Hell's Gate

Chapter Four

They found the footprints first, naturally.

"Whoever it was," Gaythar Harklan said, pointing toward the far bank, "they came down that into the water."

Jasak studied the steep slope opposite them, and his eyes narrowed speculatively. The other bank was steeper, rising a good ten or eleven feet above Osmuna's body. Had the killer entered the water before he attacked? Or to investigate the body after the killing was done? Or, the hundred's eyes hardened, to make certain his victim was dead?

Nothing offered any answers, just as nothing he saw could explain the sharp cracking sound which had split the morning apart.

"What's up there?" he asked Osmuna's squad shield.

"Nothing much, Sir. Looks like he'd been following the stream bank when he spotted Osmuna."

"Show me."

"Yes, Sir."

Harklan started back across the stream, with Jasak wading alongside. Threbuch followed the hundred, and Garlath tagged sullenly along behind.

"Here's where he slid down the bank, Sir," Harklan said. "See the gouges and footmarks?"

Jasak saw them clearly. Whoever had come down that bank had been clumsy as hell doing it. No Andaran Scout worth the uniform on his back would have left a trail like that to follow. In fact, Jasak couldn't think of anyone who would have.

He very carefully didn't glance at Fifty Garlath for his reaction. Instead, he stooped closer to the mud, peering intently.

"Send a couple of men both directions along this creek, Fifty Garlath. Tell them to look for a blood trail."

"Blood trail?" Chief Sword Threbuch muttered to himself. He peered more closely at the same marks, then grunted.

"By damn, Sir, you're right. Osmuna nailed the bastard. I didn't even think to check his arbalest to see if he'd fired it," the chief sword admitted in a chagrined tone.

"We're all a little rattled," Jasak answered, his voice dry as brittle weeds. "What I can't tell from this is how badly Osmuna nailed him."

There were only a few drops of blood splashed into the mud, but whoever had slithered down this bank had been wounded when he did it.

"Search this whole area," he told Garlath. "I want every inch of this ground run through a sieve, if necessary. Get me some gods-cursed facts to look at here!"

Garlath nodded sharply and turned to spit orders with a brisk efficiency that Jasak tried?hard?to give him credit for, since they were actually the right orders for a change. Search teams spread out, looking for a trail to follow and whatever else might be out there waiting to be discovered.

"Fifty Garlath!" someone called only moments later. "I've got something, Sir. I just don't know what it is."

Jasak followed Garlath to the top of the bank. Evarl Harnak, the platoon sword, was crouched down in a tangle of weeds almost directly above Osmuna's body.

"Look here, Sir," he said. "Here's a set of footprints. You can see where he must've been standing when Osmuna came along."

The noncom pointed to a distinct pair of footprints in the soft earth. Unlike the prints on the slope, these were undistorted and crisp, and Jasak studied them closely.

The feet which had made them had been wearing boots, he realized. Not soft-soled ones, either. They showed deeply ridged treads, the sort of treads found in the footgear of soldiers, or civilian outdoor enthusiasts. A design had been worked into the tread, he noticed uneasily. The kind of design an Arcanan bootmaker would use as a maker's mark, cut into the thick leather of the sole. If that footprint hadn't been left by a manufactured boot, Sir Jasak Olderhan would eat the ones on his own feet.

The realization chilled him even further. Osmuna's killer was no primitive half-wild savage. He was wealthy and sophisticated enough to wear manufactured boots and wield weapons of frightening, unknown power.

"You said you'd found something you couldn't understand?"

"Yes, Hundred." Harnak nodded and pointed into the clump of weeds. "The sunlight caught it as I was bending down to look at the footprints. It's metal, Sir. But I'm hanged if I can figure out what it is."

Jasak crouched for a closer look of his own.

It was a metal cylinder, closed on one end, open on the other. There was a small, distinct ridge or lip formed into the metal around the closed end, as if to form a base, and there were faint marks on the metal. Striations that were discolored. It smelled sharp, sulfurous, a deeply unsettling smell.

