Hell's Gate

Chapter Nine

"Cease fire! Cease fire!"

Jasak plowed into the nearest infantry-dragon's crew. He caught the closer assistant gunner by the collar and heaved him bodily away from the weapon. The gunner didn't even seem to notice … until Jasak kicked him solidly in the chest.

"Cease fire, godsdamn you!"

The gunner toppled over with an absolutely astonished expression. For just an instant, he didn't quite seem to understand what happened. Then his expression changed from confusion to horrified understanding, and he shook himself visibly.

Two of First Platoon's four dragons were still firing, blasting round after round into the tangle of fallen timber. There hadn't been a single return shot in well over a minute, but the gunners didn't even seem to realize it. They were submerged in a battle frenzy, too enraged by the slaughter of their fellow troopers?and too terrified by the enemy's devastating weapons?to think about things like that.

"Graholis seize you, cease fire!" Jasak bellowed, charging into a second dragon's crew while Chief Sword Threbuch waded into the third.

The fourth dragon hadn't fired in some time; its entire crew, and six other troopers who'd taken their places, were sprawled around it, dead or wounded.

Threbuch tossed the last operable dragon's gunner into a tangle of blackberry bushes at the clearing's edge just as a final lightning bolt sizzled from the focus point and slammed into a fallen tree trunk. Bark flew, smoke billowed up with the concussive sound of thunder, and then the discharge fizzled out.

Silence, alien and strange, roared in Jasak's ears.

He stood panting for breath, his pulse kicking at the insides of his eardrums like a frantic drumbeat. He made himself stand there, fighting his shakes under control, then dragged his sleeve across his face to clear his eyes of sweat and grime. Only then did he make himself look, make himself count the bodies.

His men lay sprawled like gutted marionettes across ground that was splashed with far too much blood. There were bodies everywhere, too many of them motionless, not even moaning, and his stomach clenched in the agony only a commanding officer could know.

Graholis' balls. Half his entire platoon was down out there. Half!

"You're bleeding, Sir."

The quiet, steady voice punched through his numb horror. Shocked, he slewed around to find his chief sword tearing open a medical kit.

"What?"

"You're bleeding, Sir. Let's have a look."

"Fuck that!" Jasak snapped. "It can't be more than a scratch. We've got to search for the wounded?all the wounded. Theirs as well as ours."

"So order a search. But you're still bleeding, and I'm still going to do something about that."

"I'm not?"

"Do I have to knock you down and sit on you, Hundred?" Otwal Threbuch snarled so harshly Jasak stared at him in total shock.

"You're our only surviving officer Sir," Threbuch's voice was like harsh iron, fresh from the furnace, "and you will damned well hold still until I find out why there's blood dripping off your scalp and pouring down your side!"

Jasak closed his mouth. He hadn't realized he was bleeding quite that badly, and he made himself sit quietly while the chief sword swabbed at the scalp cut he hadn't even felt. Worse was the furrow that something had plowed through the flesh along the edge of his ribs. Whatever it was, it had barely grazed him, but it had left a long, stinging wound in his side, ripped his uniform savagely, and left an impressive bloodstain that had poured down over his side. Another few inches inward, and it would have gone straight through a lung, or even his heart.

Jasak gritted his teeth, directing his surviving noncoms?there weren't many?to search for the wounded while Threbuch applied a field dressing. The instant the chief sword finished, Jasak strode out into the clearing, checking on his own wounded as he headed for his real objective: the enemy.

Some of his men had already reached them.

"We've got a survivor, Sir!" Evarl Harnak called out. "He's in bad shape."

Jasak hurried over to Garlath's platoon sword wondering what miracle had brought the sword through alive, since Harnak had led the charge the other side's weapons had torn apart. It was hard to believe that any of those troopers could have survived, Jasak thought bitterly. And that, too, was his fault?he'd been the one who'd thought the dragons had suppressed the enemy's fire.

He climbed through a tangle of fallen tree limbs and hunkered down beside Harnak. The sword was kneeling beside a man whose entire left side was badly burned. He'd taken a crossbow bolt through the belly, too, doing untold and probably lethal damage, even without the burns and the inevitable severe shock.

He was breathing, but just barely. It was a genuine mercy that he was unconscious, and Jasak was torn by conflicting emotions, conflicting duties and priorities. This whole disaster was his fault, which meant this man's brutal injuries were his fault. He reached for the wounded man's unburnt wrist and found the pulse. It was faint, thready, failing fast. Helpless to do anything else, he watched the stranger die.

"More survivors, Sir!" another shout rang across the smoke-filled clearing. "Oh, gods! One of them's a woman!"

Jasak ran, sickness twisting in his gut. He cursed the debris in his way, fighting to find a path through it, then flinging himself down, crawling under a fallen tree trunk to reach them. There were four survivors, fairly close together. Three had been burned badly; the fourth was scorched, but the infantry-dragon's breath had barely brushed her, thank Graholis.

