Hell's Gate

Jasak was impressed. She might be "no soldier," but her reasoning tallied closely with his own. And from the flicker of respect in the chief sword's expression, it tallied with Otwal Threbuch's, too.

"You'd have made an effective military analyst, Gadrial," the hundred said, and her eyes glinted.

"One of these days, you Andaran bully boys will be civilized enough to let us ladies join your ranks. The effect ought to be bracingly beneficial."

"Ladies in uniform?" The chief sword snorted. "Carrying arbalests and throwing war spells? Ransaran democratic madness."

"I'm qualified expert with a hand arbalest," she said tartly. "And I can throw spells that would singe your braided Shalomarian hair. Literally," she added sweetly.

The chief sword just gri

"I would suggest," Jasak interrupted, before Threbuch succeeded in digging himself in any deeper, "that we discover what we can about that."

He nodded toward the palisade, and Fifty Garlath took his cue from that and ordered the platoon forward. First and Second Squads split up and did a sweep of the treeline surrounding the clearing, looking for possible ambushes or snipers. Third Squad unlimbered its crew-served infantry-dragon, setting it up in a cover position on this side of the stream. Fourth Squad followed First and Second across the creek and bellied down under cover of the far bank, waiting.

Gadrial watched with quiet intensity from her vantage point in the scrub. She was perfectly aware that Jasak had no intention of walking out there until the security sweep was complete and the platoon's heavy weapons were in place to respond to any threat. Had she not been present, he would probably be out there already himself, but she was along for the ride, so he was left with the responsibility for her safety.

He obviously placed a high priority on keeping her in one piece, and she was scared enough to appreciate that, yet independent-minded enough to flush with embarrassment as she admitted to herself that she wasn't able to hold her own out here. She had no formal military training. She truly was a crack shot with a hand-sized arbalest, but she'd never fired a shoulder weapon in her life, and she couldn't even give the dragon gu

Gadrial's main interest in the infantry-dragons, and the heavier field-dragons of the true artillery, was in the battle spells that powered them. She'd spoken to combat engineers and knew battle spells were complex. Building them demanded intense concentration frequently under conditions that were challenging, to say the least, and not all of them were directly related to the artillery. Infantry companies included not just the dragons and their gu

Combat spell engineers were among the highest-skilled and highest-paid men in the Union of Arcana's armed forces. There were never enough of them to go around, though, and they were too valuable to put at the sharp end and get them shot at if it could be avoided, so units like Hundred Olderhan's routinely carried plenty of extra spell packs for emergency use.

Infantry platoons were built around squads, each twelve men strong. A squad was subdivided into two maneuver teams, each consisting of three arbalestiers commanded by a noncom, and supported by an infantry-dragon. It took both of a dragon gu

Now Gadrial shivered, watching the heavy weapons deploy defensively. She was afraid a battle was exactly what was going to happen. The question was whether it would break loose here, or somewhere else.

When the final "all clear" whistled across the open space, Fourth Squad rose out of its cover, spread into a skirmish line, and headed into the abandoned camp. Jasak strode ahead, leaving Gadrial in the care of two men assigned as her bodyguards. She deliberately fell behind his rapid stride, making sure she didn't get in anyone's way. Still, she'd nearly reached the gap in the brush walls when she realized Jasak had stopped dead in his tracks.

He stopped so abruptly she almost collided with him, and when she stepped around him to see what he was staring at, she caught her breath. A cairn of rocks lay in the shadow of the brush wall, piled up between the interwoven branches and the edge of the stream, and she felt a tremor in her knees, and another in her chest, as she recognized its shape and depth.

The fact that someone had died here shouldn't have shocked her so brutally. She knew that. But as she stared down at the pile of rocks over what had been a human being, there was no doubt in Gadrial's mind that they'd found the man who'd killed Osmuna.

Dismay stabbed deep as the sickening import crashed home. There'd been only one man on the bank above the creek where Osmuna had died. Only one trail through the forest led back to this camp. Which meant that only two men knew what had happened out there in the wilderness.

And both of them were dead.

She recognized the same understanding in the grim look in Jasak Olderhan's eyes, the knotted muscles in his jaw and the tension in his shoulders. She wondered what he was thinking, then decided she didn't really want to know. Then Jasak raised his gaze, granite eyes tracking like a hunting gryphon after prey as they sought out his commander of fifty.

"Search this camp," he said flatly. "I want to know how many men were here. What they left behind. Anything that might give us an idea of where they're from, and why they're here."

"Yes, Sir!"

Garlath started spitting orders. They sounded industrious enough, but they lacked a certain clarity, and Jasak locked eyes with his chief sword. The grizzled noncom nodded crisply and moved immediately to organize the search Garlath was attempting to direct.

Once Chief Sword Threbuch waded in, the swift, methodical search went so smoothly it was like watching a choreographed dance, Gadrial thought. Except for the fact that there was no music but the jittery rattle of wind in dead leaves that scuttled across the rocky cairn where Osmuna's killer lay, that was. She supposed she ought to be glad?in a retributive, just-desserts fashion?that the man who'd murdered Osmuna was dead, and a portion of her did want to be glad, shocking as that seemed. But it was only a small part of her, and the rest was horrified by what had transpired out here.

The Union Accords, the cornerstone of the Union of Arcana, had put an end to the savagery of the Portal Wars two centuries previously. They had united the various warring kingdoms and republics into one cooperative entity, dedicated to exploring the multiple universes and giving everyone in the Union a better life. The opportunity to build something new and worthwhile in pristine universes, the chance to amass wealth in a civilization which was wealthy in a way pre-portal Arcanans couldn't possibly have imagined.

Those Accords had governed the use of portals and new universes for two hundred years. And they also laid out the rules and contingency plans for contact with another human civilization in the clearest possible terms. Every soldier in the Union's military forces was put through training on how to conduct such a first contact, which aimed above all else to be peaceful. The last thing anyone had wanted was a shooting war with another human civilization.

Yet in all the years of the Union's existence, no such other civilization had ever been encountered. The rules were still there, the troops were still trained in them, but only as a contingency. No one had actually expected to ever require them. Not really. Surely if there'd been other human beings in existence, Arcana would have discovered them long ago.