David Weber - Hell Hath No Fury

"I can't pretend I'm not … very relieved to hear that, Sir," Toralk told him after a moment.

"I know you are, Klayrman." Harshu reached across the floating map table in his command tent and patted the Air Force officer's forearm gently. "I know you are."

There was silence for a moment. Then Harshu inhaled sharply and handed Toralk his copy of the current intelligence summary.

"When you look this over, I think you'll see why this Fort Salby's going to be tough," he said much more briskly. "I'll be interested to see if you come to the same conclusions I did about the most effective approach. I don't want to prejudice your thinking, but as you look through the summary, I'd like you to consider-"

"My gods, Sir! I thought you were dead!"

"As you can see, Silky, we Arpathians are even tougher then you knew." Namir Velvelig's eyes were darker and bleaker than Company-Captain Silkash had ever before seen them, yet his voice held a ghost of genuine amusement.

"No one's that tough," Silkash said flatly. "Remember, I'm the one who triaged you in the first place."

"You did?" Velvelig cocked his head to one side. "Odd. I don't recall it."

"I imagine that's because you were unconscious, almost out of blood, and had serious cranial injuries, not to mention a badly shattered hip and what I'm almost certain was at least one spinal fracture,"

Silkash told him. The surgeon's face twisted with bitter memory. "I black-tagged you."

"I see."

Velvelig reached out and squeezed his friend's shoulder. He understood now why Silkash looked the way he did. A black tag indicated that there was no point trying to save the patient. That it was time to let him go and concentrate on saving those who might live, instead.

"I don't think your judgment was in error, if that's what's bothering you, Silky," the regiment-captain said after a moment. Silkash looked skeptical, and Velvelig snorted. "Look, don't forget that these people can work magic. Magic, Silky. And apparently it's not limited solely to better ways to kill people, either. You wouldn't believe what I saw their healers doing before they decided I was fit enough to go to jail with the rest of you."

"If they could fix everything that was wrong with you, they really are wizards," Silkash said. Then he grimaced.

"What?"

"I was just thinking. If they could fix you up, as badly hurt as you were, and do it this quickly, no wonder an idiot like Thalmayr didn't understand what we were doing! I'll bet you they don't use surgery at all."

"I don't know about that." Velvelig shook his head. "I saw them doing some surgery, but I'd say they only do it for relatively minor injuries. I'm guessing there's some kind of limit on how much healing they can do at any one time with these spells of theirs, so they probably handle the little stuff the hard way and save the 'magic' for really serious problems. But I think you're probably right about Thalmayr … since I saw him walking out of their medical tent unassisted."

He and Silkash looked at one another, and Velvelig saw the mirror of his own response to the sight of a magically-literally-restored Hadrign Thalmayr walking around Fort Ghartoun. Of course, it was probably even more complex for Silkash than it was for Velvelig. After all, Silkash was a Healer. His oath, as well as his natural personality, required him to want to see any of his patients fully recovered.

However stupid, frustrating, detestable, and just plain infuriating the patient in question might be.

"Well, that's certainly interesting," Silkash said after a moment.

"That's one way to put it. On the other hand, I'm considerably less interested in Thalmayr than I am in what else has been going on."

"I don't know everything that's happened," Silkash replied slowly, and Velvelig's spine stiffened at the bleakness which suddenly infused the surgeon's voice. "What I do know hasn't been good, though."

"In that case," Velvelig said, in a tone whose evenness might have deceived anyone who didn't know Arpathians, "I suppose you'd better tell me about it."

"I'm worried about the horses, Dad," Syrail Targal said.

"So am I," his father said, patting him on the shoulder. "They'll just have to look after themselves for a while, though. Just like we will."

Syrail nodded, and his father ruffled his hair the way he'd done when Syrail was much younger. The youngster managed a smile, and Kersai gave him a gentle nudge in the direction of the carefully hidden tent.

"Go help your mother with supper," he said quietly.

"Yes, sir." Syrail nodded again and headed obediently towards the assigned chore.

His father watched him go, doing his best to hide the depth of his own concern. It had been just over twelve hours since the fall of Fort Ghartoun, and given the strength of the Voice talent Syrail had been showing for the last several months, there wouldn't have been a lot of point trying to deceive the boy into thinking his parents weren't frightened. But no father wanted to add to his child's fears. Especially, Kersai thought, his expression turning hard and bleak, when that child had already Seen what Syrail had Seen in Folsar chan Tergis' last moments of life.

A part of the worried father was furious at the Fort Ghartoun Voice for inflicting that sort of trauma on his son. And an ignoble part of him was even angrier at chan Tergis for having bragged about Syrail's remarkable Talent to other members of the fort's garrison. If the Voice had just kept his big mouth shut, then Kersai Targal wouldn't be hiding in the early-winter woods praying that the cold-blooded butchers who shot Voices out of hand wouldn't catch up with his son!

But most of him knew it was totally irrational to be angry with chan Tergis. There had been no possible way for the Voice to anticipate what had happened, to even guess that his pride in his protegee might prove dangerous to Syrail. And if his final Voice message to Syrail had been traumatic, it had also been the only thing that had warned Kersai and Raysith to flee.

The man warned us with literally the last seconds of his life. Told Syrail to run and hide when he knew he was about to be murdered, Kersai thought. Gods-while he was being murdered! How could anyone be angry with someone who did that?

He knew all of that intellectually; it was just his emotions which couldn't quite catch up with the knowledge. Which was stupid … which, in turn, was one reason he was as irritated with himself as he was. He could actually understand that, although there wasn't anything he could do about it. Not yet. Not when his son might very well already be under sentence of death by the same barbarian butchers who had massacred the Chalgyn Consortium crew and now, apparently, launched a vicious, unprovoked attack on all Sharonians even while they were officially "negotiating for peace."

He grimaced, gazing up at the sky, wondering if one of those eagle-lions Syrail had tried to describe to him might already be circling high overhead, spying on them. He'd hidden his encampment as carefully as he could, and he'd used his surveys of the surrounding terrain to pick a spot which offered at least three separate avenues of escape. But if these bastards could literally fly … .

He grimaced again and reached into his coat pocket to squeeze the bronze falcon he'd taken out of Syrail's dresser drawer. Then he turned and made his own way towards the tent.

Senior Sword Barcan Kalcyr pulled out his navigation unit and glowered at it as his unicorn picked its way through the unforgiving terrain.

The hammering these mountains had taken when this universe's portal formed was more extreme than most. It must have been exciting as hell, but Kalcyr was delighted he hadn't been here to see it. The way it had battered the mountainsides, stripping away trees and soil, leaving naked stone cliffs which rose like ramparts and piling up the wind-driven equivalent of silt behind any sheltering windbreak, had made a complete farce out of the normal maps for this particular piece of terrain. And the fact that the tree cover had been given time to fill back in after the carnage finally tapered off only made things even worse. Or that was the way it seemed to Barcan Kalcyr, at least.