Hell's Gate

Chapter Six

"That's not a campsite, Sir. It's the next best thing to a godsdamned fortress," Chief Sword Threbuch breathed in Sir Jasak Olderhan's ear, and Jasak nodded grimly. It was an exageration … but not much of one.

They'd found no trace of where their quarry had gone after murdering Osmuna, which told Jasak that he'd turned back in the direction from which he'd come, keeping to the stream to throw off the scent. It also meant the only clue they had to follow was the trail he'd left on his way to the site of the murder.

So they'd backtracked him. It hadn't been especially difficult; whoever he was, he hadn't bothered to cover his tracks when walking towards his murderous rendezvous with Osmuna, so the trail itself was easy to pick up. On the other hand, that trail had wound its way through the underbrush along the stream like something a snake with epilepsy might have left behind, and after what had happened to Osmuna, Fifty Garlath's men moved with a certain understandable caution.

Jasak told himself the killer couldn't be very far in front of them now. Not when he was wounded and struggling through the boulder-strewn stream. Jasak had halfway expected to overtake the bastard somewhere along the creek, but they'd found no trace of him. And he had to admit that they'd taken at least two or three times longer than they ought to have to get their pursuit organized in the first place. He knew he could legitimately blame most of that delay on Garlath's inefficiency, but innate honesty forced him to admit that he'd been more than a little slow off the mark himself.

In fairness to himself?and Garlath?the sheer, stunning impossibility of what had already happened would have thrown anyone off stride. And despite the importance of finding the killer and anyone else who might be with him, Jasak knew he'd been right to take the time to try to learn everything he could before setting out in pursuit.

However little "everything" turned out to be in the end, he thought glumly, lying belly-down beside Threbuch with his chin on his folded forearms while they studied the natural clearing on the far side of the stream.

The camp in the middle of that clearing made it painfully obvious that whoever he was, Osmuna's killer wasn't out here alone. One man could never have built the palisade-like wall they were studying from their vantage point across the streambed. Not by himself. That high brush barrier of interwoven branches and cut saplings surrounded an area at least thirty yards in diameter, and it was too high to see over from their present position.

There was too much timber down around the edge of the clearing, too, all of it showing the white scar of newly cut wood, for one man to have felled it all. If he'd cut down that many branches and small trees by himself, the oldest cuts would have started losing that raw, pale look of just-hacked-down timber.

"At least fifteen or twenty, you think?" he murmured to Threbuch.

"Couldn't be much less than that, Sir," the chief sword replied. "Not from all the work the bastards've put in over there."

Jasak nodded again and thought some more.

If that estimate was accurate, First Platoon had the mysterious strangers substantially outnumbered. In addition to the fifty-seven men of his four line squads, Garlath had an attached six-man engineer section, four quartermaster baggage handlers, and a hummer handler. Adding Jasak himself, and Chief Sword Threbuch, that came to seventy men, which ought to provide Jasak with a comfortable superiority.

But he couldn't be sure of that. Threbuch's estimate was based on the minimum number the construction of that palisade would have required, but it was large enough to house a considerably bigger number. A simple division of labor could easily have put fifteen or so to work building it while others hunted for food, prospected for minerals?there was a substantial iron deposit in the area, Jasak knew?or even pillaged some nearby village unfortunate enough to have been targeted by pirates. There simply wasn't any way to know from out here how many people really were occupying that camp. Which meant someone had to go inside to find out. Yet Jas didn't feel like rushing forward and risking the lives of more of his men unnecessarily.

The palisade was strong enough to repel anyone who wanted to get inside, unless he had a convenient field-dragon to blast it down with explosive spells, which Jasak didn't. The thick wall of saplings?cut from the stream bank where there was enough open sunlight to allow heavy shrubs and saplings to grow?had been interwoven with tough brush, much of it thorn-covered, to create a high, virtually impenetrable barrier. His scouts' infantry-dragons, far lighter than the field-dragons the artillery used, would find it extremely difficult to blow gaps in it.

Despite the chief sword's comment, it wasn't quite a fortification. But it was more than stout enough to keep out any wild animals, and the number of people who could have been concealed in the area inside that high, thorny wall was dismayingly large … especially when those people were equipped with whatever unknown sort of weaponry they'd used against Osmuna.

Worse, the camp had been placed by someone with an excellent eye for terrain. The land rose towards it from the streambed, not steeply but steadily, and that location and its wall?higher than necessary to stop any native predator, but perfect for hiding its interior from an aggressor and preventing him from seeing the placement of men and weaponry on the other side?spoke of military planning. That much was unmistakable, but who had built it? And?more to the point?why?

