Movement at his shoulder jerked his head around. Otwal Threbuch hissed between his teeth at his first sight of the victim's back, then lifted worried, deeply shocked eyes to Jasak's.
"Do you have any idea what did that, Sir?" he asked, clearly hoping Jasak's education might have the answer the chief sword needed to hear.
"No. I don't." Jasak shook his head, and Threbuch cursed foully under his breath.
"I was afraid you're going to say that," he muttered through clenched teeth. "What the fuck do we do now, Sir?"
Jasak looked pointedly at Shevan Garlath. The platoon commander was also staring at Osmuna's back, swallowing hard. Every few seconds he looked away, darting wild-eyed glances up the stream banks toward the ominous trees, but every time, that gaping wound dragged his unwilling eyes back to the corpse at his feet.
"Fifty Garlath?"
"Sir?" Garlath's voice sounded constricted, and his eyes were unsteady as they skated across to Jasak's.
"I would suggest you try to find the bastards who did this."
Garlath nodded, the motion choppy and strained. It took him three deep gulps of air to find enough of his voice?or courage?to begin issuing orders.
"Spread out. Look for any trace of the attackers. We're going to find the whoreson who did this."
Oh, yes, Jasak promised the slain man's ghost. We most certainly are.
Shaylar was busy filling in yet another new stream on her chart when a sudden sound broke her concentration. It was a hoarse, gasping cry, so faint it was almost inaudible in the background noise of the stream, and it came from very nearly under her feet.
"Shaylar!"
She jumped as though stung, her pencil skidding across the paper. Then she peered down the bank toward the creek and gave a sharp cry of her own. Someone was trying to crawl up the bank. Even as she realized who it was, the wiry scout slithered weakly back into the water with a mewling pain sound.
"Falsan!"
She cast one wild glance around the clearing, searching for Barris Kasell. He was a good fifteen yards further east along the bank, where Braiheri Futhai was poking into more bushes.
"Barris!" Her cry snapped him around in surprise. "Get Tymo!"
Then she flung herself down the bank, skidding through damp leaves and a slick spot of clay. Falsan was struggling doggedly to get his hands under himself, trying to stand back up. She reached him, braced him with one arm as she tried to help him up, and?
Pain struck with a brutal fist. It caught her right in the chest, robbing her of breath even as a ghastly sound broke through Falsan's lips. He collapsed again, sliding sideways, away from her, down the bank. He splashed into the stream and rolled almost prone in the icy water. He came to rest on his back?which let her see the dreadful red stain on his shirt. It had soaked the whole front, spreading outward from something that had penetrated cloth and flesh.
"Ghartoun!" she screamed in a voice edged with knife-sharp horror.
Falsan clutched at her blouse with one blood smeared, shaking hand. He whispered through grey lips, his thready voice almost too weak to catch.
"Man … shot me … stayed in … water … no trail … can't foll?"
His breath wheezed away to nothing. His eyes didn't close. They remained open. Horribly, sightlessly open.
She felt him go. Felt the unseen force that was Falsan chan Salgmun vanish like smoke in her hands, even as she searched frantically for the wound. Her fingers touched metal. Stupid with shock, she stared down at it, found a thick steel shaft protruding nearly two inches from his flesh. Her hands were hot with his blood, but the rest of her was frozen. She sat half immersed in ice-cold water, shaking violently and trying to focus her spinning mind on the impossibility of what he'd just said.
A man had shot him.
A man …
Theirs was the only team anywhere in this universe. That meant?
Barris Kasell, Tymo Scleppis, and Ghartoun chan Hagrahyl plunged down the bank, literally on one another's heels. chan Hagrahyl cursed horribly as he splashed into the water beside her. Their healer slithered down next, took one look, and groaned.
"Too late," Shaylar heard him say. "He's gone."
She lifted her head. It took forever, that simple effort, like lifting a mountain with her bare hands. She met Ghartoun's stunned gaze.
"Somebody shot him." Her words came out like ax blows on solid ice. "He said a man shot him."
chan Hagrahyl wrenched his gaze away from her face and stared at the ghastly metal shaft buried in Falsan's flesh.
"My gods," he whispered.
Suddenly the whole stream was looping and rolling in wild gyrations. Shaylar felt rough hands on her shoulders, heard somebody saying her name, and fought the roaring in her ears and the black tide trying to suck away her consciousness.
I will not faint like a schoolgirl! a small, hard voice grated somewhere deep inside her, and she shook off the hands trying to drag her up the bank. She went to her knees as they released her, but she forced her wildly spinning senses to steady.
She found herself kneeling in a tangle of tree roots, panting and trembling, but in control once more. She raised her head, and a worried pair of dark eyes swam into focus. Barris was crouched beside her, one hand bracing her so she didn't slide back down the bank.
"That's better," he said softly. "For a minute there, I thought you were going to collapse."
Her face tried to heat up. But she was still too shocky and pale to flush with humiliation, and his next words eased some of the shame which had wrapped around her like a blanket.
"You've had a nasty psychic shock, Shaylar, and you're not combat trained."
"Combat trained?" she parroted, appalled by the hoarse croak which had replaced her voice, and Barris nodded.
"When a Talented recruit joins the military, he's trained to handle something as brutal as combat death shock, especially at point-blank range. Nobody teaches that to civilian survey scouts."
The rough burr in Barris' voice seeped through the numb ice encasing her. Anger, she realized slowly. It was anger that she'd been exposed to something that ugly, that unexpected. And a deeper anger that one of their own had been murdered. Even shame that he hadn't seen Falsan struggling along the streambed.
When that realization sank in, some of her own shame eased. The abrupt loosening of her grip on her shuddering emotions was followed almost instantly by a flood of tears and violent tremors. She struggled grimly to hold them back, but without much success. Barris took her by one elbow and Tymo took the other. They helped her to climb to the top of the bank, and Tymo slipped an arm around her.
"Let them come, Shaylar. Let the shakes run their course. That's the way emotional shock will drain, as it should, not fester in your mind and poison your body."
That almost made sense. The fact that it didn't make complete sense, when it should have, rang faint alarm bells. But Tymo knew what he was talking about, if anyone did, so she sat there in the warm sunlight and waited for the tremors to ease up. When they did, she drew down a final, ragged gulp of air and looked up again.
"I heard his rifle," she said. "That must've been when … "
"Yes, I heard it, too." Barris nodded, his voice bitter with self-condemnation. "To think he'd been struggling all that time, trying to make it back, and we didn't do anything?"
"It's not your fault, Barris!" Ghartoun's voice interrupted sharply, and Kasell looked up at the team leader.