Jasak measured the distance between the footprint and cylinder with his eyes. Four and a half feet, give or take. It hadn't been dropped, he realized. It had been thrown into the weeds. Deliberately? Or had the man hurled it away accidentally, in reflex perhaps, when Osmuna's quarrel struck flesh? It didn't look like a weapon, or even a part of one. And it was certainly far too small to hold anything big enough to punch a hole that big through solid flesh. Unless?

Jasak frowned in fresh speculation. The hole in Osmuna's back was enormous, yes. But the hole in his chest was small. Very small. Just about the diameter of that cylinder, in fact.

"He used this to kill Osmuna."

"How?"

Jasak hadn't realized he'd spoken aloud until the chief sword's one-word question told him he had. Threbuch didn't sound incredulous?quite. But he did sound … perplexed, and Jasak scowled up at the grizzled noncom.

"Beats hell out of me, Otwal. But look." He fished the thing gingerly out of the weeds, picking it up by inserting a small twig into the open end. "It's the same diameter as the hole in Osmuna's chest."

"That couldn't possibly have gone through Osmuna." Fifty Garlath's tone was scathing enough to cross the line into open insolence. "There's no blood on it, and the angles are wrong, and it landed in the wrong place. If that thing had gone through Osmuna, it would've landed on the other side of the creek, not up here."

"I didn't say this had gone through the poor bastard," Jasak snapped, gripping his temper in both hands.

"Maybe whatever was in it went through him? Chief Sword Threbuch mused, and Jasak tilted the cylinder so that sunlight fell into it as he peered inside.

"If there was anything in here, there's barely a trace of it left." He sniffed again. "Something smells … burnt?"

He reached into the open neck with one fingertip and felt some kind of residue inside. The chief sword twitched violently, as though he'd just suppressed a need to jerk Jasak's hand away, and the hundred managed to summon a wry smile.

"I think it's fairly safe to say Osmuna wasn't poisoned," he said.

"And you're sure of that because??" Threbuch growled.

"Point taken. So I won't lick my finger, all right?"

"Sir!" Threbuch's eyes widened. "Look at your finger."

Jasak glanced down, startled, and discovered a black smudge on his fingertip.

"That's carbon," he said wonderingly. "It's like ordinary lampblack."

"But?" Garlath began, then clicked his teeth on whatever he'd been about to say.

"Go on, Fifty," Jasak said quietly.

"It doesn't make sense, Sir. Osmuna wasn't burned, any more than he was poisoned!"

"No," Jasak agreed thoughtfully. "No, he wasn't. But something was burned inside this thing, burned so completely that all that's left is a film of lampblack. And the end of this cylinder is the same size as Osmuna's wound. So there's a connection somewhere, even if we can't see it."

"An incendiary spell-thrower, Sir?" Gaythar Harklan asked nervously, and Jasak glanced at him.

"I'm not ruling anything out at this point, Shield," he said. "How close were you to Osmuna when he died?"

"About thirty yards away, Sir. Maybe forty." The trooper pointed to the other stream bank, where Gadrial sat on a boulder in the sun, waiting with commendable calm for a civilian plunged into the middle of a military emergency an entire universe away from the nearest help. "I was behind all that mess of underbrush. Shartahk's own work getting through it, too, Sir."

"And how loud was that cracking sound we all heard?"

"Damned loud, Sir. Hurt my ears, and that's no lie."

"It was loud enough where we were that I can well believe it," Jasak said, nodding absently.

He stood frowning at the enigma perched on the palm of his hand. Harklan was certainly right about how obstructive the underbrush was. The noncom's own nervousness?not to mention his military training's insistence on advancing cautiously in the face of the unknown?undoubtedly meant it had taken him even longer to get through it. Which, unfortunately, had given Osmuna's murderer a priceless gift of time in which to make his own escape.

He realized that his frown at the bland metal cylinder had become a glower, instead, and felt a burning frustration that he couldn't make any of the puzzle pieces fit together.

But whether he could do that or not, they still had a wounded killer to track.

"He went into the water," Jasak said. "After he threw this into the weeds. Was he just trying to rinse his wound, or was he trying to accomplish something else? Was anything of Osmuna's missing?"

He glanced at Evarl Harnak, who gave him a hangdog look of sudden guilt.

