David Weber - Hell's Gate

"Go on. Say the rest, I mean."

"Arcana, Sharona di-plo-mats meet here."

Skirvon drew an "X" in the mud between the two circles he'd already drawn and tapped it to indicate the approximate spot of the slaughter. He let his face fall into a deeply sorrowful expression which Dastiri mimicked beautifully. Even the Navy petty officer who'd managed the boat for them contrived to look sad.

"Great grief," Skirvon said. "Much hurt." He touched his chest to indicate his heart, then patted the "X" again. "Diplomats talk here." Then he pointed to the portal overhead and said, "Sharona stay here. Arcana want Sharona stay here." He pointed at chan Tesh's soldiers and their sandbagged positions. "But diplomats go, talk here."

He pointed to the "X" again, and chan Tesh cocked an eyebrow at him.

"You mean you're willing to accept that we keep this portal? You just want your diplomats to meet our diplomats here?" It was chan Tesh's turn to point at the "X" in the mud.

"You stay?soldiers stay," Skirvon said, very carefully not answering chan Tesh's first question directly, then indicated the "X" once more. "Diplomats talk here. Me. Dastiri. Sharonian diplomats."

"Under a flag of truce?"

"No shoot, yes. Talk. Negotiate."

chan Tesh gazed thoughtfully at the muddy diagram, then studied Skirvon and Dastiri carefully before he finally spoke once more.

"I'll send a message to bring a diplomat here." He pointed at the "X." "To Fallen Timbers."

"Fall En Tim Burr?" Skirvon asked, this time genuinely puzzled, and chan Tesh pointed at the massive trees behind him on the Sharonian side of the contested portal.

"Trees," he said. "Also 'timber.'" He pantomimed a tree with his arm, positioning his forearm vertically with his fingers outstretched as branches. "Timber." Then he blew hard at his hand and lowered it as if his arm were a falling tree. "Fall. So we call the site where you murdered our civilians 'Fallen Timbers.'"

"Ah … grief place." Skirvon nodded. "We walk, negotiate Fallen Timbers."

"Why?" chan Tesh's eyes were cold again, the soul-deep anger back again, burning coldly in their depths. "Why at Fallen Timbers?"

"Sharona fight hard. Arcana grief. Arcana want see, want re-mem-ber?" Skirvon spoke the Ternathian word carefully "?brave Sharona."

chan Tesh's eyebrows soared. Then he frowned thoughtfully.

"You want to meet where they were murdered? To do them honor?"

"'Honor'?" Skirvon repeated.

"If someone does a brave thing and dies doing it, we feel respect. We feel honor. We say they were good and brave and should be remembered with a good feeling here." chan Tesh touched his own heart, and Skirvon nodded emphatically.

"Yes. Meet at Fallen Timbers, honor brave Sharona." Then he gave the soldier a concerned look. "No bad anger, meet at Fallen Timbers?"

"Will we be so angry we won't negotiate?" chan Tesh shrugged. "I can't say. I don't have the authority. Meeting there to honor our murdered civilians will help, but it won't be easy to set aside our anger. We didn't start this."

Skirvon cocked his head and smiled gently.

"Arcana no start," he said. "Who start? Two men dead, no man see. Who start?"

chan Tesh blinked, then grimaced.

"So that's your story? You didn't start it because no one saw who killed Falsan? I find that profoundly interesting."

He gazed at Skirvon thoughtfully, but, to Skirvon's surprise, the uneducated rube didn't continue. He neither badgered Skirvon in an attempt to forcibly change his mind, nor pointed out?as they certainly could have?that it was Arcana who had run a party of civilians to ground and then slaughtered them. Skirvon kept smiling, gently, and revised?just a tad?his opinion of this particular provincial rube in uniform. At least the man was intelligent enough to leave that chore to the diplomats.

"When meet?" Skirvon asked.

"Stay here," chan Tesh replied. "We'll send a message. Wait here until the answer to that question comes back."

Either chan Tesh didn't know where the nearest diplomat was, Skirvon reflected, which was an interesting piece of information. Or he didn't want to admit how far away he was, which would be another interesting piece of information.

"We'll feed you while we wait," chan Tesh added stiffly. "We'll give you water and loan you blankets, if they're needed."

If they were needed? Could these thought messages, which Skirvon still found almost impossible to credit, really travel that fast? Or was a diplomat that near? The lack of information was maddening, but at this stage in the negotiations, their best was all they could do.

"We wait," Skirvon agreed.

chan Tesh nodded sharply and turned on his heel as smartly as any Andaran aristocrat on a parade ground. That was interesting, as well. Out in the middle of the godsforsaken wilderness, this company-captain?the equivalent of a mere commander of one hundred, assuming Kelbryan's primer had gotten it correct?was as spit-and-polish formal as some self-important, blue-blooded Andaran.

Either these people were as virulently militant as Andara itself, or else he was putting on a show for them, exaggerating his militancy for effect. Either answer would present its own possibilities, once Skirvon managed to figure out which one applied. It would, he realized with a slowly building emotion almost akin to relish, be a very interesting little exchange all around, wouldn't it?

The possibilities, he thought, licking his mental chops, were boundless.

Dorzon Baskay, Viscount Simrath, had dropped the "chan" from his name for his new role. It was possible that the Arcanan diplomats had discovered that the word indicated military service, and Platoon-Captain Simrath wasn't being a member of the military just now. After all, a diplomat as young as he was wouldn't have had time to become a military veteran, as well, so he couldn't be one, either, because right this minute he had to be a diplomat. A very convincing diplomat.

He wasn't at all happy about that, but he didn't have much choice. Sharona didn't have a real diplomat within less than three months' travel, and no one was prepared to admit that to the other side. They'd already delayed for the better part of two days while Company-Captain chan Tesh had conferred by Voice with Regiment-Captain Velvelig, but chan Tesh and Velvelig had both been aware that the possibility offered by the Arcanan contact might well be fleeting. If it wasn't seized now, it could slip away and never be offered again. Neither of them wanted to lose any possibility of avoiding an all-out war, and so Velvelig had finally made the decision which had led to chan Baskay's present unhappiness.

"We don't have an official diplomat, and we don't have time to get one," chan Tesh had told chan Baskay bluntly. "I don't have any idea whether or not these people are sincere. Even if they are, they've made it fairly clear that they're at the end of a long?and slow?communications chain. So whatever they may want doesn't necessarily mean a damned thing about their superiors' or their government's ultimate intentions. But I agree with Regiment-Captain Velvelig that we can't afford to let this possibility slip away if they are sincere. That means we don't have time to sit around, literally for months, with our thumbs up our arses while we wait for a 'real' diplomat?from whatever government we finally wind up with?to get all the way out here to Hell's Gate. Which brings us to you, Platoon-Captain."

chan Baskay had nodded, although he hadn't cared at all for where chan Tesh was obviously headed. chan Baskay was no diplomat; he was a cavalry captain, even if he had been born into the aristocracy, and a cavalry officer was all he'd ever wanted to the. He might be the son of an earl, with a lineage of political service to the Ternathian Empire that could have stretched from Hell's Gate clear back to Estafel, but he'd never wanted that part of the family tradition.