David Weber - Hell's Gate

Last of all, that cool, appraising gaze centered itself squarely on Sir Jasak Olderhan. Jasak greeted his superior with that curious clenched-fist salute, and the older officer returned it?crisply enough, but with a good deal less formality. Jasak spoke briefly, and his superior asked a question. Jasak answered, and the older man nodded. Then, catching Jathmar by surprise, the man who obviously commanded this military outpost stepped back and gestured them past him and his official entourage.

Jasak saluted again, then solicitously escorted Shaylar?and, by extension, Jathmar?into the enemy fortress.

Jathmar's first impression from the air, that this fort wasn't so very different from Sharonian ones?just as the lives of the men stationed in it couldn't be so very different from Sharonian soldiers' lives?had been accurate enough. He readily identified barracks, officers quarters, and a central block which undoubtedly held the fort's command center. There was what looked like a mess hall to one side, and a particularly stoutly constructed building, which was probably the armory or the brig, or might well be both.

All of that was expected enough, but other things he saw had no Sharonian equivalents.

For one thing, there were cages along the far side of the open courtyard. There weren't many of them, but they were big enough to hold a really massive wolf or a small pony, and they obviously contained something which was violently alive. The cages were too far away to determine what kind of creature was penned inside, but he could see?and hear?enough to know they were unlike anything which had ever walked Sharonian soil or flapped through Sharonian skies.

They gave off metallic glints, for starters, rather like the dragons did. They also produced a noise like a steam whistle in a crowded railway station, and the breeze carried the smell of them across the courtyard to Jathmar. He wriggled his nose, trying to come up with something?anything?familiar he could compare it to. Nothing came to mind, though.

Other cages and pens were reassuringly normal looking. He could see chickens in coops and a pigpen with a number of live swine lolling in the mud, and he could hear the distinctive bleating of goats. What he didn't see was any trace of horses, or any similar draft animals.

Given the dragons' size, they certainly had to be housed outside the fort, but he hadn't seen any sign of external corrals for more mundane transport animals as they overflew the fort, which struck him as a little odd. All Sharonian portal forts stocked horses and mules. They were necessary for rapid deployment in the field against border bandits, portal pirates, or other serious threats to civilian lives in a frontier settlement. They were equally essential for the pursuit of armed desperadoes, the transport of supplies and equipment, rescue work in the face of natural disaster, or hauling supply wagons or the field artillery held at most of the larger portal forts.

Jathmar supposed it was possible that Jasak Olderhan's army hadn't brought horses to this particular fort because of the unsuitable terrain. Swamps and horses didn't get on well with one another, for multiple good reasons, and the thought of trying to drag wagons through that muck would have been enough to send any Sharonian quartermaster into gibbering fits. Then, too, with dragons to haul supplies, they probably didn't really need horses as pack animals, although Jathmar could envision all sorts of terrain where dragons would be useless. The dense forest in which he and his friends had first encountered these people came forcibly to mind.

Whatever they used for pack animals, though, one thing was clear: this fort was as well stocked and well organized as any Portal Authority fort Jathmar had ever seen at the end of a long transit chain, and he frowned as an earlier thought recurred to him. He couldn't tell how many men were housed here, but he had the distinct impression that the fort had been designed to hold a much larger garrison.

That was interesting … and worrisome. From what he could see, Grafin Halifu probably had almost as many men as these people did, despite the fact that his company was understrength. But even if that were true, it was clear this fort was intended as the base for a force much larger than Halifu's. So, was that larger garrison simply out in the field on exercises? That was certainly possible, and if true, it meant the enemy had sufficient reinforcements in close proximity to easily handle anything Halifu might throw at them.

On the other hand, if Jathmar was right that this was an end-of-the-line installation, built primarily to service the swamp portal, then it might very well still be awaiting the rest of its garrison. Gods knew that was common enough for the Portal Authority's forts! And if that were the case here, then that gray-eyed man on the beach might just find himself very hard pressed to hold off a prompt Sharonian strike.

Unless, of course, Jathmar reminded himself, the reinforcements he's waiting for are almost here already. This fort's obviously been here for at least several months; that probably means the rest of its assigned personnel are somewhere in the pipeline on their way here. Grafin's first reinforcement column certainly wasn't all that far out when we headed through the portal.

They reached their evident destination, and Jathmar found himself helping Shaylar into a roughhewn building whose wooden walls and floorboards had been roughcut from large logs. The first room was obviously an office of some kind, where a uniformed young man saluted Jasak and personally escorted their entire party into another, much larger room. Jathmar had halfway expected to find jail cells; instead, they entered an airy, breeze-filled room that was obviously an infirmary, where rows of cots had been laid out in readiness for the incoming wounded.

Several of the floating stretchers were maneuvered past them, with the more seriously hurt taking precedence over the walking wounded, including Shaylar. Men who were obviously physicians and orderlies handled the incoming casualties with brisk efficiency, although most of the medical personnel seemed to lose a bit of their professional detachment at their first sight of gunshot trauma.

A man with graying hair, slightly stooped shoulders, and gentle eyes the color of the North Vandor Ocean in winter gave Shaylar a kindly smile and gestured her over to a real bed, not one of the emergency cots.

She held onto Jathmar's hand as she sat down on the edge of the bed. The gray-haired man spoke at length with Jasak Olderhan and Gadrial. Jathmar didn't need to speak the language to recognize a physician at work, and he watched the?doctor? healer??nodding slowly and jotting what were obviously notes into a small crystal the size of his palm. Like Halathyn's, this man's crystal held squiggles of text that glowed faintly. But he tucked that crystal away in a capacious pocket and pulled out a much slimmer one, long and thin, with a bluntly tapering point at one terminus. The new crystal's other end was rounded, shaped to fit into his palm, and he held it out and murmured something.

A beam of light streamed from the end. Shaylar twitched away in astonishment, but he only smiled reassuringly and allowed the light to play across the back of his other hand, demonstrating its harmlessness. She looked at him just a bit timidly, then smiled back and sat straight and still as he peeled back her eyelids, peered carefully into her pupils, and shined the beam of light right into her eyes to see how the pupils reacted.

He frowned and asked Gadrial a brief question.

Gadrial' answer was also brief, and the man shined the light into Shaylar's ears, paying particular attention to the one on the bruised, swollen side of her face. Then he murmured something else in an absent tone, extinguishing the crystal's light, and put the peculiar little device away. He stood for a moment, then laid very gentle hands on Shaylar's battered face. He closed his eyes, and his fingers moved slowly across her injuries, lighter than butterfly wings as he traced the extent of the damage. They moved around to the side of her head, then to the back, all while his eyes remained closed.