She was unconscious. One slim hand was still wrapped around a weapon that was the most alien thing Jasak had ever seen. Drying blood caked the hair on the right side of her head, and a ghastly bruise was already swelling along that side of her face. A nasty lump ran from her temple to the back of her head.

"She must've been thrown against the tree trunk," he said, turning his head, eyes narrowed.

Yes, there was hair and blood caught in the rough bark, and it took all of Sir Jasak Olderhan's discipline not to slam his bare fist into the bark beside them. His only medic was dead?had been shot down, trying to reach wounded dragon gunners?and at least three of these people were so badly hurt they probably wouldn't have survived even with a medic.

"I need Magister Kelbryan," he barked over his shoulder, turning back to the savagely wounded survivors. "Now, damn it!"

Somebody ran, shouting for Gadrial, and Jasak bent over the unknown woman. Her pulse was slow under his fingers, but it was steady, strong, thank the gods. She was tiny, even smaller than Gadrial, with a beautiful, delicate face. She looked like a fragile glass doll lying crumpled in the ruins, and Jasak's heart twisted as he raged at Garlath and even at this woman's companions for coming here, for killing Osmuna and starting this whole disaster. And worst of all, for bringing this lovely girl into the middle of the killing his men?and hers?had unleashed in this clearing.

He'd kept Gadrial back at the very edge of their own formation, flat in a shallow ravine where she?and the men he'd assigned specifically to guard her?were out of the line of fire. Why the hell hadn't these men done the same?

Because, the stubborn back of his mind whispered in self-loathing and disgust, you left them no choice, circling around them to cut off their escape… .

Someone came crashing toward him through the underbrush, and he lifted his gaze to see Gadrial running recklessly through the tangled wood, past dead soldiers and smoking rubble.

"Where?" she gasped, and Jasak reached out and lifted her across the five-foot fallen trunk as if she'd been a child. He set her down beside the wounded, and her breath choked on a sound of horror.

All three of the male survivors were burned. Two had been caught facing the fireball when the dragon's breath detonated amongst them, and their crisped skin and the stench of their burnt flesh twisted Jasak's stomach all over again. The third man had been facing away, or at least partially away, leaving him burned across the back. His shirt was a tattered wreck of blackened cloth. He'd been slammed into a jutting limb and fallen sideways, landing on one shoulder before sprawling across the ground, and broken ribs were visible through the tattered shirt.

"Rahil," Gadrial whispered. Jasak looked at her, saw her eyes, and flinched inwardly.

"Can you save them?" he asked, his voice hoarse. "Can you save any of them?"

She swallowed hard and nerved herself to test the pulse of the nearest burn victim. He was semi-conscious, and a hideous, gurgling scream ripped loose as his arm shifted. Gadrial whimpered, but she didn't let go.

"Rahil's mercy," she breathed, then forced herself to inhaled deeply. "The others?"

Jasak led her to them. She tested their pulses in turn, her eyes closed, whispering under her breath. Power stirred about her, gripping hard enough to twist Jasak with a sharper nausea.

"It's bad?Heavenly Lady, it's bad. I can't save them all. I'm sorry. I might?I can probably keep one of them alive. Maybe … "

She stood, staring down at them, and Jasak felt her inner, helpless horror as she realized the hideous choice which lay before her. He started to open his mouth, to tell her which to try to save, to take the burden of that choice from her. It was both his responsibility and all he could offer her, but before he could speak, her shoulders twitched suddenly.

"Look!" She pointed at the woman's wrist, and Jasak frowned. The tiny, unconscious stranger wore a bracelet?a cuff of flexible metal that looked like woven gold. He'd already noticed that, but Gadrial was pointing at one of the wounded men, as well. He wore a matching cuff.

"That one," the magister said. "I'll?"

Her voice broke as she turned away from the others, the two who would die. The two she must let die.

She knelt beside the man with the wrist cuff. He was broken, as well as burned. The savagery of his wounds bled back through her hands, carried by her minor healing Gift, and she moaned involuntarily in the face of so much pain, so much damage… .

She closed her eyes, rested her hands carefully on his chest, and summoned the power of her Gift. Whispered words poured from her lips, helping her shape and direct the energy she plucked from the air about her. That energy was everywhere, a vast, unseen, seething sea that rolled and thundered like a storm-swept tide. It poured out of the emptiness between mortal thoughts and the power of God and scorched down her arms, out through her hands into the injured man. It was enormous, that sea of energy, an unimaginable, infinite boil of power flying loose and wild for anyone with the Gift strong enough to touch and take it.

But Gadrial's healing Gift was only a minor arcana. She could take only a little, only a sliver of the power someone with a major healing Gift could have taken, and even that small an amount had a price.

