David Weber - Hell's Gate

Just over an hour later, Threbuch stiffened in astonishment. He froze instantly, listening to the night, and looked down at his PC. The crystal's glassy heart glowed dimly, its illumination level deliberately set low enough to keep anyone from seeing it at a distance of more than a very few feet, and the chief sword's eyes widened as he saw the small, sharp-edged carat strobing at one side of the circular navigation display.

He stood very still for several more moments, watching, but the carat was equally motionless. After a moment, the noncom turned towards his right, rotating until the strobing carat and the green arrowhead indicating his own course lined up with one another. Then he moved slowly, cautiously, forward through the currently knee-deep swamp.

The carat strobed more and more rapidly, and then, abruptly, it stopped blinking and burned a steady, unwinking green.

Threbuch stopped, as well, standing in a dense, dark patch of shadow in the lee of a cluster of scrub trees growing out of the swamp. The combination of moonlight, shadow, and swamp grass rippling in the wind created a wavering sea of eye-bewildering movement, and he cleared his throat.

"Who's there?" he asked sharply.

"Chief Sword?" a hoarse voice gasped. "Gods above, where've you been?"

"Great thundering bollocks?Iggy?"

"Yes, Chief."

Threbuch watched in disbelief as Iggar Shulthan crawled cautiously out of the scrub trees. The other Scout's silhouette looked misshapen, and Threbuch's eyes went even wider as he realized what Shulthan had strapped to his back.

"Gods!" the chief sword half-whispered in the reverent voice of the man who'd suddenly discovered there truly were miracles. "You've got the hummers!"

The company's hummer handler reached out. Threbuch extended his hand, and Shulthan gripped it so hard the bones ached. The younger noncom's face was muddy, and even in the uncertain moonlight, Threbuch could see the memories of the horror Shulthan had witnessed in his eyes. Or perhaps he couldn't, the chief sword reflected. Perhaps he simply knew they had to be there because he knew they were in his own eyes.

"I-I ran, Chief." Shame hovered in the javelin's voice. "I grabbed the hummers, like Regs said, and ran with 'em. I ran, Chief!"

Tears hovered in Shulthan's voice, and Threbuch released his hand to grip both of the younger man's shoulders hard.

"Son, you did exactly the right thing," he said. "Don't you ever doubt that! Those regulations were written for damned good reasons. You're the Company's link with the rest of the Army. When the shit hits the fan, and the bottom falls out, somebody's got to get word back. The hummer handler's the only man who can do it."

"But the Hundred never gave me the order," Shulthan whispered, blinking hard. "He went down so fast, and they were dropping us like flies, and?"

"I know, Iggy," Threbuch said more gently. "I was trapped on their side of the portal. I had to sit there and watch it all, because my recon report for Five Hundred Klian is every bit as critical as yours." Threbuch found it abruptly necessary to swallow hard a few times. "That was the hardest thing I've ever had to do?ever. So don't think for a minute I don't understand exactly what you're feeling right now, Iggy."

The younger man nodded wordlessly, and the chief sword gave his shoulders another squeeze before he released them, stood back, and cleared his throat roughly.

"So, do you think anyone else got out?"

"No, Chief." Shulthan shook his head. "I haven't seen anyone. Not even them."

"I haven't seen any signs of pursuit, either," Threbuch said with a nod, although that wasn't exactly what he'd asked. He'd already known Shulthan was alone. Unlike the hummer handler's PC, the chief sword's carried specialized spellware which could give him the bearing to any of his company's personnel within five hundred yards. Bringing up the S amp;N spellware had automatically activated the locator function, thank the gods! But because of that, he'd known none of their other people were within a quarter mile of his current location. He'd simply hoped?prayed?that Shulthan might have seen someone else get out. Someone else who might be hiding out here, beyond the spellware's reach, trying to make his own way back to the coast.

"Where's Borkaz, Chief?" Shulthan asked after moment, and Threbuch's jaw tightened.

"Didn't make it." He shook his head and started to explain, then stopped himself. Shulthan's anguish at having cut and run while his friends died behind him was only too obvious. He didn't need to be told how Borkaz had died running in the "right" direction. Not, at least, until he had enough separation from his own actions to realize just how stupid Borkaz's had been.

"All right," the chief sword continued after moment. "Have you already sent back a hummer?"

"No, Chief." Shulthan shook his head. "I've just been running and hiding," he admitted in a shamefaced tone.

"Don't think I've been doing anything else since it happened," Threbuch said, shaking his head. The chief sword looked at the sky. The night was at least half over, he reflected.

"We need to send one back now, though," he continued. "It's going to take the rest of the night just to reach the coast, and we need to let Five Hundred Klian know what's happened. Come to that, we need to set up an LZ for them to pull us out of here, too."

"Yes, Chief."

Threbuch looked down at his PC again, trying to decide on the best spot. He didn't want a dragon within miles of the base camp. Gods alone only knew how far those bastards could throw whatever they'd used for artillery!

His empty stomach rumbled painfully while he was thinking, and he glanced at Shulthan again.

"You wouldn't happen to have anything to eat on you, would you, Iggy?" he asked, and blinked as Shulthan actually chuckled.

"Matter of fact, Chief, I managed to grab my whole pack. I've got a couple of blocks of emergency rats."

"Iggy, it's too bad you're not a woman," Threbuch said with the fervor of a man who hasn't eaten in well over twenty-four hours. "Or maybe it isn't. If you were, I'd have to marry you, and you're ugly as sin." The chief sword looked back down at his PC, picked the coordinates he needed, and then glanced back up at Shulthan. "Let's get that hummer on its way. Then lead me to those rations and stand back."

"Is a … unicorn," Shaylar said in slow, carefully enunciated Andaran.

"Yes, exactly!" Gadrial replied in the same language with a broad smile. She leaned closer to the breathtakingly life-like image displayed above the gleaming crystal on her tiny desk and indicated the booted and spurred man standing beside the beast in an anachronistic-looking steel breastplate. "And this?"

"Is a war-rider," Shaylar said firmly. Gadrial nodded once more, and Shaylar smiled back at her. Then she glanced at Jathmar, sitting beside her on the unused bed in the quarters which had been assigned to Gadrial, and felt her smile fade around the edges as she tasted his reaction to the imagery Gadrial was showing them through the marriage bond.

The coal-black creature Gadrial had just informed her was called a "unicorn" was unlike anything either of them had ever seen before, yet it was close enough to familiar to make it even more disturbing than something as totally alien as a dragon. The beast was roughly horse-sized and shaped, except for the legs, which were proportionately too long, and the improbably powerful looking hindquarters. But no horse had ever had those long, furry, bobcat-like ears, or that short, powerful neck, or the long, deadly-looking tasks?like something from some huge, wild boar?and obviously carnivorous teeth. Or the long, ivory horn which must have been close to a yard in length. And then there were the eyes. Huge green eyes with purple irises and catlike slitted pupils.