David Weber - Hell's Gate

"I'm afraid I don't understand a single word you're saying, you stupid bastard!" he called back.

"Wrong answer," Arthag growled under his breath as the other officer shouted back something unintelligible. Then he raised his own voice, louder than before.

"Shaylar! Bring me Shaylar right now!"

Thalmayr's jaw clenched. He still couldn't understand what the other man was saying, but the repeated use of Shaylar's name in what certainly sounded like an increasingly angry tone, worried him. The mounted man wasn't asking general questions, wasn't following the sort of "take me to your leader" approach one might have expected from a first-contact situation. Whatever he was saying, he was being specific?very specific. And he kept using the woman's name.

"I can't understand you!" Thalmayr shouted back. "I don't have any idea what you're talking about!"

Arthag listened not to the words?which wouldn't have meant anything to him, anyway?but to the tone, and his eyes were narrower than ever as he studied the other man's body language.

Whatever this bastard's saying, he's lying out his ass, the Arpathian decided. He was fully aware that he knew nothing at all about the other's cultural template, the gestures his people routinely used among themselves. But Arthag's Talent was at work. Like any Talent, it couldn't penetrate the interface of a portal, but after so many years, so much experience of knowing what was behind a gesture, a shift in expression, a change in tone, he was prepared to back his own ability to read the hearts of others across any imaginable cultural divide.

"You're lying!" he shouted. "You know perfectly well who I'm asking for! You bring me Shaylar?Shaylar Nargra-Kolmayr?now! I want to see her here?right here!" His left hand pointed at the ground in front of Bright Wind. "Shaylar, now! Or we come in there, kick your cowardly, murdering ass, and pull her out ourselves!"

He knows, Hadrign Thalmayr realized abruptly. He knows what happened!

The other man's anger was painfully obvious, and the jabbing of that accusatory index finger could not be mistaken. He wasn't asking if they'd seen the little bitch; he was demanding that they produce her.

The hundred still couldn't imagine how anyone could have gotten word back, but they obviously had. Yet whatever they'd gotten back must've been garbled, or partial, he thought, his mind whizzing along at dizzying speed.

They know something happened, he told himself, fighting to stay calm, but if they really knew what, they'd've come loaded for dragon, and they wouldn't have started out asking questions. And this bastard's here all by himself … probably.

Thalmayr's brain hurt as all the possibilities and ramifications spun through it. He didn't know that this single cavalryman really was here on his own. It seemed possible, although it was obviously far from certain. But even if he'd brought friends along, they were all still on the far side of the portal. Those shoulder weapons of theirs might be able to punch through the interface, just as arbalest bolts from Thalmayr's own men could, but artillery would be useless, and not even artillery could knock down his fortifications. So unless there were hundreds of the bastards out there in the woods, Thalmayr's positional advantage was still overwhelming.

I need more information, he told himself. And I need to keep the other side guessing as long as possible. And these people's weapons are supposed to be noisy as hell, whereas our arbalests aren't, and he's well within my people's range. So if they have split up their search parties to cover more ground …

The decision made itself. Perhaps, if he hadn't been trying to juggle so many unknowns, so many imponderables, simultaneously, he would have thought it through a bit more clearly, realized just how many optimistic assumptions he was still allowing himself.

But perhaps not, either.

Arthag watched angrily as the other man shook his head again, forcefully. Then the lying bastard made a mistake.

He snarled something low … and the sentries both whipped up their crossbows.

"All right!" Thalmayr shouted at the other man. "That's enough of this silly shit! You're my prisoner, godsdamn it!"

It was his turn to point at the ground with one hand while the other made a peremptory "get your ass over here!" gesture.

"Get over here now! Or, by all the gods, I'll nail you do that fucking saddle!"

"You must be as crazy as you are stupid," Hulmok Arthag said conversationally, although there was no way in any of the hells the other man could have heard him. Then he raised his voice.

"I don't think so!" he shouted back, his voice firm but calm, and shook his head.

"Fine!" Thalmayr snarled.

The horseman had obviously understood the surrender demand, but he didn't even seem to care. He only sat calmly in the saddle, exactly the way he had been, ignoring the arbalests aimed at him, and Hundred Thalmayr's simmering anger?and uncertainty?turned into pure, distilled fury at his failure to impose his will on the situation. And at that single, arrogant prick sitting out there as if he didn't have a care in the world. As if Hadrign Thalmayr were a threat too insignificant for him even to deign to notice.

"Have it your own way!" he shouted at the other man.

"They've fired on Platoon-Captain Arthag!" Balkar chan Tesh snapped.

He'd been peering through his field glasses from his own position on a tree branch fifteen feet off the ground. Now he raised his head and turned to look at the wiry noncom sitting on the branch above his and hugging the trunk for dear life.

"Instruct Platoon-Captain chan Talmarha and Senior Armsman chan Sairath to open fire!"

"Yes, Sir!" Junior-Armsman chan Synarch replied, grateful for anything to distract him from his fear of heights. He closed his eyes for a brief instant, and one of the small metal dispatch cases he wore at his waist, on what looked for all the world like an outsized cartridge belt, disappeared from its loop. An instant later, a second dispatch case vanished as he Flicked it to Senior Armsman Quelovak chan Sairath on the far side of the portal.

The dispatch cases reappeared almost instantly. chan Talmarha and chan Sairath snatched them up, opened them, and found the written orders chan Tesh had prepared for this very contingency before ever sending Arthag out. chan Talmarha glanced at the order, then turned to his gunners.

"Time to open the ball, boys!" he barked.

Hadrign Thalmayr cursed as the golden horse twisted on its tail and lunged sideways. He'd never imagined an unenhanced animal could move that quickly. Had he been wrong in his original assessment of it?

The question flickered behind his eyes even as both arbalest bolts hissed past its flashing hind quarters. They missed by scant inches as the rider dropped like a stone and vanished behind the horse's side. He simply vanished … but he hadn't hit the ground. He was hanging off the side of his saddle, completely hidden by his mount, as the horse took off like a fiend. It whipped back into the trees, and Thalmayr swore again, viciously, as he saw the rider twist himself back up into the saddle.

Godsdamn it! That's torn it wide open! When that son-of-a-bitch gets home he'll?

The hundred looked up suddenly as he heard a brief, abbreviated fluttering sound.

Balkar chan Tesh had his field glasses back to his eyes. He'd breathed a huge sigh of relief as Arthag thundered safely back into cover, but his attention was on the murderous bastard who'd just tried to have the Arpathian murdered.

That pretty well answers the question of whether or not the first massacre was an accident, doesn't it? chan Tesh thought viciously.

The idiot was still standing there, fully exposed, staring after Arthag, and chan Tesh bared his teeth in contempt.