"He's … stabilized …" she managed to whisper, and the smoke-filled clearing looped and whirled around her.

Someone caught her shoulders, steadied her, and she leaned against a shoulder that took her weight effortlessly.

She needed that support?badly?as voices swam in and out of focus. The universe seemed to dip and swerve, curtsying like a ship in a heavy sea, and the start of a brutal headache throbbed somewhere behind her eyes.

Gift shock, her trained mind told her through the chaos. The strain of someone pushing a Gift far beyond its safe limits. It had been a long time since she'd felt it, and she wandered through seconds and minutes which stretched and contracted wierdly as she tied to find her way through the chaos of the backlash.

It took what seemed a very long time, but then her senses finally cleared, and she realized she was sitting propped against Sir Jasak Olderhan himself. His arm was about her, holding her there, while he issued a steady stream of orders.

"?and when that's done, Chief Sword, I want you to take one man and confirm that class eight portal. I want to finish that, at least, whatever else we do. I hate to give you up, but I want my best man in charge out there. Just be damned careful. We didn't?I didn't?mean to massacre these people, and I don't want anyone shooting at anyone else. Is that clear?"

"Very clear, Sir."

"Good. Just tiptoe in and tiptoe out, do whatever it takes to avoid further contact. Any questions?"

"No, Sir."

"Move out, then. The sooner you go, the likelier you are to get there and back before anyone realizes these people aren't coming home."

Jasak's voice went bleak and grim on the final few words. He could only hope the other side hadn't sent a runner ahead with a message. If they had …

"Keep your eyes open, Chief Sword, but don't dawdle. If they've dispatched a runner, I want him?alive and unharmed."

"Yes, Sir."

Threbuch saluted and turned away. Jasak watched him go, then noticed that Gadrial was watching him.

"Feeling better?" he asked quietly, moving the arm which had held her upright, and she nodded and sat up.

"Yes. Thanks." Her voice was hoarse, but it didn't quiver. "What we do now?"

Jasak glanced at the still-unconscious woman and the man Gadrial had pulled back from the brink.

"We have to get them back to the swamp portal before we can airlift them out. We can't get a dragon here in time. The nearest is at the coast, seven hundred miles from our entry portal. First it'd have to get there, then fly cross-country to meet us, and once it touched down out here?" he pointed at the clearing "?it wouldn't be able to take off again. Not enough wing room to get airborne fast enough to clear the trees. A battle dragon might be different?they're smaller, faster. They can dive, strike, and lift off again in a much smaller space. But transport dragons need a lot of wing room."

He sounded so calm, so controlled, Gadrial thought. Except for the fact that that calm controlled voice of his was telling her things he knew perfectly well she already knew.

"What about clearing a landing zone?" she asked. "Could you burn down some of the trees with the infantry-dragons?"

Jasak shook his head and gestured at the scorched trunks the enemy had found shelter among. They were smoldering, badly scorched, but mostly intact.

"Look for yourself. A dragon is designed to burn people," he said bitterly, "not to knock down trees. We do have some incendiary charges that could bring down even a tree that size," he nodded towards a towering giant, six feet thick at the base, "but not enough to clear a landing field long enough for a dragon to take off again. We'd need ten times as many as we've got to do that.

"We're Scouts, Magister Kelbryan, not heavy-combat engineers. No. The only hope is to get the wounded back to the swamp portal, or at least to someplace with enough open space for a transport dragon to take off, as well as land." Jasak glanced at the man Gadrial had saved. "Can he be moved? Without jeopardizing his life?"

"I don't know." She ran a weary hand through her hair while she struggled to focus her thoughts. "Probably. I'll know more when I touch him again. He shouldn't be moved right away, though. We'll have to get them out of this, I know." She motioned at the smoldering wreckage surrounding them. "But not far?not yet. Even the little I've done so far will have exhausted him."

Jasak nodded somberly. He'd seen what saving the man had done to Gadrial, and the healing Gift drew deeply upon the reserves of the injured person, as well.

"We can do that," he said. "And he'll have at least a little while to stabilize before we can pull out. We have a few things to do that will take some time."

He looked out across the open ground where so many of his men?good men, among the best in the Andaran Scouts?had died because of one man's colossal stupidity. And because of another man's even greater stupidity in not relieving a dangerous, incompetent fool of command, whatever regulations and the articles of war said.

Gadrial turned her head, following his gaze, and her eyes were dark.

"What will you do with them?" she asked softly.

"The same thing the Chief Sword did for Osmuna." Jasak had to clamp his jaw tighter for a moment.

"Field rites," he said then, and looked down at her. She looked back, her expression puzzled, and his lips tightened. "I take it you've never seen them?" he said almost harshly.

