The Road to Hell - eARC (18 page)

Before he could reach the window, an arbalest bolt hissed past him. He swerved, dodging the follow-up, then shouldered his newly acquired weapon and squeezed the trigger.

The cell’s window was higher above ground level than above the level of the cell floor, and someone cursed loudly as the return fire came close enough to clip a lock of his hair. Whoever it was dropped down below the window sill for cover, and Ulthar plastered his back against the interior wall to one side of the opening and worked the cocking lever.

“
Shit!
” someone grunted, and he looked up to see young Yanthas clutching at the arbalest bolt which had suddenly appeared in his left shoulder.

“Idiot!” Hyndahr barked. “
Told
you to keep your stupid head down!”

The demoted sword had been Charlie Company’s senior hand-to-hand and swordsmanship instructor, but he’d been a marksmanship instructor in his time, as well, and Ulthar heard a shrill scream from outside the brig as he sighted quickly and then fired. Hyndahr, at least, was obviously out of stun bolts, the fifty thought grimly.

Someone moved closer at hand, and his eyes narrowed as he saw Velvelig shoving his way back into the cell carrying another of the original guards’ arbalests. Ulthar was none too happy to see the weapon in Sharonian hands, but he wasn’t exactly in a position to be choosy. He started to offer some quick instruction, then shut his mouth firmly as Velvelig pulled the cocking lever and nocked a quarrel as expertly as if he’d been using an arbalest all his life.

His surprise must have shown, because the Sharonian grinned at him again, much more warmly this time.

“Couldn’t afford a decent rifle when I was growing up back home,” he said. “Nice piece, though. Cocks really easily, doesn’t it? More of that ‘magic’ of yours, is it?”

Ulthar started to answer, then paused as the Sharonian whipped around and sent the steel-headed bolt back out through the window. An explosive grunt answered his shot, and he jerked back to press his back to the wall on the opposite side of the window.

“Your turn next,” he said as he pulled the cocking lever again.

“Fire in the hole!” someone else shouted, and Ulthar looked back just in time to see Sarkhol Gersmyn snatch up the grenade someone had gotten through the window. The wiry
garthan
’s arm whipped forward, throwing it back the way it had come, but its spell activated just as it cleared the window. The outer wall absorbed most of the fireball’s fury, but enough of it blew back through the window to sear the Scout’s hand to the bone.

He went down, clutching his wrist, jaw muscles standing out like iron as he bit down on a scream of agony, and Company-Captain Silkash shoved himself shakily to his feet. He staggered across to Gersmyn and grabbed the Arcanan’s arm, forcing it straight so that he could peer at it through his swollen, blackened eyes. The Sharonian surgeon’s own hands were already bloody, Ulthar realized, and another Sharonian, one of Velvelig’s senior noncoms, knelt beside Yanthas, putting pressure on the improvised dressing which had somehow appeared.

“We have to keep them out of throwing range of the windows!” he shouted. “If they get another of those things in here we’re all cooked!”

* * *

“Mother Jambakol!”

Lerso Jathyr watched the grenade detonate outside the brig and wondered how the hells the bastards in there had managed to get it back through the window in time. They hadn’t gotten it clear by much, but close didn’t count when there was a solid wall between the grenade and its intended target. Worse, he only had three of them left. Of course, he wouldn’t have had any of them, if Bersal Darnaiyr, one of his more idiotic troopers, hadn’t tucked them away under his bunk in violation of about five dozen regulations “just in case I needed them.”

Well, maybe not
that
much of an idiot, at that
, the javelin thought.
Under the circumstances, at least! And at least he hadn’t squirreled away any dragon charges to keep ’em company.

In the meantime, he’d already lost three of 3rd Squad’s twelve men, and he had no idea how many opponents they faced inside the brig. Or, for that matter, when somebody else might come running up their backsides.

“All right,” he said, raising his voice just enough for the five men on this side of the brig to hear him. “We’ve got to get close enough to pop another one in on them. Darnaiyr, toss one of them to Tymkara! His arm’s at least as good as yours. Lets see if we can’t get both of you close enough to give the bastards two of them to deal with.”

