David Weber - Hell's Gate

Two of First Platoon's four dragons were still firing, blasting round after round into the tangle of fallen timber. There hadn't been a single return shot in well over a minute, but the gunners didn't even seem to realize it. They were submerged in a battle frenzy, too enraged by the slaughter of their fellow troopers?and too terrified by the enemy's devastating weapons?to think about things like that.

"Graholis seize you, cease fire!" Jasak bellowed, charging into a second dragon's crew while Chief Sword Threbuch waded into the third.

The fourth dragon hadn't fired in some time; its entire crew, and six other troopers who'd taken their places, were sprawled around it, dead or wounded.

Threbuch tossed the last operable dragon's gunner into a tangle of blackberry bushes at the clearing's edge just as a final lightning bolt sizzled from the focus point and slammed into a fallen tree trunk. Bark flew, smoke billowed up with the concussive sound of thunder, and then the discharge fizzled out.

Silence, alien and strange, roared in Jasak's ears.

He stood panting for breath, his pulse kicking at the insides of his eardrums like a frantic drumbeat. He made himself stand there, fighting his shakes under control, then dragged his sleeve across his face to clear his eyes of sweat and grime. Only then did he make himself look, make himself count the bodies.

His men lay sprawled like gutted marionettes across ground that was splashed with far too much blood. There were bodies everywhere, too many of them motionless, not even moaning, and his stomach clenched in the agony only a commanding officer could know.

Graholis' balls. Half his entire platoon was down out there. Half!

"You're bleeding, Sir."

The quiet, steady voice punched through his numb horror. Shocked, he slewed around to find his chief sword tearing open a medical kit.

"What?"

"You're bleeding, Sir. Let's have a look."

"Fuck that!" Jasak snapped. "It can't be more than a scratch. We've got to search for the wounded?all the wounded. Theirs as well as ours."

"So order a search. But you're still bleeding, and I'm still going to do something about that."

"I'm not?"

"Do I have to knock you down and sit on you, Hundred?" Otwal Threbuch snarled so harshly Jasak stared at him in total shock.

"You're our only surviving officer Sir," Threbuch's voice was like harsh iron, fresh from the furnace, "and you will damned well hold still until I find out why there's blood dripping off your scalp and pouring down your side!"

Jasak closed his mouth. He hadn't realized he was bleeding quite that badly, and he made himself sit quietly while the chief sword swabbed at the scalp cut he hadn't even felt. Worse was the furrow that something had plowed through the flesh along the edge of his ribs. Whatever it was, it had barely grazed him, but it had left a long, stinging wound in his side, ripped his uniform savagely, and left an impressive bloodstain that had poured down over his side. Another few inches inward, and it would have gone straight through a lung, or even his heart.

Jasak gritted his teeth, directing his surviving noncoms?there weren't many?to search for the wounded while Threbuch applied a field dressing. The instant the chief sword finished, Jasak strode out into the clearing, checking on his own wounded as he headed for his real objective: the enemy.

Some of his men had already reached them.

"We've got a survivor, Sir!" Evarl Harnak called out. "He's in bad shape."

Jasak hurried over to Garlath's platoon sword wondering what miracle had brought the sword through alive, since Harnak had led the charge the other side's weapons had torn apart. It was hard to believe that any of those troopers could have survived, Jasak thought bitterly. And that, too, was his fault?he'd been the one who'd thought the dragons had suppressed the enemy's fire.

He climbed through a tangle of fallen tree limbs and hunkered down beside Harnak. The sword was kneeling beside a man whose entire left side was badly burned. He'd taken a crossbow bolt through the belly, too, doing untold and probably lethal damage, even without the burns and the inevitable severe shock.

He was breathing, but just barely. It was a genuine mercy that he was unconscious, and Jasak was torn by conflicting emotions, conflicting duties and priorities. This whole disaster was his fault, which meant this man's brutal injuries were his fault. He reached for the wounded man's unburnt wrist and found the pulse. It was faint, thready, failing fast. Helpless to do anything else, he watched the stranger die.

"More survivors, Sir!" another shout rang across the smoke-filled clearing. "Oh, gods! One of them's a woman!"

Jasak ran, sickness twisting in his gut. He cursed the debris in his way, fighting to find a path through it, then flinging himself down, crawling under a fallen tree trunk to reach them. There were four survivors, fairly close together. Three had been burned badly; the fourth was scorched, but the infantry-dragon's breath had barely brushed her, thank Graholis.

She was unconscious. One slim hand was still wrapped around a weapon that was the most alien thing Jasak had ever seen. Drying blood caked the hair on the right side of her head, and a ghastly bruise was already swelling along that side of her face. A nasty lump ran from her temple to the back of her head.

"She must've been thrown against the tree trunk," he said, turning his head, eyes narrowed.

Yes, there was hair and blood caught in the rough bark, and it took all of Sir Jasak Olderhan's discipline not to slam his bare fist into the bark beside them. His only medic was dead?had been shot down, trying to reach wounded dragon gunners?and at least three of these people were so badly hurt they probably wouldn't have survived even with a medic.

"I need Magister Kelbryan," he barked over his shoulder, turning back to the savagely wounded survivors. "Now, damn it!"

Somebody ran, shouting for Gadrial, and Jasak bent over the unknown woman. Her pulse was slow under his fingers, but it was steady, strong, thank the gods. She was tiny, even smaller than Gadrial, with a beautiful, delicate face. She looked like a fragile glass doll lying crumpled in the ruins, and Jasak's heart twisted as he raged at Garlath and even at this woman's companions for coming here, for killing Osmuna and starting this whole disaster. And worst of all, for bringing this lovely girl into the middle of the killing his men?and hers?had unleashed in this clearing.

He'd kept Gadrial back at the very edge of their own formation, flat in a shallow ravine where she?and the men he'd assigned specifically to guard her?were out of the line of fire. Why the hell hadn't these men done the same?

Because, the stubborn back of his mind whispered in self-loathing and disgust, you left them no choice, circling around them to cut off their escape… .

Someone came crashing toward him through the underbrush, and he lifted his gaze to see Gadrial running recklessly through the tangled wood, past dead soldiers and smoking rubble.

"Where?" she gasped, and Jasak reached out and lifted her across the five-foot fallen trunk as if she'd been a child. He set her down beside the wounded, and her breath choked on a sound of horror.

All three of the male survivors were burned. Two had been caught facing the fireball when the dragon's breath detonated amongst them, and their crisped skin and the stench of their burnt flesh twisted Jasak's stomach all over again. The third man had been facing away, or at least partially away, leaving him burned across the back. His shirt was a tattered wreck of blackened cloth. He'd been slammed into a jutting limb and fallen sideways, landing on one shoulder before sprawling across the ground, and broken ribs were visible through the tattered shirt.