David Weber - The Road to Hell

“I can see how that might have been a problem.” Velvelig’s voice was flat, giving away nothing, and his expression gave away even less. “Of course, you two have another little problem now, don’t you?”

“We have several of them, actually,” Ulthar acknowledged with a sour smile. “Which one did you have in mind, Sir?”

“The fact that my people are out of cells and we’re not likely to go back into them peacefully. Which, coupled with the fact that by my best estimate you and your men are still outnumbered somewhere around four or five-to-one by the rest of the garrison, suggests you might just find your resources running short if you tried to make us go back.”

“Frankly, the same thought had already occurred to me,” Sarma admitted, and Ulthar nodded in wry agreement. “Believe me, Regiment-Captain Velvelig, Therman and I are both of the opinion that your people have been abused enough. By the same token, I trust you understand why we can’t simply stand on the fort’s fighting step and wave goodbye as you vanish into the distance. We’re going to be in deep enough dragon shit with our superiors for what we’ve already done, however justified. If we were to, ah…mislay all of you on top of everything else, I’m afraid our word about Thalmayr’s behavior wouldn’t carry very much weight.”

“I could point out that that’s your fucking problem,” Velvelig observed coldly. “We didn’t attack you. And we sure as hells didn’t launch an offensive while we were pretending to negotiate with you! And then there’s that little matter of how many of our Voices you bastards murdered along the way here.”

“We can’t deny any of that,” Ulthar said quietly. “I think you know my men and I had nothing to do with any of it, though, since we were your guests right here at the time. And Jaralt’s been trying to figure out how to stop as much of it as he could from the very beginning. But we’re not very far up the totem pole, Sir. A commander of fifty is only the equivalent of one of your platoon-captains. I know it’s a pretty pale excuse after everything you just listed, but we really were following orders…right up to the moment we completely violated our orders and put the lives of every one of our men into jeopardy in the process.”

Eyes of Andaran blue met dark, hard eyes of Arpathian brown levelly in the firelight. Stillness hovered around the two men, made even stiller by the greedy background crackle of flames, the voices of the men in the bucket brigade, and the hiss when a fresh bucket of water sluiced across blazing timbers. Then, finally, Velvelig nodded slowly.

“Don’t expect me to be doing any drum dances or swearing blood brotherhood anytime soon,” he said. “But I truly do understand what it took for a pair of platoon commanders to run this sort of risk. For that matter,” he added a bit grudgingly, “maybe the fact that the two of you chose to do what you’ve done proves there really is someone in Arcana who understands what honor is.”

Ulthar winced, but he didn’t look away and he couldn’t deny that Velvelig had every right to feel that way.

And he doesn’t even know yet about how that motherless bastard Neshok and the rest of the intelligence pukes lied to us every step of the way. I wonder if he’ll even believe us if we tell him? Not that he wouldn’t find out eventually anyway, even if it’s only at Jaralt and my courts-martial!

“I guess I’m glad you feel that way, Sir,” he said. “And I’m sorry as hell that it took something like this for us to show you that Arcana-or Andara and the Army, at least-really do have a sense of honor. It’s been buried under a pretty damned deep load of dragon shit just at the moment, and cleaning it’s going to be a gods-awful challenge, but it’s got to start somewhere. It might as well be here.”

Velvelig gazed at him a moment longer, then nodded again. He wasn’t going to go out of his way to make that chore any easier for the Arcanan Army in general than he had to, but he had to admit these two youngsters seemed to have made a fair start.

“In the meantime,” Ulthar continued, “I don’t think we have any choice but to keep you and your men in custody-officially, at least. There are only twenty-one of you, so I don’t think you could get very far back towards Sharona with Two Thousand Harshu’s entire army between you and there. And it’s going to be hard enough getting our superior officers to listen to our side of what happened here even with your people available for interviews. If we don’t have you around to back up our testimony, they probably won’t believe us at all, to be honest.”

“We might not be able to get back to Sharona, but we could sure as hells make ourselves scarce enough out there in the wilderness that you people would have one demon of a time finding us again,” Velvelig observed rather caustically. “Besides, what makes you think your superiors would be interested in our testimony?”

“Sir, I’m an officer in the Second Andaran Scouts,” Ulthar said. “That’s the hereditary command of the Olderhan family, and Sir Thankhar Olderhan is the Duke of Garth Showma, who also happens to be the planetary governor of New Arcana and one of the three or four most senior officers in the entire Commandery. When he gets involved in something, things happen, and you don’t want to be part of what he thinks is the problem. I’ve already sent a full report about what’s been happening here to him through a secure channel. He won’t have gotten it yet, but when he does, hell won’t hold what’ll come down on the people responsible. I give you my word of honor on that.”

“This Duke’s going to take a platoon-captain’s word for it despite anything his immediate superiors might have to say?” Velvelig sounded skeptical, and Ulthar didn’t blame him.

“ This Duke will definitely take my word,” he replied flatly. “He’d do that anyway, or at least give us a fair hearing, whoever we were. The fact that I’m a Second Andaran will make it easier, I admit. And so will the fact that his son is Shaylar and Jathmar Nargra’s baranal .”

It didn’t register for a moment. Partly because the spellware hadn’t translated the Andaran term, but then Ulthar’s verb tense penetrated and Namir Velvelig’s eyes blazed suddenly.

“ What did you say?!” he demanded. “You said ‘ is !’ Are you saying Jathmar Nargra and Shaylar Nargra-Kolmayr are alive? ”

Ulthar stepped back half a pace involuntarily, stunned by Velvelig’s reaction. The Sharonian reached out with one hand as if to grab the front of his tunic and drag him closer, then closed that hand into a fist so tight the knuckles whitened.

“They were the last I heard, Sir,” the Arcanan said cautiously. “Both of them were badly hurt in the original confrontation between our people and yours, and the dragon pulling them back to the rear passed my dragon on the way forward, so I didn’t see either of them personally. But Sword Harnak was at Toppled Timber with Hundred Olderhan, and I’ve had plenty of time to discuss what happened with him. I understand Madam Shaylar had a nasty concussion and Jathmar was so badly burned by an infantry dragon that no one expected him to survive, but Magister Gadrial had enough of the healing Gift to keep him alive until our company healer reached him. Sword Morikan healed him, but Madam Shaylar’s injuries weren’t immediately life threatening and there was only one of him. They had to triage the wounded, and there were too many critically hurt for him to heal her concussion before she and her husband were pulled back to Fort Rycharn, but I’m sure the magistrons there were able to heal both of them fully.”