* * *

Keraik Nourm left Briahk to secure the stunned, disoriented members of Brys Varkan’s platoon. The commander of fifty was as singed looking as anyone, but he’d recovered enough to curse Nourm up one side and down the other. He was just getting around to all of the capital offenses the sword had already committed while one of Briahk’s troopers used a binding spell to immobilize him, but Nourm had other things to worry about at the moment. He and Brysyl Vahrtanak, Briahk’s squad shield, were already headed for the second barracks and Fifty Yankaro’s men. If Yankaro’s platoon got loose with weapons in hand—

He slid to a halt as Traymahr Sahnger shoved his head out one of the windows.

“We’ve got this!” Sahnger shouted.

“You sure?” Nourm shouted back, raising his voice to carry above the still clanging bell. Sahnger was supposed to be sitting on the unicorn stables, but under the circumstances, the sword was disinclined to pick any nits about it. “One of Varkan’s squads got out the back way.”

“Shit! Which way did they go?”

“Damned if I know. How many men do you have?”

“Nine, counting me.”

“Okay. You take a section and head for Admin. I’ll—”

“Belay that,” another voice commanded, and Nourm turned to see Fifty Sarma striding towards him, prodding Fifty Yankaro along at sword point. Yankaro’s hands were obviously spell bound behind him, and if looks had been spells, Sarma would have been a corpse.

“I just came from Thalmayr’s office by way of the BOQ,” the fifty continued. “Nobody passed me on the way here. I’m guessing that means they headed for the brig, instead. Is First Platoon secured, Keraik?”

“Yes, Sir!”

“All right. Traymahr, leave half your men to keep an eye on Third Platoon. Send the other half to take over from Tolomaeo. Keraik, you and I will take all of Second Squad to relieve the brig. Come on, boys—let’s move!”

* * *

Barcan Kalcyr found himself wishing—briefly, at least—that he was in the infantry. Or that he was wearing infantry boots with their soft, skid-proof soles, at any rate. Riding boots made the gods’ own racket trying to creep across a wooden veranda! Fortunately, the godsdamned alarm spell was still making enough noise to hide almost anything.

He’d seen Ulthar and Sarma—he hadn’t gotten that good a look at them, but he was damned sure it hadn’t been Varkan or Yankaro—rushing out of the admin block. One of them had headed for the brig, while the other dashed across the parade ground towards the officers’ quarters beside the barracks. Obviously, his darkest, most paranoid apprehensions had fallen short of the reality, and his face was grim as he contemplated what he was probably about to find. They wouldn’t have gone rushing off that way if Hundred Thalmayr had been in any condition to make problems for them.

He’d almost gone after the traitorous fifties himself. Unlike anyone else in Fort Ghartoun, he was armed with a daggerstone. Strictly against regulations, of course, but Hundred Worka had left it with him. It was charged for only four shots, and it was much shorter ranged than any arbalest, but it was also far more deadly and Kalcyr was sufficiently Gifted to use it when the opportunity arose.

His hand twitched around the stone as he watched Sarma disappear between the barracks assigned to Varkan and Yankaro’s platoons. Unfortunately, the fifty was already far beyond daggerstone range. Besides, he had to make sure of what had happened to Hundred Thalmayr before he did anything else.

He peered cautiously around the edge of the open doorframe and his eyes narrowed as he saw the orderly—Bahbar, his name was, if Kalcyr remembered correctly. The shield was seated in his chair, obviously kept there by a binding spell, but his head was free and he’d clearly seen Kalcyr. He kept his mouth shut, but he jerked his head urgently, using it to point in the direction of Hundred Thalmayr’s personal quarters.

Kalcyr’s heart rose. Bahbar wouldn’t be relying on head gestures unless there’d been someone close enough to hear him. And the bastards wouldn’t have left anyone behind unless there was someone alive to guard. And
that
meant…

He held a finger across his lips, warning Bahbar to go right on keeping his mouth closed, and eased his way into the office space. The door to Hundred Thalmayr’s quarters stood ajar and he sidled towards it as silently as he could.