"I don't know, Sir," he admitted. "We, uh, didn't look."

"Then look now, curse you!" Garlath snapped so viciously Harnak paled.

"Yes, Sir!"

The platoon sword threw a sharp salute and scrambled down the bank, and Jasak bit back an acid comment. Harnak should have checked Osmuna's gear immediately; he and Garlath actually shared that opinion. But the men were already shaken, as it was. Snarling at them would only make them more nervous?and mistake-prone?than ever.

Garlath caught Jasak's tightlipped disapproval and glared back defiantly, as though daring Jasak to reprimand him for ordering a trooper to repair his dereliction of duty. But the hundred couldn't do that, of course, however severely tempted he might be. If he reprimanded Garlath, even in private, it would only add weight to any charge of personal prejudice against Garlath the fifty might make.

In that moment, Jasak realized just how much he truly hated Shevan Garlath. Any man who abused shaken troops in the middle of a crisis?let alone a crisis bigger than anything the Union of Arcana had weathered since its founding?was a man who deserved to be cashiered. Preferably with his head stuffed up his nether parts.

Jasak wanted, more than he'd ever wanted anything in his life, to do that stuffing. The fact that he couldn't only fanned his cold fury, and his voice was an icy whiplash when he spoke.

"I want that killer's trail found and followed, Fifty. Send First Squad west, with one section on this side of the creek, and the other section on the far bank. Have them look for a place our man might've crawled out of the streambed. We know he's been hit, but we don't know how seriously, or which way he went. It'd be rough going for a wounded man to wade very far through all those boulders, though, so send them, say, half a mile.

"If we haven't found any trace of him by then, chances are he headed back east again. His footprints certainly appear to have come from that direction. So, in the meanwhile, send Third Squad east, looking for the same thing."

"And you, Sir?" Garlath bit out.

Jasak held the older man's eyes coolly, staring down the hostility in them. Hostility and a dark flare of pure hatred. Both of them knew precisely how badly Jasak wanted to be rid of Shevan Garlath, yet both of them also knew they were stuck with one another?at least for the duration of this crisis?and Jasak's reply would have frozen a lump of lava.

"Chief Sword Threbuch and I will backtrack the only solid evidence the bastard left behind. That trail." He pointed toward the faint line of footprints along the stream bank, prints that disappeared into the tangle of undergrowth. "Give me a couple of point men?preferably a fire team that's trained together."

He needed someone to watch out for Gadrial, and neither he nor Threbuch could devote the proper attention to that job. Not while tracking a murderer through this terrain. But they couldn't leave her behind, either. The multiple Mythalan hells would freeze solid before Jasak Olderhan entrusted Magister Gadrial Kelbryan's safety to the likes of Shevan Garlath.

"Yes, Sir!" Garlath made the snappy precision of his salute an insult in itself. Then he spun away and started snarling orders.

"Begging your pardon, Sir," Threbuch muttered, "but whoever this bastard is, he would have done us a grand favor if he'd killed that asshole instead of poor Osmuna."

Jasak didn't respond. The chief sword was way too far out of line for a noncom of his seniority, and he knew it. Worse, though, he obviously didn't care. And, worse still, Jasak couldn't blame him. So he simply ignored the remark entirely and gave the order no commanding officer liked to give.

"Chief Sword, please see to it that someone collects Osmuna's personal effects. We'll have to forward them to his widow. Then find Kurthal. He's the best draftsman we have. Have him render a sketch of those wounds, front and back, to proper scale."

Threbuch nodded, and Jasak drew a shallow breath.

"When he's done," he said, his voice flat as the ice on Monarch Lake, "prepare Osmuna's body for field rites. We can't just leave him, and we can't spare anyone to take him back to camp."

"Yes, Sir."

The older man's expression told Jasak he was about as happy with those orders as Jasak was. Nobody enjoyed that particular duty, least of all Threbuch, who'd conducted field rites over the years for more troopers than any man cared to recall. Jasak's father had very nearly been one of those troopers, and something in the chief sword's eyes said he was determined to make certain Jasak didn't become one, either.

