David Weber - Hell's Gate

Someone moved beside the casualty tent, and Jasak glanced up, automatically checking to see if it had been Gadrial. It hadn't, and when he turned back to the device in his hand, his gaze snapped back to the needle. He'd moved the case with the rest of his body, but the needle?which appeared to be floating on a post, able to spin freely?hadn't moved with the rest of the case. Or, rather, it had moved, swinging stubbornly around to point in the same direction as before despite the case's movement.

The discovery startled him, so he experimented, and found that no matter how he turned the case around, the needle swung doggedly to point in the exact same direction: north.

Understanding dawned like a thunderclap. It was a navigation device. But this was no spell-powered personal crystal that oriented its owner to the cardinal directions, as every Arcanan compass ever built did. It was nothing but a flat needle on a post, an incredibly simple mechanical device, powered by nothing he could see. How the devil did it work?

The bottom section of the metal case was much heavier than the lid, providing most of the heft he'd noticed when he first picked it up. Clearly, it housed something dense, and this object, too, had a flat glass face, under which lay another dial with hatchmarks, and another series of letters or numbers of some kind, beside each of the twelve longest hatch lines. There were three needles on this device: a short one which scarcely seemed to move at all; a long one which moved slowly; and a very thin one that moved continuously, sweeping around the dial in endless circles.

Its purpose, too, came in a flash of understanding as the slow, audible click-click of the long needle reminded him of the changing numbers in his personal crystal's digital time display. Yet this was no spell-powered device, either. Or, he didn't think so, at any rate. He discovered a small knob at one side which could be pulled out slightly to change the positions of the needles, or simply turned in place. Turning it without pulling it out resulted in a slight clicking sound inside the device, and a gradually stiffening resistance which increased the pressure needed to turn the knob. He stopped before it got too stiff to turn at all, lest he damage it by trying to force it.

He laid the two halves of the case in his lap, gazing down at them in the firelight, and frowned in unhappy contemplation. He was no magister, but his touch of Gift should have been enough to at least recognize the presence of any sort of spellware. Yet he hadn't detected even the slightest twitch of magic. He would have liked to believe that that meant the weapons he'd examined had exhausted whatever powered them, but he knew that wasn't the case.

Instead, what he had was a weapon which had amply proved its deadly efficiency; a navigation device which, for all its simplicity, looked damnably effective; and another device which obviously kept very precise track of time, indeed.

And none of them?not one of them?depended on spellware or a Gift. Which meant they would work for anyone, anytime, anywhere.

The night wind blew suddenly chill, indeed.

The sun had disappeared into darkness when Windclaw reached the swamp portal camp after almost seven, arduous hours of high-speed flight. There were few landmarks to navigate by, but the camp's scattered lights stood out sharply against the unrelieved blackness of a world mankind had discovered considerably less than a year earlier.

Windclaw backwinged neatly to a landing between the base camp's tents and the portal itself. An icy breeze blew across the camp from the portal, rustling the dead trees that speared into the sky on the other side, rattling the reeds on this one. The vast sweep of black-velvet heaven visible above the trees revealed brilliant stars, in an unnerving northern constellation pattern, vastly different from the southern skies it was pasted across.

It didn't seem to matter how many portals Salmeer saw or stepped through; the spine tingling awe never changed, and he'd been flying portal hops for the better part of thirty years.

Windclaw had barely furled his wings when a soldier ran across the muddy ground, holding what proved to be the transcript of another hummer message. He climbed up the foreleg Windclaw had been trained to offer, and Salmeer recognized him. He didn't know Javelin Kranark especially well, but he'd always impressed Salmeer as a competent trooper, utterly dedicated not only to the second Andaran Scouts, but also to Hundred Olderhan.

"Thank the gods you're here, Squire!" Kranark panted as he handed Salmeer the transcript. "The Hundred's halted at these grid coordinates. He didn't dare keep moving his wounded after dark. He needs you to bring the dragon through for an emergency evacuation of the worst wounded."

Salmeer stared at Kranark in disbelief. He hadn't taken Windclaw through the portal, but he'd made enough deliveries to the base camp when it was daylight on the far side to have a pretty fair grasp of the sort of terrain?and tree cover?waiting on the other side.

"Is he out of his mind?" the pilot demanded harshly. "He wants me to try to set a dragon down out in the middle of those fucking woods?"

"You can't do it?" The javelin's expression was barely visible in the darkness, but the horror in his voice was clear, and Salmeer winced. The critically wounded men out there were this man's brothers in arms, the closest thing he had to a family out here.

"I've seen that canopy out there, and it's murder," the pilot said in a marginally gentle voice, waving one hand at the looming portal. "I haven't actually flown over it, not in that universe, anyway. But I've seen plenty of forests like it. That's a solid sea of trees, Kranark, stretching for hundreds of miles. A transport dragon can't slide sideways between branches that are damned near interwoven!"

"Is that all?" Kranark replied, hope glittering in his voice once more. "The Hundred said he's camped along an open stream. He says there's plenty of wing room for a skilled dragon to get in and take off again."

"'Skilled dragon,' huh?" Salmeer muttered, interpreting that phrase to mean there was just enough clear space for it to be dangerous as hell, but doable. . . if your set was big enough, and your brain small enough, to try it.

In, of course, the opinion of a man who wasn't?and never had been?a qualified dragon pilot himself.

There are old pilots, and there are bold pilots, but there are no old, bold pilots. The flight school training mantra ran through the back of his mind, and he hovered on the brink of refusing. After all, Windclaw was an incredibly valuable asset out here. If Salmeer flew him into a treetop, then the possibility of evacuating any of the wounded to Fort Rycharn went straight out the window.

"Just how many casualties are there?" he asked, temporizing while common sense fought against his own sense of urgency.

Kranark's muscles seemed to congeal. The javelin went absolutely motionless, and his voice went wooden and hollow.

"There were twenty-one. There are only twenty now. Hundred Olderhan took a full platoon through the portal?sixty-seven men, counting the supports. Twenty-five of them are dead now."

"Mother Jambakol's eyelashes!" The filthy curse broke loose before he could stop it, and he made a furtive sign to ward off "Mother Jambakol's" evil glance.

"Please, Sir." Krankark gripped his arm. "Please, at least try," he begged. "All the Hundred's got out there is an herbalist. We've got men unconscious, and the Hundred says Ambor can't bring them out of the coma… . "

Krankark's voice shook, and Sword Morikan leaned forward behind Salmeer's shoulder.

"Their situation's desperate, Sir. You've got to get me to those men. I can't Heal that many with magic alone, but I can save the most critically wounded, and we've got trained surgeons for the others. Except that unless I get there soon?and from the sound of it, we're talking about minutes, not hours?the death count's going to get worse. Feel that wind blowing through the portal? Badly wounded men won't last the night in that, even with a good hot campfire."