Gadrial shook her head. The only thing she knew about "field rites" was that military commanders were sometimes forced by necessity to abandon their dead. Procedures had been developed for just that sort of emergency, but that was all she knew about it. She thought he might explain, but he didn't. Instead, he turned to Platoon Sword Harnak, his senior noncom now that he'd sent Otwal Threbuch away, and indicated the other two wounded men with a gentle, curiously vulnerable wave of his hand.

"Have someone stay with these men until … until they're not needed, Sword. No man should die alone."

Harnak nodded grimly, and Jasak inhaled and nodded at the girl and the man Gadrial had saved.

"I want these two moved out of this hellish pile of timber. But for pity's own sake, take care with him. He's got to survive, Harnak."

Gadrial realized there was more to Jasak's almost desperate insistence than any mere intelligence value living prisoners might represent. Jasak Olderhand was a soldier, but no murderer, Gadrial realized, and even she recognized that these people hadn't stood a chance once his support weapons opened fire on them. Now she felt his granite determination to snatch at least some of them back from the jaws of death … whatever it took.

"Yes, Sir." Harnak's acknowleding salute, like his voice, was subdued. Exhausted.

Gadrial knew how the sword felt. She watched Jasak smooth a tendril of long, dark hair away from the unconscious woman's face. His fingertips were so gentle, so tender, Gadrial felt tears prickle at the corners of her eyes.

"I'm sorry," she thought she heard him whisper, but it might have been only the wind. Then he pulled himself together and got busy organizing his surviving troopers for the farewell they would soon bid to far too many brave men.

And to one arrant coward, a small voice whispered deep inside Gadrial Kelbryan. She looked at the wounded, the dying, the dead, and knew it would be hard not to spit on Garlath's grave.

Shaylar didn't want to wake up. She wanted to be dead. For long moments, she couldn't remember why?she was just certain that whatever ghastly thing waited for her was too terrible to bear living through. She whimpered, wanting her mother. Wanting someone who could hold her close and whisper that everything was all right. That everything would be as it should, and not as it was, torn with screams and flame, the sight of her beloved?

She jerked back from the memory, but not in time. Pain?hot and terrible?gripped her heart with savage, shredding claws.

Jathmar!

She tried to touch him through the bond, but there was something wrong, dreadfully wrong, inside her head. Pain throbbed relentlessly, leaving her dizzy and sick. And, far worse, Voiceless. She couldn't Hear Jathmar, and even though she tried, she couldn't Hear Darcel, either. There was nothing but pain. Nothing else in the universe …

Someone touched her.

She flinched violently, whimpering again as fresh pain exploded through her. But the touch returned, gentle, soothing her, drawing her back from the crumbling edge of sanity. Reluctantly, she opened her eyes and blinked in the dappled light streaming down through golden treetops.

A woman knelt beside her. Not a uniformed soldier?a woman, dressed much the way Shaylar was, in sturdy and practical clothes. She was lovely, in the delicate, porcelain way of Uromathian women, but Shaylar knew this woman didn't come from Uromathia. Nor from anywhere else Sharonians had ever set foot.

The stranger's dark eyes were shadowed with grief and the lingering shock of having witnessed something too horrible to face. There was strength in those eyes, the strength of gentle compassion and something else Shaylar couldn't quite define.

The not-Uromathian woman moved slowly and carefully, as if she understood without words that a rapid movement would send Shaylar skittering in terror. She held up a canteen?despite its unfamiliar shape, it couldn't be anything else?and poured carefully into a small metal cup. A hand eased under Shaylar's head, lifted a little?

?and pain exploded through her. A cry choked loose, and her hands dug into the ground in spastic response. But she felt the other woman touch the side of her head. She murmured something, so softly Shaylar wasn't even sure she'd heard words at all, and then the pain in her head eased a little. Shaylar opened her eyes and stared, wondering what had just happened. She knew from experience what the touch of a telempathic healer felt like, and this was nothing like that.

Fear stirred uneasily once more, despite the dampening down of the pain and nausea. Whoever?and whatever?she was, the woman held the cup to Shaylar's lips, and Shaylar drank deeply. The water felt glorious to a throat made raw by screams and smoke.

Memory struck her down again. Smoke. Flame. Jathmar burning in the center of the fireball. She began to cry, helplessly, and the woman held her, rocked her gently.

Shaylar's Talent roared wide open. She couldn't hear thoughts; her wounded head throbbed without mercy, and the language would have been wrong, in any case. But the other woman's emotions spilled into her, hot as peppered Ricathian whiskey, yet gentle and filled with sorrow and compassion.

They didn't mean for this to happen.

She didn't know how she knew it, but Shaylar knew. As certainly as if the woman had told her, mind to mind, she knew … and knew it was the truth. They hadn't meant for the fighting, the death, to happen at all. Deep currents of someone else's emotions washed over her: bitter regret, a sorrow so deep it ached, a sense of helpless grief, smoldering anger at someone?a specific person, somehow to blame for all the agony and destruction. Shaylar felt it all, and with it came a bleak, terrible desolation all her own.

