by David Weber
"I see. And you don't trust my men to do their jobs, either?" Klian's tone was biting.
"That's not at all an issue, Sir. My concern where your men are concerned rests entirely on Jathmar's state of mind, not theirs. He's been hammered by multiple shocks in a very short time. The slightest manifestation of sorcery shakes him to the core, and his wife is also our prisoner. That terrifies him, and I can't say I blame him for it. If our roles were reversed, I'd be damned worried about the interrogation methods my captors might intend to use."
Five Hundred Klian frowned, but it was a thoughtful frown, not an angry one.
"Go on," he said.
"I won't go so far as to say he trusts me, but I'm at least a somewhat known quantity, and I stood between them and Hundred Thalmayr when the Hundred expressed … dissatisfaction over my decision not to chain them."
Klian's frown deepened, but he said nothing, and Jasak wondered whether Fort Rycharn's CO's displeasure was directed at Thalmayr or at Jasak's decision.
"In a fort filled with soldiers," Jasak continued, "I'm the only known quantity from his viewpoint. In my considered opinion, leaving him alone under the guard of men he has excellent reason to fear, would constitute a serious risk. He's desperately shaken and afraid. I don't want to take even the slightest chance of someone inadvertently pushing him across an edge we don't want him to cross. There's been more than enough violence already, and we need him?what he knows, what we can learn from him that we couldn't learn from his wife. I don't want to see us lose all of that because someone he doesn't know accidentally pushes too hard."
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?"
"Yes, Sir. Magister Kelbryan concurs. In fact, she suggested it first, and everything I've seen only strengthens that assessment."
Klian nodded again, sitting back with pursed lips as he went over everything Jasak had said.
"It's possible they got a message out," the five hundred said finally, slowly. "On the whole, though, I think I agree with you that it's not likely. Magister Kelbryan's equipment put the portal you went out to find at no more than, what?thirty miles?"
"About that, Sir. I sent Chief Sword Threbuch ahead to confirm that," Jasak reminded him.
"Yes. The thing is, I'm trying to weigh risks. We don't know their protocol for handling portals. A civilian team in an uncharted universe suggests a radically different approach from ours, though, which leads me to wonder whether there's likely to be any military presence of theirs out this way."
"Is that a risk we can afford to assume, Sir?" Jasak asked quietly.
Klian met the younger officer's eyes. There was no challenge, no criticism, in his expression or tone. Just quiet worry. Deep worry. Gods and thunders, what had it taken to put that look in Jasak Olderhan's eyes? Jasak's expression brought home to the five hundred the fact that even having heard the description of the battle, even adding up the admittedly shocking number of casualties, he couldn't imagine what it had been like standing under those trees while some totally unknown form of weaponry cut down men all around him.
"You tell me, Hundred," he said abruptly. "You were the one who faced them out there."
Jasak sucked in air, then straightened in his chair.
"Sir, I've already said that remaining at that portal is a grave risk, in my opinion. Not only are my men badly shaken, but there's no military reason to remain, and a great many political reasons to pull out. Eventually, someone from their side's going to come looking for that crew. If they find an empty portal, with seven hundred miles of swamp between them and Fort Rycharn, they can't possibly reciprocate with a return assault. And unless something's changed in the last four days, I'm afraid we're too short of available manpower to reinforce Thalmayr."
He looked a question at Klian, who shook his head with a grimace.
"I'm supposed to have a full battalion out here already," the five hundred said sourly. "Did you happen to notice a thousand men or so out there on the parade ground, Hundred? No? Well, I haven't seen them either."
"So, basically, all Hundred Thalmayr will have is Charlie Company's second and third platoons, and what's left of First Platoon." Jasak shook his head. "With all due respect, Sir, that's not very many men to hold a portal three and a half miles across."
"No, it isn't. But at least the terrain would favor him. It's mostly flat as my mother-in-law's bread out there. He'd have the best sightlines we're going to get for his infantry-dragons, and I've got half a dozen field-dragons I could send forward to him by air. That's a lot of firepower, Hundred."
"Yes, Sir, it is." Jasak's tone was deeply respectful. Which, Klian noted, wasn't exactly the same thing as agreement.
