The Road to Hell (Hell's Gate Book 3)

by David Weber

  Velvelig twitched in surprise, then shook himself and fastened on the most burning of the several questions churning through his brain.

  “Why in the names of all the gods and demons of Arpathia did he do that after massacring our people? I don’t want to sound like I doubt your word, but that seems like a godsdamned strange thing for a man who’d just butchered an entire party of civilians to do!”

  “Trust me, Sir, there are going to be enough Arcanans who wonder exactly the same thing, if not for the same reasons,” Ulthar said, still looking him in the eye. “It’s not something even an old-school Andaran like one of the Olderhans does very often these days. In this case, though, there’s a very specific and special reason Hundred Olderhan declared Shaylar and Jathmar shardonai, Sir. A reason Sarma and his people—all of the Arcanans who launched the attack against Sharona—didn’t know. Something they were lied to about.”

  “Lied to?” Namir Velvelig was about as tough-minded as a human being came, but he was beginning to feel decidedly dazed. “Lied to how?”

  “Regiment-Captain,” Sarma said quietly, “I was told—we were told—by our superiors that your people initiated the conflict between us, and no one ever told us they were civilians. And on top of that, we were told that Magister Halathyn vos Dulainah, one of our most beloved and respected…scholars was shot and killed by your people after he’d surrendered. That doesn’t excuse a single thing that was done to you, but it does explain why so many of our people were so enraged.”

  “And it was also a complete lie—one that had to be deliberate,” Ulthar said flatly. “I know it was a lie, because I was there when your people counterattacked at the swamp portal, and I know Magister Halathyn was killed by friendly fire, by one of our own weapons. And I already told you my senior noncom, Sword Harnak, was there at Toppled Timber when it all fell into the crapper.” He met Velvelig’s fiery stare unflinchingly. “It wasn’t your people who opened fire, it was ours. It was a worthless, gutless excuse for a Second Andaran officer named Shevan Garlath, and he opened fire directly against Hundred Olderhan’s orders. Once he did, and once your people returned fire, there was no way for the hundred to get a handle on the situation and stop it before almost all of your people were dead. That’s how this whole bloody, senseless thing started, and that’s why Hundred Olderhan took Shaylar and Jathmar under his family’s protection. It was his way of admitting responsibility for what happened, even though Garlath acted against his specific order to stand down, and it was also his way of protecting them from any additional harm. Sword Harnak was there when Sir Jasak faced Thalmayr down when he tried to put Madam Shaylar and her husband in chains as ‘enemy prisoners of war.’ It damned near turned into swordplay, because the hundred would’ve cut Thalmayr down in a heartbeat if he’d pushed it…and it would have been a better damned thing if he had!”

  Ulthar drew a deep breath and shook his head as if to clear it.

  “But that’s what really happened, Sir,” he said after a moment, “and I know damned well the hundred would’ve made a complete and accurate report to Five Hundred Klian at Fort Rycharn. And that means there’s no way in Shartahk’s deepest hell Jaralt and his men could have been told what they were told unless it was deliberate. Somebody—somebody pretty damned high up, I’m afraid; higher than the five hundred, anyway—wanted it to have exactly the effect it did have, and I will be damned if I can think of any reason someone would!”

  Velvelig’s jaw clenched. Everything Ulthar had just said matched with the Voice report Shaylar had gotten out during the savage fight at Fallen Timbers. Oh, there was no way to know whether or not this Hundred Olderhan really had tried to prevent the bloodshed, but there was no question that the first shot had been fired by a single Arcanan to kill Ghartoun chan Hagrahyl, the very man for whom this fort had been renamed. It could have happened exactly the way Ulthar had just described, and the frustrated fury in the Arcanan’s expression seemed utterly genuine.

  But Shaylar and Jathmar alive? That was impossible! Surely it was impossible! Why in the names of every god and devil would the Arcanans have lied about that?

  “Why?” he asked the question out loud, even knowing that Ulthar and Sarma were far too junior to be able to answer it. “Why lie to us about that?”

