David Weber - Hell's Gate

"The same thing the Chief Sword did for Osmuna." Jasak had to clamp his jaw tighter for a moment.

"Field rites," he said then, and looked down at her. She looked back, her expression puzzled, and his lips tightened. "I take it you've never seen them?" he said almost harshly.

Gadrial shook her head. The only thing she knew about "field rites" was that military commanders were sometimes forced by necessity to abandon their dead. Procedures had been developed for just that sort of emergency, but that was all she knew about it. She thought he might explain, but he didn't. Instead, he turned to Platoon Sword Harnak, his senior noncom now that he'd sent Otwal Threbuch away, and indicated the other two wounded men with a gentle, curiously vulnerable wave of his hand.

"Have someone stay with these men until … until they're not needed, Sword. No man should die alone."

Harnak nodded grimly, and Jasak inhaled and nodded at the girl and the man Gadrial had saved.

"I want these two moved out of this hellish pile of timber. But for pity's own sake, take care with him. He's got to survive, Harnak."

Gadrial realized there was more to Jasak's almost desperate insistence than any mere intelligence value living prisoners might represent. Jasak Olderhand was a soldier, but no murderer, Gadrial realized, and even she recognized that these people hadn't stood a chance once his support weapons opened fire on them. Now she felt his granite determination to snatch at least some of them back from the jaws of death … whatever it took.

"Yes, Sir." Harnak's acknowleding salute, like his voice, was subdued. Exhausted.

Gadrial knew how the sword felt. She watched Jasak smooth a tendril of long, dark hair away from the unconscious woman's face. His fingertips were so gentle, so tender, Gadrial felt tears prickle at the corners of her eyes.

"I'm sorry," she thought she heard him whisper, but it might have been only the wind. Then he pulled himself together and got busy organizing his surviving troopers for the farewell they would soon bid to far too many brave men.

And to one arrant coward, a small voice whispered deep inside Gadrial Kelbryan. She looked at the wounded, the dying, the dead, and knew it would be hard not to spit on Garlath's grave.

Shaylar didn't want to wake up. She wanted to be dead. For long moments, she couldn't remember why?she was just certain that whatever ghastly thing waited for her was too terrible to bear living through. She whimpered, wanting her mother. Wanting someone who could hold her close and whisper that everything was all right. That everything would be as it should, and not as it was, torn with screams and flame, the sight of her beloved?

She jerked back from the memory, but not in time. Pain?hot and terrible?gripped her heart with savage, shredding claws.

Jathmar!

She tried to touch him through the bond, but there was something wrong, dreadfully wrong, inside her head. Pain throbbed relentlessly, leaving her dizzy and sick. And, far worse, Voiceless. She couldn't Hear Jathmar, and even though she tried, she couldn't Hear Darcel, either. There was nothing but pain. Nothing else in the universe …

Someone touched her.

She flinched violently, whimpering again as fresh pain exploded through her. But the touch returned, gentle, soothing her, drawing her back from the crumbling edge of sanity. Reluctantly, she opened her eyes and blinked in the dappled light streaming down through golden treetops.

A woman knelt beside her. Not a uniformed soldier?a woman, dressed much the way Shaylar was, in sturdy and practical clothes. She was lovely, in the delicate, porcelain way of Uromathian women, but Shaylar knew this woman didn't come from Uromathia. Nor from anywhere else Sharonians had ever set foot.

The stranger's dark eyes were shadowed with grief and the lingering shock of having witnessed something too horrible to face. There was strength in those eyes, the strength of gentle compassion and something else Shaylar couldn't quite define.

The not-Uromathian woman moved slowly and carefully, as if she understood without words that a rapid movement would send Shaylar skittering in terror. She held up a canteen?despite its unfamiliar shape, it couldn't be anything else?and poured carefully into a small metal cup. A hand eased under Shaylar's head, lifted a little?

?and pain exploded through her. A cry choked loose, and her hands dug into the ground in spastic response. But she felt the other woman touch the side of her head. She murmured something, so softly Shaylar wasn't even sure she'd heard words at all, and then the pain in her head eased a little. Shaylar opened her eyes and stared, wondering what had just happened. She knew from experience what the touch of a telempathic healer felt like, and this was nothing like that.

Fear stirred uneasily once more, despite the dampening down of the pain and nausea. Whoever?and whatever?she was, the woman held the cup to Shaylar's lips, and Shaylar drank deeply. The water felt glorious to a throat made raw by screams and smoke.

Memory struck her down again. Smoke. Flame. Jathmar burning in the center of the fireball. She began to cry, helplessly, and the woman held her, rocked her gently.

Shaylar's Talent roared wide open. She couldn't hear thoughts; her wounded head throbbed without mercy, and the language would have been wrong, in any case. But the other woman's emotions spilled into her, hot as peppered Ricathian whiskey, yet gentle and filled with sorrow and compassion.

They didn't mean for this to happen.

She didn't know how she knew it, but Shaylar knew. As certainly as if the woman had told her, mind to mind, she knew … and knew it was the truth. They hadn't meant for the fighting, the death, to happen at all. Deep currents of someone else's emotions washed over her: bitter regret, a sorrow so deep it ached, a sense of helpless grief, smoldering anger at someone?a specific person, somehow to blame for all the agony and destruction. Shaylar felt it all, and with it came a bleak, terrible desolation all her own.

Deep, wrenching sobs shook her, and then the other woman was urging her to turn around. Was speaking softly but urgently, pointing at something nearby. Shaylar turned reluctantly, resisting the pressure, unwilling to face whatever it was, but the not-Uromathian was gently, implacably insistent, and Shaylar was too weak to resist.

And then her breath caught. He lay beside her. His hair was singed; his shirt?what little remained of it?was scorched; and her breath faltered at the sight of the raw, oozing burns along his back. But his ribs were lifting and falling, slowly, steadily.

"Jathmar!"

The shriek came from her soul, and she tried to fling herself at him. But the other woman caught her back, speaking urgently again. Her fear gradually seeped through Shaylar's wild need to throw her arms about her husband and protect him from further harm. The other woman had captured Shaylar's face between her hands, was speaking in a frantic tone, trying to make Shaylar understand something vitally important.

And then she did. Jathmar was badly, desperately injured. He might yet die, and Shaylar stopped struggling to reach him. The relief in the other woman was so strong it caused the slender not-Uromathian to sag and gulp in air. Then she released Shaylar, and watched as Shaylar ruffled Jathmar's flame-damaged hair, brushed a fingertip across his cheek.

Shaylar's eyes were wet. When she looked up, so were the other woman's. They sat beside Jathmar, both of them weeping, and somehow the worst of the horror faded away. Whoever these people were, whatever ghastly "mistake" had ended in such carnage, there were decent and caring people among them.

Other sounds gradually penetrated Shaylar's awareness. Voices?men's voices, close by, sounding well organized, busy, and deeply grim. She looked around, trying to find other survivors, and saw no one else she knew. They were no longer in the clearing at all. Someone had carried them under the trees, away from the toppled timber and the scene of the massacre.