David Weber - Hell's Gate

It was terrifying, that silence. And yet, given the agony he was in, or would be when he awoke, it might be a mercy, as well.

Her world had shrunk to a tightly constricted sphere around herself and Jathmar's hand. Everything beyond was lost in a haze, out of focus and rumbling with a strange, muted roar, like freight trains whispering in the distance. The strongest reality was the unrelenting, raw agony inside her own head?an ache with spiked heels, doing a raucous Arpathian blade dance behind her temples and eyelids.

She had no idea how much time had passed since the attack, no idea how far she would be forced to struggle through this endless wilderness. Her awareness faded in and out, unpredictably, with an occasional louder noise close by. An explosive crack as a dried branch broke under someone's foot; a murmur of voices speaking alien gibberish. The sounds whirled around her like a slow cyclone, leaving her lost and dizzy in the middle of nothing at all …

She awoke brutally, with her face against something rough and uneven. Ground, she thought distantly. The roughness was the ground, covered with drifts of leaves. Confusion shook her like a terrier with a wounded rat, and voices rose in alarm on all sides. For long, terrifying moments she had no idea where she was, or why. Then memory slammed her down, and she bit back the scream building in her throat. She wanted to fall back into the delicious nothingness, couldn't find the strength to face what had happened or was yet to happen.

Someone was sobbing uncontrollably, and she realized slowly that it was her.

Then a voice came to her. It was a gentle voice, the voice of a woman whose name she knew but couldn't find in her broken memory. An equally gentle hand touched her hair, and the whirling confusion steadied. The voice came again, more sharply focused this time, and someone's arms were around her. They lifted her gently, laid her on a soft surface.

Cloth, she realized. Cloth cradling her from head to toe. She collapsed against it, sinking into its supporting embrace, boneless with gratitude for the chance to simply lie still and rest.

"Is she asleep?"

Gadrial glanced up. Sir Jasak Olderhan was bent over her shoulder, peering worriedly at Shaylar, his eyes dark.

"Very nearly," she said. "Let's get her litter up to transport height."

She let Wilthy adjust the levitation spell in the accumulator. Once Shaylar was floating between waist and hip height, Wilthy passed guidance control to a strapping soldier with a bandage on one thigh and livid bruises across the right side of his face. The trooper's expression as he gazed down at the slender girl was a curious blend of wonder and apprehension, as though he expected her to mutate into a basilisk at any moment. Given the damage Shaylar had helped inflict on the soldier's unit, Gadrial supposed the analogy might be apt, at that.

She watched the litter float away, then drew a deep breath and looked up at the afternoon sky visible through occasional breaks in the leaf canopy. It was later than she liked, for their progress had been agonizingly slow, with twelve litters to guide through primeval wilderness and far too few able-bodied soldiers to do the piloting. They should have been no more than twelve hours' hike from the portal when they began their homeward trek, but she was beginning to fear that Jasak's twenty-five-hour estimate had been too optimistic.

"You're worried," Jasak said quietly.

"Terrified!" she snapped, then bit her lip. "I'm sorry. But Shaylar isn't strong. I think there's some internal injury, something inside her skull. I'm trying to keep it stabilized, but it takes constant attention, and I think she's slipping away from me slowly, anyway. And Jathmar?"

She lifted both hands helplessly in admission of a deep, unfamiliar sense of total inadequacy, and saw Jasak's face tighten.

"If we could only get a transport dragon in here," he murmured. His voice trailed off, but then, suddenly, his eyes snapped to life. He, too, glanced skyward for a moment, obviously thinking hard, then nodded sharply.

"It might just be possible," he muttered to himself, then refocused on Gadrial. "Excuse me," he said, almost abruptly, and wheeled away, walking straight to Javelin Shulthan.

"Send another hummer back to camp, Iggy," he said. "Tell Krankark to send the medical evacuation team through the portal the instant it reaches camp. Have them meet us at the stream where Osmuna was mur?"

He paused, glancing at the litters where Jathmar and Shaylar lay crumpled and broken, and the verb he'd been about to use died in his throat.

"At the stream where Osmuna died," he said instead, looking back at Shulthan. "A transport dragon should have the wing room to take off if he flies down the streambed. Tell Krankark to send a reply hummer, homed in on these coordinates, to confirm receipt of our message. Stay here until it returns, then catch up to us at the stream. It's less than ten minutes from here to the portal for a hummer, so you shouldn't have to wait too long."

"Yes, Sir!"

The hummer shot away through the trees less than two minutes later, like a feathered crossbow bolt. Jasak watched it disappear into the towering forest, willing it to even greater speed, then turned to find Sword Harnak with his eyes.

"Let's get them moving again, Sword," he said briskly. "We're heading for the stream where Osmuna died."

Jasak was grateful that he'd entered the exact coordinates for the spot of Osmuna's death into his personal navigation unit. He'd done it for the purposes of making sure his report was complete and accurate, of course, but now it was going to serve a second, even more important purpose. With that for guidance, they could follow a cross-country course directly to the same place, and they set back out, moving steadily … and unbearably slowly. Someone's litter hung up on something every few moments, which made walking a straight line?difficult in this kind of terrain, under any circumstances?outright impossible. Only the coordinates in Jasak's nav unit made it possible to follow a reliable bearing towards their destination at all, and the terrain was actually rougher on their new heading.

Jasak winced inside every time one of his wounded men stumbled, or cursed under his breath, or blanched, flinching as an unexpected, leaf-hidden foot-trap jarred his ripped and torn flesh. As a first combat experience, it?and he?had been a dismal failure, he thought. Too many good men were wounded or dead, and he still had no answers. He hadn't prayed?really prayed, and meant it?in years, but he did now. He prayed no one else would die out here; that no one else would pay for his errors in judgment. And while he prayed, he moved among his men as they struggled forward, pausing to murmur an encouragement here, to jolly someone into a painful smile there, anything to keep them on their feet and moving forward.

He wasn't sure he'd made the right decision now, either. But he'd made it, for good or ill, and the sound of the stream, musical and lovely in the silence, was a blessed sound as it guided them across the last, weary stumbling yards to its banks several hours later.

The sun was barely a hand's width above the treetops when they finally caught sight of the rushing, sparkle-bright water. Jasak longed to fling himself down, surrender at least briefly to his fatigue and the pain of his own wounded side, give himself just a few moments of rest as a reward for getting his survivors this far. But this late in the season, and this far north, full darkness would be upon them quickly. The rescue party couldn't possibly reach them before nightfall, and probably not before dawn, and the night promised to be clear and cold. Some of his wounded would die before sunrise without a hot fire … and Jathmar would be among them.