In the face of so many unknowns, Jasak was unwilling to assume anything. What he needed was hard evidence, the answers to at least his most pressing questions, and he had nothing. For all he knew, this might not even be be killers' encampment. It might belong to someone else entirely?someone the killer had been scouting, prior to attacking.

Yet Jasak didn't believe that for a moment. Indeed, he was becoming more and more convinced that what he was looking at was a base camp for another multi-universal civilization. The very notion was absurd, but no more absurd than what had already happened. And they were close to what Magister Halathyn and Gadrial strongly believed was a class eight portal. If they were right, no one could possibly have lived in the vicinity without literally stumbling across the thing. A class eight wasn't the sort of thing that could escape notice for very long. The class three portal leading to their own swampy encampment was almost four miles across; a class eight would be closer to twenty-five or even thirty.

With something that size and the swamp portal only a couple of days travel apart by foot, Jasak couldn't believe any natives in the general vicinity would have failed to notice them. Which meant they should have built cities, or at least villages and transportation systems, to take advantage of them. Yet all the Andaran Scouts had found was this tiny, semi-fortified camp.

Which meant Osmuna's killer had probably been doing much the same thing they were: mapping and exploring.

Jasak conscientiously ordered himself not to wed himself to any sweeping conclusions without more evidence. They could be in the middle of some noble's huge game preserve, after all. Whoever had killed Osmuna might have thought he was eliminating a locally born trespasser or poacher. Or Jasak and his men might have unknowingly trespassed upon sanctified or unsanctified ground, in which case Osmuna might have been killed for blasphemy. But however firmly he reminded himself of those possibilities, he kept coming back to the totally alien nature of whatever had been used to kill his man.

This isn't getting me anywhere, he told himself. And every minute I waste speculating is another minute for anyone inside that camp to make his ambush nastier, if he's planning one.

The problem was what to do about it. Anyone who stepped out into that open clearing would undoubtedly find out if there was someone waiting inside that palisade with a terror weapon in his hands. Getting holes blown through more of his troopers didn't exactly strike Jasak as the best way of going about finding out, though. Oh, for one lowly reconnaissance gryphon to do an aerial sweep!

That gave him an idea.

He caught Fifty Garlath's eye, which wasn't all that difficult since the platoon commander was staring at Jasak with something close to panic in his eyes. The hundred pointed silently toward the nearest tree, then upwards into its widespreading branches. It stood along the bank of the creek where they lay prone, and Garlath nodded convulsively, with a look of relief that would have been comical under other circumstances but managed to look mostly pathetic under these.

The fifty signaled to Sword Harnak, then pointed at the same tree. Harnak, in turn, signaled to Jugthar Sendahli, who nodded, tapped one of his squad mates on the shoulder, and disappeared into the concealing brush.

It took the two troopers the better part of six sweat-filled minutes to work their way around to the back of the tree through the brush. Its trunk was more than broad enough to conceal them when they finally reached it, and Jasak heard the slightest of rustles as Sendahli's squad mate boosted the garthan high enough to reach the lowest of the widespreading limbs.

The dark-skinned scout went up the tree in slow motion, each movement silent with caution, each toehold tested gently before he used it to boost himself higher. He scarcely jostled a single leaf on his way up, and Jasak gave an internal nod of approval, pleased that Garlath's tenure hadn't ruined the garthan yet. Jasak had recommended Sendahli for promotion, and he hoped it went through.

The man was Mythalan, but hardly shakira or even multhari. The garthan caste was the lowest of the low in Mythalan society, comprised of the vast masses born without any Gift at all. In most parts of the Union of Arcana, those born without the ability to use magic were simply ordinary citizens. They might not be able to aspire to the magistery like Gadrial, but they could look forward to ordinary careers and the same basic opportunity to earn a good living as anyone else.

But not in Mythal.

Jasak's jaw muscles knotted as he watched Sendahli's slow, skillful execution of his orders and felt his Andaran sense of civilized behavior towards other human beings rising up in fresh indignation. A garthan wasn't legally property any longer. Chattel slavery had been outlawed two centuries ago, under the Union of Arcana's founding accords. But the accords had only limited power inside a country's national borders, which meant most local laws had remained the same. And in countries which had embraced the Mythalan culture and its rigid stratifications, those born without the ability to use magic faced lives little if any better than those of a Hilmaran serf from Andara's first age of conquest.

