David Weber - Hell's Gate

Chief Sword Otwal Threbuch went to one knee in front of her chair. The man who was so strong, so professional, in such command of his own emotions that she'd privately concluded that he'd been chiseled from granite. That man knelt in front of her chair and took her icy fingers in his, and even through her pain she felt a distant sense of surprise as his own fingers actually trembled.

"My lady," he said in a choked voice, "I'm sorry. There wasn't anything I could do. Nothing at all. I was trapped on the wrong side of the portal, couldn't even get to our camp, let alone get to Magister Halathyn."

She started to cry, silently, because she was unable to draw a deep enough breath to sob aloud.

"How?" she whispered, the sound thin as skeletal fingers scratching on glass, and his eyes flinched.

"I wish to every god in heaven I could tell you the enemy killed him, Magister. One of their soldiers had pulled him out of his tent, was questioning him. About Shaylar, I think, because Magister Halathyn was pointing toward the coast, toward this fort. Then one of our field-dragon crews?"

"No!" The word was ripped from her. Jathmar's ghastly burns swam before her eyes, and the picture her mind's eye painted of Halathyn, caught in a dragon's fireball, was too horrifying to face.

"No, Magister!" Threbuch said urgently. The chief sword reached out, caught her chin in one hand, forced her to look into his eyes and see the truth in their depths. "I know what you're thinking, but it wasn't a fireball! The gods were at least that merciful. He didn't suffer, I swear that, My Lady! The lightning caught them both, killed them instantly?"

The sobs which had been frozen inside her broke loose. She sensed people moving, heard their voices, but couldn't make sense of the words. Threbuch's hands let go of hers, then someone else crouched in front of her, tried to hold and comfort her. But she jerked back in her chair, wanting to hate these men for not forcing Halathyn to leave the swamp portal with her.

"Gadrial, please." Jasak's voice reached her at last, hoarse and filled with pain. "Let me at least help you."

She opened her eyes, staring at him through the blur of her tears, and even from the depths of her own dreadful pain she saw the anguish in his ravaged face. And as she saw it, she realized that Sir Jasak Olderhan had just lost nearly every man of his command. Men he'd cared about, felt responsible for, had grown to know?even love?in that mysterious male way of soldiers: formal and distant, at times, yet as close as brothers. But he was also Jasak Olderhan, with all that name implied, captive to all those Andaran honor concepts she couldn't understand. Unlike her, he couldn't weep for his loss, for his dead. Shame stung her cheeks, punching through the wild rush of grief, and she shook her head.

"I'm sorry," she whispered. "You cared about him, too. About all of them… . "

He merely nodded. The movement was jerky and stiff, but that was because there were witnesses, both men he had commanded and the man who commanded him.

"I'm sorry," she said again, louder, looking this time at Otwal Threbuch. "You must think I'll hate you," she continued, trying desperately to steady her voice. "I'm trying not to."

His eyes flinched once more, and she bit her lip.

"I'm trying not to blame any of you. Trying not to blame myself. He was so stubborn?"

She broke off, gulping hard to maintain control, and looked Threbuch squarely in the eye.

"You were on their side of the portal, Chief Sword. I know that, and I've seen what their weapons can do. You couldn't possibly have reached him." Her voice was hoarse, cracking, but she forced it onward. "Nobody could have, I know that. Not through that kind of fighting. It's just such a terrible?"

She did break down again, then, but this time she let Jasak put an arm around her shoulders. There was great comfort in leaning against the strength of his broad shoulder, in the warmth soaking into her, helping her rigid muscles relax. She was mortified, at one level, to have broken down so completely and deeply, having wept in front of these men like any other helpless female. But losing Magister Halathyn for any reason, let alone this way …

"Would you like to go back to your quarters?" Jasak asked gently.

She nodded, and he helped her stand up, steadied her, let her lean on his forearm. She tried to say something to Five Hundred Klian, but her throat was locked. She turned a helpless look on Otwal Threbuch, but her throat remained frozen, so she reached out one hand, instead, and gripped his fingers in silence. Then Jasak was guiding her across the room. He opened the door for her, slipped an arm around her shoulders when they stepped outside, and steadied her carefully as her knees went rubbery on the low wooden steps down to the parade ground.

They were almost to her quarters when she remembered and went stiff and stumbled to a halt.

"What is it?" Jasak asked urgently.

"Shaylar. And Jathmar. They're in my room."

She didn't think she could face them yet. They hadn't done anything themselves to kill Halathyn?or the others?but her mentor, the man who'd been her second father, was dead because soldiers from their universe had come looking for them. Gadrial couldn't?just couldn't?face them yet. Not while the shock was so raw.

Jasak swore under his breath, then changed direction and led her to his own quarters, in the building reserved for officers, not civilian technicians. His room was neat, tidy, and very nearly empty. The gear he'd brought back from the field was stored in orderly fashion, and his personal crystal sat on his desk, glowing lines of text visible where he'd obviously been interrupted in the middle of something when Chief Sword Threbuch had arrived with the news.

He guided her to the bed, rather than the chair.

"Lie down and rest for a while," he murmured, easing her down.

The bed, like all military bunks in frontier forts, was a simple cotton bag stuffed with whatever the regional commissary had been stocked with: feathers, cotton wadding, even hay. This one, like her own, had feathers inside, soft and comforting as she curled up on her side atop the neatly tucked-in blanket. He opened the window, letting in a cooling breeze, then looked back down at her.

"Just stay here for a while, Gadrial. I'll come back for you later, all right?"

His kindness in not mentioning the names of the people he was about to remove from her room left her blinking on salty water once more. She heard his feet cross the bare plank floor, then the door clicked softly shut behind him and Gadrial lay still, listening to the wind rustle through the room, the distant sound of men's voices, the occasional cry of seabirds high above the fort, and remembered.

She remembered a thousand little details. Her first day at the Mythal Falls Academy, an awestruck young girl from the windy empty plains of North Ransar, still short of her fourteenth birthday. How she'd gaped at the ancient stone buildings, stared in amazement at the thunderous roar of Mythal Falls, one of the two largest waterfalls in any universe, plunging into its deep chasm. The very air, and the ground under her feet, had been so pregnant with latent magic that her skin had tingled and her bones had buzzed, and yet even that had been almost secondary beside an even greater sense of wonder.

She?Gadrial Kelbryan?had scored so highly on the standard placement tests that Magister Halathyn vos Dulainah himself had offered her a place at the Academy.

It wasn't possible. She hadn't even known her Ransaran teachers had sent her exam results to the Academy, hadn't guessed how truly outstanding those scores had been. Not until the message crystal had arrived with Halathyn's personal invitation recorded in it. And then, impossibility piled on top of impossibility, he'd personally met her that first day, taken the unknown, timid teenaged girl from Ransar?the only non-Mythalan student in the renowned academy's entire student body, and one of the three youngest students ever admitted to it?under his wing. And he'd taken her out to the Falls themselves, shown them to her, and spoken quietly about the reason her body had buzzed so strangely there.