Hell's Gate

The trail?of course?led uphill all the way. Jathmar was in excellent physical condition?anyone who spent as much time hiking as a survey crewman had to be in good shape?but he hadn't pushed himself this hard in a long time. His thighs and calves were feeling the strain, and his breathing was heavier than he would have liked it to be. His Model 70 grew heavier with every stride, but he gritted his teeth and kept going. He'd been ru

"Jathmar!"

He slid to an instant halt, breathing hard and turning his head to follow the sound.

"Ghartoun?" he panted, and the stocky ex-soldier rose from a cautious crouch.

"Any sign of pursuit?" he asked, his voice urgent but quiet, and relief jellied Jathmar's knees. He shook his head, stiffening both weary legs in grim resolution.

"Not yet. The camp hadn't been disturbed when I got there. And I haven't heard anything behind me."

"That's something, at least," chan Hagrahyl muttered. "You made good time catching up to us. Let's hope to hell Falsan's killer doesn't to the same. All right, we're moving out."

Jathmar pushed through the spirea behind chan Hagrahyl, and Shaylar flung himself into his arms, holding on tightly. She wasn't quite trembling, but he felt the distress tightening her muscles, and spikes of emotion ripped through their bond.

"I was so scared," she whispered against his chest. "Thank all the gods you made it back to us!"

"Shhh." He lifted her chin and kissed her gently, then frowned as he glanced at her bulging pack. "That's too heavy for you."

"Yes, but I didn't dare leave any of this behind, in case … "

She swallowed hard, and he brushed a fingertip across her lips.

"Never say it, love. It didn't happen. Here." He slid off his pack, opened hers, and redistributed the weight. "That ought to help."

She gave a sigh of relief when he helped her shrug the straps back across her shoulders.

"Oh, that's lovely. Thanks."

"Don't mention it, M'lady," he said with a courtly bow, and her smile wavered only slightly as she squeezed his hand.

She headed out behind the others, and Jathmar followed, carefully placing himself between her and whatever might be coming up behind them. They moved at a rapid pace, not quite jogging, but the difference was so tiny as to hardly matter. The trail wasn't a friendly one. It still drove inexorably uphill, and it was littered with underbrush, deadfalls, and deep gullies that hindered their progress. It hadn't seemed like such rough country coming through in the other direction, he thought bitterly, then gave himself another mental shake.

Be fair, he told himself. It isn't that rough?you're just scared too death and trying to get through it five times as fast!

chan Hagrahyl kept them moving for two hours without stopping. Shaylar strode grimly forward, outwardly holding her own, but Jathmar could feel her aching weariness and the need for rest that she managed to keep hidden from the others. He'd never been so proud of her, nor so frightened for her, but he wasn't surprised when chan Hagrahyl finally called a halt and she cast pride to the winds and simply sank to the ground, panting.

The stocky Ternathian who'd once been an imperial officer cast uneasy glances at the forest behind. Probing glances that tried to see into the shadows behind far too much underbrush, far too many trees. Barris Kassel and the other ex-soldiers spread themselves into a defensive ring without a word, silently standing guard while everyone gulped a few swallows of water and caught their breath. Shaylar had her breathing under control again, but he could feel the aching weariness in her.

She can't keep going hour after hour at this pace, Jathmar thought despairingly. Not all the way to the portal.

He wasn't sure the rest of them could keep up this wicked pace, for that matter. Jathmar already felt the strain, and Braiheri Futhai was at least as badly winded as Shaylar. Jathmar tried to keep his worries quiet, tried to keep Shaylar from catching them, but he didn't succeed. When she lifted her head, meeting his gaze levelly, he tried to smile, and her answering smile's courage, and the strength of her love, nearly broke his heart.

Being here with you is worth it, worth the risk and the danger, her smile told him, and he smiled back, aware that he'd never loved her more.

Far too soon, chan Hagrahyl gave the soft-voiced order to move out again.

Chapter Six

"That's not a campsite, Sir. It's the next best thing to a godsdamned fortress," Chief Sword Threbuch breathed in Sir Jasak Olderhan's ear, and Jasak nodded grimly. It was an exageration … but not much of one.

They'd found no trace of where their quarry had gone after murdering Osmuna, which told Jasak that he'd turned back in the direction from which he'd come, keeping to the stream to throw off the scent. It also meant the only clue they had to follow was the trail he'd left on his way to the site of the murder.

So they'd backtracked him. It hadn't been especially difficult; whoever he was, he hadn't bothered to cover his tracks when walking towards his murderous rendezvous with Osmuna, so the trail itself was easy to pick up. On the other hand, that trail had wound its way through the underbrush along the stream like something a snake with epilepsy might have left behind, and after what had happened to Osmuna, Fifty Garlath's men moved with a certain understandable caution.

Jasak told himself the killer couldn't be very far in front of them now. Not when he was wounded and struggling through the boulder-strewn stream. Jasak had halfway expected to overtake the bastard somewhere along the creek, but they'd found no trace of him. And he had to admit that they'd taken at least two or three times longer than they ought to have to get their pursuit organized in the first place. He knew he could legitimately blame most of that delay on Garlath's inefficiency, but i

In fairness to himself?and Garlath?the sheer, stu

However little "everything" turned out to be in the end, he thought glumly, lying belly-down beside Threbuch with his chin on his folded forearms while they studied the natural clearing on the far side of the stream.

The camp in the middle of that clearing made it painfully obvious that whoever he was, Osmuna's killer wasn't out here alone. One man could never have built the palisade-like wall they were studying from their vantage point across the streambed. Not by himself. That high brush barrier of interwoven branches and cut saplings surrounded an area at least thirty yards in diameter, and it was too high to see over from their present position.

There was too much timber down around the edge of the clearing, too, all of it showing the white scar of newly cut wood, for one man to have felled it all. If he'd cut down that many branches and small trees by himself, the oldest cuts would have started losing that raw, pale look of just-hacked-down timber.

"At least fifteen or twenty, you think?" he murmured to Threbuch.

"Couldn't be much less than that, Sir," the chief sword replied. "Not from all the work the bastards've put in over there."

Jasak nodded again and thought some more.

If that estimate was accurate, First Platoon had the mysterious strangers substantially outnumbered. In addition to the fifty-seven men of his four line squads, Garlath had an attached six-man engineer section, four quartermaster baggage handlers, and a hummer handler. Adding Jasak himself, and Chief Sword Threbuch, that came to seventy men, which ought to provide Jasak with a comfortable superiority.