Deep, wrenching sobs shook her, and then the other woman was urging her to turn around. Was speaking softly but urgently, pointing at something nearby. Shaylar turned reluctantly, resisting the pressure, unwilling to face whatever it was, but the not-Uromathian was gently, implacably insistent, and Shaylar was too weak to resist.

And then her breath caught. He lay beside her. His hair was singed; his shirt?what little remained of it?was scorched; and her breath faltered at the sight of the raw, oozing burns along his back. But his ribs were lifting and falling, slowly, steadily.

"Jathmar!"

The shriek came from her soul, and she tried to fling herself at him. But the other woman caught her back, speaking urgently again. Her fear gradually seeped through Shaylar's wild need to throw her arms about her husband and protect him from further harm. The other woman had captured Shaylar's face between her hands, was speaking in a frantic tone, trying to make Shaylar understand something vitally important.

And then she did. Jathmar was badly, desperately injured. He might yet die, and Shaylar stopped struggling to reach him. The relief in the other woman was so strong it caused the slender not-Uromathian to sag and gulp in air. Then she released Shaylar, and watched as Shaylar ruffled Jathmar's flame-damaged hair, brushed a fingertip across his cheek.

Shaylar's eyes were wet. When she looked up, so were the other woman's. They sat beside Jathmar, both of them weeping, and somehow the worst of the horror faded away. Whoever these people were, whatever ghastly "mistake" had ended in such carnage, there were decent and caring people among them.

Other sounds gradually penetrated Shaylar's awareness. Voices?men's voices, close by, sounding well organized, busy, and deeply grim. She looked around, trying to find other survivors, and saw no one else she knew. They were no longer in the clearing at all. Someone had carried them under the trees, away from the toppled timber and the scene of the massacre.

But some of that massacre's slaughter had come with them. She, Jathmar, and the woman trying to help them were surrounded by other men, men in torn and bloody uniforms. Many of them were swathed in bandages. Some lay motionless, faces waxen, hardly breathing. Others moaned in pain, and Shaylar felt a sudden, shockingly vicious stab of satisfaction as she saw the proof that her friends?her family?had not gone easily into death.

There were two other people in sight. Two more men in uniform, but these weren't wounded. They stood less than two yards away, although they weren't watching Shaylar, which both surprised and relieved her. She felt far too fragile to be stared at by men who had, just minutes previously, tried their best to murder.

Instead, they were staring into the trees, their gazes sharp and alert. Sentries, Shaylar realized abruptly, and bitterness choked her. They might as well have saved themselves the effort standing guard. They'd already slaughtered the only Sharonians and this universe, except Darcel Kinlafia, and he was probably on his way back to the previous portal, taking with him the horrifying last minutes they'd spent in linked communication.

He probably thought she was dead?that all of them were dead. They would be no rescue attempt, unless she somehow found a way around the pain and the fracture in her Talent that had left her Voiceless. Without that, Darcel would have to believe they were dead, and Company-Captain Halifu had too few men to risk confronting the these people's terrible firepower just to recover a dozen dead bodies.

Her fragile self-control wavered, threatened to break apart. She was alone, cut off from anyone who could help her, awaiting only the gods knew what fate … Then she thought of Jathmar and his terrible injuries. He would need her even more desperately than she would need him, she told herself fiercely, and felt fear and the beginnings of hysteria recede. They were alive and together, and Jathmar needed her. That was all that mattered.

She looked up dully as someone walked across and stopped in front of her. He was tall and ruggedly handsome, but his eyes were burnt holes, filled with the afterimage of what he'd witnessed. There was a huge, invisible weight on his shoulders, one she'd seen a handful of times in her life. Most recently, it had rested on Ghartoun chan Hagrahyl's shoulders. It had been there when he decided they couldn't wait for Jathmar. And again, when he stood up and faced armed men without so much as a pocket knife in his hands.

He's their commander, she realized with a shock like icewater. He was simply standing there, looking at her, and his eyes held hers the way Ghartoun's had, pleading with her to understand. To somehow refrain from hating him.

Jasak watched the play of emotions across the tiny woman's face. They were as transparent as glass, and his heart ached. He'd never felt so helpless in his entire life, but there was literally nothing he could do to erase the agony that lived behind her eyes. He didn't even dare to step closer; he didn't want to see her flinch away from him.

He looked at Gadrial. She'd been crying, but she wiped her face dry, waiting for him to say what he'd come to tell her.

"Were ready to begin the field rites," he said quietly. "If you'd rather not watch …"

"I knew some of those men well enough to grieve for them," she said, her own voice low but steady as she stood.

"Field rites aren't for the faint of heart."