"There's another point to consider," the five hundred said, even as a part of him wondered why he was explaining himself this fully to so junior an officer. "As you say, your company is really all that's been sent forward to my command area right now. Oh, I've got the supports for an entire battalion, but under normal circumstances I'd be surprised if I saw more than another company or so any time in the next couple of months. Under these circumstances, I'm sure my dispatches are going to have sort of the same effect a well-placed kick has on an ant hill, of course. Give Two Thousand mul Gurthak a few days to react, and he's going to the reaching for every warm body he can find and shoving them in here. But that's going to take time, and until it happens, that swamp portal is the only place I can hope to hold with the combat power I've already got. I hate to say it, but Thalmayr's right about that."
"I know he is, Sir," Jasak agreed. "I guess I'm mostly concerned by two points. First, if their personal weapons could slaughter eighty percent of First Platoon, then gods only know what their artillery and heavy weapons are capable of."
Klian's mouth tightened in acknowledgment of the point, and Jasak continued.
"Second, and maybe even more important, I'm afraid that if any additional shots are fired, they'll cinch the certainty of open warfare. I'm talking politics, not military protocol, Sir. We need a team of trained ambassadors, and it's going to take time to bring them down the chain. Our next meeting with these people has to be peaceful, Sir, or we will be looking at war. A long, potentially disastrous, nasty war."
Five Hundred Klian winced at the image that conjured. Still …
"Everything you've said is true, Hundred," he said, fingertips drumming once more on the rough wood planking of his desk. "The question is one of timing. You say you saw nothing among their effects that might have paralleled our hummer communications system, which ought to mean the only way they could get a message back to their nearest support would be by runner. There's at least a chance they did exactly that, but even so, it's got to take them at least a few days to react.
"If we could be sure they had a military presence at the portal you were looking for, I'd evacuate our swamp portal in a flash. Or, at least as much of it as I could with only two dragons to pull everyone out. But even if they do have the equivalent of Fort Rycharn sitting out there somewhere, it's probably not all that close to their entry portal. We're only seven hundred miles from our entry portal to that universe, and you know as well as I do how short a hop that is compared to most distances involved. They'd have to have either a very heavy garrison deployed very far forward, or else a ridiculously short distance between portals, in order to put a powerful strike force into the field quickly."
Jasak nodded almost unwillingly, and Klian shrugged.
"Artillery can't fire through a portal, Hundred. If Hundred Thalmayr digs in properly, he can dominate everything on our side of the portal by fire. They'll need a substantial troop strength to break through that sort of defense, and presumably they'll know it, which should discourage adventurism on their side."
"Assuming they see things the same way we do, Sir."
"Always assuming that," Klian agreed. "Still, I'm inclined to leave Thalmayr where he is." He saw the alarm in Jasak's eyes, despite the younger man's best efforts to conceal it, and shrugged.
"I'll give him direct orders to dig in on our side of the swamp portal and stay there," he said. "The only way there could be another serious shooting incident would be for the other side to try to force a crossing. I don't really like it, but I think it's the best compromise I can come up with, at least until mul Gurthak gets more troops in here."
"I hope you're right, Sir," Jasak said. Hi
s voice was harsh, but that didn't bother Five Hundred Klian. The youngster was grim as hell, unhappy about the decision, but he recognized that the decision had been made. He might not like it?Klian didn't like it one damned bit, himself?but this was an officer who recognized that an order was an order.
"I hope I am, too," he sighed, then shook himself.
"I know you'll feel better, son, if you wait to hear Chief Sword Threbuch's report before you head for home with Magister Kelbryan and the prisoners. I'll arrange quarters for all four of you, apart from the rest of the men."
"Thank you, Sir. I appreciate that." Jasak met Klian's eyes levelly once more. "In fact, for the record, Sir, I'd like to officially inform you that Shaylar and Jathmar are my shardonai."
Klian stiffened?not in anger or outrage, but in dismay.
"Are you sure about that, Hundred?" he asked very quietly.
"Yes, Sir. I am," Jasak replied firmly, and Klian closed his mouth on what he'd been about to say.
The last thing this boy needed, duke's son or no, was to throw himself into the sort of catfight this was going to be. Klian didn't like to think about what was going to happen to Shaylar and Jathmar once higher authority got its hands on them. The military was going to be bad enough; the politicians and the internal security forces were going to be a nightmare. Given what was already hanging over Jasak's head, not to mention the inevitable tribunal, throwing himself between his prisoners and the entire Arcanan military and political establishment would be suicidal for his career. The five hundred couldn't conceive of any other possible consequence for his actions.
But when he looked into Jasak Olderhan's eyes, he knew the hundred didn't need him to explain that.
"Very well, Hundred Olderhan," he said instead, his tone formal. "I accept your declaration of shardon, and I will so attest, both in my dispatches and in your travel orders."