People born to the garthan caste lived painfully limited lives. Their employment choices were a matter of heredity?a butcher's son became a butcher, even if he was better suited to building wagon wheels?unless the whim of their shakira lords and masters willed otherwise. The magic-using castes and sub-castes, with the ruthless support of the traditional multhari military caste, still ruled Mythal and her allied colonies?including those in several new universes?with an iron hand. They jealously guarded their hereditary privileges and frothed at the mouth at the slightest suggestion of abolishing the caste system that relegated men like Sendahli to third-class citizenship and a grimly limited future.

Jasak had never learned the details of the debacle which had finally driven Magister Halathyn to sever all connection with the great Mythal Falls Academy, the premier magic research and development academy in all of Arcana's many universes. Much as he personally detested the shakira caste, Jasak had to admit that, historically, the majority of the great breakthroughs in magical theory had originated with the Mythalans. Which, of course, only made them even more insufferably overbearing and arrogant.

It undoubtedly also helped to explain what had happened with Magister Halathyn. Jasak did know that Halathyn had infuriated many of his shakira peers by devoting so much of his time and talent to the needs of the UTTTA even before he left the academy. It wasn't so much that they'd objected to trans-temporal exploration, but the shakira as a caste harbored a fierce resentment for the fact that the military (which meant Jasak's native Ardana) dominated trans-temporal exploration. The Mythalans had tried for years to secure control of the Union's exploration policies, only to be frustrated by Andara and Ransar. Whatever their own differences might be, the Andarans and Ransarans had formed a unified front against shakira arrogance literally for centuries, which had only made Mythal's resentment of the UTTTA's policies worse. Halathyn had never had much patience with that particular view, and he'd actually taken the time to find out how he could best aid in the exploration process.

And then had come Gadrial Kelbryan. She'd been only a lowly undergraduate, at the time?not yet seventeen, which had been an almost unheard of age for anyone, even a shakira, far less a Ransaran, to win admission to the academy?but every story agreed that she'd been at the heart of whatever had driven Halathyn vos Dulainah out of Mythal Falls forever in a white-hot rage. Given what Jasak had come to know of Halathyn, added to the obvious strength of Gadrial's Gift and the deep and abiding Ransaran faith in the individual, he rather suspected he could guess how it had happened. And he was absolutely certain that the Mythalan version?that Gadrial had been Halathyn's out-of-caste lover, trading sexual favors for better grades?was a total fabrication.

Ransaran and Mythalan societies, and the religious beliefs which underpinned them, could not have been more different. Mythalans believed in the reincarnation of the soul, and that lives of virtue were rewarded by successive incarnations in steadily higher castes on the path to a fully enlightened existence. Virtually all Ransaran religions, whatever else they might disagree about, were monotheistic and believed in a single mortal incarnation and a direct, personal relationship with God.

The Mythalan belief structure validated the superiority of the shakira and bolstered the monolithic stability of the structure which rested upon the garthan's total subjugation. After all, how could someone become a member of the shakira in the first place, unless he had attained the right to it in his previous incarnations? But Ransaran theology engendered a passionate belief in the right and responsibility of the individual to take command of his own life, to make of himself all that his own God-given abilities and talent made possible. The Mythalan caste system was a loathsome perversion in their eyes, and the clash between the two cultures was long-standing and bitter.

The discovery that a Ransaran possessed such a powerful Gift would have been gall-bitter for most shakira, and it was widely believed that the Mythal Falls faculty had a habit of washing out "unsuitable" students any way it had to. Or, if the student in question was too academically strong for that, using the requisitely brutal form of harassment to drive him?or her?away.

Jasak had no way of knowing if that was what had happened in Gadrial's case, but the towering fury of Halathyn's vitriolic letter of resignation when he broke off completely with his fellow shakira and formally joined the faculty of the academy that served the Union of Arcana's military headquarters at Garth Showma was legendary. And Gadrial Kelbryan, then a lowly third-year undergrad, had accompanied him as his prot?g?e and student.

Over the two decades since, Magister Halathyn had assembled the staff?including Gadrial?which had built the Garth Showma Institute into a true rival for Mythal Falls and improved the UTTTA's field capabilities by at least twenty-five percent. In the process, he'd carved out his own special niche in field operations … and continued his ruthless demolition of Mythalan stereotypes wherever he encountered them.

It had been one of the greatest pleasures of Jasak's military career to watch the aging magister convert the suspicious garthan soldier now swarming so carefully up the massive oak?a man who'd joined the Andaran Army as a way to escape Mythal and buy a better future and higher social status for his children?into an ally and friend.

There was only one Magister Halathyn, he thought. And the swamp portal where Halathyn was currently camped, in a flimsy tent with only a single squad to provide security, was far too close to whoever had come out of this fortified camp.

