Hell's Gate

Jasak measured the distance between the footprint and cylinder with his eyes. Four and a half feet, give or take. It hadn't been dropped, he realized. It had been thrown into the weeds. Deliberately? Or had the man hurled it away accidentally, in reflex perhaps, when Osmuna's quarrel struck flesh? It didn't look like a weapon, or even a part of one. And it was certainly far too small to hold anything big enough to punch a hole that big through solid flesh. Unless?

Jasak frowned in fresh speculation. The hole in Osmuna's back was enormous, yes. But the hole in his chest was small. Very small. Just about the diameter of that cylinder, in fact.

"He used this to kill Osmuna."

"How?"

Jasak hadn't realized he'd spoken aloud until the chief sword's one-word question told him he had. Threbuch didn't sound incredulous?quite. But he did sound … perplexed, and Jasak scowled up at the grizzled noncom.

"Beats hell out of me, Otwal. But look." He fished the thing gingerly out of the weeds, picking it up by inserting a small twig into the open end. "It's the same diameter as the hole in Osmuna's chest."

"That couldn't possibly have gone through Osmuna." Fifty Garlath's tone was scathing enough to cross the line into open insolence. "There's no blood on it, and the angles are wrong, and it landed in the wrong place. If that thing had gone through Osmuna, it would've landed on the other side of the creek, not up here."

"I didn't say this had gone through the poor bastard," Jasak snapped, gripping his temper in both hands.

"Maybe whatever was in it went through him? Chief Sword Threbuch mused, and Jasak tilted the cylinder so that sunlight fell into it as he peered inside.

"If there was anything in here, there's barely a trace of it left." He sniffed again. "Something smells … burnt?"

He reached into the open neck with one fingertip and felt some kind of residue inside. The chief sword twitched violently, as though he'd just suppressed a need to jerk Jasak's hand away, and the hundred managed to summon a wry smile.

"I think it's fairly safe to say Osmuna wasn't poisoned," he said.

"And you're sure of that because??" Threbuch growled.

"Point taken. So I won't lick my finger, all right?"

"Sir!" Threbuch's eyes widened. "Look at your finger."

Jasak glanced down, startled, and discovered a black smudge on his fingertip.

"That's carbon," he said wonderingly. "It's like ordinary lampblack."

"But?" Garlath began, then clicked his teeth on whatever he'd been about to say.

"Go on, Fifty," Jasak said quietly.

"It doesn't make sense, Sir. Osmuna wasn't burned, any more than he was poisoned!"

"No," Jasak agreed thoughtfully. "No, he wasn't. But something was burned inside this thing, burned so completely that all that's left is a film of lampblack. And the end of this cylinder is the same size as Osmuna's wound. So there's a co

"An incendiary spell-thrower, Sir?" Gaythar Harklan asked nervously, and Jasak glanced at him.

"I'm not ruling anything out at this point, Shield," he said. "How close were you to Osmuna when he died?"

"About thirty yards away, Sir. Maybe forty." The trooper pointed to the other stream bank, where Gadrial sat on a boulder in the sun, waiting with commendable calm for a civilian plunged into the middle of a military emergency an entire universe away from the nearest help. "I was behind all that mess of underbrush. Shartahk's own work getting through it, too, Sir."

"And how loud was that cracking sound we all heard?"

"Damned loud, Sir. Hurt my ears, and that's no lie."

"It was loud enough where we were that I can well believe it," Jasak said, nodding absently.

He stood frowning at the enigma perched on the palm of his hand. Harklan was certainly right about how obstructive the underbrush was. The noncom's own nervousness?not to mention his military training's insistence on advancing cautiously in the face of the unknown?undoubtedly meant it had taken him even longer to get through it. Which, unfortunately, had given Osmuna's murderer a priceless gift of time in which to make his own escape.

He realized that his frown at the bland metal cylinder had become a glower, instead, and felt a burning frustration that he couldn't make any of the puzzle pieces fit together.

But whether he could do that or not, they still had a wounded killer to track.

"He went into the water," Jasak said. "After he threw this into the weeds. Was he just trying to rinse his wound, or was he trying to accomplish something else? Was anything of Osmuna's missing?"

He glanced at Evarl Harnak, who gave him a hangdog look of sudden guilt.

"I don't know, Sir," he admitted. "We, uh, didn't look."

"Then look now, curse you!" Garlath snapped so viciously Harnak paled.

"Yes, Sir!"

The platoon sword threw a sharp salute and scrambled down the bank, and Jasak bit back an acid comment. Harnak should have checked Osmuna's gear immediately; he and Garlath actually shared that opinion. But the men were already shaken, as it was. Snarling at them would only make them more nervous?and mistake-prone?than ever.

Garlath caught Jasak's tightlipped disapproval and glared back defiantly, as though daring Jasak to reprimand him for ordering a trooper to repair his dereliction of duty. But the hundred couldn't do that, of course, however severely tempted he might be. If he reprimanded Garlath, even in private, it would only add weight to any charge of personal prejudice against Garlath the fifty might make.

In that moment, Jasak realized just how much he truly hated Shevan Garlath. Any man who abused shaken troops in the middle of a crisis?let alone a crisis bigger than anything the Union of Arcana had weathered since its founding?was a man who deserved to be cashiered. Preferably with his head stuffed up his nether parts.

Jasak wanted, more than he'd ever wanted anything in his life, to do that stuffing. The fact that he couldn't only fa

"I want that killer's trail found and followed, Fifty. Send First Squad west, with one section on this side of the creek, and the other section on the far bank. Have them look for a place our man might've crawled out of the streambed. We know he's been hit, but we don't know how seriously, or which way he went. It'd be rough going for a wounded man to wade very far through all those boulders, though, so send them, say, half a mile.

"If we haven't found any trace of him by then, chances are he headed back east again. His footprints certainly appear to have come from that direction. So, in the meanwhile, send Third Squad east, looking for the same thing."

"And you, Sir?" Garlath bit out.

Jasak held the older man's eyes coolly, staring down the hostility in them. Hostility and a dark flare of pure hatred. Both of them knew precisely how badly Jasak wanted to be rid of Shevan Garlath, yet both of them also knew they were stuck with one another?at least for the duration of this crisis?and Jasak's reply would have frozen a lump of lava.

"Chief Sword Threbuch and I will backtrack the only solid evidence the bastard left behind. That trail." He pointed toward the faint line of footprints along the stream bank, prints that disappeared into the tangle of undergrowth. "Give me a couple of point men?preferably a fire team that's trained together."

He needed someone to watch out for Gadrial, and neither he nor Threbuch could devote the proper attention to that job. Not while tracking a murderer through this terrain. But they couldn't leave her behind, either. The multiple Mythalan hells would freeze solid before Jasak Olderhan entrusted Magister Gadrial Kelbryan's safety to the likes of Shevan Garlath.

"Yes, Sir!" Garlath made the snappy precision of his salute an insult in itself. Then he spun away and started snarling orders.