David Weber - Hell Hath No Fury

Velvelig brought down yet another gryphon, and his second magazine was empty. He dropped it out of the magazine well and reached into the carrier at his side for a third.

That was when the crossbow bolt hit him.

It slammed into his right hip like an incandescent spike, and he grunted explosively at the raw, brutal stab of agony. The sheer sledgehammer impact was enough to knock him backward, off his feet, and he went down, losing his shotgun as he landed. His left hand went to the stubby, thumb-thick steel shaft driven deep into his pelvis, but his right swept down to his holster and the heavy, familiar weight of his H amp;W revolver fell into his palm.

The monsters swarming around the barracks had noticed him at last, and one of them came straight at him. He brought the revolver up, tracking the incoming nightmare with a rock-steady muzzle, and fired.

The hollow-nosed .46-caliber slug hit the gryphon in the left eye at a range of little more than fifteen feet. The creature's head snapped up under the brutal impact, but momentum kept it coming, and Namir Velvelig's world went black as the plummeting body smashed into him.

Iftar Halesak stood in the center of the captured fort's parade ground, looking about him at the litter of bodies-and body parts-sprawled across the gore-splashed dirt. In some ways, the carnage was even worse than he'd seen at Fort Shaylar and Fort Brithik. The bodies there hadn't been this mangled.

This … shredded. True, many of them had been so burned and shriveled as to no longer look human, but in some ways that had actually lessened the impact. It was hard to think of them as anything which had ever been human, while those killed by the yellows had at least been intact. These bodies were not.

In fact, they looked exactly like what they were-the brutally mutilated corpses of men who had been literally torn to pieces by vicious, ravening predators bigger than most of them had been.

So what? he demanded of himself harshly. Dead is dead, however you get that way. Besides, at least it's pretty quick when a gryphon gets hold of you! And none of these bastards was an old, gentle civilian who got murdered after he'd surrendered.

A stubborn little voice buried deep in the back of his brain stirred uneasily at that last statement. He felt it there, but he crushed it ruthlessly back into silence. Whatever might be happening to surrendered Sharonian POWs, he and his men hadn't had anything to do with it. And none of it could change what the butchers had done to Magister Halathyn.

He watched the dismounted unicorn cavalry troopers spreading out to relieve the initial infantry assault force. He and the other air-dropped infantry had opened the gates and held them until the cavalry could arrive against the disjointed efforts of the dozen or so Sharonians who'd been outside the barracks and somehow evaded destruction by the gryphons. He'd lost three of his own men, but the defenders had been so stunned, so shocked, by what had happened to them that they'd had virtually no unit organization at all. Their counterattacks had been determined, but they'd been launched in ones and twos, without sufficient strength-even with their infantry weapons-to break through the defensive fire of Halesak's arbalests and infantry-dragons.

Most of those who'd tried to retake the gate were just as dead as the ones the gryphons had ripped apart, and-

"Sir! Fifty Halesak!"

Halesak turned and found Yirman Farl pelting across the parade ground towards him.

"What is it?" the officer asked sharply.

"We've found the POWs!" Farl announced excitedly. "One of them's asking for you, Sir!

"For me?" Halesak blinked.

"Yes, Sir!" Farl's smile looked like it was about to split his face in half. "It's Fifty Ulthar!"

"Ulthar?" Halesak repeated sharply. "Where?"

"Over here, Sir!"

Halesak followed the lance quickly through the carnage to what was obviously the fort's brig. There were perhaps a dozen men locked into its cells. The early morning light pouring in through the outer barred windows showed that the cells weren't particularly crowded, and that they'd been provided with ample bedding. That registered peripherally with Halesak, but his attention was locked on the tallish, wiry, red-haired Andaran who had a cell entirely to himself.

"Therman!" Halesak seized his brother-in-law's good hand as Fifty Ulthar reached it through the bars to him. "Gods, man! We thought you were dead!"

"Not quite." Ulthar was paler than ever, Halesak thought, and noticed the awkward way the other man stood, with his left arm in a sling. The shoulder on that side was oddly hunched and swollen, as if there might be multiple layers of bandage under his blouse, and his face was grooved with pain lines which hadn't been there the last time Halesak had seen him.

"I took a hit through the shoulder," Ulthar explained as he saw the direction of Halesak's gaze. "Tore the hell out of it, actually, and these people don't have healers. Not like ours, anyway. They did their best, but …"

He shrugged his good shoulder, and Halesak's jaw tightened.

"If they did, it's the only time they did," he grated, and Ulthar's eyebrows rose.

"What's that mean?" he asked. Halesak looked at him in surprise, and Ulthar smiled crookedly. "I know you better than that, Iftar. It's not like you to leap to conclusions, and I'm a bit at a loss to understand how you'd know anything about how they've been treating us since they captured us."

"I don't have to know about that to know what sort of butchers these people are," Halesak said harshly.

Ulthar's surprise was obvious, and Halesak's lips drew back in a snarl. "The fact that they shot Magister Halathyn down like a dog after he surrendered is all I need to know, Therman!"

"Shot Magister Halathyn?" Ulthar's surprise had segued into confusion. "What're you talking about?

They didn't kill Magister Halathyn!"

"What?!" Halesak stared at him in disbelief. For an instant or two, the ex-garthan's brain simply refused to process information. Then he shook himself violently. "But the Intelligence reports … the briefings

– "

"I'm telling you, they didn't do it," Ulthar said. "They couldn't have. It wasn't one of their weapons-it was one of ours. An infantry-dragon. A lightning-thrower."

"Are you sure, Therman? Are you positive?"

"Damned right I'm sure," Ulthar said. "They allowed us funeral rites when they buried the dead. I saw Magister Halathyn's body with my own eyes, Iftar. He'd been wounded in one arm, probably by one of their hand weapons, during the attack, yes. But it was the lightning that killed him."

"Oh my gods," Halesak whispered, remembering the hatred, the fury which had impelled him. "They said they couldn't confirm it, but …"

"I don't know what 'they' told you," Ulthar said, "but as far as I can tell, these people have treated all of their prisoners-including me, Iftar-with respect. I haven't seen one bit of casual brutality, and their healers-such as they are-have done everything they could for our wounded. Despite the fact that we shot at them first."

"We shot first?" Halesak parroted.

"Of course we did!" Ulthar's voice was suddenly harsh and bitter. "Hundred Olderhan was right. He wanted us pulled back, away from the portal until we could sort out how to manage a peaceful contact, but Hundred Thalmayr had other ideas. I talked to one of the sentries he ordered to open fire on the single cavalry trooper they sent forward to talk to us. To talk to us, Iftar!"

Halesak's mind was working overtime, putting bits and pieces together, remembering the rumors about how Five Hundred Neshok went about "interrogating" captured Sharonians … and remembering that Two Thousand Harshu hadn't done a thing to stop him.

"Listen, Therman," he said quickly, urgently, leaning closer to the bars and keeping his voice low, "can you prove we didn't kill Magister Halathyn?"