David Weber - Hell's Gate

Now, as the peered down at the distant ground through the glass face shield and cold wind whipped over him in an icy hurricane, he discovered that anything he'd ever imagined fell far short of the truth. The sheer exhilaration of actually streaking through the sky was so great, so overwhelming, that it actually pushed his dread of the future awaiting him and Shaylar out of the front of his thoughts. That wasn't something he would have believed was possible, and a corner of his brain wondered if he was concentrating on his delight so hard in part to avoid thinking about that self same future.

Maybe he was, but that didn't change anything. The creature beneath the platform upon which he and Shaylar were seated, carefully strapped in for safety, was unquestionably the most powerful animal he had ever seen. The sheer strength in every downstroke of those seemingly fragile wings beggared every other notion of animal power he'd ever held, and now that he'd gotten over his initial shock, he could appreciate the creature's?the dragon's?metallic, glittering beauty. The flashes of bronze and copper-colored sunlight, reflected from its scales, were almost blinding, and the ornate pattern on its wings and hide gleamed. Shaylar had to be right, he told himself. That marvelous geometric design had to be artificial, although he couldn't imagine how such intricate patterns had been applied to a living animal's skin.

In fact, there was a lot about these people that he couldn't imagine, and whatever else befell them, he couldn't suppress his delighted grin as they raced the wind itself. He'd come out here in search of adventure, hadn't he? Well, when it came to unusual, unlikely experiences, riding the back of a dragon which dwarfed any elephant and soared as effortlessly as any eagle had to rank high on the list.

The sheer speed of the flight was enough to leave him gasping in amazement. Not even a train barreling down a miles-long straight track could have matched it. He couldn't begin to fathom how a creature so massive could fly so fast. It simply wasn't natural.

He snorted at the thought. He and Shaylar had already seen a dozen other impossible things, and no doubt they'd see still more. Things nobody on Sharona would even have believed possible. Beneath the anger, the hatred, the fear, the portion of Jathmar Nargra-Kolmayr which had drawn him into the survey crews in the first place struggled to reassert itself. His genuine love of new sights, odd adventures, and places no Sharonian had ever set foot pressed tentatively against the deep traumas of the last ninety-six hours.

He felt it stirring and wondered what was wrong with him. How could he possibly feel anything except fear, anxiety, hatred for the people who'd murdered his friends, crippled his wife's Talent, almost killed him? How could there be room for anything else?

He didn't know. The fact that he couldn't banish his silly grin made him feel guilty, as if he were betraying his dead friends' memories, yet there it was, and he couldn't convince himself Ghartoun, or Barris, or Falsan would have begrudged him the feeling. It wasn't enough to set those darker, harsher emotions aside. Even if it had been, he wasn't prepared to do that yet, for many complex reasons. It would be a long time before he was prepared to even consider truly relinquishing that darkness. Yet there was a deep, almost soothing comfort in discovering that an important part of him, one he valued deeply, hadn't died with his friends among the toppled trees.

He recalled Shaylar's attempt to comfort Gadrial's distress and wondered if she struggled with some of the same feelings. Maybe she was simply braver than he was. Maybe it was just that she'd already recognized the truth in that ancient, banal clich? about life going on. Certainly there was an undeniable edge of bad melodrama in refusing to recognize that they had to make the best of whatever came their way. If they wanted to do more than merely survive, wanted to continue to be the people they'd always been before, then they had to discover things which could still bring them joy, people they could still care about. Perhaps Shaylar simply understood that better than he did. Or perhaps she simply had the courage to go ahead and admit it and reach out, risking fresh hurt because she refused to surrender to despair.

He reached down to cover Shaylar's hands with his own, where she'd wrapped them around his waist, and gave her fingers a gentle squeeze. He couldn't tell her why, not with the wind snatching sound away, but she tightened her arms around him in a brief return gesture, then leaned more of her weight against his back and the sturdy, borrowed shirt he wore.

It felt strange, that shirt. It was a uniform shirt, made of heavy cotton twill, comfortable, and certainly rugged enough for the purpose of exploring virgin universes, but with a cut unlike anything Jathmar had ever seen. Sharonian shirts were simply two panels of cloth which met in front and buttoned down the center, but this shirt had a complicated bib-like construction, with two rows of buttons where the left panel and right panel overlapped a third, which lay beneath the other two.

Jasak Olderhan had shown him how to fasten it up. It wasn't one of Olderhan's own shirts, since Jathmar would have been lost in the taller, broader man's garments. He suspected it had belonged to one of the men killed in the fighting, which gave him a distinctly odd feeling. Still, he'd needed a shirt, and clothing wasn't among the things Olderhan's men had taken away from the survey crew's abandoned camp.

Not that they hadn't taken plenty of other things. Several heavy cases?obviously purpose-designed canisters specifically intended to be transported by dragons?were strapped to the platform behind the wounded. Those cases contained all the guns and every piece of equipment they'd been carrying on the battle. From the looks of it, they also contained a fair percentage of the equipment they'd abandoned in camp, as well. Olderhan's men had even carried out the spare ammunition boxes.

At some point, Jathmar knew, Olderhan was going to "ask" them to demonstrate all of that equipment's use. Including the guns. He wasn't looking forward to that, but for the moment, streaking through the sky on a creature out of mythology, suspended between what had happened and what was yet to happen, he was able to set those worries aside and simply enjoy the breathtaking experience of riding the wind.

Below them, as far as he could see, lay miles and miles of trackless swamp. He'd discovered that his Mapping Talent worked just fine from up here?or would have, if not for the fact that he'd never in his life moved this quickly. Trying to sort out everything his Talent let him See was all but impossible simply because of the speed with which it came at him. He was sure he could have learned to compensate with practice, but for now he couldn't make a great deal of sense out of what he was Seeing. Which was particularly frustrating, since he rather doubted that his captors realized they'd given him the opportunity to chart a perfect escape route … if only he'd been up to the challenge.

But if he couldn't See all he would have liked to, there was more than enough he could see. Brilliant sunlight scattered diamonds across the open patches of water among the reeds, swampy hillocks, and patches of trees. Vast clouds of birds rose in alarm as the dragon flashed overhead: graceful waterbirds with snowy white wings and dove grey wings and wings of darker hues that were doubtless herons and cranes.

They were too high to see any of the other animals which inhabited that vast swamp, but Jathmar had little doubt that there'd be plenty of crocodiles or alligators of some sort down there, along with fish, water-loving mammals, and millions upon millions of crustaceans. He wished he could figure out where they were, though, and he couldn't. The shape of land masses never varied from one universe to the next, but one stretch of swamp was very like any other, and he had absolutely no reference points to try and figure out where this one lay. If he could look at the stars tonight, he would at least be able to tell whether they were in the northern hemisphere, or the southern, but he was unhappily certain that the information wouldn't do him a great deal of good.