  “About what?” Ulthar asked cautiously.

  “About the fact that they’re alive!” Velvelig snapped. “Your fucking ‘diplomats’ told us they were both dead!”

  “What?” Sarma looked at him blankly. “Told you they were dead?” He shook his head. “That doesn’t make any sense at all. Not when we were trying to negotiate some kind of settlement!”

  “You’re damned right it doesn’t make any sense,” Velvelig said grimly. “In fact, it was godsdamned stupid if you people ever wanted to put a lid on this! Bad enough the rest of the Chalgyn Consortium team was massacred, but do you have any concept of just how furious the news Shaylar was dead made every living Sharonian? No, of course you don’t! This…this ‘magister’ of yours, this vos Dulainah. You say he was loved by everybody in Arcana?”

  “Everybody but the other shakira, who thought he was a traitor for treating garthans like human beings,” Ulthar acknowledged, still cautiously.

  “Well, your people had better understand that he couldn’t possibly have been more beloved than Shaylar Nargra-Kolmayr. That was probably true even before you attacked her survey team, but after? She was beautiful, she was smart, she was one of the strongest Talents we’ve ever produced, her entire kingdom was proud of her accomplishments, and she was the public face of the entire Portal Authority. Not only that, but she was—she is—a Voice. She sent back every single detail of that fight. She held onto that Voice link, kept sending back an eyewitness account to us while it happened, even while you were blowing every one of her friends into bloody meat around her. Even when her own husband went down, burning alive before her eyes, and she knew he was dead. She was still sending that message when whatever caused her concussion knocked her unconscious—we all thought she’d been killed when that happened—and every single Talented person with even a trace of Mind Speech has Seen that message.”

  Ulthar’s expression was sick, but it wasn’t sick enough yet, and Velvelig felt something almost like sadistic pleasure, as if he were somehow paying back all of Arcana for every single Sharonian life which had been destroyed, every drop of Sharonian blood which had been shed.

  “You don’t have Talents, just like we don’t have your ‘Gifts,’ so maybe you don’t understand what a Voice truly is. When I say every trace Mind Speaker in Sharona Saw that message, I mean they experienced it with her. They felt every single thing she felt. All of it—sights, sounds, smells, even her thoughts and emotions. They were firsthand witnesses to the entire fight, to the entire fucking massacre, because they were right there inside her head with her while she experienced it! You think your people are pissed off over being lied to about your magister? You have no idea, no frigging concept, of how pissed off and infuriated my entire home universe is, because we absolutely know that every single thing she sent us was completely true! And then, on top of all that, you not only launched this godsdamned attack while we were negotiating for a peaceful settlement but shot every additional Voice you could find along the way?” He shook his head. “Trust me, what you’ve already done is enough to turn every single nation of Sharona against you, and every one of them sees Shaylar as its own martyr. I don’t know exactly what’s happening back home right this minute, but I don’t need to know any specifics to guarantee you that you can’t even begin to imagine what’s headed your way sometime very soon…assuming it’s not already on its way.”

  Ulthar and Sarma stared at each other, expressions horrified. They’d thought they understood how bad the situation was. Now they knew their worst nightmares had fallen dismally short of reality.

  They were still standing there, still staring at one another, when Valnar Rohsahk, who’d been sent to fetch Fifty Maisyl and his medical det
achment, dashed back to them.

  “Sir! Fifty Ulthar!” the recon crystal specialist panted. “Hathnor’s dead and Hundred Thalmayr and Bahbar are both gone!”

  * * *

  “I’d love to have some idea of what we do now,” Therman Ulthar admitted wearily and looked around the unlikely group at the huge table in the Fort Ghartoun mess hall.