But not silently enough. His boot scuffed the floor and the door jerked open.

Kalcyr didn’t know the infantry sword who came leaping through the door, but the short sword in his hand—held low and deadly in a practiced grip—left no doubt about the man’s intentions. Kalcyr was a cavalryman, accustomed to fighting from unicornback, not on his own two feet, and the mutinous

sword came at him with a balanced lethality which left him in very little doubt about how things would have worked out in a straight up fight. Unfortunately for the mutineer, what Kalcyr held in his hand wasn’t a sword.

Kalcyr never knew if the sword had realized what he was carrying. Perhaps he had, given how quickly he tried to close. But he couldn’t close quickly enough, and a silent concussion shook the orderly room as the cavalryman triggered the daggerstone.

* * *

It was Ulthar’s turn to take the shot. The area behind the brig was darker than Shartahk’s riding boots, but he caught a flicker of half-imagined movement and sent an arbalest bolt sizzling toward it. Somebody swore in a high, falsetto—the tone of a man who’d been scared spitless by a near miss and not of someone who’d been hit, unfortunately—and he fell back from the window to respan his weapon.

“Watch it!” someone shouted from the office.

Another fireball erupted in the night, but this one hadn’t made it through the window, praise Hali! From the sudden smell of smoke, though, it had ignited the brig’s cedar shingle roof.

“There, beside the water trough!”

“Got it!”

An arbalest fired and someone shrieked. Which was all very well but wasn’t going to help them very much if the brig burned down around them.

* * *

Jathyr snarled as another of his men went down, but his eyes glowed with baleful satisfaction as he watched the flames beginning to leap from the brig’s roof. Not much longer and the bastards would have to come out where he could get at them or fry—them and the damned Sharonians with them! In another minute or so—

Fortunately for Lerso Jathyr and his remaining men, Tolomaeo Briahk’s squad still had almost a dozen stun bolts left.

Chapter Eleven

December 16

“Am I glad to see you!” Therman Ulthar said fervently.

“Likewise.”

Sarma’s response was a bit more reserved as he watched the released Sharonians intermingled with Arcanans in the bucket brigade working to extinguish the brig’s flames before it spread to the rest of the fort. Somehow none of his plans had anticipated letting Regiment-Captain Velvelig and his companions out of their cell—not, at least, until there’d been time to establish certain ground rules. Under the circumstances, however, trying to put them right back into confinement didn’t strike him as the best idea he’d ever had. Especially not when he considered how competently Velvelig and one of his noncoms, who looked enough like the regiment-captain to have been at least a distant cousin, were holding the infantry arbalests they’d somehow acquired.

He turned away from the fire for a moment, gazing at the bodies sprawled in the dancing light and shadow from the crackling flames. He couldn’t quite decide what he felt. He’d never wanted anyone, Arcanan or Sharonian, to die, yet he couldn’t pretend he and Ulthar hadn’t always known the odds were very much against pulling off a successful mutiny without casualties. And it could have been far worse, especially if Sahnger hadn’t pulled off the stables and moved to neutralize Yankaro’s platoon on his own initiative. At least the mutineers—he didn’t like the word, but it was the only one which truly applied—had suffered only three fatal casualties. Six others had been wounded, the most seriously of them Sarkhol Gersmyn’s savagely burned hand, but none so badly as to surpass the Gift of Commander of Fifty Sorthar Maisyl, the journeyman magistron assigned as Fort Ghartoun’s senior healer. So, taking everything together, he supposed they hadn’t done too badly. Except, of course, that now they had to figure out what to do with Thalmayr…and how to go about reporting all of this in a way that wouldn’t get the lot of them sent straight to the dragon.

“I’m sorry it took us so long to get you out of that hellhole, Regiment-Captain,” he said to Velvelig through his own PC’s translating spellware. “We couldn’t make our move until all the pieces were in place.”

“I can see how that might have been a problem.” Velvelig’s voice was flat, giving away nothing, and his expression gave away even less. “Of course, you two have another little problem now, don’t you?”