While Threbuch went to deal with that unpleasant chore, Jasak glanced across the stream to where Gadrial sat, unobtrusively watched over by troopers who stood a yard or so above her with loaded arbalests, their gazes roaming ceaselessly for possible danger. She was watching Jasak. Even at this distance he could practically see her blazing curiosity over what they'd found. Not out of any ghoulishness, but because she was worried. More than worried, however splendidly she was concealing the fear he knew she must be feeling.

There was no point keeping her in suspense, and he motioned for her to join him.

Gadrial rose from her perch on the boulder, waded carefully across the swiftly moving stream, and climbed the far bank to join Jasak. She carefully kept her face calm, her manner composed, but she feared her eyes would betray her inner agitation. She wasn't afraid, precisely, but she was gripped by a strong emotion she couldn't readily identify. She was unsure whether to call it anxiety, worry, nervous jitters, or healthy caution, but whatever it was, she was determined to remain in control of it.

She dug her boots into the soft earth of the stream bank, resisting the temptation to rub her posterior, which hadn't enjoyed its stony resting place. It was a steep scramble, but she finally reached the top, where Sir Jasak Olderhan stood watching her through hooded eyes.

Military secrets, she thought, and sighed mentally. He would tell her only what he thought she needed to know. Which wouldn't be much. That was going to be frustrating enough, but the slight chill in his manner distressed her almost more, since she knew its probable source.

She hadn't looked at Osmuna as she waded the stream.

Sir Jasak didn't understand that, she was sure. Mired in his rigid Andaran codes of behavior, he probably thought she was being callous, possibly even coldhearted. He'd expected her to stare, perhaps blink on tears and bite her lip in an emotional display, because she wasn't Andaran, and therefore didn't share an Andaran woman's set of responses to such situations. He'd expected her to display curiosity, at the least, particularly since his men hadn't let her get close enough to see the wounds that had killed the poor man.

She had yet to meet any Andaran male who'd bothered to learn the attitudes held by other cultures' women on much of anything, let alone something as rigidly prescribed as the Andarans' views on death and the proper responses to it. Gadrial, on the other hand, wasn't particularly interested in learning the proper responses to death, because she held a profound respect for the sanctity of life, and murder violated that sanctity unforgivably.

Staring at a murdered person's remains was deeply disrespectful to the soul which had inhabited those remains. Worse, that soul was usually still there, confused by the sudden, brutal shift in its state and unwilling to move on until the shock had worn off. But more importantly even than that, her main concern?as always?was for the living, not the dead. There was nothing she could do to help Osmuna's brutalized soul, whereas there were a number of thing she could do to help Sir Jasak Olderhan and his soldiers. If Hundred Olderhan allowed her to help. Being a stiffnecked Andaran noble, he was far more likely to order her wrapped up in cotton gauze and protected like a child.

She bit back a sigh and scrambled up the last two feet of the bank to level ground. She found herself more upset than she'd expected to be by Jasak's cool manner. It disturbed her that she wanted so deeply for him to understand, even if none of the others did. But there was nothing she could do about that, so she simply drew a deep breath and looked up a long way to meet his hooded eyes.

"Did you find anything?" she asked quietly.

"Nothing but more mysteries," he admitted. "That, and a trail to follow. More precisely, to backtrack. We're still looking for traces of where he went after he splashed into the stream."

"At least we've got something to follow," she said with a wan smile that lightened a little of the grim chill in his brown eyes. He studied her for a silent moment, then seemed to come to a decision.

"Ever see anything like this?"

He held a small metal cylinder on the palm of his hand. Gadrial peered closely without touching it, then frowned as she realized what she was seeing.

"Somebody burned something inside that," she said, and he nodded, one eyebrow flicking slightly upward.

"Yes, they did," he agreed.

"What?"

"I was hoping you might be able to tell me that."

The morning air felt suddenly colder. He didn't know what had killed Osmuna. He had no more idea than she did, and she stared at the object on his hand.

"It's so simple there's nothing you could use as a clue, trying to figure out what it does," she said. "Of course," she frowned, "someone who'd never seen a personal crystal might wonder what it was for, let alone how to retrieve any notes stored in it."

