Hell's Gate

He approached the portal and brought Bright Wind down to a dancing walk as he rode through the positions of the carefully hidden Marines. The stallion worried at the bit. The horse was aware of Arthag's battle-ready tension and ready for a fight himself, fretting against the restrained pace to which Arthag held him and so primed for instant combat that sweat darkened his neck.

Arthag saw two sentries on the far side of the portal. They should have seen him already, he thought, but they weren't looking in his direction at the moment. He walked Bright Wind steadily forward, waiting for them to notice him, and grimaced in exasperation as he got within eighty yards of the portal. Admittedly, the thick forest stretched right up to the portal, and chan Tesh's decision to send him in from the west meant the sentries had the blinding light of the afternoon sun shining straight into their eyes, but still … !

Close enough, he thought as the range fell to barely fifty yards, and let out a shrill whistle.

Their heads jerked up as if he'd poked them with a heated poker, and both of them whipped around towards him. They saw him, sitting his horse, just outside the treeline on his side of the portal, and one of them gave a startled shout and started to bring up his crossbow.

"Halt!" Arthag called out sharply, even as Bright wind screamed in warning and lifted his front hooves off the ground. But the second sentry shouted something urgent at his companion, and the man with the weapon aborted the movement and stood frozen in place.

Then others began stirring behind the sentries. Arthag couldn't make out details, since the earthworks which had been thrown up blocked his view, but he had the distinct impression of purposeful movement. Well, that was to be expected, although the thought that the other side was busy ma

After several tense moments, someone else turned up. A tall man, whose uniform was subtly different from that of the sentries. The newcomer was an officer, Arthag decided. The uniforms these people wore were too unfamiliar for him to explain why he was sure of that, but he was. And as he watched the other man, he suspected he was looking at the portal camp's commanding officer.

Even from fifty yards away, Arthag could clearly see the surprise?amounting to shock?on the officer's face. The man looked as if he couldn't believe his own eyes, although Arthag couldn't imagine what he found so difficult to accept.

Commander of One Hundred Hadrign Thalmayr stared in disbelief at the single horseman.

He was positive Commander of Two Thousand mul Gurthak would be fu

He'd never had much use for those over imaginative sorts who fretted themselves into panics over events no one could control. Indeed, he'd always prided himself on his own levelheadedness. Yet he suddenly realized that he'd been allowing himself to become if not complacent, at least … increasingly optimistic. If the other side didn't know what had happened, it might be weeks?even months?before they got around to coming looking, and he'd been settling more and more into the belief that that was what was happening.

The appearance of the man on that golden horse was like taking a bucket of cold water in the face. Not only had "someone" turned up, but one look at the someone in question told Thalmayr it wasn't another civilian.

The hundred swept the trees behind the mounted man through narrow eyes, shading them with his raised hand and cursing the blinding sunlight. The stranger was more than a bit difficult to make out, in his dark tunic and breeches, and Thalmayr was uneasily aware that he couldn't see very much through the light glare. Still, if there'd been more of these people around, surely his people would have seen them! The wood-cutting parties he'd sent out that morning hadn't seen any sign of them, so they couldn't have been here very long … however many of them there might be.

In fact, he thought slowly, it was possible this fellow was all alone. Thalmayr had already decided Olderhan was right about at least one thing; the people he'd encountered had been just as surprised as Olderhan had been. They hadn't expected to run into another trans-universal civilization, either, so there was no reason for their superiors to think that was what had happened to them. But they hadn't been far from their entry portal, either, so even if they hadn't gotten a message back?and there's no fucking way they could have, he told himself?it was possible whoever had sent them out had finally missed them and sent out search parties. And in a virgin universe, those search parties would have been thinking in terms of some sort of accident or natural disaster, not hostile action, so it would have made sense for them to split up their available manpower to cover as much area as possible.

A corner of Thalmayr's mind warned him against grasping at straws, but standing here on top of his parapet dithering wasn't going to accomplish anything, and he started forward.

Arthag watched the enemy officer, wondering what was ru

But then, finally, the other man started forward, as if he intended to climb down from his earthwork. Arthag didn't want that. He wanted all of these bastards right where he could see them until he was confident they hadn't pla

"Stop!" he called out in a voice trained to carry above the din of battle, lifting his hand in a universal "halt" sign. "Stand right there!"

Thalmayr stopped as the horseman raised his hand. The other man's voice was authoritative, the words harsh and alien-sounding, and the hundred felt his face darken with anger. He didn't much care for the notion of having a single stranger giving him orders in front of his men! Besides, who the devil did this godsdamned fellow think he was, giving orders to an Arcanan officer!

"What do you want?" he barked back, hands on hips. "This portal is Arcanan territory!"

Arthag watched the enemy officer stop where he was. Then the other man shouted something that sounded belligerent. That might simply have been the difference in languages, he reminded himself conscientiously, but there was still something about the other man's body language that rubbed Arthag the wrong way.

"You've attacked my people!" Arthag shouted back, sweeping one arm around to point toward the distant battlefield. "And you've taken prisoners." That was still a shot in the dark, of course, but the other man wouldn't understand a word he was saying anyway. "I want to see Shaylar! Shaylar Nargra-Kolmayr!"

Thalmayr twitched. Most of the words the horseman had spouted were only so much more arrogant-sounding gibberish, but not all of them. He shouldn't really have been surprised?if this was a member of a search party, presumably he would have known who he was searching for, after all?but it still took him offguard. Perhaps the name had taken him by surprise simply because it was the only part of the other man's unintelligible speech he'd been able to recognize.

His mind flashed back to the confrontation with Olderhan, the tiny, beautiful woman with the brutally bruised face standing behind the other hundred, and remembered fury whipped through him. It stiffened his shoulders, and his eyes flashed angrily as his head came up.