David Weber - Hell's Gate

"Same as usual, Sir," he said, standing and turning to look up at Arthag. "They were moving slowly, but steadily. It was nearly dark when whoever dropped this dropped it." He indicated the item with his foot, without actually touching it, and glanced at his partner.

"Your turn, Soral."

Hilovar nodded and crouched down in Parcanthi's place. He stared down at what had been dropped, and his brow furrowed.

"What the hell is that?" he muttered under his breath.

It was a small, square object, made of something that looked almost like glass which had been deliberately opaqued. There were markings on it, but what the alien symbols signified was anyone's guess. Hilovar considered it for a moment, then shrugged and picked it up?

?only to let out a startled yelp and drop it back into the leaves on the forest floor.

"What's wrong?" chan Tesh asked sharply, watching the Tracer shake his hand as if he'd just burned it.

"Sorry, Sir." Hilovar looked a bit embarrassed. "It just took me by surprise. It's … unnatural."

"That fucking word again," Arthag growled.

"Sorry, Sir," Hilovar said again, glancing back at the scowling Arpathian. "But this thing?it's got the same feel as those accursed ash piles, only stronger. Much stronger. Concentrated as acid, in fact. It prickled my hand so hard it was like being swatted by wasps."

chan Tesh winced at the image, then sighed.

"Do what you can, Junior-Armsman. We need anything you can dredge out of that thing?whatever it is."

Hilovar nodded, gritted his teeth, and picked it up again. It was obvious that just holding the thing caused him considerable pain, but he endured grimly.

"He's shot through the shoulder," the Tracer said, after a heartbeat or two, in a grating, savagely satisfied tone. "Bleeding into his bandages and hurting like a son-of-a-bitch. Stumbling a good bit. Wishing he could ride on one of the stretchers, it feels like. He keeps looking at them, up ahead."

Then, suddenly, Hilovar shot upright.

"Great gods! There's a woman with 'em!"

"Shaylar?" The name tore from Darcel Kinlafia like a cry of pain, jerking Hilovar out of his concentration, and the Tracer turned to meet his tortured gaze.

"No," the junior-armsman said gently, watching the Voice's face crumple again. "I'm sorry, Darcel. She looked Uromathian?a little thing, pretty as a peach. She was walking beside one of the stretchers. I caught just a tiny glimpse of her. I think the man who dropped this," he held up the surprisingly dense object on his palm, "wanted her to help him."

"A Healer, then?" Arthag mused.

"Sounds like it," chan Tesh agreed, and cocked an eyebrow at Hilovar. "Can you get anything else off of it?"

"No, Sir. Not really," the Tracer said, obviously unhappily. "It's just more of the same. He's just moving slowly?very slowly. And hurting like hell."

"Good!" Kinlafia snarled, and Arthag leaned over in the saddle and gripped his shoulder wordlessly.

"Is there anything else on the ground here?" chan Tesh asked, and Wirtha shook his head.

"No, Sir. We looked around pretty carefully before I reported it to the Platoon-Captain."

"In that case, may I see it, Soral?"

Hilovar stepped over between chan Tesh's mount and Arthag's magnificent stallion. He held his hand up, allowing the officers to study the object on his palm. Neither of them offered to touch it lest they contaminate it for further Whiffing or Tracing.

"Doesn't look like much, does it?" Arthag murmured, and chan Tesh frowned.

"It looks like glass. But it isn't, is it?"

"It's made from the same thing as those godsdamned 'artillery pieces' of theirs," Darcel said harshly even as Hilovar shook his head.

"Now that's interesting," chan Tesh mused. He glanced at Kinlafia, then back at the Tracer. "It's heavy, isn't it?"

"Yes, Sir. Very dense," Hilovar added. "Surprisingly so, for its size."

"Are those buttons along the side?"

"That's what they look like, Sir," Hilovar agreed.

"Well, I'm damned if I'll try pushing one of them!" chan Tesh snorted.

"If you don't mind, Sir, I'd like to put it into an evidence bag. This thing hurts to hold. I don't know what it's made of, or what's inside it, but it's got that same foul, nasty?unnatural?" he added, meeting Arthag's gaze grimly "?feel. I'm not real anxious to push those buttons, either, Sir, and that's no lie. This thing is damned weird."

"Very well." chan Tesh nodded. "Put it away. Carefully."

Hilovar pulled a small canvas evidence bag out of his saddlebags and slid the dense little cube into it, then slid both of them into a larger canvas bag slung from his saddle horn, where he'd stored the other bits and pieces they'd found scattered along the trail.

"All right," chan Tesh said then. "We're getting close to that overnight bivouac of theirs, aren't we?"

"Yes, Sir," Wirtha agreed. "About another ten, fifteen minutes. There's quite a bit of stuff scattered around where their fires were. Most of it's little bits and pieces of personal gear, torn uniforms, that kind of thing. And lots of soiled bandages," he added with grim satisfaction.

"Let's move along, then," chan Tesh said.

"Here it is, Sir," Wirtha told chan Tesh shortly afterward, and the company-captain drew rein one more. The area before him, a clearer space along the bank of the same stream which had flowed beside the slaughtered survey crew's day-fort, showed the rings of half a dozen big bonfires and a handful of smaller ones. Even from here, he could see that there was a lot of debris strewn around, including a stained snowdrift of gore-crusted bandages.

"Has anyone been out there yet?" he asked.

"No, Sir," Wirtha replied. "We bypassed it on the way through."

chan Tesh glanced at Arthag, and the acting platoon-captain shrugged very slightly.

"Nolis and Soral had their hands full with the debris we'd already found at the fallen timbers and at the Chalgyn crew's day-fort, Sir. I'd left them behind to deal with that while I went ahead. By the time we actually found the campsite, we also knew we were hot on their trail, so I took the point and pressed on in hopes we might overtake them. But they got to their own entry portal at least several hours before we did. By the time Nolis and Soral were ready to follow us up, we'd received the order to hold in position and wait for your arrival. It took a while to get a runner forward to my position to recall me to meet you, and Nolis and Soral stayed put in the meantime, as per their orders from Company-Captain Halifu. By the time I got back to camp and could have ordered them forward to the bivouac area here, you were only a couple of hours out."

"I see." chan Tesh smiled thinly. "So that old saying about order, counter-order, disorder came into play."

"More or less, I'm afraid," Arthag agreed.

"Well, it's no one's fault," chan Tesh sighed, and looked at Parcanthi and Hilovar. "Go ahead," he said.

The two noncoms saluted, dismounted, and headed forward. Hilovar, as usual, waited while Parcanthi moved into the bivouac area, sweeping from one cold ash pit to another, following the energy residues. It took him the better part of twenty minutes, but when he returned to the waiting officers, his eyes glowed.

"I got some good, solid Whiffs, Company-Captain!" he told chan Tesh. "There's a place a bit further down the creek over there," he pointed, "where something came in during the night."

"Something?" chan Tesh repeated. "What sort of 'something'?"

"Gods alone know," Parcanthi said frankly. "It was big. Dark. I could see firelight on what looked like … hide, maybe. If it was hide, the creature under it was big, Sir. Really big, like nothing I've ever seen. But it was too damned dark to get a good look at it. They were loading stretchers onto it, whatever it was."