Jasak peered upward, trying to spot Sendahli, but he couldn't see a trace of the trooper. Good. If he couldn't see Sendahli, even knowing he was there, nobody inside the palisade ought to see him, either.

On the heels of that thought, a piercing trill came wafting down from the treetop.

All clear.

Jasak grimaced. So their mystery camp was empty, but was it merely unoccupied at the moment, for abandoned?

He glanced at Fifty Garlath, who was sweating profusely again. Garlath darted a nervous glance back at Jasak, then motioned to Gaythar Harklan. The squad shield lay prone at the edge of the creek, but he rose at the gesture and scrambled his way down the bank, across the swift-moving main current, and up the other side. He scuttled across the ground in a swift, crouching dash that carried him to the base of the palisade, then came fully upright. He kept his back as close as he could to the brush wall's outermost, sharply jutting branches, taking no chances Sendahli's all clear might have been mistaken, but at least no one was shooting at him with anything.

So far, so good, Jasak thought. And now …

Harklan edged sideways along the wall, then whipped through the opening in a rollover prone that took him into enemy territory literally at ground level. Silence gripped the waiting platoon. Flies whirred and buzzed past Jasak's ears, and still the silence held. Then Harklan reappeared.

"It's abandoned," he called across, "but they haven't been gone long. There are several fire pits in here, and the coals're still hot enough to cook over. And they've left their pack animals."

Jasak exchanged glances with Threbuch.

"Whoever they are, they're in a tearing hurry to be somewhere else, Sir," the chief sword observed quietly, and Jasak nodded, then glanced at Gadrial.

"They're headed for your class eight portal, is my guess," he said.

"It's not my class eight," she muttered. "If it's anyone's, I'd say it's theirs." She waved at the abandoned camp. "They obviously got to it before we did. It's even possible the class eight leads into their home universe."

"You don't think they're from this one?" Jasak was curious to see if her logic paralleled his own.

"I don't see how they could be," she said, shaking her head. "I'm no soldier, but it seems to me that if there were more of them nearby, they'd have sent a messenger for help and holed up behind those spiky walls while they waited for it. But they didn't do that. They ran. That suggests they're feeling outnumbered, guilty, or maybe just scared to death. Whatever their motives, they're obviously determined to go someplace where they can get help. That camp may look formidable from out here, but it's actually pretty rudimentary. If there weren't very many of them, they could've built that just to keep out bears and panthers and what-have-you so they wouldn't have to post a sentry to watch for predators."

Jasak was impressed. She might be "no soldier," but her reasoning tallied closely with his own. And from the flicker of respect in the chief sword's expression, it tallied with Otwal Threbuch's, too.

"You'd have made an effective military analyst, Gadrial," the hundred said, and her eyes glinted.

"One of these days, you Andaran bully boys will be civilized enough to let us ladies join your ranks. The effect ought to be bracingly beneficial."

"Ladies in uniform?" The chief sword snorted. "Carrying arbalests and throwing war spells? Ransaran democratic madness."

"I'm qualified expert with a hand arbalest," she said tartly. "And I can throw spells that would singe your braided Shalomarian hair. Literally," she added sweetly.

The chief sword just grinned, unrepentant.

"I would suggest," Jasak interrupted, before Threbuch succeeded in digging himself in any deeper, "that we discover what we can about that."

He nodded toward the palisade, and Fifty Garlath took his cue from that and ordered the platoon forward. First and Second Squads split up and did a sweep of the treeline surrounding the clearing, looking for possible ambushes or snipers. Third Squad unlimbered its crew-served infantry-dragon, setting it up in a cover position on this side of the stream. Fourth Squad followed First and Second across the creek and bellied down under cover of the far bank, waiting.

Gadrial watched with quiet intensity from her vantage point in the scrub. She was perfectly aware that Jasak had no intention of walking out there until the security sweep was complete and the platoon's heavy weapons were in place to respond to any threat. Had she not been present, he would probably be out there already himself, but she was along for the ride, so he was left with the responsibility for her safety.

He obviously placed a high priority on keeping her in one piece, and she was scared enough to appreciate that, yet independent-minded enough to flush with embarrassment as she admitted to herself that she wasn't able to hold her own out here. She had no formal military training. She truly was a crack shot with a hand-sized arbalest, but she'd never fired a shoulder weapon in her life, and she couldn't even give the dragon gunners a hand. As strong as her various Gifts were, she'd never used artillery and had only the vaguest sense of how it operated.