  He sat at one end of the table, despite his lowly rank, as the most senior Arcanan present, with Jaralt Sarma to his right and Commander of Fifty Cothar to his left. The very dark-complected Hilmaran cavalry officer looked less than delighted at the situation, but he’d burned his bridges as thoroughly as any of the others when he didn’t join the effort to resist the mutiny. Sorthar Maisyl, Fort Ghartoun’s senior healer, sat to Cothar’s right, and Evarl Harnak and Keraik Nourm faced Maisyl across the table. Both noncoms looked acutely uncomfortable at finding themselves in an officer’s council, but they’d earned the right to be there and the dragon shit was so deep they deserved the chance to speak up for themselves and the enlisted men who’d followed Ulthar and Sarma into mutiny. Besides, any junior officer who wasn’t a complete fool knew enough to listen to his senior noncommissioned officers’ advice.

  Namir Velvelig sat at the far end of the table, flanked by Company-Captain Silkash, his senior surviving officer, and Master-Armsman Hordal Karuk. Silkash looked enormously better than he had, thanks to Maisyl’s healing Gift. The Sharonian surgeon was an Inkaran, from the island off the coast of Shaloma which the Sharonians apparently called Bernith, with sandy hair and blue eyes which were still more than a little bemused from watching Maisyl and his assistants work on the wounded. Tobis Makree was still in the infirmary, although his condition was enormously improved, so Senior-Chief-Armsman Lestym chan Visal sat beside Karuk, and Armsman Thakoh chan Dersain filled out the Sharonian end of the table.

  Chan Dersain was both the most junior and the youngest person present, and he looked more than a little nervous. Velvelig had insisted upon his presence, however, and neither Ulthar nor Sarma could fault him for that. The youngster—he had to be at least eight or nine years younger than either of the two fifties—had dark auburn hair and brown eyes. He was from Parnatha, which the Sharonians called Alathia, and his left eye had been blinded in the fight for Fort Ghartoun. It was possible Maisyl would be able to do something about that…but it was also possible the magistron wouldn’t be able to, given how much time had passed. Yet whatever might have happened to his physical vision, chan Dersain had a very useful Talent for an observer. He was what the Sharonians called a “Sifter,” which made him a human lie detector. With him at one end of the table and a sarkolis crystal charged with a verifier spell at the other end, all parties could be satisfied that no one was lying to anyone else.

  Gods, I hate to think how the Commandery’s going to react to this one, Ulthar thought almost whimsically. Talk about violating military security—!

  “I think a lot of what we decide to do now depends on what you were already planning to do,” Velvelig observed in response to his opening remark.

  The regiment-captain was the equivalent of a commander of two thousand, which made him astronomically senior to anyone else at the table. He was also at least ten years older than any of the Arcanan officers, and he spoke with a calm sense of assurance and authority which ought to have been out of place in a prisoner of war. Under the circumstances, Ulthar found that more reassuring than anything else.

  “What we’d intended to do, Sir,” he said now, after glancing at Sarma and receiving the other fifty’s nod of agreement, “was to place Hundred Thalmayr under arrest, disarm and secure anyone who opposed our actions, and send a hummer—that’s a messenger bird—back to commander of Five Hundred Klian in Mahritha with a report of what we’d done and a request for orders.”

  “A commander of five hundred is—what? The equivalent of one of our battalion-captains?”

  “Approximately, yes, Sir.”

  “And you thought he’d have the seniority to untangle the mess you were planning to drop into his lap?” Velvelig sounded skeptical, and Ulthar didn’t blame him.

  “We didn’t know whether he’d have the seniority or not, Sir,” Sarma put in. “But my uncle served with Five Hundred Klian when they were both squires—that would be under-captains in your Army. He invited me to dinner when I arrived in Fort Rycharn—as the son of an old friend, not one of his junior officers—and my platoon was one of the first ones ordered to move up as reinforcements. I talked to several of the five hundred’s men before Two Thousand Harshu or Five Hundred Neshok arrived from Erthos. That’s why I knew something wasn’t right about the intelligence briefings we were given just before the offensive kicked off. I had a lot better idea of what had actually happened at Toppled Timber and at the swamp portal than anyone else in the Expeditionary Force seemed to have. I couldn’t be sure what they were telling us was wrong, but it sure sounded that way. And Five Hundred Klian knows exactly what really happened when all this started, since he personally debriefed Hundred Olderhan on his way up-chain. If anybody would be likely to believe us and be in a position to give us some kind of advice, maybe even some cover, it’d be him.”

