Hell's Gate

But Jasak had seen those things, all too clearly, and his jaw tightened. Unfortunately, he couldn't accuse the platoon leader of the cowardice his current indifference screened. Despite his own sudden, intuitive suspicion that something was wrong?terribly wrong?Jasak had no proof that it was. And a gut feeling wasn't grounds for making a charge as serious as "cowardice in the face of the enemy," despite the fact that both of them knew exactly why Garlath wasn't responding to the crackling danger that sound represented.

Or might represent, Jasak reminded himself. It wasn't easy, but he made himself step back just a little, determined to keep an open mind precisely because he recognized his own hairtrigger willingness to attribute the worst possible motives to Garlath's conduct as an officer of the Second Andaran Scouts.

All the fifty had really done, after all, was to ignore a sound that might be nothing more threatening than an old tree coming down somewhere. Jasak might be willing to bet his next five paychecks that the cause of that sound had been nothing so benign, but until he had more information?

Squad Shield Gaythar Harklan burst suddenly through a screen of brilliantly colored poplars, crushing a patch of toadstool mushrooms underfoot in his wild, headlong rush. He actually shot straight past Fifty Garlath and came to a gasping halt directly in front of Jasak.

"Sir!" His salute was a hasty affair, sketched with a hand that shook violently. "Sir, I beg leave to report a hostile contact?"

"Hostile contact?" Garlath snarled, abandoning his contemplation of the treetops to charge forward like an angry palm-horned bull moose. "Don't play the Hundred for a fool! And how dare you desert your post without orders?"

"S-Sir?" Harklan stuttered, swinging irresolutely between Jasak and the irate Garlath. "It's just that Osmuna?he's dead, Sir!"

"Dead?" Jasak asked sharply, cutting off another vitriolic outburst from Garlath with a brusquely raised hand. "What killed him?"

He'd meant to ask "who," rather than "what," but he had a sudden feeling that his meager Gift must be functioning, because Harklan's answer should have shocked the living daylights out of him.

"That's just it, Sir. I don't know what killed him. None of us know. I-I think he missed the halt order for the rest break, Sir. I was just about to pass the word to our flankers that I was moving forward, trying to catch up with him, when that sound came." He gulped hard. "It was right on the line to Osmuna, whatever it was, but it took me a while to get through the brush and find him. He's dead, Sir. Just fucking dead, and the right-flank patrol caught up to me, and we can't any of us figure out why he's dead or even how?"

"That is quite enough!" Garlath's dark complexion had acquired a nearly wine-purple hue. "You're hysterical, soldier! Place yourself on report and?"

"Fifty Garlath."

The ice-cold voice cut Garlath off in mid-snarl.

"Sir?" The fifty's response was strangled.

"We have a dead soldier, Fifty. I might suggest making that our immediate priority. Discipline can wait."

Garlath's jaw muscles bunched visibly, and the enraged flush spread abruptly down his neck and under the line of his uniform's collar. His furious, frightened eyes snapped to Jasak's face, and for just a moment, it looked as if he might actually explode. But then his eyes fell.

"Of course, Sir," he grated.

If his jaw had been any stiffer, the bone would have shattered like ice, and the glare he turned on Harklan was deadly with a promise of vengeance. Jasak took note of that, too, and made himself a promise of his own where Shevan Garlath and the squad shield were concerned. Then the fifty wheeled away and began barking furious orders of his own.

Despite that, it took him nearly ten minutes to shake First Platoon into anything approaching proper threat-response posture.

Jasak watched the platoon commander with eyes of brown ice. At least half of Garlath's snarled orders only contributed to the confusion of the moment, and the fifty's collar was soaked with sweat, despite the morning air's persistent chill.

It was simple fear, Jasak realized. Or perhaps not so simple, given the dynamics at play. It didn't require a major Gift to detect the sources of Garlath's pronounced lack of courage: fear of whatever had killed Osmuna, fear of making a mistake grave enough to finally get him cashiered, fear that he'd already made that fatal mistake… .

Well, a man can dream, can't he? Jasak thought sourly, wondering once again how Garlath had managed to outlast every other commander of one hundred assigned to ride herd on him.

"When we move out," he told Gadrial quietly without looking at her, his attention fully focused on the abruptly hostile shadows, "stay close to me."

He glanced at her, and she gave him a choppy nod. She looked tense, but not overtly frightened. Or, rather, on a second and longer look, she was scared spitless, but she wasn't letting the fear dominate her. Fifty Garlath ought to take lessons from this mere civilian?if anything about this particular civilian could be labeled "mere."

His brief glance lingered on her longer than he'd intended for it to. She didn't notice, because she was too busy sweeping the forest with an alert and piercing gaze that tracked any motion instantly. Her focused attention had a sort of dangerous elegance, almost a beauty, like a hunting falcon's, or a gryphon searching for a target to strike, and Jasak wondered quite abruptly if the slim magister had any self-defense warding spells tucked away as part of her extensive training in magical theory and applications. That might explain her composure. Then again, she struck Jasak as a thorough and competent professional, well aware of her skills?and weaknesses?and more than capable of weathering whatever unpleasant surprise the multiple universes might conspire to throw her way.

He reminded himself sternly of his own responsibilities and turned his attention away from her. It was surprisingly difficult. His attraction to the magister was deepening rapidly into profound respect as she resolutely refused to let death's unexpected arrival tumble her into panic.

It took nine and a half minutes too long, but Garlath did get his troopers moving within ten minutes, which was undoubtedly a personal record. He even managed to deploy them in the correct formation for responding to an unknown threat in close terrain. Privately, Jasak was willing to bet that it had taken Garlath those extra nine and a half minutes to remember the correct formation.

Once underway, it took almost twice as long as it should have to reach Osmuna's resting place. Mostly because Garlath was jumping at shadows … and a forest this size had a lot of shadows.

Jasak put Gadrial directly behind him as they moved through the trees.

"Stay right behind me," he told her.

With another civilian, he might have added a warning to keep quiet, but this civilian made considerably less noise than Garlath did as they moved cautiously forward through the brittle autumn leaf litter. The scent of the crisp leaves underfoot?a dry, incongruous ci

The temptation was the next best thing to overwhelming, but bad as things were, taking over from Garlath right in the middle of things would only have made them even worse. They didn't need anything confusing the chain of command at a time when half the platoon was out of visual contact with its CO and senior NCOs. He had no choice but to let the commander of fifty do his job, so he hugged his irritated impatience tightly to himself and took comfort in the fact that Gadrial remained a constant, exact two paces behind him.