Gadrial's main interest in the infantry-dragons, and the heavier field-dragons of the true artillery, was in the battle spells that powered them. She'd spoken to combat engineers and knew battle spells were complex. Building them demanded intense concentration frequently under conditions that were challenging, to say the least, and not all of them were directly related to the artillery. Infantry companies included not just the dragons and their gunners, but also an attached squad of combat spell engineers with multiple responsibilities.

Combat spell engineers were among the highest-skilled and highest-paid men in the Union of Arcana's armed forces. There were never enough of them to go around, though, and they were too valuable to put at the sharp end and get them shot at if it could be avoided, so units like Hundred Olderhan's routinely carried plenty of extra spell packs for emergency use.

Infantry platoons were built around squads, each twelve men strong. A squad was subdivided into two maneuver teams, each consisting of three arbalestiers commanded by a noncom, and supported by an infantry-dragon. It took both of a dragon gunner's assistant gunners and two of the squad's six arbalestiers to carry enough accumulator reloads to fight any sort of sustained engagement, but in the absence of someone who could recharge them, a team had only the ammunition it could carry.

Now Gadrial shivered, watching the heavy weapons deploy defensively. She was afraid a battle was exactly what was going to happen. The question was whether it would break loose here, or somewhere else.

When the final "all clear" whistled across the open space, Fourth Squad rose out of its cover, spread into a skirmish line, and headed into the abandoned camp. Jasak strode ahead, leaving Gadrial in the care of two men assigned as her bodyguards. She deliberately fell behind his rapid stride, making sure she didn't get in anyone's way. Still, she'd nearly reached the gap in the brush walls when she realized Jasak had stopped dead in his tracks.

He stopped so abruptly she almost collided with him, and when she stepped around him to see what he was staring at, she caught her breath. A cairn of rocks lay in the shadow of the brush wall, piled up between the interwoven branches and the edge of the stream, and she felt a tremor in her knees, and another in her chest, as she recognized its shape and depth.

The fact that someone had died here shouldn't have shocked her so brutally. She knew that. But as she stared down at the pile of rocks over what had been a human being, there was no doubt in Gadrial's mind that they'd found the man who'd killed Osmuna.

Dismay stabbed deep as the sickening import crashed home. There'd been only one man on the bank above the creek where Osmuna had died. Only one trail through the forest led back to this camp. Which meant that only two men knew what had happened out there in the wilderness.

And both of them were dead.

She recognized the same understanding in the grim look in Jasak Olderhan's eyes, the knotted muscles in his jaw and the tension in his shoulders. She wondered what he was thinking, then decided she didn't really want to know. Then Jasak raised his gaze, granite eyes tracking like a hunting gryphon after prey as they sought out his commander of fifty.

"Search this camp," he said flatly. "I want to know how many men were here. What they left behind. Anything that might give us an idea of where they're from, and why they're here."

"Yes, Sir!"

Garlath started spitting orders. They sounded industrious enough, but they lacked a certain clarity, and Jasak locked eyes with his chief sword. The grizzled noncom nodded crisply and moved immediately to organize the search Garlath was attempting to direct.

Once Chief Sword Threbuch waded in, the swift, methodical search went so smoothly it was like watching a choreographed dance, Gadrial thought. Except for the fact that there was no music but the jittery rattle of wind in dead leaves that scuttled across the rocky cairn where Osmuna's killer lay, that was. She supposed she ought to be glad?in a retributive, just-desserts fashion?that the man who'd murdered Osmuna was dead, and a portion of her did want to be glad, shocking as that seemed. But it was only a small part of her, and the rest was horrified by what had transpired out here.

The Union Accords, the cornerstone of the Union of Arcana, had put an end to the savagery of the Portal Wars two centuries previously. They had united the various warring kingdoms and republics into one cooperative entity, dedicated to exploring the multiple universes and giving everyone in the Union a better life. The opportunity to build something new and worthwhile in pristine universes, the chance to amass wealth in a civilization which was wealthy in a way pre-portal Arcanans couldn't possibly have imagined.

Those Accords had governed the use of portals and new universes for two hundred years. And they also laid out the rules and contingency plans for contact with another human civilization in the clearest possible terms. Every soldier in the Union's military forces was put through training on how to conduct such a first contact, which aimed above all else to be peaceful. The last thing anyone had wanted was a shooting war with another human civilization.

Yet in all the years of the Union's existence, no such other civilization had ever been encountered. The rules were still there, the troops were still trained in them, but only as a contingency. No one had actually expected to ever require them. Not really. Surely if there'd been other human beings in existence, Arcana would have discovered them long ago.