"Not everyone has an Andaran view of death." Her voice was as level as before, but it had suddenly turned much cooler.

"No, not everyone does," he said, holding her eyes steadily. "But there's been too much burning of flesh already for anyone to relish witnessing more. That's what field rites do, Gadrial. Cremation."

He'd heard the harsh burr in his own voice, and her face changed. The cool aloofness vanished, replaced by something almost like contrition.

"I'm sorry," she said. "I was thoughtless and rude. They were your men… . "

She looked away, but not before he saw fresh tears glittering on her eyelashes. That nearly proved his undoing, but she pulled herself back together and her eyes met his once more.

"Thank you for letting me know it was time," she said softly, and glanced down at the woman Jasak had carried here. Then she looked back at him.

"If I were her, I'd want to know," she said, even more softly.

Jasak's soul flinched, but he nodded, and Gadrial crouched beside the other woman, speaking very softly. She urged the tiny, injured woman to her feet and steadied her as her balance wavered. She was probably suffering from a concussion, at the very least, Jasak thought bitterly, hoping fervently that the blow hadn't fractured her skull.

Don't be stupid, he told himself sharply. Gadrial wouldn't have let her stand up if there were broken bones anywhere in her body.

Shaylar had to lean heavily on the other woman, but she managed to take the few tottering steps back to the open clearing. The smoke had dissipated, but the smell lingered, and Shaylar swallowed nausea, certain she would carry this stench to her grave. Then they reached the edge of the trees, and her footsteps faltered. She would have fallen, if the other woman hadn't been holding her so tightly.

She couldn't count the bodies. They were too many of them, and the world was spinning again, trying to drag her down into darkness. She fought off the vertigo and the tremors, fought to regain control of her swimming senses. Why had they brought her out here? Why did they wanted to see the pitiful remains of the people she loved?and the foul remains of the men who'd killed them? She wanted to scream at them for make in her come out here and face this again.

What finally caught her attention was the way the surviving soldiers were standing. They were silent, helmets in hand, and then the tall man began to speak. His voice was very quiet, and Shaylar finally realized what he was doing. It was a eulogy?sacred rites for the dead.

And not just his own, she noticed, forcing herself to look again. She saw the bodies of her own companions, laid out with the same care they'd taken with their own dead. Limbs had been straightened, hands crossed over breasts, crossbow quarrels removed …

Her crippled, frustratingly erratic Talent was still functioning well enough to catch the emotions of the woman she leaned against, and she winced as they flooded through her. These people were nearly as devastated as she was, with guilt added to the grief. They were trying to show proper respect, according her people the same honors and rites as their own. Someone was moving among the bodies, now, laying a small object on each man's chest. Whatever the objects were, they were placed with reverence and care. Rectangular and dense, they caught the sunlight with the same odd, crystalline sheen as the terrifying weapons which had hurled fire and lightning at them.

The last one was placed, and the man who'd placed them returned to the edge of the clearing and rejoined his companions. Their commander said something further, then turned once again and looked at Shaylar, with something terrifying and almost pleading in his eyes. He took something from the pocket of his uniform blouse, looked at his men, and spoke again.

His voice was harsh with command, and every one of his men snapped to attention. Their right hands struck their left shoulders in what was obviously a salute, and they held it as the commander drew a quick breath, as if for courage, and touched something on the object he taken from his pocket.

Light flared, so bright Shaylar had to look away, her eyes clenching shut in reflex. When she got them open again, her entire body stiffened. The bodies laid so carefully on the ground were burning.

She choked, tried to whirl away, and lost her precarious balance. She was falling, dragging the other woman with her. Someone was screaming mindlessly, and a corner of her mind realized it was her. Strong hands caught her, kept her from sprawling across the ground, and she fought like a wildcat, striking out with her fists and nails, frantic to escape this newest horror. She might as well have tried hitting a mountain. The hands were strong, terrifyingly strong, yet strangely gentle, and their owner was saying something in a voice filled with raw pain.

And then her Talent betrayed her once again.

His emotions battered her bleeding senses with someone else's regret, so sharp it was like a knife in her own heart. And that wasn't all. She felt his aching desire to erase her suffering, and a bitter acknowledgment that his attempt to show respect to her people had backfired hideously. He would have done anything in that moment to ease her pain, and she knew it. Knew it with the absolute certainty possible only to a telepath.

It was the cruelest thing he could have done to her. She needed an enemy to hate, and he gave her this?his bleeding heart and the agony of a man whose every instinct was to protect and who knew, with a certainty which matched her own, that he'd destroyed her very life, instead.

Shaylar opened her eyes and stared up into his, and then shuddered violently and went limp, undone by that last realization.