“We have
several
of them, actually,” Ulthar acknowledged with a sour smile. “Which one did you have in mind, Sir?”

“The fact that my people are out of cells and we’re not likely to go back into them peacefully. Which, coupled with the fact that by my best estimate you and your men are still outnumbered somewhere around four or five-to-one by the rest of the garrison, suggests you might just find your resources running short if you tried to
make
us go back.”

“Frankly, the same thought had already occurred to me,” Sarma admitted, and Ulthar nodded in wry agreement. “Believe me, Regiment-Captain Velvelig, Therman and I are both of the opinion that your people have been abused enough. By the same token, I trust you understand why we can’t simply stand on the fort’s fighting step and wave goodbye as you vanish into the distance. We’re going to be in deep enough dragon shit with our superiors for what we’ve already done, however justified. If we were to, ah…mislay all of you on top of everything else, I’m afraid our word about Thalmayr’s behavior wouldn’t carry very much weight.”

“I could point out that that’s
your
fucking problem,” Velvelig observed coldly. “We didn’t attack you. And we sure as hells didn’t launch an offensive while we were pretending to
negotiate
with you! And then there’s that little matter of how many of our Voices you bastards murdered along the way here.”

“We can’t deny any of that,” Ulthar said quietly. “I think you know my men and I had nothing to do with any of it, though, since we were your guests right here at the time. And Jaralt’s been trying to figure out how to stop as much of it as he could from the very beginning. But we’re not very far up the totem pole, Sir. A commander of fifty is only the equivalent of one of your platoon-captains. I know it’s a pretty pale excuse after everything you just listed, but we really were following orders…right up to the moment we completely
violated
our orders and put the lives of every one of our men into jeopardy in the process.”

Eyes of Andaran blue met dark, hard eyes of Arpathian brown levelly in the firelight. Stillness hovered around the two men, made even stiller by the greedy background crackle of flames, the voices of the men in the bucket brigade, and the hiss when a fresh bucket of water sluiced across blazing timbers. Then, finally, Velvelig nodded slowly.

“Don’t expect me to be doing any drum dances or swearing blood brotherhood anytime soon,” he said. “But I truly do understand what it took for a pair of platoon commanders to run this sort of risk. For that matter,” he added a bit grudgingly, “maybe the fact that the two of you chose to do what you’ve done proves there really is
someone
in Arcana who understands what honor is.”

Ulthar winced, but he didn’t look away and he couldn’t deny that Velvelig had every right to feel that way.

And he doesn’t even know yet about how that motherless bastard Neshok and the rest of the intelligence pukes lied to us every step of the way. I wonder if he’ll even believe us if we tell him? Not that he wouldn’t find out eventually anyway, even if it’s only at Jaralt and my courts-martial!

“I guess I’m glad you feel that way, Sir,” he said. “And I’m sorry as hell that it took something like this for us to show you that Arcana—or Andara and the Army, at least—really do have a sense of honor. It’s been buried under a pretty damned deep load of dragon shit just at the moment, and cleaning it’s going to be a gods-awful challenge, but it’s got to start somewhere. It might as well be here.”

Velvelig gazed at him a moment longer, then nodded again. He wasn’t going to go out of his way to make that chore any easier for the Arcanan Army in general than he had to, but he had to admit these two youngsters seemed to have made a fair start.

“In the meantime,” Ulthar continued, “I don’t think we have any choice but to keep you and your men in custody—officially, at least. There are only twenty-one of you, so I don’t think you could get very far back towards Sharona with Two Thousand Harshu’s entire army between you and there. And it’s going to be hard enough getting our superior officers to listen to our side of what happened here even with your people available for interviews. If we don’t have you around to back up our testimony, they probably won’t believe us at all, to be honest.”

“We might not be able to get back to Sharona, but we could sure as hells make ourselves scarce enough out there in the wilderness that you people would have one demon of a time finding us again,” Velvelig observed rather caustically. “Besides, what makes you think your superiors would be interested in
our
testimony?”