But they hadn't … until today. Until two total strangers had met in a trackless wood. Met in fear and suspicion, and despite the strictures of the Accords, promptly slaughtered one another. Gadrial hadn't known Osmuna, but he'd seemed a bright enough fellow, dedicated to his duty in the Andaran Scouts. He'd seemed unhappy with Fifty Garlath, but proud to serve Hundred Olderhan, and Gadrial found it difficult to believe he would have thrown the Accords into the garbage can without extremely good cause.

Her gaze returned again and again to the silent grave while Jasak's men searched the camp for clues. Ten minutes elapsed in grim silence, punctuated by the sounds of angry men ransacking what had been an orderly camp, and their ugly mood frightened her. These men had blood in their eyes, looking for something?or someone?to rip apart in retaliation for a comrade's murder. She couldn't really blame them, but that made their anger no less frightening, and when she glanced at Jasak, she saw him frowning as he, too, watched the camp's destruction.

The facts they shook loose were few and far between.

"We're not looking at more than eighteen or nineteen people, at most," Chief Sword Threbuch reported to Jasak and Garlath. "There's damn near nothing here but spare clothes, sleeping rolls, and abandoned foodstuffs. We found more of those little metal things we recovered on the bank above Osmuna's body, though, and you're right, Sir. There is something inside."

He produced several shiny metal cylinders, each of which had a duller metal object stuffed into the top. They weren't all identical; some were larger, some smaller. Most of the metal caps were round-nosed, although some were flatter than others. All of those had hollows in their tips, but there were also three longer ones, each of which had a solid, sharply pointed tip.

"That looks like lead," Jasak frowned as he touched one of the round-nosed cylinders. "But this one?" he took one of the three pointy ones "?looks more like … copper?"

He glanced up at Threbuch, but the chief sword's expression was baffled. Jasak looked at Gadrial, who extended her hand. He laid the cylinder in her palm, and she turned it, examining it from all angles.

"It is copper," she agreed. "But look here." She tapped the end. "It's not solid copper. It's more like a jacket around something else. And I think you're right about that, too. The core is lead."

"I wonder …" Jasak murmured as he took the mysterious object back from her.

"Sir?" Threbuch asked.

"I wonder how much force it would take to propel this," Jasak tapped the cylinder's pointed cap with one fingernail, "across fifteen or twenty feet of space and drive it through a human body?"

Garlath lost color and made a strangled sound that drew Jasak's eyes to him.

"That?that's barbaric!" the fifty protested.

"But damned effective," Jasak pointed out.

"You can't be sure that's what happened," Garlath objected. "There's not enough of anything inside that little cylinder to do such a thing."

"Just because we can't imagine how to do it, Fifty Garlath, doesn't mean someone else couldn't figure out how to do it," Jasak observed.

Garlath flushed, the color looking even darker against his fearful pallor, and Jasak turned back to Threbuch.

"Go on, Chief Sword," he said, and Threbuch produced some other odd cylinders of metal. These were much larger, as broad as his palm, and six inches long.

"There's a whole stash of these, whatever they are, Sir. We found them in every tent. They don't seem to be weapons of any sort, but there something inside them. You can feel it slosh when you shake the thing."

"You shook one of them?" Jasak frowned, and Threbuch snorted.

"One of the men had already been shaking them, Sir. It didn't explode in his hand, so after I'd ripped him a new asshole?pardon, Magister." He glanced at Gadrial and colored slightly himself. "Anyway, I figured it was probably safe enough to handle them."

"See if someone can cut into one of them. But not here. Take it out to the woodline, just in case."

As the unhappy trooper who'd drawn that particular job headed out with the dense metal object and his short sword, Threbuch continued his situation report, such as it was.

"They haven't been here more than a couple of days, Sir. If I were to hazard a guess, I'd say this was a forward observation post, or a base camp of some kind. A relay station, maybe, for others to follow. They're no primitives, whoever they are and wherever they've come from. You've seen their metalwork. That matches ours, but it's just the beginning."

He motioned to another trooper, who brought over an armload of examples.

"Their cloth is high quality," he said, holding up a length of what looked like sturdy canvas. "If this wasn't machine-loomed, I'll?" he flicked another glance at Gadrial and amended the phrase on his tongue to "?eat my shirt."

The magister just grinned, which stained the hard-bitten noncom's cheeks pink once more. Then he jerked his gaze back to his commanding officer.

"The same pattern repeats everywhere you look, Sir," he said, doggedly ignoring the humor glinting in Hundred Olderhan's eyes, despite the tension of the moment. "We found high quality leather goods sewn on a machine. Metal mess kits, with eating utensils and plates tucked inside collapsible cookpots. Personal toiletry kits with combs and brushes that look like something manufactured for a mass market, not locally produced by some village shop."

