David Weber - Hell's Gate

Darcel probably thought she was dead, but he couldn't be positive, and as far as he could know, some of the others might have survived, even if she hadn't. Under the circumstances, Company-Captain Halifu would almost certainly have to be sending out a party to rescue any possible survivors, and if these people couldn't retreat because of their own injured men …

The woman who'd been trying so hard to comfort her was moving among the wounded who lay sprawled in the trees. She paused at each man, touching him lightly and whispering something. She also consulted frequently with their commander, but she obviously wasn't a soldier. Shaylar was virtually certain of that. She'd already noticed the other woman's lack of a uniform, but Shaylar wondered if she might be a civilian healer assigned to this military unit. Certainly what she'd done for Shaylar's throbbing head and her current attentiveness to the wounded suggested that might be the case, which surprised Shaylar on two separate levels.

Healers assigned to the Sharonian military were full-fledged members of that military, part of the Healers' Corps. They were also all men. Women didn't serve in the Sharonian military. Even in Ternathia, which was deplorably "progressive" by the standards of other Sharonian cultures, only a tiny handful had ever been accepted for military service, and then, inevitably, only in staff positions or as nurses well to the rear. Officers and even enlisted men could marry, of course, and their wives and children could travel with them to their assigned duty posts. But those wives and children remained in military-built and financed housing in the civilian towns which sprang up around the portal forts. They didn't accompany their men on missions, whether in the wilderness or to put down the occasional outbreak of banditry in more settled country, and not even Ternathian female nurses were ever assigned to the Healer Corps which served units in the field.

Whoever this woman was, she finished tending the wounded and returned to Shaylar's side. She sat beside her, looked into Shaylar's eyes, and pointed to herself as she spoke slowly and clearly.

"Gadrial," she said. It was an odd name, but a name was clearly what it was.

"Jathmar?" she continued, pointing at Jathmar and confirming Shaylar's guess.

"Yes." Shaylar nodded, wincing at the movement of her aching head. "Jathmar."

Gadrial nodded back, then cocked her head, waiting expectantly, and Shaylar touched her own breastbone.

"Shaylar," she said, and a lovely smile flickered like sunlight across Gadrial's face.

"Shaylar," she repeated, then said something else. Shaylar tried desperately to make contact with Gadrial's mind, hoping that this woman might be some sort of telepath, but she could touch nothing. The place inside her own mind where such connections were made was a throbbing mask of blackness and pain. She was still Voiceless, and panic nibbled at the edge of her awareness. If the damage proved permanent …

Don't borrow trouble.

Her mother's voice echoed through her memory, and grief and the fear that she would never see her mother again were nearly Shaylar's undoing. She felt her mouth quiver, felt fresh tears brimming in her swollen eyes, but then Gadrial took her hand gently and pulled her back from that brink.

"Shaylar," she said again, then something else. She pointed to Jathmar and the others, then to the south. Shaylar frowned, and Gadrial pantomimed walking with two fingers on the ground, then pointed again.

Shaylar felt herself tensing internally once more. They were leaving, walking toward something in the south … which was the direction Darcel had sent them to locate the nearest portal to another universe.

She looked at all of the other wounded, then back at Gadrial, cursing the whirling unsteadiness of her own senses and thoughts. She couldn't imagine how the remaining fit soldiers could possibly transport all of their wounded fellows, and her heart sank as she realized Gadrial might be referring only to her and Jathmar. If their own portal to this universe was as close at hand as Darcel had thought, they might want to get their prisoners safely away for future interrogation, and that thought was terrifying.

But if they want prisoners to interrogate, they'll have to keep us alive until they can start asking questions, a little voice said somewhere deep inside her. And that means they'll have to get Jathmar proper healing as quickly as possible.

Her jaw clenched as the exquisite anguish of her plight gripped her like pincers. Every step, every inch, toward the south would take them further and further from any possibility of rescue. But those same steps might very well take Jathmar towards healing and survival.

Shaylar had known the risks when she signed up for this job, but she'd never dreamed how devastating it would be to face a moment like this, knowing her beloved needed medical care only their enemies could provide. Yet in the end, that was the only chance fate was likely to put into her trembling hands, and so she nodded, and felt as if she were somehow sealing their doom.

And either way, it's not as if I have very much choice, she thought grimly.

"I know you're frightened," Gadrial said gently to the other woman?Shaylar?and touched her arm. "But I swear Sir Jasak will do everything he can to save Jathmar for you."

Shaylar's mouth trembled again briefly at the sound of her companion's name. She reached down, touching Jathmar's forehead with heartbreaking gentleness, and Gadrial's own heart twisted as she recognized the grief and despair in the gesture.

Then she heard the sound of approaching footsteps, and she and Shaylar both looked up as Jasak went to one knee beside them. Weariness showed in the commander of one hundred's face and the set of his shoulders. It was obvious from the way he moved that the wound along his ribs, especially, was causing considerable pain, but the shadows in his eyes as he looked down at Jathmar and Shaylar had nothing to do with his wounds.

"How's it going?" he asked.

"I've got their names," Gadrial said. "And I think I just got her to understand and agree to walk with us to the swamp portal."

"Gods, I hope so." His voice was full of smoke and gravel. "She's suffered enough without us having to drag her every step of the way."

"They're your prisoners."

Gadrial tried to keep from speaking between clenched teeth, but it was hard. She wasn't at all happy in her own mind about taking Shaylar and Jathmar back as military prisoners. Surely they'd already done these people enough hurt! The thought of what Shaylar and Jathmar might face at the hands of government and military interrogators, on top of all they'd already suffered, was enough to stiffen her with rage.

It must have showed, despite her effort to control her voice, because Jasak gave her a quick, very sharp look. Then he nodded.

"Yes, they are," he said flatly. "And my responsibility."

Ah, yes?responsibility, Gadrial thought. That most Andaran of all traits. Noblesse oblige. The duty to codes of honor instilled into Andaran children?girls, as well as boys?from the cradle itself. She wanted to ask if that responsibility would protect these battered people from the military hierarchy that would want to peel their minds like apples. She had no idea what kind of magic might be brought to bear on the mind of the prisoner of war, and, frankly, she didn't want to find out. But if the Union of Arcana and its military decided that extracting information from Shaylar and Jathmar was vital to the security of the Union, there wouldn't be a single damned thing Gadrial could do about it.

So she did the only thing she could do. She introduced Sir Jasak Olderhan, son of the Duke of Garth Showma, to his prisoners.

Jasak saw the worry and anger in Gadrial as clearly as he saw the terror and exhaustion in Shaylar. The slender girl repeated his given name with a bruised weariness he recognized as post-battle trauma. He hated seeing it in Shaylar's eyes as much as he hated seeing the suspicion in Gadrial's, but he couldn't expect the magister to understand that. She was Ransaran, raised in a culture where the formality of military duty, of knowing one's obligations to a stratified social order, wasn't an ingrained part of everyone's basic childhood training. She didn't understand what Jasak's responsibility entailed. Not yet. But she would, he promised himself, and hoped that the worry and anger would fade from Gadrial's eyes as quickly as he hoped the terror and shock would fade from Shaylar's.