David Weber - The Road to Hell

Thalmayr collapsed, and Therman Ulthar jerked his utility crystal back out of his pocket. The UC’s spellware menu was on the general side, but it did contain a coagulating spell intended to both stop the bleeding, even from arterial wounds, and prevent infection. It was going to require the healing Gift to do more than that for Thalmayr, but at least he wouldn’t bleed to death in the meantime.

He’d barely activated the spell before the strident clangor of an alarm spell pounded over the fort.

“Oh, wonderful! ” he snarled as he shoved Sarma roughly, turning him to apply the same first aid spell to his leg.

* * *

“Oh, dragon shit!” Javelin Traymahr Sahnger growled.

Fifty Sarma had assigned his 3rd Squad to secure the stables while Hynkar Vahsk’s squad did the same thing for the armory, Sword Harnak secured the brig, and Sword Nourm and Tolomaeo Briahk’s squad secured the barracks occupied by the two platoons commanded by Fifty Brys Varkan and Fifty Dernys Yankaro. Nourm and Briahk had drawn the assignment for both barracks because there’d been only enough “special weapons” to equip a single squad…sparingly. Fifty Sarma and Fifty Ulthar had skimmed enough stun bolts off the top to give each of Sahnger’s men one of them, but all the rest had been reserved for 2nd Squad’s takedown of the barracks. That plan, however, had been predicated upon achieving surprise. Sahnger had no idea what somebody had been doing up and about to sound an alarm spell at this hour, but the fact that someone had suggested Nourm and Briahk might just have their hands full trying to secure their assigned objectives against someone who outnumbered them six-to-one.

He and 3rd Squad had carried out their own assignment with no fuss or bother, and this was where they were supposed to stay under the plan Fifty Sarma and Fifty Ulthar had worked out. According to Fifty Sarma, Commander of Fifty Sahrimahn Cothar, whose cavalry troop had been left behind to support Hundred Thalmayr, was no happier about the hundred’s brutality than they were, even though Cothar hadn’t heard the truth about the portal attack which had killed Magister Halathyn. In theory, that should mean his cavalry troopers were less likely to come boiling in here looking for their mounts than they might have been otherwise. Sahnger couldn’t count on that, but it was at least possible, and if Varkan and Yankaro’s men figured out what was happening quickly enough, there wasn’t any question that Nourm and Briahk were damned sure going to need help.…

“Maysak, you and Volmar stay here and keep an eye on those unicorns.” He jerked his thumb over his right shoulder at the stalled, restless cavalry mounts. “The rest of you, on me!”

Shield Maysak Uthsamo nodded sharply, and he and Lewak Volmar peeled off as the rest of Sahnger’s squad followed their javelin out of the stable and headed for the nearer barracks at a run.

* * *

“I think that’s part of your answer, Sir,” Evarl Harnak said to Velvelig through the translating spellware while the bell continued to sound.

“What’s part of the answer?” the Sharonian demanded, and Harnak scowled.

“I don’t have time to explain everything, Sir,” he said. “What matters right now is that the way Hundred Thalmayr’s been treating you is against the Kerellian Accords. That means it’s illegal under our military law. Fifty Ulthar and Fifty Sarma planned to place him under arrest and send word to higher authority, but the people they could count on to back them are outnumbered four or five-to-one, so they were trying to do it as quietly as they could. From the sound of that”-he jerked his head at the brig door to indicate the bell pealing deafeningly outside it-“something went wrong.”

Velvelig looked at him, his face giving no sign of the thoughts racing through his brain. That simple paragraph of explanation stood everything he’d thought he understood on its head. Of course, there was always the possibility the Arcanan was lying to him, although he couldn’t think of any same reason for the man to do that.

“So what happens now?” he asked.

“Sir, my orders are to secure the brig and hold it until Fifty Ulthar or Fifty Sarma tells me otherwise. It’s my job to look after you until one of them can get here.”

“Does that include letting us out of these cells?” Velvelig demanded.

“Nobody said anything to me about letting you out, Sir.” Harnak’s tone carried an edge of apology. “And, to be honest, even if Hundred Thalmayr’s been breaking the Accords, you’re still prisoners of war.”

* * *

“ Move your arses!” Fifty Varkan shouted as the men who’d been turned out for inspection started grabbing helmets, sidearms, and arbalests. “Rokar! Take your squad and shag arse over to the admin block! Find out what’s going on there and then put yourself at Hundred Thalmayr’s orders!”

“Yes, Sir!” Javelin Shelmyn Rokar replied, then jerked his head at the eleven other members of his squad. “All right, you lot! Let’s go!”

“Jathyr, you get your arse to the brig and make sure the damned Sharonians are still there!”

“Yes, Sir!” Lerso Jathyr took long enough to salute, then turned for the barracks back door, the shortest route to the brig. The men of his squad followed him in a thunder of boots, most of them still buckling weapons harnesses as they went, while Varkan went on barking orders behind them.

* * *

“Oh, crap.”

Keraik Nourm, platoon sword for 3rd Platoon, A Company, saw the first man burst out the front door of Fifty Varkan’s 1st Platoon’s barracks. The man in question was in full combat gear, and he looked disgustingly wide awake. Worse, if he was up and about, then-

More troopers erupted from the same door, and Nourm glanced over his shoulder at Tolomaeo Briahk.

“So much for catching them in their racks!” he snarled. “Now we do it hard way.”

“Whichever way we have to,” the very dark-skinned garthan who was 2nd Squad’s javelin said grimly.

Like Nourm himself, Briahk had accepted the lies they’d been told about the Sharonians without question. And, even more than Nourm, the javelin had treated the Sharonians he’d encountered with brutality on more than one occasion when he thought Fifty Sarma wasn’t looking. Magister Halathyn vos Dulainah had been universally admired and loved by the garthan of every explored universe, and the news that he’d been shot out of hand by the Sharonians after he’d surrendered to them had been carefully and coldly calculated to fan the hatred of men like Briahk to a white-hot flame. Now, looking back at his own actions, he was bitterly ashamed of them…and even more infuriated by the way Magister Halathyn’s death had been used.

“Drop your weapons!” Nourm shouted at the emerging squad, and heads snapped around in their direction. “ Do it now! ”

* * *

Shelmyn Rokar had no idea what was happening. Like his fifty, he’d heard the sound of the Sharonian weapon and, also like Fifty Varkan, he’d automatically assumed the weapon in question had to be in a Sharonian hand. Now he saw a full squad of Arcanans coming at him in an ordered line with arbalests already locked and loaded, and that made no sense at all.

“What the fuck is going on?!” he demanded.

“Drop the weapons, I said!” the same voice shouted, and this time he recognized it. It was Keraik Nourm from that pain in the arse Sarma’s platoon.

“Like hell we will!” Rokar shot back as his men skidded to a halt and turned instinctively towards Nourm’s men. They didn’t know any more about what was happening than their javelin did. “We-”

* * *

“Take them!” Nourm barked, and 2nd Squad’s arbalests spat bolts.