  “But the fellow in charge of this Expeditionary Force of yours is a commander of two thousand, right?” Velvelig asked. Ulthar nodded, and the Sharonian grunted. “It seems likely to me that, as the CO, he has to have a pretty damned good idea what his intelligence pukes are telling his army. I can’t see anybody who could pull off an operation like this as slickly as he has not knowing that. In fact, I’d be deeply surprised if he wasn’t a part—probably a big part—of the entire story.”

  “That’s why we weren’t planning on sending any hummers to him, Sir,” Ulthar agreed, His expression troubled. “Two Thousand Harshu has a high reputation in the Army, and I really don’t want to think he’s part of some organized lie. But like you, I can’t see how anybody could have pulled it off without his at least giving his unofficial blessing.”

  “And is this Harshu the sort of fellow who’d come up with something like this all on his own?” Velvelig waved one hand when Ulthar raised his eyebrows at him. “What I mean is, would he try something like this without the approval of whoever’s next up in your chain of command?”

  “We don’t know,” Ulthar said frankly. “That’s one thing we hoped Five Hundred Klian could advise us on.”

  “Actually,” Commander of Fifty Cothar said, speaking up for the first time, his expression troubled, “I think I might be able to suggest a little something about that, Therman.”

  Ulthar looked at Cothar with a surprised expression, and the dark-haired, dark-complected cavalry fifty shrugged.

  “You’re married to Fifty Halesak’s sister, aren’t you?” he asked, and Ulthar nodded. “Well, my grandmother’s a garthan, too,” Cothar said with a crooked, rather bitter smile none of the Sharonians understood. Ulthar did, though. He nodded again, more firmly, and Cothar looked down the table at Velvelig.

  “The senior Union Army officer out here is Two Thousand mul Gurthak, Regiment-Captain,” he said. “His headquarters are in Erthos—that’s four universes up-chain towards Arcana from here—but he’s responsible for a nine-universe command area reaching back from Mahritha, the universe immediately up-chain from Hells Gate, all the way back to Esthiya. He’s been pulling in every reinforcement he could dig up from the moment the first hummer from Hundred Olderhan reached him, and he could’ve taken command of the AEF himself. In fact, that’s what he should’ve done. But instead, he gave it to Two Thousand Harshu.”

  “And?” Velvelig prodded gently when the cavalry officer paused.

  “I don’t think he did that because he thought Harshu was better qualified for the command than he was,” Cothar said flatly. “He’s a shakira, and it’s not like one of them to let anyone else have any credit he could claim for himself.”

  “Shakira?” Velvelig repeated, and Cothar grimaced.

  “They’re a bunch of bigoted
bastards, Sir. They come from our continent of Mythal—I think your people call it Ricathia—and they believe anyone who isn’t Gifted is worthless. They’d like to turn all of them into slaves. For that matter, they did turn any Mythalan without a Gift into a slave. People like my grandmother’s family—garthans they call them. They lost the war that broke out back home in Arcana when we first discovered the portals, and the Andarans and Ransarans made them back down on the worst of their bigotry. But they’ve never forgiven that, and if one of them saw a chance to shove a knife into the Army’s back—the Army’s Andaran through and through, Sir—the son-of-a-whore would take it in a heartbeat. Or that’s my opinion, anyway.” He shrugged, his expression bitter. “Only fair to admit I’m prejudiced as all hells where the shakira are concerned because of what they’ve done to my grandmother’s family, but I don’t think that makes me wrong.”

  Velvelig glanced back at Ulthar, trying to assimilate the latest overload of information, and the Scout nodded, his own expression just as bleak as Cothar’s.

  “Sahrimahn has a point, Sir. My brother-in-law thought pretty much the same thing when he found me here in your brig and found out just how thoroughly he’d been lied to.”