay had replied. "My father holds a seat in the Lords. As his eldest son, I've deputized for him on a few occasions, mostly while I was still at the Academy." He'd smiled a bit tartly. "Frankly, I think it was his way of trying to convince me to change my mind and go into the Foreign Service instead of the Army. It didn't work."

  "I see." chan Tesh had sat back in his camp chair, considering the young cavalry officer for several seconds. He'd wondered why the platoon-captain went by "chan Baskay" instead of the "Viscount Simrath" to which he was certainly entitled.

  "I suppose it's ironic?at least?that I should wind up talking to you about this, if you never wanted Foreign Service in the first place," he'd said then. "At the same time, I hope you can understand why I'm glad to have someone with your background available. Frankly, Platoon-Captain, there's no one else out here with any background in diplomacy or high-level politics. I suppose the ideal person for this would have been Crown Prince Janaki, but just between you and me, I'm delighted that he's no longer available."

  "You won't get any argument for me about that point, Sir," chan Baskay had said fervently. The mere thought of having the heir to the throne hanging out here at this particular moment had been enough to make the platoon-captain shudder.

  "But with him gone, you're our next best choice," the company-captain had pointed out. "On the other hand, I don't suppose this is something we can simply order someone to do."

  chan Tesh had paused, looking at him with a waiting expression, and chan Baskay had heaved a deep and mournful mental sigh. He would vastly have preferred to be able to decline, but that was impossible, of course. For a lot of reasons?not least that endless lineage of service to the Winged Crown. A Ternathian noble simply did not refuse when duty called. Not if he ever wanted to face the scrutiny of his revoltingly dutiful ancestors. Or, chan Baskay had conceded, his own conscience.

  And at least if he had to do this, he had the proper background for it. chan Tesh was right about that, too. He'd imbibed a basic understanding of political realities almost with his mother's milk, whether he'd wanted to or not. And he'd also had those dozens of generations of blue-blooded ancestors?not to mention his observations of several hundred currently carnate fellow aristocrats?upon which to draw for role models. He'd been reasonably confident he could act the part.

  What he hadn't been confident of was whether or not he could do the job. He'd been crushingly aware of the responsibility looming before him, and it had terrified him. This wasn't a job for someone pretending to be a seasoned diplomat?it was a job for the most experienced diplomat Sharona had ever boasted. And what Sharona actually had was … him.

  "It's all right, S
ir," he'd finally sighed. "I understand, and I'll give it my best shot. How exactly do you and Regiment-Captain Velvelig want me to handle it?"

  Which was how he came to find himself riding steadily through the breezy woods under a dancing drift of blowing red and gold leaves towards his first meeting with the representatives of another trans-universal civilization.

  A civilization, he reminded himself, with which we're effectively at war, at the moment. Vothon, please don't let me screw this up!

  At least he'd had two genuine strokes of luck. The first was his baby sister's idiocy. Charazan Baskay was enrolled in one of those ghastly finishing schools that specialized in turning young ladies' brains into mush, and it appeared to be working just fine, in her case. She'd decided, on the basis of logic so … unique that chan Baskay hadn't even tried to follow it, that it would be a good idea to send him a dress suit and cloak to wear at "cotillions and military balls." Exactly where she'd expected him to find either of those out here on the bleeding edge of the frontier eluded him, and he'd rolled his eyes heavenward and stuffed the ludicrous outfit into the bottom of a trunk the day it arrived. He'd intended for it to languish there until the day he finally returned to Sharona, and he certainly hadn't realized that his batman had packed the contents of that trunk into his duffel bags when he'd been ordered forward with the rest of Company-Captain chan Tesh's column.

  But there it was, and he was inclined to see the hand of fate in his batman's apparent lapse into lunacy. Thanks to that, and Charazan, he actually had the proper civilian attire to pull off this charade. He'd blessed his harebrained baby sister fervently when he realized that he did.

  The second stroke of good fortune was the presence of Under-Captain Trekar chan Rothag. The dark-haired and dark-eyed chan Rothag was a Narhathan who'd grown up almost in the shadow of the Fist of Bolakin. Where chan Baskay had the fair hair and gray eyes so common among the Ternathian nobility, chan Rothag's hair was so dark a brown it was almost black, and his swarthy complexion and powerful nose could almost as well have been Shurkhali. Unlike chan Baskay, chan Rothag had no connection whatsoever to either the aristocracy or the Foreign Service. What he did have was a Talent which police agencies and military intelligence organizations had always found extraordinarily useful.

  chan Rothag was a Sifter. He couldn't read minds, wasn't actually a telepath at all. But he knew, instantly and infallibly, when someone lied. He couldn't magically?chan Baskay shuddered at his own choice of adverb, under the circumstances?divine the truth they were lying to conceal or distort, but knowing they'd lied at all was almost as useful. Most commanders above the platoon level in any Sharonian army tried to get at least one Sifter assigned to them. More often than not, they failed; Sifters were too useful for senior officers to be willing to turn the limited supply of them loose. Balkar chan Tesh, however, had what amounted almost to a Talent for scrounging the personnel he wanted, which was how chan Rothag had ended up attached to his column.

  chan Rothag had also spent several days in company with their Arcanan prisoners before Crown Prince Janaki carted them off. As a trained interrogator, he'd found his complete inability to communicate with them frustrating, and chan Baskay knew that chan Tesh had been tempted to send chan Rothag along with Janaki. But the company-captain had decided not to in the end, because there'd been plenty of equally well-trained interrogators further up the chain, while chan Rothag had been the only interrogator at this end of it. Under the circumstances, chan Baskay had decided to regard chan Rothag's continued presence, like that of Charazan's gift, as another example of the hand of fate in action.