Jasak stared helplessly at the tiny, wounded figure slumped in his arms. He'd tried to show her companions the same honor he'd paid his own fallen men. He'd hoped?prayed?she could understand that there were too many dead, too few living to carry them home again. Too many for them to bury in earthen graves if they had any hope of getting the wounded back to safety in time for it to do any good.

He couldn't?wouldn't?leave any of them for the buzzards and the carrion crows. Her companions had been as human as his own men, and he was already beginning to suspect that they hadn't been soldiers at all. They'd been civilians, but they'd fought trained soldiers with a courage?and a ferocity?any man of honor must respect. If anyone had ever deserved proper treatment from their enemies, these men had.

But he should have realized what those fiery bursts of light and flame would do to someone who'd just seen all of her companions slaughtered in deadly explosions of fire. Especially when there was no way for any of them to explain to her what they were doing.

Jasak didn't know what to do. No training manual, no officers' course, covered something like this, and he glanced up at Gadrial, hoping for enlightenment, or even a simple suggestion. But he found her biting her lip, her own face twisted with guilt and a sense of helplessness which matched his own.

But then the slender woman he held lifted her head. Her eyes were wet and wounded, reddened from too many tears, but they studied him for a brief, dreadful eternity. He was unaware he'd been holding his breath until she turned that deadly gaze away, releasing him from the paralysis which had gripped him, and looked out at the still fiercely blazing funeral pyres.

She wrenched away from him and stood watching the flames, her body swaying for balance, her face ashen. When she started to speak, Jasak's pulse jumped in shock. Her voice was a thin, fragile sound against the roar of magic-induced flames. He couldn't know if she was invoking a deity, or speaking a eulogy, or simply saying their names, but a chill ran across his skin as he watched her face the flames and all they meant.

Everyone else was staring at her, as well, and several of his men shivered. Jasak wondered how many of his men she'd killed. She'd still had a weapon in her hand when they found her. Who was she? They didn't even know her name, much less what she was, or why she was here, and the totality of his ignorance appalled him.

She finished speaking at last and closed her eyes. She stood silently for long moments, tears sliding down her cheeks. Her face was bruised and swollen, blood had dried in her hair, and the poignancy of her grief tore at his heart like considers. She nearly crumpled when Gadrial wrapped an arm around her shoulders, and Jasak started forward to capture. But she caught herself, stiffened her knees, and stayed on her feet.

"Jathmar," she whispered brokenly, and Jasak watched Gadrial guide her back into the trees and help her sit down beside the man who wore the cuff that matched hers.

Jasak watched for a moment longer, then dragged his attention away and focused on the next task at hand. Somehow, he had to transport his own wounded, a woman with an obvious concussion, and a man so badly injured he literally hovered at death's door, through almost twenty miles of rough wilderness. And somehow, he had to figure out what happened here, and how a handful of people had slaughtered Fifty Garlath's command in such a tiny handful of minutes. First Platoon had gone into the fight with fifty-six arbalestiers and dragon gunners. Twenty-seven of them were dead, and another nineteen were wounded, some of them critically.

With Threbuch and one other trooper dispatched to find the other side's portal, he had fewer uninjured men than he had wounded, even counting his six engineers and the baggage handlers.

He didn't look forward to the rest of the day.

Haliyar Narmayla struggled to hold back tears as the carriage clattered through the cobbled streets of New Ramath. The cavalry escort riding in front of her cleared the way, giving her carriage absolute priority, and the port master had already been alerted to expect her arrival. The dispatch boat was undoubtedly raising steam even as the well-sprung, rubber-tired carriage swayed and vibrated over the cobbles.

It was impossible to see much, or would have been, if she'd had the heart to look out the window in the first place. New Ramath was a respectable small city?or very large town, depending on one's standards?but it was no huge metropolis. It was also out towards the end of the explored multiverse. In fact, it's only reason for existence was to serve Fort Tharkoma, perched in its mountainous aerie almost four hundred miles inland, where it covered both the exit portal from the universe of Salym and also the railhead from Sharona itself. Additional track was being laid beyond Tharkoma, of course. In fact, the actual railhead was currently no more than a few hundred miles short of Fort Salby in the universe of Traisum.

But New Ramath was a critical link in the chain which bound the ever expanding frontier to the home universe. The entry portal for Salym was guarded by Fort Losaltha, almost fourteen hundred miles from Fort Tharkoma. The rail line could have been extended from Losaltha directly to Tharkoma, but Losaltha was located at the Salym equivalent of Barkesh in Teramandor, where the fist of the Narhathan Peninsula and the Fist of Bolakin closed off the eastern end of the Mbisi Sea. A rail line would have had to skirt the northern coast of the Mbisi and penetrate some of the most rugged mountains to be found in any universe. With its long experience, the Portal Authority and the shareholders of the Trans-Temporal Express had opted to avoid the huge construction costs and delay that would have entailed and utilize the water route, instead.