"Why do you say that?"

She looked up, a bit startled by the sharp edge in his voice and the sudden intensity of his eyes.

"What?"

"What in particular made you think about someone who'd never seen a PC before?" he amplified, and she pursed her lips.

"Well," she said, "the men under your command are scared. I mean, really scared. There's something wrong?terribly wrong?about Osmuna's death. None of you seem to know what caused the poor man to die, and now you're showing someone who isn't even a soldier an unknown device found near the dead man. That suggests to me that you have no idea who killed Osmuna, no idea how. And that means … "

Her voice trailed off as the full import of her own subconscious insight came sputtering up to the surface.

"That means somebody who isn't Arcanan did the killing," she said finally, slowly, and realized she was rubbing her arms in an effort to persuade the fine hairs to lie back down. She wanted desperately to stare into the woodline, and kept her gaze on Sir Jasak's face instead through sheer willpower.

"I'm right, aren't I? Otherwise, you wouldn't have asked me if I'd seen something like that."

He drew breath, visibly stepped back from whatever white lie he'd been about to utter, and nodded.

"Right on all counts," he said simply, and she shivered.

"You're sure it isn't a spell accumulator of some kind, Magister?" Chief Sword Threbuch asked. The question startled her, since she'd been concentrating too hard on what Sir Jasak was saying to realize the noncom had returned behind her.

And that's not the only reason it 'startled' you, either, is it? she told herself tartly. There was something unnerving about having a grizzled combat veteran old enough to be her grandfather ask her such a question. Especially, in a voice filled with such flagging hope. She wished she didn't have to, but she shook her head.

"No, Chief Sword," she said almost gently, hating to kill even that tiny hope. "It isn't an accumulator. At least, it's nothing like any accumulator I've ever heard of, and I've had plenty of exposure to odd bits and pieces of experimental equipment. It doesn't seem to contain any sarkolis at all, so I don't see any way it could have been charged in the first place. And there isn't even the faintest whiff of magical energy clinging to it. Not even a faint residue. It's not connected to anything arcane."

When she glanced at Jasak again, she found a curious blend of relief and unhappiness in his eyes.

"Well," he muttered, "at least you didn't identify it as some sort of super weapon cooked up by a theoretical magician."

She couldn't stop the glance she cast at Osmuna, sprawled so obscenely below their vantage point.

"You're afraid it's a super weapon?"

"I don't know what the hell it is," he admitted with a frankness which astonished her.

"Then you really don't know what killed him?" she said, and Jasak's mouth went hard as marble.

"We know exactly what killed him." His voice was as hard and flat as his expression. "Something was driven through his body, straight through the heart."

"But you don't know what went through him?"

"No."

Gadrial peered at the innocuous metal cylinder again, then sighed.

"I'm sorry, Sir Jasak, but I haven't the faintest idea what that thing might be." She met his gaze once more. "And you have no idea how much I wish I could help you with this."

His response surprised her.

"If anything crops up that you can help with, be sure I'll call on you. We're a long way from home. A long way from the nearest help. Before this business is done, we may need the Gifts of every Gifted person we have. Meanwhile, stay close to the Chief Sword and me, but stay behind us."

She started to speak, but he held up one hand and surprised her again.

"That isn't Andaran chivalry," he added, his eyes glinting briefly with what might almost have been an odd little flash of humor. "It's my duty to see that any civilian is as safe as possible during a military emergency. That goes double for a magister with a Gift strong enough for Magister Halathyn to handpick her to head his theoretical research department."

His eyes dared her to protest that assessment, when both of them knew his standing orders contained no such official statement. Besides, Gadrial wasn't a civilian?not precisely, since she was officially on the payroll of the UTTTA and currently on sabbatical from her Academy position to serve as a research liaison to the Second Andaran Scouts.

But she wasn't about to take that particular gryphon bait, much less run with it. She was no adolescent, and the agony she'd endured at the Mythal Academy had taught her which battles were worth fighting, so she conceded the point.

"I appreciate your position, Hundred Olderhan."

