David Weber - Hell Hath No Fury

Surprise startled the repetition out of Toralk. Mul Gurthak had been oddly silent ever since the Expeditionary Force began its advance. In fact, as far as Toralk was aware, he hadn't sent Harshu a single message in all that time.

"Indeed," Harshu told him. "It would appear that Two Thousand mul Gurthak is most distressed over the way in which I have misinterpreted his desires and grossly exceeded his intentions."

Toralk's eyes went wide. He couldn't help it. He'd read most of the official instructions and memoranda mul Gurthak had sent forward to Mahritha before Harshu launched his attack.

"But, Sir, that's rid-" he began.

"Don't say it," Harshu interrupted. Toralk closed his mouth with a click, and Harshu grimaced. "Given a couple of things he said in his dispatches, Klayrman," he said very quietly, "I think he probably has his own eyes and ears out here, keeping him informed. It might not be very wise to … express your opinion overly freely in front of anyone besides myself, if you take my meaning."

It was Toralk's turn to sit back, and his jaw muscles tensed as the implications began to percolate through his brain.

"That's better," Harshu told him. The two thousand picked up his almost forgotten wineglass and sipped from it, then set it back down again.

"According to Two Thousand mul Gurthak, it was never his intention for us to advance beyond Hell's Gate. And, in fact, he always regarded the use of force to retake even Hell's Gate as an action of last resort."

"Sir," Toralk said, despite Harshu's warning, "I don't see how any reasonable individual could have interpreted his instructions to mean anything of the sort. Certainly not in light of the verbal briefings he gave both of us before he deployed us forward!"

"Klayrman," Harshu said chiding way, shaking a finger at him, "you're letting your opinions run away with you again."

Toralk clamped his mouth shut, and Harshu snorted harshly.

"The interesting thing is that if you read his written instructions without those verbal briefings of his, they can actually be interpreted exactly the way he's interpreting them at the moment. While I would never wish to imputes duplicity to a superior officer, I find that I can't quite shake the suspicion that the discrepancy between his current very clearly expressed views and what you and I understood his instructions to be isn't … accidental, shall we say?"

"Sir, I don't like what you seem to be saying."

"I'm not overjoyed with it myself. In fact, the thing that bothers me most right now is that I can't decide whether mul Gurthak is simply trying to cover his own ass now that the shit's hit the fan, or if he deliberately set us up-well, set me up, at least-from the start. Did he simply shape his written instructions this way so he'd be covered if something went wrong, or did he want us to do exactly what I went ahead and did, but clearly-for the record, at least-without his authorization?"

Toralk started to open his mouth again, but Harshu's raised finger stopped him. Not, the Air Force officer reflected a second later, that it was really necessary for him to say what he was thinking.

But why? Why would mul Gurthak want us to start a shooting war out here "without his authorization"?

He's still the senior officer in command, even if he did delegate the field command to Harshu.

Ultimately, surely the Commandery is going to hold him responsible for what happens in his command area. So why go to such elaborate lengths?

The thoughts flashed through his brain. He had no answers for any of the questions, but he was sinkingly certain that if he'd had those answers, he wouldn't have liked them.

"Of course," Harshu continued in a lighter tone which fooled neither of them, "Two Thousand mul Gurthak is not yet aware that we've managed to kill the heir to the Ternathian Crown, is he? That's going to be just a bit unexpected, I imagine. As is the way the Sharonians are going to respond to it."

He showed his teeth in a smile which contained no humor at all, and Toralk winced. Unlike Harshu, he'd actually met the senior Sharonian officers at Fort Salby. There wasn't much question in his mind about how the Ternathian Empire, at least, was going to respond.

He looked across the table at Mayrkos Harshu and wondered if he looked as sick as he felt.

Rof chan Skrithik stood stiffly to attention as the haunting bugle notes of Sunset, the call the Ternathian Empire's military had used to close the day for almost three thousand years, floated out under the smoldering embers of a spectacular sunset.

It was a beautiful bugle call, with a sweet, clear purity that no soldier ever forgot. And it was also, by a tradition so ancient no one even knew when it had begun, the call used at military funerals.

The last sweet notes flared out, and chan Skrithik inhaled deeply, gazing out across the neat rows of graves. At least a third of them were marked with the triangular memorial symbol of the Triad. Others showed the horsetails of Arpathia, or the many-spired star of Aruncas of the Sword.

And out there, in the midst of the men who had died to hold Fort Salby, was the young man who had died to save Fort Salby.

Chan Skrithik reached up, gently stroking the falcon on his right shoulder. For millennia, since the death of Emperor Halian, the House of Calirath's tradition had been that when one of its own died in battle, he was buried where he fell. Buried with the battle companions who had fallen at his side, and with his enemies. Chan Skrithik would have preferred to send Janaki home to his mother. To let him sleep where he had earned the right to sleep, beside Erthain the Great. But like Halian nimself, Janaki chan Calirath would rest where he had fallen, further away from Estafel and Tajvana than any other Calirath.

And where he slept would be Ternathian soil forever.

"It doesn't seem right, Sir."

Chan Skrithik turned. Chief-Armsman chan Braikal stood beside him, looking out across the same cemetery.

"What doesn't seem right, Chief?"

"It doesn't seem right that he's not here, Sir." Grief clouded the chief-armsman's voice. "None of us would be here without him, and-"

Chan Braikal broke off, and chan Skrithik reached out and touched him lightly on the shoulder.

"It was his choice, Chief. Remember that. He chose to die for the rest of us. Never let anyone forget that."

"No, Sir. I won't." Chan Braikal's wounded voice hardened. "And none of us will be forgetting how he died, either."

Chan Skrithik only nodded.

Division-Captain chan Geraith's entire First Brigade had marched past Janaki's body. Every surviving man of the fort's PAAF garrison had done the same, and Sunlord Markan had personally led his surviving Uromathian cavalry troopers past the bier in total silence, helmets removed, weapons reversed, while the mounted drummers kept slow, mournful time.

Janaki chan Calirath's death had done more than save Fort Salby. Rof chan Skrithik already understood that. Janaki had been added to the legend of the Caliraths, and the fighting men of Sharona would never forget that the attack which had killed him had been launched in time of peace by the very nation which had asked for the negotiations in the first place.

He wasn't the only victim of their treachery. In fact, chan Skrithik never doubted that Janaki would have been dismayed-even angry-if anyone had suggested anything of the sort. Yet it was inevitable that the young man who would one day have been Emperor of all Sharona should be the focal point for all the grief, all the rage-all the hate-Arcana had fanned into a roaring furnace.

"I stand between," chan Skrithik thought. Well, you did, Janaki. You stood between all of us and Arcana.

And you stood between me and the gryphon that killed you. It's a hard thing, knowing a legend died for you. But that's what Caliraths do, isn't it? They make legends. They become legends, and, gods, the price they pay for it!