The city of Losaltha, built on the splendid harbor which had served Barkesh for so many thousands of years back in Sharona, was in the process of becoming a major industrial city. For now, however, the Express and Portal Authority were still shipping steamships through to Salym by rail. They arrived as pre-manufactured modules, which were assembled at Losaltha and then put into service, closing the water gap between Losaltha and New Ramath. In fact, it had amazed Haliyar when she realized just how big the modules the Trans-Temporal Express's specialized freight cars could transport really were. Of course, most of the shipping here in Salym was still of local manufacture?small, wooden-hulled, and mostly powered by sail. That was the norm in the out-universes, after all.

But given the fact that New Ramath's sole reason for being was to handle the bigger, faster TTE freighters and passenger vessels plying back and forth between Losaltha and the Tharkoma Portal, its dockyards and wharves were several times the size one might have expected, with not a few luxury hotels under construction. But it remained a provincial city, for the most part, with few of the amenities those closer to the heart of civilization took for granted. Which had struck Haliyar as particularly amusing when she was first assigned here, since Tharkoma was little more than two hundred miles from Larakesh, the Ylani Sea seaport serving the very first portal ever discovered, and little more than three hundred miles from Tajvana itself. Or, rather, from the locations Larakesh and Tajvana occupied in Sharona.

And why are you letting your mind run on like a crazed tour guide at a moment like this?

Her mouth tightened as the question drove through her brain, but she knew the answer. It was to keep from thinking about the message locked in the agonized depths of that self-same mind.

If only Josam hadn't taken ill, she thought bitterly.

But he had. Josam chan Rakail was the Voice assigned to Fort Tharkoma, and he had the range to reach Chenrys Hordan, in the small town of Hurkaym. Hurkaym was actually little more than a village, built on the island which would have been Jerekhas off the toe of the boot of the Osmarian Peninsula to serve as a link in the Voice chain between Fort Tharkoma and Fort Losaltha. Josam could reach Hurkaym easily, but Haliyar's range was far more limited. That was why she'd been assigned to serve as the New Ramath Voice and link the city to the portal fortress. But Josam had come down with what sounded like pneumonia, and his assistant Voice at Tharkoma had even less maximum range than Haliyar did. Which meant all he'd been able to do was to relay the message to her for her to pass on to Chenrys.

And since I don't have the range to do it from here, either, I'm going to have to get into range in the first place, she thought.

She finally glanced out the window. It was the middle of the night in New Ramath, and without gas streetlamps, the city was wrapped in slumbering darkness, sleeping peacefully. She wondered how that would change when its inhabitants discovered the news she was about to pass on.

Her fingertips traced the hard, round outline of the pocket watch in the breast pocket of her warm jacket. It was hard to believe, even for a Voice, that less than half an hour had passed since the vicious attack on the Chalgyn Consortium's survey crew, five universes, two continents, and an ocean away from New Ramath. Haliyar bit her lip, fighting back a fresh burst of tears.

She'd met Shaylar Nargra-Kolmayr and her husband on their way through Salym. As a Voice herself, although never one in Shaylar's league, she'd been unable to avoid feeling the echoes of their mutual devotion. Their marriage bond was so strong that no telepath?whether of Voice caliber, or not?could spend five minutes in their company without feeling it, whether she wanted to or not. And that made the agony of Seeing Jathmar's horrible death before Shaylar's very eyes, and then Seeing?and feeling?the even more terrible moment when Shaylar's Voice went abruptly silent, even worse. The experience had been like an ax blow, and now it was her job to pass that dreadful, soul-searing experience on to Chenrys in all its horrifying detail.

She wouldn't have had to do this if Josam hadn't fallen ill. She might have managed to avoid the unbearable immediacy of knowing exactly what had happened to two people she had both liked and admired deeply … and envied more deeply still.

The carriage slowed, and she drew a deep breath, preparing to climb down when the door opened. The dispatch boat?an incredibly fast little vessel, powered by the new steam turbines and capable of sustained speeds of thirty knots or more?lay waiting for her, smoke pluming from its two strongly raked funnels. It wouldn't have to take her all the way to Hurkaym. Haliyar's range was almost three hundred miles; getting her as far as the west coast of Osmaria would allow her to reach Chenrys, and that would take the dispatch boat less than four hours. Then the message?and all its grim, horrible imagery?would go flashing further along the transit chain literally at the speed of thought.

There were still water gaps which couldn't be closed by convenient relay stations like Hurkaym, Haliyar thought as the carriage came fully to a halt. Those were going to impose delays much greater than just four hours. Still, the message would reach Tajvana and the Portal Authority's headquarters there in less than a week.

And what happens then, she thought as the coachman's assistant opened the door for her, scarcely bears thinking on.

She stood for a moment, gazing at the dispatch boat under the bright, gas-powered lights of the TTE wharf, and tried not to shiver.