David Weber - The Road to Hell

Not that they weren’t entirely capable of accomplishing both goals at once, of course.

Somebody’s snoring hitched, then ended in a raucous, questioning sound, and one of the slumbering Arcanans shoved himself upright in his chair. The knocking sound came yet again, and the roused guard shook himself, then reached out with one foot and thumped one of his companions on the leg. He growled something that sounded unpleasant, and the second Arcanan heaved up out of his chair, stretched his arms high overhead in a spine-popping yawn, and ambled towards the front door.

* * *

Trooper Zhandru Mysa blinked sleep-scratchy eyes and jerked his camo-pattern tunic straight while Thankhar Zoa and Shield Foswail Tohsar, the guard detail’s senior man, climbed out of their own chairs. Shartahk only knew who’d be banging on the door at this time of night, and the odds were that it was going to be bad news for Tohsar’s section. Not that it was likely to be too bad, but a man never knew. At least Fifty Varkan wasn’t like that prick Sarma or that holier-than-thou pain in the arse Ulthar! Or any of those other Andaran Scout bastards. Of course, even Fifty Varkan would have a little something to say if he had to take official cognizance of someone who’d been catching a few winks on duty. Which was why it was only prudent to let Zoa and Tohsar stretch themselves into a suitable facsimile of awakeness before he opened the door.

He glanced over his shoulder to be certain they had, then shot back the locking bar and pulled the door open with a certain briskness, just in case it really was an officer on the other side.

It wasn’t, and his mouth tightened at the unpleasant sight of one of the very Andaran Scouts he’d been thinking about.

“Yes?” he half-growled in a deliberately surly tone. He probably should have shown at least a little respect for a senior sword, but it wasn’t like the other man was an officer. And it wasn’t like anyone was going to pay a lot of attention to complaints from someone whose unit had fucked up as thoroughly as the 2nd Andaran Scouts had managed to do when the Sharonians took the Mahritha-Hell’s Gate portal away from them.

“What d’you want?” he continued, holding the door half open-there was no point letting any more of the guard room’s precious warmth leak out of it than he had to-and glowering around it at the newcomer.

“Funny you should ask,” Sword Evarl Harnak said pleasantly…and kicked the door as hard as he could.

Harnak’s stocky build and powerful shoulders and arms fooled some people into thinking he was shorter than he was. In point of fact, he stood two inches over six feet and weighed a good two hundred and fifty pounds, very little of it fat. When he kicked a door, that door opened…rapidly and with a significant degree of force.

Mysa squawked in astonishment-and anguish-as the heavy panel smashed into him like a misplaced wrecking ball. He flew backward, one kneecap shattered, then slammed into the sturdy logs of the guardroom’s rear wall. The back of his skull whacked into them with stunning force, and he oozed down into a slovenly, half-conscious puddle.

The door continued its backward arc after hitting him until it slammed into the wall itself, and Sword Tohsar’s and Trooper Zoa’s mouths dropped open in shock. Astonishment and the rags of sleep held them motionless for perhaps three heartbeats. By the time they started to stir, five men in the uniform of the 2nd Andaran Scouts had stormed into the guardroom, drawn short swords in hand.

“What the fu-?!” Tohsar began furiously, only to stop abruptly as the cold, disagreeably sharp point of one of those swords made contact with the base of his throat. The hand holding that sword belonged to Evarl Harnak.

“I never much liked you anyway,” Harnak told him pleasantly. “Are you going to be reasonable about this, or do I get to cut your throat after all?”

* * *

Namir Velvelig sat up.

There didn’t seem to be much point in pretending to be asleep. Not after all that racket, and not when it had awakened eight of the other nine men in his cell almost as abruptly as the door had floored the idiot who’d gotten in its way. The regiment-captain had no idea what was going on, but he felt an undeniable glow as he contemplated the semiconscious idiot in question. It looked as if his nose, at least, was broken, and Velvelig wouldn’t be surprised if he’d lost a tooth or two along the way. That was an interesting thought. Could the Arcanan Healers actually regrow missing teeth? If they couldn’t, someone was going to need a good set of false ones.

He climbed slowly to his feet, stepping over Makree, who’d been so badly battered he’d actually slept through the hullabaloo. The others got out of his way, pushing back to give him space as he faced the bars and watched what was happening beyond them.

He recognized all the newcomers. They were the ones for whom he’d conceived a special hatred over the last hideous weeks, for every one of them had been left at Fort Ghartoun to be cared for by Velvelig’s Healers, and those Healers had given them the very best treatment they possibly could. Unlike Thalmayr, the rest of them had realized what was happening, too. That made their betrayal, the fact that none of them had so much as protested Thalmayr’s brutality, even worse than the callous approval the rest of the Arcanan garrison showed for that same brutality. Now he glared at their senior noncom-Evarl Harnak, as nearly as he could pronounce the outlandish name the man had given when he arrived at Fort Ghartoun as a prisoner-while his fellows finished shoving the two regular guards who were still on their feet into a corner of the guard room. They stripped their captives of the swords and daggers Arcanans carried as personal weapons instead of revolvers, and Velvelig’s eyebrows rose infinitesimally-the equivalent of a shouted astonishment for an Arpathian-as the guards were turned around and their wrists were fastened together with yet another of the Arcanans’ preposterous bits of casual magic.

* * *

Harnak finished securing Tohsar’s wrists with the binding spell from his utility crystal, then looked at Trooper Marsal Hyndahr and twitched his head at the moaning heap in the corner.

“Drag his arse over here with the others,” he said, and Hyndahr nodded with a certain grim delight.

Hyndahr had a special bone to pick with Hadrign Thalmayr, who’d reduced him to trooper from sword for “insubordination.” The insubordination in question had consisted of agreeing with another noncom in a private conversation that Hundred Olderhan’s proposal for withdrawing from the swamp portal rather than digging in to defend it had sounded like a good idea. It had been no more than one seasoned veteran talking to another one in the face of potential combat which would involve their squads, quietly, without involving anyone else, but Thalmayr-who’d already been pissed off by the way Hundred Olderhan had made him back down when he tried to put the Hundred’s shardonai in irons-had overheard it. Not simply overheard it, but taken it as a personal criticism directed at him and decided to vent his spleen at Hundred Olderhan by taking out his spite on one of the hundred’s men. Given the way Thalmayr had proceeded to get the entire company cut to pieces shortly afterward, it seemed self-evident that Hundred Olderhan-and Hyndahr-had been exactly right. Which, of course, had only prompted Thalmayr to assign him to every shit detail he could find since he’d been given command of the Fort Ghartoun garrison.

Now he crossed to Mysa, grabbed him by one ankle-the one with the kneecap that seemed to have been pushed to one side-and dragged him across the floor to join his mates.

Harnak watched him for a moment, then shrugged and reached into a pocket for his personal crystal. No one except the “designated interrogators”-which consisted mostly of the uniformed thugs Thalmayr had deputized as assistants for his periodic beatings-was supposed to have access to the translating spellware Two Thousand Harshu’s troops had brought with them. Shield Rohsahk had hacked Thalmayr’s own PC for a bootleg copy, however, and now the sword touched his stylus to the crystal and brought it up.