The relief in his eyes told her he'd expected her to protest. She was, after all, Ransaran, with notions most Andarans regarded as rife with anarchy and social chaos. Gadrial didn't know whether to be irritated or amused. Then his eyes darkened, and she was suddenly gazing at another person, a grim stranger with skulls reflected in his suddenly frightening gaze.

"We're trying to find a wounded killer, Magister Kelbryan," he said softly, his near whisper far more chilling than another man's ranting. "This isn't going to be a simple hike through the woods. We're hunting the most dangerous quarry any human can hunt, and the only thing we have to track him by is the trail he left walking to this spot. I don't mean to give offense, but you're not an experienced tracker. You could damage a faint spoor without even realizing it."

"No offense taken. I'm a good outdoorswoman, but I'm no soldier, and I won't pretend to possess skills I don't."

"I appreciate your honesty. We're going to be moving fast. Very fast. You're not combat trained, Magister?"

"Gadrial," she interrupted, and one of his eyebrows quirked. The light in his eyes changed, the balefires flickering and dimming as surprise misted through the flame.

"I beg your pardon?"

"My name is Gadrial. If were going to face death together, I'd just as soon do it on a first-name basis. Death is a little personal, don't you think? Much too intimate to face with a stiff formality between us. If I were soldier, it would be one thing. But I'm not. Frankly, I'll feel better if you stop being so aristocratically formal and just talk to me."

He blinked. Actually blinked, started to speak, and paused. He blew out his breath, and then a tiny smile crooked one corner of his mouth.

"You have a point. Several points, all of them valid." The smile flickered larger for a moment. "In fact, you rather remind me of someone else. All right." He nodded. "Where was I?"

"You were telling me I'm not combat trained," she said in a dry voice which surprised another tiny smile from him. Then he regained his equilibrium.

"Yes. Well, the point I was going to make is that we'll be moving fast, trying to catch up. You may find it difficult to keep up the pace," he said, not formally, but certainly diplomatically, and she grinned.

"Is that all that's worrying you? My dossier must not have mentioned that I run competitively. Distance running. I may not match your speed," she added with a droll glance at all those muscles in a body that was certainly easy on the eyes, "but I've got endurance, and that's what we'll need most, isn't it?"

Jasak was beginning to think this delightful woman was just this side of perfection. But before he could decide how to respond, she continued.

"There's something else you need to know about me. You know I have a very strong primary Gift, but I have two or three minor arcanas, as well. One of those may be useful before this business is done."

"Oh?"

Gadrial tilted her head, studying him for a moment before answering. His tone sounded hopeful, rather than challenging or dismissive. Sir Jasak Olderhan might be a blue-blooded Andaran noble to his bootsoles?he was, after all, destined to become the next Duke of Garth Showma, Earl of Yar Khom, Baron Tharkala, and at least another half-dozen equally improbable titles?but that didn't seem to have atrophied any of his brain cells.

"I would be grateful for anything you can contribute, he said very quietly.

"Thank you. I'll be glad to help however I can. And among other things, I possess a minor Gift for healing. I'm no miracle worker, mind. Not even remotely in the same class as a school-trained magistron, or even an army surgeon with a fair dollop of Gift. But I can heal relatively minor wounds all day long, if necessary. And if a man's injured critically, I might be able to save his life. At the very least, I could probably stabilize him until a real healer can take over and do a proper job of tissue renewal."

"Magister Kelbryan?Gadrial," he said softly, "you have no idea how glad I am to hear that."

The glorious sunlight faded to a pale blur, and the sounds of birdcalls, wind in the treetops, and the bubbling wash of water below their feet all vanished from her awareness when the depth of worry behind those quiet words hit home. He was expecting trouble. Big trouble. Injuries worse than his platoon medics could handle. His surgeon was with Fifty Therman Ulthar, a universe away and seven hundred miles from the swamp portal. No one had expected to run into anything like this, and she glanced down at her hands, which could heal minor things. Sprains and contusions, broken toes or fingers. Those lay within her capabilities, and she hoped with sudden desperation that she wouldn't be called upon to handle more than that.

For the first time since their departure from the swamp portal, Gadrial Kelbryan was truly afraid.