Hell's Gate

Kasell's jaw muscles clenched for a moment. Then he nodded and relaxed a fraction.

"Yes, Sir. You're right, of course. It's just … "

"I know. Triad, but I know. And I'd like to know where his rifle is, too. It's not with him."

Kasell swore one filthy, ugly word.

"Fanthi," Ghartoun called to a rugged hulk of a man who'd always given Shaylar the impression that every stretch of ground he walked across was a potential battlefield, "set sentries in a perimeter fifty yards out in all directions. We don't know where these bastards are, or how close they might be, let alone how many of them there are."

Fanthi chan Himidi, who'd served a double stint in the Ternathian infantry before signing on with Chalgyn Consortium, nodded sharply and organized the rest of the survey crew with swift, efficient dispatch. They had eight men with at least some military experience, who took charge of the others, sending their cook, their drovers, their smith?even Ghartoun's clerk?out to form a circular guard around their little camp. Shaylar felt better just watching the process chan Himidi had set in motion.

Ghartoun hesitated, looking unhappily into her eyes, then crouched down beside her.

"Shaylar," he said gently, "I have to ask. Did Falsan say anything?"

"He?" She drew an unsteady breath and made herself repeat those pitiful few words, then added, "I'm pretty sure he started to say 'They can't follow,' there at the last. But he didn't get the whole thing out before he?"

She stopped and swallowed hard.

"They?" Ghartoun asked, his voice sharp. "You're sure of that? Not 'he'?"

"No," she said slowly. "I'm not sure. He said 'can't follow,' but the impression I got was 'they.' I don't know if that means he saw several of them, Ghartoun, or if he was simply afraid there might be more of them nearby."

The expedition's leader exchanged grim glances with Barris Kasell. Then he looked back at Shaylar.

"Did you pick up anything else? Anything at all that could help us figure out what in the gods' names really happened out there?"

Shaylar drew another deep breath and shook her head to clear it, then held up one impatient hand when he misconstrued her meaning and started to speak. She closed her eyes and sorted through every impression she'd been able to catch during those fleeting seconds of contact. Falsan hadn't been Talented, but Shaylar had been touching him, which helped. She couldn't See anything that he'd seen, but the emotions behind those gasped-out words of warning had slammed their way into her awareness, along with the words themselves. If she could just get a solid grasp on them …

"I don't think there was more than one when he was actually shot, Ghartoun," she finally said. "I'm not picking up a sense of 'me versus them'. It's more a 'me versus him'. I think he was just afraid that there would be others who could follow a blood trail back to us."

"Which is why he stayed in the water," Ghartoun muttered.

"Where there's one, there are bound to be more," Kasell said with quiet intensity. "And did you get a good look at what killed him?"

"Oh, yes. A crossbow bolt."

"Crossbow?" Shaylar stared at the expedition's leader. "But that's?that's medieval!"

"So are clubs and rocks," Ghartoun snapped, his eyes crackling with suppressed fury. "And they'll still kill a man just as dead as a rifle will. Crossbows were weapons of war in our history for damned near a thousand years, come to that, until we finally figured out how to make gunpowder. These people don't have to be our technological equals to kill us."

"That's a fact," Kasell muttered in a voice of steel, and Ghartoun chan Hagrahyl glanced back at Shaylar.

"Can you pick anything else out of those impressions?"

She tried, but nothing else came.

"I'm sorry," she whispered miserably. "I only touched him for just a few seconds, and …" Her voice went unsteady. "I'm sorry. I just can't get anything more."

"I'm grateful you got as much as you did," chan Hagrahyl told her, squeezing her shoulder with surprising force, as though he'd forgotten she was barely the size of a half-grown Ternathian child.

"All right." He stood up, hands curling around the butt of his handgun and the hilt of his camp knife, both sheathed at his wide leather belt. "We don't know exactly who or what we're up against, but we do know they're nasty tempered and don't like company." He met Barris Kasell's gaze, his own hard and grimly determined. "We may have some time, especially if Shaylar's impression is right and there really was only one of the bastards. If Falsan hadn't nailed him with his first shot, we'd probably have heard at least two. And if Falsan got him, it may be a little while before his friends figure out he's not coming home. But we have to assume that there were others of them fairly close by, and that they'll at least be able to backtrack him to camp. And they will, too, after something like this. So we've got to get back to the portal before these bastards overrun us, and it's been a while since we heard that rifle shot."

Shaylar's breath caught. She hadn't thought about that, and the thick woods, so hushed and lovely, suddenly menaced their little party from every shadow, every movement of sun-dappled leaves in the breeze. In a single blink of her eyelashes, the entire forest seemed to be in sinister motion, tricking the eye and confusing the senses. And somewhere out there, well over two miles east of their camp, Jathmar was alone and unaware of what had just happened. She started to make contact when Elevu Gitel's voice jolted her out of her reverie.

"We've got to warn Company-Captain Halifu. Shaylar has to send a message. Immediately."

Shaylar looked up, and chan Hagrahyl nodded, meeting her gaze.

"Contact Darcel. Let him know what's happening. Have him take the message to Company-Captain Halifu, then come back to our side of the portal to listen for additional messages from you. Then try to contact Jathmar. I know you can't talk to him, but we've got to warn him to break off the survey and rendezvous with us."

"Rendezvous?" Braiheri Futhai's voice was incredulous. "Don't you mean return to camp?"

chan Hagrahyl met the naturalist's astonished gaze.

"No, I do not mean return. We're abandoning this camp as fast as humanly possible. I want everyone to pack up the absolute essentials and be ready to march in ten minutes."

"We can't possibly be ready to leave in only ten minutes!" Futhai protested.

"If you can't pack it that fast, leave it," Ghartoun snapped. "And if you can't carry it at a dog-trot from now until we reach the portal, abandon it. Is that clear enough?"

"But?but what about Falsan?"

"Falsan's dead! And it's my job to make sure none of the rest of us join him!"

Futhai's eyes widened at the harshness in the expedition's leader's voice. But his jaw muscles clenched, and he gave chan Hagrahyl the obstinate glare Shaylar had come to associate with the naturalist at his absolute worst.

"We are not leaving this camp until that poor man is properly buried!"

"We don't have time." chan Hagrahyl's voice was a glacier grinding up boulders.

"We are civilized people, sir, and civilized people bury their dead," Futhai shot back, and Kasell's nostrils flared as he rounded on the naturalist.

"Not when the godsdamned natives are shooting at them!" he snarled in a voice of withering contempt.

"Nobody is shooting at us." Futhai pointed out in maddeningly reasonable, patiently courteous, patronizing tones. "And since we're not in immediate danger, we can at least behave with respect for that poor man's death."

Barris Kasell's right hand clenched into a white-knuckled fist around the carrying sling of his rifle. From his expression, he would have vastly preferred to have the naturalist's neck in that fist's grasp, instead.