The Road to Hell - eARC (5 page)

He paused, as if for comments, but once again none of his staffers said anything, and he shrugged.

“Everything makes the advance through Karys the shortest line of advance once he can get past the Cut, and the Cut won’t be anywhere near the terrain obstacle for them that it is for us. A
serious
obstacle, but not an insurmountable one like crossing the Vandor without ships. Because of that, and because it’s our only present point of contact, he almost
has
to be calling in his secondary advance to strengthen his position in Karys until those reinforcements he’s expecting arrive. He’ll probably leave pickets along the Kelsayr Chain to cover his back, but I very much doubt he’ll seriously expect anyone to attack them.”

Chan Isail was looking at him very intently indeed now, and the division-captain smiled again, more thinly even than before.

“My mother always used to tell me a little knowledge is a dangerous thing,” he said. “And she used to say it’s not what you don’t know is so that hurts you; it’s what you
think
you know that
isn’t
so. At the moment, Harshu knows a lot more about us than we know about him, but no Arcanan’s ever so much as heard of a Bison. I realize seventeen thousand miles is a long way, but we’ve got over thirty-five hundred miles of rail line clear across Kelsayr and Lashai and TTE’s already laying track in Resym. For that matter, its advanced work crews are cutting and grading roadbed over a hundred miles down-chain from the current railhead. Since we haven’t lost Voice contact with them yet but we
have
lost contact with the portal forts in Nairsom and on Lake Wernisk in Resym, I’m inclined to think that’s as far up-chain as they’ve gotten. What it means from our current perspective is that it’s only about seven thousand miles cross-country from the railhead to Hell’s Gate as opposed to four thousand miles going via Karys. For that matter, it’s barely
three
thousand miles to Thermyn, and at least until Harshu is heavily reinforced, the Cut works both ways as a defensive feature. For that matter,” the division-captain’s already thin smile became a razor, “he may just find it costing him more than he expects to get his dragons through the portal here even
after
he’s reinforced.”

“That’s true, Sir,” chan Isail said. “But the weather’s going to be a royal pain in the arse in Kelsayr, and Thermyn and Naisom aren’t exactly going to be picnics this time of year, either.”

“At least winter in Serinach will be a change from Salbyton!” chan Geraith retorted, and more than one of his staff officers chuckled again. Serinach, the northernmost state of the Republic of Rendisphar back in Sharona, consisted of most of the vast Serinach Peninsula where New Ternath reached towards the Serinach Strait which separated it from the easternmost tip of Farnalia. For all its stupendous size, Serinach was only lightly inhabited…which had quite a lot to do with Serinach winters.

“The good news,” chan Geraith continued, “is that we can move everything by ship and rail all the way from Traisum to Resym, and the construction crews in Resym shifted into high gear the instant TTE heard about Fallen Timbers. Master Banchu’s ready to start moving
his
crews and their heavy equipment to Resym, as well, and once they get there, they’ll be laying double-tracked line in three shifts. On that basis, they’ll be putting in the next best thing to twenty-five miles of track a day, and Therahk estimates that we’ll need another couple of months to bring up the rest of the division and prep it for the move. That means they’ll have laid another eleven hundred miles across Resym by the time we get there.”

He paused, and chan Isail nodded slowly.

“You’re right that the weather in Thermyn and Naisom will be more of a problem,” chan Geraith conceded, “but the worst leg from that perspective’s going to be in Naisom, and that’s less than six hundred miles. On the basis of our exercises at Fort Emperor Erthain, the Bisons should be able to maintain an average speed of around fifteen miles an hour across the kind of terrain between Kelsayr and Thermyn even in winter. Allowing for the present length of rail, mounted scouts could cover the total distance from Vankaiyar here in Traisum to Fort Ghartoun in about sixteen and a half weeks. Allowing for rail length by the time we could get the Bisons to the railhead, the rest of the division could cover the same distance in about
nine
weeks, and I guarantee you that’s one hells of a lot sooner than anyone on the other side’s going to be expecting us!”

His staffers were staring at him now. They were silent for a very long moment, then chan Isail cleared his throat.

“Sir, the Bisons have never been tested on that kind of extended advance.”

“True enough.” Chan Geraith nodded. “But they
have
done the thousand-mile torture test—in winter, through the mountains—and did it damned well, too. And that was
before
we adopted the new rubber-backed track blocks. I know those were only trials, with the best mechanics we had on the spot to put faults right, but that’s still impressive as hell.

“I know it is, Sir. But this is a lot longer trip over a lot of different sorts of terrain. However good they may be, there’d be bound to be a lot of breakdowns before we ever got to Thermyn.”