"If they left dishes and combs behind, they left in a damned hurry," Garlath muttered.

"And they weren't too worried about replacing them, either," Threbuch replied. "That kind of gear's hard to replace when you're at the end of a long transit chain."

"They may not be at the end of a long chain," Jasak said quietly.

Utter silence reigned for a long moment, broken only by the wind and rustling leaves.

"They're running for the portal we came out here to find," he continued after a moment. "I'm certain of it. Not only did they abandon most of their gear so they could move faster, they abandoned the donkeys they used to carry it here, as well." He nodded toward the sturdy little beasts pinned in one corner of the camp behind a fence made of rope. "I'm betting they have another fortified base on the other side. Not a little camp like this, either. A large base, with plenty of troops."

The chief sword swore colorfully. Then he stopped himself abruptly. He looked at Gadrial again, started to say something apologetic, then obviously decided he had more serious things to worry about than her possible reaction to a little rough language.

"We can't afford to let them reach that portal ahead of us, Sir," he said. "If you're right, and if they get to a bigger fort before we get to them, we'll be outnumbered. Given what they did to Osmuna, and how fast they did it, I don't like that scenario. Not one damned bit."

He glanced at Gadrial again as he spoke, but this time his expression was very different. The tough-as-dragons-scales chief sword looked terrified. And not, she realized abruptly, for himself. He was horrified by the thought that someone would kill her the same way they'd killed Osmuna. She had to blink hard, and she looked away, unwilling to embarrass him with her abruptly watery emotions.

"Hundred Olderhan," Fifty Garlath said before Jasak could respond to Threbuch, "given the Chief Sword's astute analysis, I respectfully recommend a course of extreme prudence. The enemy has an unknown troop strength and a head start. They're moving fast and light, whereas we're burdened with considerable equipment, including the dragons. Magister Kelbryan's calculations suggest that the portal's close enough they'll undoubtedly reach it well ahead of us. And with Fifty Ulthar's platoon at the coast, instead of the swamp portal, we're badly understrength."

"Your point?" Jasak tried hard to keep the acid out of his voice.

"In my considered opinion, Sir, pursuing at this time would be the height of folly. The only prudent response is to return immediately to our base camp in the swamp and send for reinforcements from the coast before attempting to run these people down."

Jasak stared at the older man, disbelief warring with rage as Garlath looked defiantly back. An ugly, triumphant glow lit the backs of his eyes, and Jasak felt his jaw muscles aching as he clenched his teeth in comprehension.

Garlath's spineless cowardice was equaled only by his incompetence as an officer and his hatred for any officer promoted past him. But he was clever in his own way. So damned clever it turned Jasak's stomach. Clever enough to wrap his desire to flee from anything that looked remotely like danger in the mantle of considered, prudent tactics.

Volcanic rage sizzled through Jasak Olderhan, but before it could boil over Gadrial Kelbryan shocked him by rounding on Garlath like a hissing basilisk. Her almond eyes flashed with lethal lightning as she advanced on Garlath, who actually backed away from her slender fury with an expression of almost comical astonishment.

"Don't you dare use my research as an excuse to cut and run!" she snarled.

"Magister Kelbryan, you mistake my meaning!" Garlath replied, speaking so quickly the words came out gabbled. "I didn't say we should run away. Not at all! That would be as foolish as rushing forward. All I'm recommending is a tactical retreat, just a temporary maneuver to concentrate our forces. If we stay scattered, we won't be able to withstand a united attack by an enemy of unknown strength using weapons we can't even understand. We can't afford to risk walking into some sort of ambush. We have to be sure we survive to carry word of this staggering discovery to our superiors. And then there's your own value as one of our finest magisters. If anything were to happen to you, or if you, gods forbid, fell into enemy hands, then?"

"Oh, stuff it someplace interesting, Garlath!" Gadrial snapped.

"Magister," Garlath said almost fawningly, "I only meant?"

"I know exactly what you meant! I've been trapped in your revolting company for weeks, Shevan Garlath. You are the most pathetic excuse for an officer I've ever seen. One of your own men has been murdered?murdered, damn you!?and the only thing you want to do about it is run away and hide someplace safe! And you have the unmitigated gall to use me as an excuse for your cowardice?!"

Gadrial realized she was literally shaking with fury, and a corner of her mind wondered how much of that stemmed from her own fear and her own need to find something to lash out at. Not that it made her contempt for Garlath any less merited, even if it did.

