David Weber - Hell's Gate

A humpback, he realized through numb shock. One of the singing whales. Only that was no whalesong bursting from it. That was rage. Pure, distilled, and terrible rage.

Gods, Kinshe realized. Shaylar's mother was broadcasting what she saw. She probably didn't even realize it, but the cetaceans did, and he jerked his gaze back to her. She was shuddering, eyes clenched tightly shut, her sounds like those of some small, trapped animal. Then she stiffened, and her eyes flew wide.

"Shaylar!" she screamed, and her husband flinched so violently he nearly went to the floor. Then Shalassar collapsed. She sagged in her chair, her head falling forward in merciful unconsciousness.

Kinshe stared at her, his eyes burning, and took a single step forward.

"Stay away from her!" Thaminar snarled.

His eyes were burnt wounds in his face, and he bent over his wife, stroking hair back from her wet face and murmuring her name over and over. Fragile eyelids fluttered. Opened. For long moments, there was no sense in Shalassar's eyes at all. Then remembrance struck like a crack of thunder, and she began to weep. She sobbed, the sound deep and jagged, while her husband cradled her close looking utterly bereft.

Kinshe could only stand there, feeling a tear trickle down his own cheek, wondering what to do. What anyone could do. And then?

"You men, out," Alimar Kinshe said firmly to her husband, her Crown Prince, and Samari Wilkon, and it was an order, not a request. "Go. Find something to do?I don't care what. Just go."

She didn't even look at them. She simply marched across the tiny office, gathered Shaylar's mother into her arms, and turned to Shaylar's father.

"Go and get some brandy, if you have any," she commanded. "Wine, if you don't. She needs it."

To Kinshe's infinite surprise, Thaminar rose without a sound of protest and left the office, like a ghost walking through terrain it can no longer see or touch. Kinshe watched him go, and then he understood.

He needed to feel useful. Needed to do something for his wife. He just didn't know how.

Halidar Kinshe's respect for his wife, already high, soared to dizzying heights, and he tiptoed very softly from the room, beckoning the others to follow.

Alimar clearly understood what needed to be done far better than he did, so he left her to do it.

Chief Sword Otwal Threbuch moved through the darkness like a ghost.

He felt like a ghost must feel?cold, empty inside, and incredibly ancient. He shouldn't have been alive, and after what he'd seen, there was a part of him which wished he wasn't. He told himself that was exactly the kind of thinking he'd spent decades hammering out of raw recruits who'd heard too many stupid heroic ballads, but that did nothing to soften the pain. Or his sense of guilt.

He'd lain on that limb, watching, helpless to intervene as the portal defenders were cut to pieces. He'd been as surprised as anyone when the enemy artillery opened fire through the portal, and he had no doubt that the shock of that totally unanticipated bombardment explained how quickly Charlie Company?his company?had been slaughtered. But it wasn't the full explanation, and deep in his heart of hearts, Otwal Threbuch cursed Hadrign Thalmayr even more bitterly than he had Shevan Garlath.

He'd known what was coming the instant that idiotic, incompetent, stupid excuse for a hundred opened fire on someone obviously seeking a parley. He'd recognized Thalmayr, of course, and the moment he'd seen the other hundred, he'd also recognized the answer to his questions about Hundred Olderhan's apparent lapse into idiocy. Not that his relief over the fact that Sir Jasak's brain hadn't stopped working after all had made what had happened to Threbuch's company any less agonizing.

Every ounce of the chief sword's body and soul had cried out for him to do something as the debacle unfolded. But the steel-hard professionalism of his years of service had held him precisely where he was, because there'd been nothing he could do. Nothing that would have made any difference at all to the men cursing, screaming, and dying in front of him. It might have made him feel a bit better to try, might have spared him from this crushing load of guilt at having survived?so far, at least. But that was all it could have accomplished, whereas the information he already possessed might yet accomplish a great deal, if he could only report it. Besides, as far as he knew, he was the only uncaptured survivor from the entire company, which meant he was also the only chance to report what had happened to Five Hundred Klian.

He clenched his jaw, eyes burning, as he reflected on everything he had to report, including the death of Emiyet Borkaz.

Borkaz had been unable to force himself to sit out the fight. When the desperate survivors had launched their hopeless charge in a despairing bid to get their own support weapons to this side of the portal, Borkaz had left his cover and run madly towards them, screaming and cursing. He'd managed to get most of the way through the trees before he was spotted, and Threbuch thought he'd managed to kill at least one of the enemy on the way through (which was more than Threbuch had managed), as well. And then at least three of those hideous thunder weapons had struck him almost simultaneously. He must have been dead before he hit the ground, Threbuch thought grimly.

But at least the enemy could make mistakes, too. The fact that Borkaz had obviously come from behind them ought to have set off a search for whoever else might be behind them, as well. On the other hand, perhaps he was being too hard on them. Given the nature of the terrain, they might not realize where Borkaz had come from at all. They might think he'd come from the swamp side of the portal and simply gotten further than any of the rest.

The chief sword froze abruptly. Something had moved, and he stood motionless, straining his eyes and ears. There!

The enemy sentry hadn't moved very much at all. Probably nothing more than easing a cramped limb. But it had been enough, and Threbuch slid silently, silently to his right, giving the other man a wider berth.

Part of him was intensely tempted to do something else. His arbalest would have been all but inaudible under cover of the night wind sighing in the trees. For that matter, he probably could have gotten close enough to slit the other man's throat. It was something he'd done before, and the thought of managing at least that much vengeance for Charlie Company burned within him like a coal. But his job wasn't to kill one, or two, or even a dozen enemies, however personally satisfying it might have been. His job was to get home with the most deadly weapon in any universe?information?and if he left any dead bodies in his wake, the enemy would know at least one Arcanan had gotten away. They'd also know how important his report might be, and a dead sentry would set off a relentless search he might well fail to evade.

He felt the moment of transition as he belly-crawled across the portal threshold, moving instantly from autumnal chill into steamy tropical heat, and he fought down a sudden sense of release, of safety. Any soldier with an ounce of competence?which, unfortunately, these bastards certainly appeared to have?would have sentries on both sides of the portal.

He kept going, easing forward, working his way cautiously through the dense swamp grass and mud at one edge of the portal and praying that he didn't startle some nesting swamp bird into sudden, raucous flight.

Somehow, he managed to avoid that, and to creep silently behind the one additional sentry he did spot on the swamp side of the portal, silhouetted against the moon. It took him almost three hours to cover a total distance of little more than another eight hundred yards, but he made it. And once the wrecked base camp was a quarter-mile behind him, he rose to his feet at last, got out his PC, activated the search and navigation spellware, took a careful bearing on Fort Rycharn, and started walking. The thought of hiking seven hundred-plus miles across snake and croc-infested swamp, without any rations at all, was scarcely appealing, but he couldn't think of anything better to do.