Hell's Gate

"Where?" she gasped, and Jasak reached out and lifted her across the five-foot fallen trunk as if she'd been a child. He set her down beside the wounded, and her breath choked on a sound of horror.

All three of the male survivors were burned. Two had been caught facing the fireball when the dragon's breath detonated amongst them, and their crisped skin and the stench of their burnt flesh twisted Jasak's stomach all over again. The third man had been facing away, or at least partially away, leaving him burned across the back. His shirt was a tattered wreck of blackened cloth. He'd been slammed into a jutting limb and fallen sideways, landing on one shoulder before sprawling across the ground, and broken ribs were visible through the tattered shirt.

"Rahil," Gadrial whispered. Jasak looked at her, saw her eyes, and flinched inwardly.

"Can you save them?" he asked, his voice hoarse. "Can you save any of them?"

She swallowed hard and nerved herself to test the pulse of the nearest burn victim. He was semi-conscious, and a hideous, gurgling scream ripped loose as his arm shifted. Gadrial whimpered, but she didn't let go.

"Rahil's mercy," she breathed, then forced herself to inhaled deeply. "The others?"

Jasak led her to them. She tested their pulses in turn, her eyes closed, whispering under her breath. Power stirred about her, gripping hard enough to twist Jasak with a sharper nausea.

"It's bad?Heavenly Lady, it's bad. I can't save them all. I'm sorry. I might?I can probably keep one of them alive. Maybe … "

She stood, staring down at them, and Jasak felt her i

"Look!" She pointed at the woman's wrist, and Jasak frowned. The tiny, unconscious stranger wore a bracelet?a cuff of flexible metal that looked like woven gold. He'd already noticed that, but Gadrial was pointing at one of the wounded men, as well. He wore a matching cuff.

"That one," the magister said. "I'll?"

Her voice broke as she turned away from the others, the two who would die. The two she must let die.

She knelt beside the man with the wrist cuff. He was broken, as well as burned. The savagery of his wounds bled back through her hands, carried by her minor healing Gift, and she moaned involuntarily in the face of so much pain, so much damage… .

She closed her eyes, rested her hands carefully on his chest, and summoned the power of her Gift. Whispered words poured from her lips, helping her shape and direct the energy she plucked from the air about her. That energy was everywhere, a vast, unseen, seething sea that rolled and thundered like a storm-swept tide. It poured out of the emptiness between mortal thoughts and the power of God and scorched down her arms, out through her hands into the injured man. It was enormous, that sea of energy, an unimaginable, infinite boil of power flying loose and wild for anyone with the Gift strong enough to touch and take it.

But Gadrial's healing Gift was only a minor arcana. She could take only a little, only a sliver of the power someone with a major healing Gift could have taken, and even that small an amount had a price.

"He's … stabilized …" she managed to whisper, and the smoke-filled clearing looped and whirled around her.

Someone caught her shoulders, steadied her, and she leaned against a shoulder that took her weight effortlessly.

She needed that support?badly?as voices swam in and out of focus. The universe seemed to dip and swerve, curtsying like a ship in a heavy sea, and the start of a brutal headache throbbed somewhere behind her eyes.

Gift shock, her trained mind told her through the chaos. The strain of someone pushing a Gift far beyond its safe limits. It had been a long time since she'd felt it, and she wandered through seconds and minutes which stretched and contracted wierdly as she tied to find her way through the chaos of the backlash.

It took what seemed a very long time, but then her senses finally cleared, and she realized she was sitting propped against Sir Jasak Olderhan himself. His arm was about her, holding her there, while he issued a steady stream of orders.

"?and when that's done, Chief Sword, I want you to take one man and confirm that class eight portal. I want to finish that, at least, whatever else we do. I hate to give you up, but I want my best man in charge out there. Just be damned careful. We didn't?I didn't?mean to massacre these people, and I don't want anyone shooting at anyone else. Is that clear?"

"Very clear, Sir."

"Good. Just tiptoe in and tiptoe out, do whatever it takes to avoid further contact. Any questions?"

"No, Sir."

"Move out, then. The sooner you go, the likelier you are to get there and back before anyone realizes these people aren't coming home."

Jasak's voice went bleak and grim on the final few words. He could only hope the other side hadn't sent a ru

"Keep your eyes open, Chief Sword, but don't dawdle. If they've dispatched a ru

"Yes, Sir."

Threbuch saluted and turned away. Jasak watched him go, then noticed that Gadrial was watching him.

"Feeling better?" he asked quietly, moving the arm which had held her upright, and she nodded and sat up.

"Yes. Thanks." Her voice was hoarse, but it didn't quiver. "What we do now?"

Jasak glanced at the still-unconscious woman and the man Gadrial had pulled back from the brink.

"We have to get them back to the swamp portal before we can airlift them out. We can't get a dragon here in time. The nearest is at the coast, seven hundred miles from our entry portal. First it'd have to get there, then fly cross-country to meet us, and once it touched down out here?" he pointed at the clearing "?it wouldn't be able to take off again. Not enough wing room to get airborne fast enough to clear the trees. A battle dragon might be different?they're smaller, faster. They can dive, strike, and lift off again in a much smaller space. But transport dragons need a lot of wing room."

He sounded so calm, so controlled, Gadrial thought. Except for the fact that that calm controlled voice of his was telling her things he knew perfectly well she already knew.

"What about clearing a landing zone?" she asked. "Could you burn down some of the trees with the infantry-dragons?"

Jasak shook his head and gestured at the scorched trunks the enemy had found shelter among. They were smoldering, badly scorched, but mostly intact.

"Look for yourself. A dragon is designed to burn people," he said bitterly, "not to knock down trees. We do have some incendiary charges that could bring down even a tree that size," he nodded towards a towering giant, six feet thick at the base, "but not enough to clear a landing field long enough for a dragon to take off again. We'd need ten times as many as we've got to do that.

"We're Scouts, Magister Kelbryan, not heavy-combat engineers. No. The only hope is to get the wounded back to the swamp portal, or at least to someplace with enough open space for a transport dragon to take off, as well as land." Jasak glanced at the man Gadrial had saved. "Can he be moved? Without jeopardizing his life?"

"I don't know." She ran a weary hand through her hair while she struggled to focus her thoughts. "Probably. I'll know more when I touch him again. He shouldn't be moved right away, though. We'll have to get them out of this, I know." She motioned at the smoldering wreckage surrounding them. "But not far?not yet. Even the little I've done so far will have exhausted him."