  "Well," he said now, his voice low pitched as the tangle of fallen and broken trees where the Chalgyn Consortium survey crew had died came into sight, "here we go."

  "Be brave, Viscount," chan Rothag replied with a slight smile, using the title by which every member of their party now addressed chan Baskay. "You'll do just fine."

  "Easy for you to say," chan Baskay growled back.

  "Just play the part, Viscount, and remember our signals." chan Rothag sounded revoltingly calm, chan Baskay thought. Which might be because, unlike chan Baskay, he was about to spend the next several hours basically saying nothing at all. They had no proof at this time that the Arcanan's command of Ternathian was as limited as it appeared to be. If they were concealing a greater fluency, then trained diplomats might well be able to recognize that chan Rothag had about as much diplomatic expertise as a pig on roller skates. chan Baskay had done his best to get some of the rudiments, at least, through to the under-captain, then given up in despair.

  "Just keep your mouth shut," he'd advised finally. "We'll work out some sort of signal system so you can tell me whether or not they're lying. And at least we both speak Farnalian. We'll use that, if we have to talk to each other without?hopefully!?the other side understanding us. And … hm …"

  He'd regarded chan Rothag thoughtfully.

  "I think you've just become Shurkalian," he'd said finally. The Narhathan had raised one eyebrow, and chan Baskay had shrugged. "If we can convince them you're related to Shaylar, then we'll have an excuse for you to break in?as emotionally as possible, in Farnalian, of course?if we twang something sensitive and you need to warn me about it. Right?"

  "Right," chan Rothag had agreed, not even trying to hide his relief at being denied a speaking part. Which was what made his current breezy confidence particularly irritating. On the other hand, it was also the best advice chan Baskay was likely to get, and he let his mind run back over the cover story one last time, like an actor settling his stage character comfortably into place.

  According to what chan Tesh had told the senior Arcanan diplomat, Viscount Simrath was a middle-ranked Ternathian diplomat, who'd been visiting his sister in the last (carefully unnamed) civilian city in this transit chain (also carefully unnamed), to which she'd emigrated after her marriage. When the Chalgyn crew had been slaughtered, the viscount had sent a Voice message back to Sharona, asking the Emperor if he should try to reach the contact universe. On the Emperor's subsequent orders, he'd set out immediately, reaching Company-Captain Halifu's fort?now formally named Fort Shaylar?almost simultaneously with the Arcanan message requesting a truce and negotiations for a genuine cease-fire.

  chan Baskay would have felt much better if the Emperor truly had authorized his mission?and this ruse?but there hadn't been time for any message to reach Sharona and come back down the chain. As a result, he didn't even have an official set of conditions acceptable to the Emperor or the Portal Authority. He hoped chan Tesh and Velvelig were right?that approval would definitely be forthcoming. In fact, he was almost certain they were right, but part of his job was going to be to keep talking until somebody in authority sent him a real set of terms.

  They reached the agreed upon conference site, and chan Baskay felt his jaw muscles tighten. It wasn't the first time he'd seen the lingering burn marks and other scars left by the brief, vicious battle, and a familiar hatred kicked him in the gut. He kicked it right back.

  Your job is to put together a negotiated cease-fire and stop something like this from ever happening again, he told himself. Besides, you just got here after traveling down-chain. You've never seen it before, and you're a frigging diplomat, not a soldier. Act like one?they're watching you.

  He did allow his face to harden slightly as he surveyed those telltale signs, then glanced at the waiting Arcanan contingent with exactly the right edge of aristocratic hauteur. They were, indeed, watching him closely, he noticed, and wondered if they'd deliberately insisted on meeting at this spot to push Sharona's diplomats into a state of rage.

  On the face of it, the idea was silly. Why ask for talks at all, if they only meant to sabotage them by enraging the other side? On the other hand, they might have done it in hopes of keeping the Sharonians sufficiently distracted by anger and hatred to give them an edge in the talks. To win extra points for themselves because the Sharonians were too busy being furious to notice that they were
giving up important concessions.

  It sounded paranoid, even to him, he realized. It sounded devious. It even sounded insane, perhaps.

  But it felt accurate.

  The Arcanan negotiating party had arrived early. As stipulated by the initial agreement, the two men in civilian clothing?who had to be the Arcanan diplomats, Skirvon and Dastiri?were escorted by no more than twenty-five of their own soldiers. Company-Captain chan Tesh had accompanied them?ostensibly as a mark of respect; actually to make sure they didn't get up to anything of which Sharona would have disapproved?along with Petty-Captain Arthag and the Arpathian officer's cavalry platoon. When the twenty men of "Viscount Simrath's escort were included, that gave Sharona a manpower advantage of over two-to-one, and none of those troopers were taking any chances.

  My, chan Baskay thought mordantly as he watched the various military contingents not quite fingering their weapons as they glared at one another, isn't this a soothing atmosphere, well suited to the dispassionate negotiation of an inter-universal cease-fire?

  Petty-Captain Arthag "honor guard" acknowledged the arrival of Viscount Simrath's party, and Company-Captain chan Tesh gravely and respectfully saluted one of his more junior platoon commanders.

  "Viscount," the company-captain said formally. "Welcome to Fallen Timbers."

  "Thank you, Company-Captain," chan Baskay replied with a pleasant, if somewhat distant, smile. Then he allowed the smile to fade. "I could wish that none of us had to be here," he continued, deliberately pitching his voice loudly enough for the Arcanan diplomats to hear. "I've Seen the reports, of course, including Shaylar's message." He shook his head, allowing his expression to turn a bit bleaker. "The personal messages I've received from home are as furious as anything I've ever heard before, and the official correspondence isn't much better."