"We have to find out what's going on out here," she continued in a marginally calmer, icy voice. "We have to find out now, before things get any further out of hand. If we can't do that?and do it before it all goes totally out of control?then I'm not going to be the only one at risk. And I warn you, Fifty Garlath. If anything happens to Magister Halathyn because of your fuck-ups, I will come after you for blood debt. And I'll keep coming, through as many godsdamned universes as it takes to track you down and feed your miserable excuse for a soul to the crows!"

Naked shock flared behind Garlath's eyes, and Jasak stepped in quickly.

"Magister Kelbryan, I fully appreciate your concern for Magister Halathyn's safety. Believe me, I want to protect him as much as you do. As for getting a message back to our superiors," he swung his gaze to Garlath, who flushed dark red under its withering contempt, "that's why we carry hummers. Chief Sword, see to it. Send a priority message to Javelin Krankark at the forward base, and another to Commander of Five Hundred Klian, at the coast. Given the urgency of the situation, I want Fifty Ulthar and his platoon recalled immediately. And I'm sure Five Hundred Klian will also want to get a message off to Five Hundred Grantyl at the Chalar base. Record and release immediately with my chop on the header."

"Yes, Sir!" Threbuch saluted crisply and darted one disgusted glance at Garlath before heading for Javelin Iggar Shulthan, Charlie Company's senior hummer specialist. Jasak watched him go, then turned back to the infuriated woman still glaring at Garlath.

"Magister Kelbryan," he said quietly and formally, breaking her concentration and drawing her carefully away from the object of her rage, "I would consider it a great personal favor if you would add your own message. Your Gifts are far superior to mine, and I want Five Hundred Klian to have as much information as possible."

"Of course," she said stiffly. "I would be delighted to help in any way I can."

She flicked one final, fiery glance at Garlath, then strode vigorously across the camp to join the chief sword and their hummer handler. Jasak watched her for a moment, then took a firm grip on his own temper and returned his attention to Fifty Garlath.

As much as he wanted to, he couldn't follow Gadrial's explosive example and call the man a sniveling coward. She was dead-on accurate, but that didn't matter. Garlath had given too many plausible, outwardly militarily sound reasons to retreat. He knew how to play the game, all right. Jasak had to give him that. That skill?playing the nasty little game of power politics which was the worst curse of the patronage system within the Arcanan military?was the one thing Shevan Garlath was actually good at.

A deep and abiding hatred crystallized in Jasak's blood, turning him cold as ice, and Garlath backed up another involuntary step before his expression.

"Your tactical concerns are noted, Fifty Garlath." Jasak's eye was granite-hard as he bit his words out of solid ice and spat them at the older man like hailstones. "Your assessment of the situation does not tally with mine, however. It's imperative that we stop these people before they reach the portal. I don't want a damned battle, Garlath. I want answers. And I want to control the situation. Until we get those answers, until we get to the bottom of what happened out here, we don't know anything. But if these people are as confused as we are, and if they get back to their superiors and tell them we started it, it's going to change from a disaster to a godsdamned catastrophe.

"We won't get any answers if they reach the portal?and whatever base may lie beyond?before we've caught up. And we won't be able to put the brakes on this, either. Shartahk seize it, we don't even have any idea how to communicate with them if we do catch up with them! So the only option I see is to find them, stop them, and try to make some sort of controlled contact with them, just like the first contact protocols require. And, failing that, we at least need to take them into custody and return them to base where someone else, with the kind of diplomatic experience none of us has, can try to figure out how to talk to them and, gods willing, straighten this fucking mess back out. Do you read me on this, Fifty Garlath?"

Garlath's jaw worked as he glared back at Jasak. The fusion of fear, resentment, and hatred bubbling away inside the man must be like basilisk venom, Jasak thought. He doubted that explaining his own analysis had done a bit of good, but he'd had to at least try to get through to this excuse for an Andaran officer.

"Do you read me?" he repeated very softly, and Garlath jerked his head in a spastic nod.

"Good," Jasak said, still softly. "Because we're facing a fast, hard march, and I expect you to pull your weight. Is that clear?"

"Yes, Sir." Garlath's tone was so brittle Jasak wondered why his tongue hadn't shattered.

"Then get the men ready to march within the next three minutes. May I assume you're capable of carrying out that order, Fifty?"

"Yes, Sir." Hatred seethed in Garlath's dark eyes. For a moment they met Jasak's. Then they skittered away, and the fifty jerked out a salute and turned on a bootheel, snarling orders at his men.

But they were, by the gods, ready to march in three minutes.