David Weber - The Road to Hell

“Shit! Which way did they go?”

“Damned if I know. How many men do you have?”

“Nine, counting me.”

“Okay. You take a section and head for Admin. I’ll-”

“Belay that,” another voice commanded, and Nourm turned to see Fifty Sarma striding towards him, prodding Fifty Yankaro along at sword point. Yankaro’s hands were obviously spell bound behind him, and if looks had been spells, Sarma would have been a corpse.

“I just came from Thalmayr’s office by way of the BOQ,” the fifty continued. “Nobody passed me on the way here. I’m guessing that means they headed for the brig, instead. Is First Platoon secured, Keraik?”

“Yes, Sir!”

“All right. Traymahr, leave half your men to keep an eye on Third Platoon. Send the other half to take over from Tolomaeo. Keraik, you and I will take all of Second Squad to relieve the brig. Come on, boys-let’s move!”

* * *

Barcan Kalcyr found himself wishing-briefly, at least-that he was in the infantry. Or that he was wearing infantry boots with their soft, skid-proof soles, at any rate. Riding boots made the gods’ own racket trying to creep across a wooden veranda! Fortunately, the godsdamned alarm spell was still making enough noise to hide almost anything.

He’d seen Ulthar and Sarma-he hadn’t gotten that good a look at them, but he was damned sure it hadn’t been Varkan or Yankaro-rushing out of the admin block. One of them had headed for the brig, while the other dashed across the parade ground towards the officers’ quarters beside the barracks. Obviously, his darkest, most paranoid apprehensions had fallen short of the reality, and his face was grim as he contemplated what he was probably about to find. They wouldn’t have gone rushing off that way if Hundred Thalmayr had been in any condition to make problems for them.

He’d almost gone after the traitorous fifties himself. Unlike anyone else in Fort Ghartoun, he was armed with a daggerstone. Strictly against regulations, of course, but Hundred Worka had left it with him. It was charged for only four shots, and it was much shorter ranged than any arbalest, but it was also far more deadly and Kalcyr was sufficiently Gifted to use it when the opportunity arose.

His hand twitched around the stone as he watched Sarma disappear between the barracks assigned to Varkan and Yankaro’s platoons. Unfortunately, the fifty was already far beyond daggerstone range. Besides, he had to make sure of what had happened to Hundred Thalmayr before he did anything else.

He peered cautiously around the edge of the open doorframe and his eyes narrowed as he saw the orderly-Bahbar, his name was, if Kalcyr remembered correctly. The shield was seated in his chair, obviously kept there by a binding spell, but his head was free and he’d clearly seen Kalcyr. He kept his mouth shut, but he jerked his head urgently, using it to point in the direction of Hundred Thalmayr’s personal quarters.

Kalcyr’s heart rose. Bahbar wouldn’t be relying on head gestures unless there’d been someone close enough to hear him. And the bastards wouldn’t have left anyone behind unless there was someone alive to guard. And that meant…

He held a finger across his lips, warning Bahbar to go right on keeping his mouth closed, and eased his way into the office space. The door to Hundred Thalmayr’s quarters stood ajar and he sidled towards it as silently as he could.

But not silently enough. His boot scuffed the floor and the door jerked open.

Kalcyr didn’t know the infantry sword who came leaping through the door, but the short sword in his hand-held low and deadly in a practiced grip-left no doubt about the man’s intentions. Kalcyr was a cavalryman, accustomed to fighting from unicornback, not on his own two feet, and the mutinous

sword came at him with a balanced lethality which left him in very little doubt about how things would have worked out in a straight up fight. Unfortunately for the mutineer, what Kalcyr held in his hand wasn’t a sword.

Kalcyr never knew if the sword had realized what he was carrying. Perhaps he had, given how quickly he tried to close. But he couldn’t close quickly enough, and a silent concussion shook the orderly room as the cavalryman triggered the daggerstone.

* * *

It was Ulthar’s turn to take the shot. The area behind the brig was darker than Shartahk’s riding boots, but he caught a flicker of half-imagined movement and sent an arbalest bolt sizzling toward it. Somebody swore in a high, falsetto-the tone of a man who’d been scared spitless by a near miss and not of someone who’d been hit, unfortunately-and he fell back from the window to respan his weapon.

“Watch it!” someone shouted from the office.

Another fireball erupted in the night, but this one hadn’t made it through the window, praise Hali! From the sudden smell of smoke, though, it had ignited the brig’s cedar shingle roof.

“There, beside the water trough!”

“Got it!”

An arbalest fired and someone shrieked. Which was all very well but wasn’t going to help them very much if the brig burned down around them.

* * *

Jathyr snarled as another of his men went down, but his eyes glowed with baleful satisfaction as he watched the flames beginning to leap from the brig’s roof. Not much longer and the bastards would have to come out where he could get at them or fry-them and the damned Sharonians with them! In another minute or so-

Fortunately for Lerso Jathyr and his remaining men, Tolomaeo Briahk’s squad still had almost a dozen stun bolts left.

December 16

“Am I glad to see you!” Therman Ulthar said fervently.

“Likewise.”

Sarma’s response was a bit more reserved as he watched the released Sharonians intermingled with Arcanans in the bucket brigade working to extinguish the brig’s flames before it spread to the rest of the fort. Somehow none of his plans had anticipated letting Regiment-Captain Velvelig and his companions out of their cell-not, at least, until there’d been time to establish certain ground rules. Under the circumstances, however, trying to put them right back into confinement didn’t strike him as the best idea he’d ever had. Especially not when he considered how competently Velvelig and one of his noncoms, who looked enough like the regiment-captain to have been at least a distant cousin, were holding the infantry arbalests they’d somehow acquired.

He turned away from the fire for a moment, gazing at the bodies sprawled in the dancing light and shadow from the crackling flames. He couldn’t quite decide what he felt. He’d never wanted anyone, Arcanan or Sharonian, to die, yet he couldn’t pretend he and Ulthar hadn’t always known the odds were very much against pulling off a successful mutiny without casualties. And it could have been far worse, especially if Sahnger hadn’t pulled off the stables and moved to neutralize Yankaro’s platoon on his own initiative. At least the mutineers-he didn’t like the word, but it was the only one which truly applied-had suffered only three fatal casualties. Six others had been wounded, the most seriously of them Sarkhol Gersmyn’s savagely burned hand, but none so badly as to surpass the Gift of Commander of Fifty Sorthar Maisyl, the journeyman magistron assigned as Fort Ghartoun’s senior healer. So, taking everything together, he supposed they hadn’t done too badly. Except, of course, that now they had to figure out what to do with Thalmayr…and how to go about reporting all of this in a way that wouldn’t get the lot of them sent straight to the dragon.

“I’m sorry it took us so long to get you out of that hellhole, Regiment-Captain,” he said to Velvelig through his own PC’s translating spellware. “We couldn’t make our move until all the pieces were in place.”