David Weber - Hell's Gate

No. What he saw was Osmuna lying dead in a creek. A stockade filled with abandoned tents, foot-weary donkeys, and strange equipment. And a terrifying montage of battle images that flashed through his memory in bright bursts, like exploding incendiary spells.

And behind them was the frightening thought of what would happen if, by some unimaginable means, these people had successfully gotten a message back through the portal to their nearest base.

He couldn't imagine how they might have done it. A careful sweep around the battle site had found no tracks leading away from all that toppled timber, and there'd been no sign of messenger birds, like the hummers his own platoons carried. But these people had all manner of strange, inexplicable abilities and devices. If they had a sufficient command of magical technology?or, he thought with a shudder, some other sort of technology?to send messages across long distances without any physical messenger, Arcana could be in serious trouble already.

That thought was more than simply worrisome. It was downright terrifying. So far, he'd found nothing?nothing at all?in their captured gear which resembled arcane technology. An Arcanan crew that size would have been carrying all manner of spell-powered devices, but he hadn't seen a trace of anything made of sarkolis, hadn't sensed even a quiver of spellware. He couldn't even begin to visualize how anyone could possibly build an advanced civilization without arcane technology, but all he'd seen were fiendishly intricate, clever, totally non-arcane machines.

Was it really possible that one of those machines?possibly one he hadn't even found yet, one they might have destroyed to prevent him from finding it, as they'd destroyed their maps and charts?might have allowed them to send a message without a runner or a hummer?

The more he thought about how little he knew about Shaylar and her people, the more he wanted to avoid contact with any of them until Arcana had managed to fill in at least a few corners of the puzzle, punch at least a few holes through the fog of total ignorance which was all he could offer his superiors at the moment. And as he considered it, it occurred to him that if there was, in fact, something odd about Shaylar Nargra's mind, something which upset dragons, it was equally clear from her reaction that Shaylar had never seen anything remotely like Windclaw.

They don't have dragons, he realized. And if they don't have dragons, is it possible that they don't have anything that flies?

His frown intensified as that possibility hovered before him. He might simply be grasping at straws, but one thing he knew: dragons?unlike donkeys, soldiers, or civilian surveyors?left no footprints. If Shaylar and her companions had gotten a message back to their people, picking up his own route from the swamp base camp to the site of the battle and backtracking it wouldn't be particularly difficult for even semi-competent woodsmen. But simply finding the base camp wouldn't help them very much.

It was over seven hundred miles from the swamp to Fort Rycharn, with no roads, no trails, between the fort and the swamp portal. Everything at the portal base camp had been airlifted in from Fort Rycharn, and even Fort Rycharn was only a forward base. The actual portal into this universe was over three thousand miles away?across equally trackless ocean?on the island which would have been Chalar back on Arcana.

He nodded, mouth firming with decision. He couldn't undo what had already happened, but he could at least buy some time, and he intended to do just that. Pulling everyone back from the swamp portal to Fort Rycharn wouldn't be easy with only a single transport dragon available, but it would be one way to dig a hole and fill it in behind them.

If Shaylar's party had summoned a rescue party, it would find only the abandoned camp. Let it hunt through seven hundred miles of virgin, trackless swamp if it wanted to. By the time it could find Fort Rycharn, even that wouldn't do it any good, if Jasak had his way. Not if he could convince Five Hundred Klian to pull all the way back to the Chalar arrival portal and put twenty-six hundred more miles of water between any search party and the route to Arcana.

Time, he thought. That's what we need?time. Time to get word back up the transit chain. Time for someone who knows what the hell he's doing to get back here and handle the next contact with these people. Time to figure out a way to somehow get a handle on this situation before it spins totally out of control.

And the way to get that time was to make sure that anyone from the other side couldn't find a trace of Arcana.

Not until Arcana was good and ready to be found.

Jathmar floated in the darkness of the still, warm depths, drifting slowly and steadily toward a sunlit surface far above him. The light grew stronger, reaching down towards him, and something stirred in sleepy protest. He reached out to the darkness, wrapping it about himself, like a child burrowing deep into a goose down comforter. He didn't want to wake up, didn't want to leave the safe, still quiet. He didn't remember why he didn't want to wake, but his drowsy mind knew that something waited for him. Something he didn't want to face.

His eyes opened, and he reached out, as automatically as breathing, for Shaylar's familiar touch.

Panic struck like a spiked hammer.

She wasn't there. Where Shaylar should have been, he found only a roaring, pain-filled blackness. The shockwave of loss jolted him into full consciousness with a sharp gasp of anguished terror, and his eyes snapped open.

Sunlight burned down over him, hot and humid. There was no trace of the glorious autumn woods he remembered; all he could see was a vast stretch of muddy water and rank vegetation, heavy with the smell of rot and mold and fecundity. The trees growing at the water's edge, some growing in the water itself, were tropical varieties, heavy with vines, with no trace of the colors of a northern fall. The voices of birds?some raucous, some musical, some like those he'd never heard before?sounded through the hot, dense stillness, huge butterflies drifted over and among the swamp grasses, like living jewels, and the whine of insects hung heavy on the thick, steamy air.

He lay on something simultaneously firm and yet soft-textured, like a folding canvas camp cot, and his thoughts fluttered and twisted, trapped between confusion and the strobing panic radiating from the absence where Shaylar ought to have been. He hung transfixed between seriously broken thoughts. Then voices registered, and movement, as well, close by. He sat up and?

He yelled and scrambled wildly backwards on the seat of his trousers. The "camp cot" under him never even wiggled, but he shot over its edge, sprawling onto muddy ground a full two feet lower than whatever had been supporting him. He panted, groping instinctively for his rifle, for his revolver, even for his belt knife, and his scrabbling hands found nothing but more mud.

The … thing … turned its horror of a head to peer down, down, down at him just as his frantically searching hand closed on a dead branch. The improvised club would be useless against a thing like that, but it was better than blunt fingernails, and he came to his knees, swinging the branch wildly up between himself and it.

The sudden flurry of shouts behind him barely registered. He ignored them, all of his attention fixed on the scaled monstrosity, until a uniformed man with a crossbow stepped in front of him. The soldier shouted and pointed his impossible weapon, but not at the horror looming over them. He aimed it at Jathmar. Then another man appeared, wearing the same uniform and snarling orders?or spitting curses?in a voice of white-hot fury. The first man lowered his crossbow and sent the second a hangdog look with something that sounded like an unhappy apology. The second man?the officer, Jathmar realized?said something else, his tone considerably less sharp but still reprimanding, and the crossbowman came to what had to be a position of attention and saluted oddly, touching his left shoulder with his right fist.