“Sir, I’m an officer in the Second Andaran Scouts,” Ulthar said. “That’s the hereditary command of the Olderhan family, and Sir Thankhar Olderhan is the Duke of Garth Showma, who also happens to be the planetary governor of New Arcana and one of the three or four most senior officers in the entire Commandery. When he gets involved in something, things happen, and you
don’t
want to be part of what he thinks is the problem. I’ve already sent a full report about what’s been happening here to him through a secure channel. He won’t have gotten it yet, but when he does, hell won’t hold what’ll come down on the people responsible. I give you my word of honor on that.”

“This Duke’s going to take a platoon-captain’s word for it despite anything his immediate superiors might have to say?” Velvelig sounded skeptical, and Ulthar didn’t blame him.

“
This
Duke will
definitely
take my word,” he replied flatly. “He’d do that anyway, or at least give us a fair hearing, whoever we were. The fact that I’m a Second Andaran will make it easier, I admit. And so will the fact that his son is Shaylar and Jathmar Nargra’s
baranal
.”

It didn’t register for a moment. Partly because the spellware hadn’t translated the Andaran term, but then Ulthar’s verb tense penetrated and Namir Velvelig’s eyes blazed suddenly.

“
What
did you say?!” he demanded. “You said ‘
is
!’ Are you saying Jathmar Nargra and Shaylar Nargra-Kolmayr are
alive?
”

Ulthar stepped back half a pace involuntarily, stunned by Velvelig’s reaction. The Sharonian reached out with one hand as if to grab the front of his tunic and drag him closer, then closed that hand into a fist so tight the knuckles whitened.

“They were the last I heard, Sir,” the Arcanan said cautiously. “Both of them were badly hurt in the original confrontation between our people and yours, and the dragon pulling them back to the rear passed my dragon on the way forward, so I didn’t see either of them personally. But Sword Harnak was at Toppled Timber with Hundred Olderhan, and I’ve had plenty of time to discuss what happened with him. I understand Madam Shaylar had a nasty concussion and Jathmar was so badly burned by an infantry dragon that no one expected him to survive, but Magister Gadrial had enough of the healing Gift to keep him alive until our company healer reached him. Sword Morikan healed him, but Madam Shaylar’s injuries weren’t immediately life threatening and there was only one of him. They had to triage the wounded, and there were too many critically hurt for him to heal her concussion before she and her husband were pulled back to Fort Rycharn, but I’m sure the magistrons there were able to heal both of them fully.”

He glanced at Sarma, who nodded sharply.

“They did,” he told the Sharonian. “I came through Fort Rycharn after they were sent further up-chain, and Five Hundred Klian told me they’d been completely healed. They’d have gotten treatment anyway, but after Hundred Olderhan made them his
shardonai
they went straight to the head of the queue.

“‘
Shardonai’
?” Velvelig repeated the Andaran word cautiously. “What in all the Arpathian hells is a
shardonai
? And why would this Olderhan have made Jathmar and Shaylar into whatever it is?”

“A
shardon
is…well, a
shardon
is an adopted member of his
baranal
’s family,” Ulthar said. He glanced at Sarma again, struck by the fact that he’d never considered that it might be necessary to define something so fundamental to the Andaran honor code. Sarma only looked back at him and shrugged, which was a great deal of help.

“The word ‘
shardon
’ is from very ancient Andaran,” he continued after a moment. “I’m a little surprised the spellware didn’t translate it, but maybe it couldn’t translate it for someone who didn’t already have enough of the concept to put it into context. Literally, it means ‘shieldling,’ I think. Jaralt?”

“That’s probably the best way to translate it,” Sarma agreed. “There are all kinds of honor obligations tied up in it, though, so it means a lot more than that in practice.”

“That’s true enough!” Ulthar agreed feelingly. Then he drew a deep breath and looked Velvelig straight in the eye once more. “What matters most in this case, though, is that Hundred Olderhan—every single member of the Olderhan family, in fact, including the Duke—is honor bound to die in the defense of his
shardonai
.”

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!”