Hell's Gate

Klian's expression relaxed a couple of degrees, and he tipped back slightly in his desk chair.

"Very well, Hundred. Your solution may be a bit unorthodox, but your reasons seem sound enough, both militarily and politically. I would have expected no less of an Olderhan. Now, though, would you be so good as to explain exactly how this cluster-fuck occurred?"

Jasak drew a deep breath, looked Sarr Klian straight in the eye, and explained it. All of it. When he described Fifty Garlath's last action, the five hundred swore so sharply Jasak paused. Klian clamped his jaws, cutting himself off in mid-oath, and motioned for him to continue, and he did, right through the thunderous disagreement between himself and Hundred Thalmayr over the evacuation of the forward camp at the portal.

When he'd finally finished, Five Hundred Klian sat back, steepled his fingers, interlaced his fingers across his hard-muscled abdomen, and exhaled a long, slow breath.

"I appreciate your candor, Hundred. And your thorough analysis. I'll be frank with you?in my opinion, you were handed one hell of a mess when we handed you Shevan Garlath. It wasn't my idea to transfer him into your company. From what I saw of him, you showed remarkable restraint in dealing with his … inadequacies. I wish I could say I'm surprised he shot an unarmed man who was clearly calling for a parley of some sort, but I can't. I'm appalled, not surprised." He shook his head. "In my crystal, Garlath's clearly at fault. But . . . "

Yes. Jasak gave a mental sigh. But …

"You realize, Olderhan, that your career may end over this?" Klian said almost gently, and Jasak met his eyes steadily.

"I do, Sir."

"Yes, I'm sure you do. Not all officers would."

Frustration colored Klian's last words. He hated to see a good officer caught in the jaws of a dragon this nasty, and he had a sinking feeling that Arcana was going to need good officers badly in the not-too-distant future. If he'd been sitting at a fort commandant's desk on the other side, and news like this had hit his desk, there'd have been hell to pay, with interest due.

"It isn't fair to you, son," he said quietly, "but it looks to me like we're staring a potentially ugly war right in the face, and politicians like to blame somebody for their wars. Military tribunals are supposed to be above that, but the men who sit on them are fully aware of political repercussions. Half the officers sitting on them have their own political ambitions, too. And Garlath's dead; you're not. They're going to want somebody they can point at, somebody they can look in the eye and see 'It's your fault, Mister!' Once they've got him, they can tell the politicians 'See? We found the guilty party, and we punished the guilty party.' It's ugly, it's brutal …"

He paused and looked into Jasak's eyes.

"And you knew all of that before you ever walked into this office, didn't you?"

"Yes, Sir." Jasak's lips twisted in what some people might have called a smile. "I did indeed."

"I'm sorry, son." Klian leaned forward. "I'll send my own sealed report back with you, along with some other official dispatches. It might do some good."

"Thank you, Sir."

"A lot will depend on the officers available for the tribunal when it's called. If you get a good board, it could still come right."

"Yes, Sir," Jasak agreed, but his voice was dry and not particularly hopeful. Then he sat forward. "If I might ask, Sir, what are your intentions regarding the portal camp?"

Klian sighed and sat back again, pinching the bridge of his nose.

"Could they have gotten a message out?" he said finally, glancing at Jathmar.

The prisoner said very quietly, hazel eyes intent as he listened to the conversation he couldn't understand and tried to glean anything he could from their faces, their voices, their eyes. Olderhan was right, Klian thought. This was a deeply frightened man, and a dangerous one. One Sarr Klian wouldn't have cared to push too far without a truly urgent reason.

The five hundred met Jathmar's eyes, then turned back to Jasak, very carefully keeping his own expression impassive. The younger officer was pulling absently at his lip, frowning ever so slightly.

"I don't know if they got a message out, Sir," he said finally. "I don't think they could have, but we know as little about them and about their capabilities as they know about ours."

"So you're not sure?"

"No, Sir. We searched for any sign that someone might have headed back independently of the rest of their party, or the possibility that someone might have made a break for their portal during the fighting. My people know their jobs, and I had Chief Sword Threbuch available to help make sure they did them. I'm fairly confident no one carried a message physically back, and we didn't find anything remotely like hummers in their gear, either. Logically, every indication says they didn't, but there's no possible way to guarantee that."

Klian drummed lightly on his desktop, which was basically a rough plank supported by two on-end wooden chests that served as storage bins for data crystals, maps, and all the miscellany of command at a fort this size.

"One would assume they took the most direct route from their fortified camp to their portal," the five hundred said, thinking aloud. "But we can't assume they were traveling at their top speed. Which means a messenger could have gone on ahead of them, possibly even bypassed the fallen timber completely. For that matter, they could have sent someone by a completely different indirect route. I'm sure your people did search diligently, but suppose they thought about that possibility ahead of time? I'm not sure I'd have been smart enough to think of it in the middle of something like this, but the smart thing for them to do would have been to send someone further up the streambed, where he wouldn't have left any trail. Let him get another four or five miles from camp, then head cross-country by a completely different route, and you'd have needed a special miracle to cut his trail."

"It's certainly a possibility, Sir," Jasak conceded. "From the look of their camp, I'm inclined to think it didn't occur to them. I think they were thinking almost exclusively in terms of clearing out and avoiding additional contact with us completely. Which," he added a bit bitterly, "I certainly managed to prevent them from doing."

"Yes, you did. Which was exactly what you were supposed to do," Klian said. He frowned some more. "You say their ages varied?"

"Yes, Sir. Considerably. The youngest was probably in his early twenties; the oldest was in his fifties, at least."

"Where they soldiers?"

Klian looked at Jasak intently, and the younger officer paused before he answered.

"I'm almost certain they weren't, Sir," he said. "A survey crew, obviously, but a civilian one. They weren't in uniform, didn't even all have the same sorts of boots or trousers. They had the kind of gear you'd expect portal surveyors to have, but none of it was stamped or painted or embroidered with unit insignia, or any sort of military identification marks. And they had an awfully broad assortment of weapons, too. Most of them carried the same sort of hand weapon, but their shoulder arms differed a lot. I don't think any military unit would have accepted something as unstandardized as that. Spare parts and ammunition differences would play hell with the Quartermaster Corps, if nothing else." He shrugged most unhappily. "When you mix all of that together, I can only come up with one answer, Sir. Yes, they were civilians."

And we blew them to hell, Klian thought darkly. May your worthless soul burn in hell forever, Garlath.

"I see," he said aloud. "And I'm tempted to agree with you. Especially given the presence of that girl. Granted, you had Magister Kelbryan with you, but their young lady's situation would appear to be very different from the magister's, if she's married to one of the crewmen." He gave Jasak another keen glance. "You're sure they're married?"