David Weber - Hell Hath No Fury

booming, crackling wavefront of flame was spreading out-it was actually moving upwind, as well as downwind-and there was no possibility of containing or controlling that raging fury. It had already completely blocked the overland route between the swamp portal and Hell's Gate, and unless some divine agency chose to intervene soon, it was going to burn all the way back to both of those portals. Not to mention burning the gods only knew how far in every other direction, as well.

From the Sharonians' perspective, simply blocking the trail would have been completely worthwhile in its own right, especially if they'd set the fire before they discovered the Air Force's existence. It was going to be a pain in the arse for Arcana even with the advantage of dragons and levitation spells; without that advantage, it would have delayed Two Thousand Harshu's offensive for days, probably even longer. The fact that it was going to completely destroy any possibility of tracking the Sharonian fugitives from Fallen Timbers was simply gravy from their viewpoint. But Neshok wasn't about to let them get away with that. If Rithmar Skirvon and Uthik Dastiri were still alive, Neshok wanted them back, and not just because they were accredited diplomats of the Union of Arcana. He wasn't supposed to know just how … friendly the diplomats were with Two Thousand mul Gurthak, but he was an Intelligence officer. As such, he had a pretty shrewd notion of how grateful mul Gurthak would be if Neshok could manage to retrieve them.

"Come now," he said almost gently as the silence stretched out. "I'm sure none of you want to be so … uncooperative that you make me angry. Believe me, you won't like me when I'm angry."

"We don't know where they'd go!" the young under-armsman blurted suddenly.

"That's enough, Sirda," the senior-armsman said quietly, almost gently.

The youngster darted a look at the older man, then clamped his jaws with a visible effort and stared at the floor directly in front of him, avoiding any possible eye contact with Neshok.

"No, Sirda," the Arcana said, his voice almost as quiet as the senior-armsman's, but far, far colder. "It isn't enough. It isn't nearly enough."

The under-armsman-Sirda-clenched his chained hands into fists behind him. His face was pale, and he bit his lip, hard, but he didn't speak.

Neshok nodded to the second of the two guards, and the Arcanan trooper bent over Sirda from behind, twisted his fingers in the young man's hair, and yanked his head back so hard the youngster couldn't quite smother his cry of pain. The pressure on his scalp forced him to look up, meet Neshok's eyes, and the Intelligence officer's smile was cruel and thin.

"Someone is going to tell me what I want to know," Neshok said softly. "Whoever it is, will probably get to live. As for whoever it isn't …"

He let his eyes drift to the trail of blood the big petty-armsman's face had left across the floor, then looked back at Sirda. The young man's throat worked, and sweat coated his face.

"In that case," the senior-armsman said levelly, "why don't you ask me?"

Neshok allowed his eyebrows to arch and gazed at the Sharonian noncom thoughtfully.

"I hadn't realized you were so eager to be reasonable, Senior-Armsman," he said. "Very well, which portal did Simrath and Arthag make for?"

The senior-armsman looked back up at him for a moment, then said something in a language the translating crystal didn't understand. The long sentence-or sentences-sounded guttural, yet flowing and edged with a sort of harsh music, but the language certainly wasn't Ternathian, and Neshok frowned.

"Speak Ternathian."

The Intelligence officer managed to bring the words out calmly, suppressing-barely in time-the urge to snap them out. Using anger to generate fear in someone else was a useful interrogation tool, but allowing a prisoner to successfully bait him would be a sign of weakness.

"Oh," the senior-armsman said. "Your rock doesn't speak Arpathian?"

"Speak Ternathian," Neshok repeated almost tonelessly, and the kneeling prisoner shrugged.

"If you want," he said. "I said, he already told you. We don't know the answer to your question."

"And what else did you say?" Neshok asked softly.

"Actually, what I said was, 'He already told you. We don't know the answer to your question, you syphilitic, camel-fucking son of a diseased sow and a hundred pig-fucking fathers,'"thinspace"" the senior-armsman replied … and smiled.

"It was, was it?"

Neshok tried to keep his voice calm, level, despite the sudden, savage bolt of white-hot fury which burst suddenly through him, but he knew he'd failed. He heard the anger crackling in his own words, heard the way they quivered about the edges, and saw the satisfaction in the senior-armsman's eyes.

Eyes, Neshok suddenly realized, which, like the cold smile below them, held not a single trace of fear.

Which dared the acting five hundred to do his worst. And as he realized that, Neshok realized something else, as well. The senior-armsman had deliberately redirected Neshok's own attention-and anger-to himself, and away from the terrified young under-armsman.

The five hundred glared at the Sharonian in front of him. It would have been inaccurate to say that Neshok reached a decision. That would have implied a deliberate, at least semi-rational process. He told himself, later, that it had been exactly that. That the coldly calculated need to undermine any defiance the senior-armsman might have managed to inject into his subordinates was what inspired him. Certainly a trained, determined interrogator would never allow a prisoner's words-the only weapon the prisoner possessed-to fill him with such sudden, volcanic fury that he acted without truly thinking at all.

Alivar Neshok looked at the guard standing behind the Arpathian prisoner, clenched his fist at shoulder level, and jerked it downward.

The Arpathian must have understood what that gesture meant, but his eyes never flinched and his smile never faltered as the short sword hissed out of its sheath behind him and the guard's free hand gripped his hair and yanked his head back.

"Now … Sirda," Neshok heard his own voice say across the coppery stink of the huge fan of blood which had erupted from the senior-armsman's slashed throat to fill his nostrils, "I believe you had something you wanted to tell me."

"Well, isn't this charming," Hulmok Arthag remarked.

It was quite astounding, Dorzon chan Baskay reflected, just how much disgust his fellow platooncaptain could put into a simple four-word sentence.

Not that he could really fault the Arpathian at this particular moment.

The Ternathian officer turned and gazed back the way they'd come. The portal through which they'd passed was far smaller than Hell's Gate. In fact, it measured barely three miles from side to side, which made it even smaller than the swamp portal. And at the moment, it was like a picture window into the very heart of one of the Uromathians' fiery hells.

The fire Arthag had created had rolled right up to the portal's very brink. The furious, heat-driven stormfront of wind had whirled bits and pieces of flaming debris through the portal as the bone-dry northern forest they'd left behind consumed itself in a vortex of searing devastation.

But there'd never been much chance of that fire pouring itself through this portal, chan Baskay reflected.

He could feel the fire's heat on his face even here, hundreds of yards away as he and Arthag stood sideby- side in the fork of a towering tree. Their chosen tree reared its impressive height-well over a hundred feet into the air, most of it far above their present perch-atop the same, sharp ridgeline over which Chief-Armsman chan Hathas was leading the other members of their tiny command. Other trees, thousands of trees, stretched away from this aspect of their arrival portal as far as they could see, and those trees were anything but "bone-dry."