“Agreed. On the other hand, we’ll have to leave a big enough force here at Salbyton to hold the Cut from our side and to make enough noise to keep Harshu looking this way instead of over his shoulder.” Chan Geraith shrugged. “We don’t want him to see the Bisons if he decides to risk a few dragons to fly reconnaissance, anyway, so whoever we leave behind couldn’t make much use of them here at the Cut. That being the case, we strip the brigade that stands in place and use its Bisons to supplement the flank column’s organic transports. And the Army’s shipping additional Bisons and Steel Mules forward after us as quickly as it can procure them, along with every steam dray it can get its hands on. Our engineers will improve the roads as we go, so anything coming down the route behind us should be able to move much faster than our main column. Banchu’s crews will go right on laying track behind us—and extending the kerosene pipeline, too. They ought to make another six or seven hundred miles good between the time we leave the railhead and the time we reach Thermyn, which will effectively shorten the distance any new Bisons or drays will have to cover. And TTE’s already surveyed their entire roadbed. We know where the worst terrain’s located, and they can push advanced crews ahead of the track layers to begin tackling them. The worst will be getting through the Dalazan Rain Forest in Resym…but that’s also where the TTE crews can start improvising bridges and improvising fords out of local materials soonest.”

“And those pickets they may’ve left behind, Sir?” the chief of staff asked.

“I’ll grant you they may have all sorts of ‘magic powers,’ Merkan,” chan Geraith said. “And given the way they’ve managed to shut down the Voice network as they advanced, they must’ve gotten at least some knowledge of our Talents. But we’re the
Third Dragoons
. If there’s anyone this side of Arpathia who’s as good as we are at scouting an enemy position without being spotted,
I’ve
never met them. We send a battalion or so down the chain on horseback with enough Voices to maintain constant communication with us. We’ll need to get them off as quickly as we can, because it’ll take them so much longer to cross the unimproved universes, but there’s not a portal in the chain that isn’t at least twenty-five miles across. Ask the PAAF how easy it is to ‘picket’ a portal that size even with a fort right in the middle of it! We send along a full recon section, complete with a Mapper, a half-dozen Plotters to keep an eye on the sky for dragons, and a good Distance Viewer or two to make it harder than hell for the Arcanans to see them coming even if they’re mounting standing patrols of dragons around the portals. And we make sure they’ve got an extra weapons company with mortars and heavy machine guns. They’ll have a hell of a lot better chance of spotting a picket on one of those portals than the picket will of spotting them when no one on the other side’s going to believe there could possibly be Ternathian dragoons anywhere near them.”

“And if they do spot a picket, Sir?” chan Isail asked quietly.

“That’s why we’ll be sending the mortars and the machine guns, Merkan, because if there
are
any pickets out there, it’ll be our turn to shut down their warning network the same way
they
shut down the Voice network.” No one could possibly have mistaken Arlos chan Geraith’s expression for a smile this time.

“
Exactly
the way they shut down our Voices,” he said very, very softly.

Chapter Three

November 30

Commander of One Thousand Klayrman Toralk glowered at the report in his personal crystal. It was neatly organized and illustrated by half a dozen color-coded graphs and charts—obviously, the intelligence types had figured out how to get the best out of their word-processing spellware—but it made grim and ugly reading.

We are
so
screwed
, he reflected glumly, and paged ahead to the latest dispatch from Commander of One Hundred Faryx Helika.

Helika’s 5001st Strike had been the weakest of the First Provisional Talon’s three strikes when the Arcanan Expeditionary Force set out on this nightmare journey. That had made it easy enough to dispense with it and assign it to the purely secondary advance up what the Sharonians called the Kelsayr Chain, but that had changed. In theory, an Air Force talon should have consisted of three full strength strikes of twelve fighting dragons each. In fact, Toralk’s talon consisted of—or would consist of, after Helika’s arrival—the 5001st’s three reds and three blacks, the three blacks which were all that survived of the 3012th Strike, plus the
single
black survivor of the 2029th. Of course, there no longer
was
a 2029th; Toralk had officially disbanded it and assigned its survivors to the 3012th.

Ten
, he thought bitterly.
A whole
ten
out of the thirty-six I
ought t
o have, and not a yellow among them. Not that anyone this side of a lunatic would send yellows in against Sharonian defenses that know they’re coming!

They’d paid a savage price to discover what alert Sharonian artillery could do to strafing dragons, and Toralk blamed himself for it. They’d captured Sharonian “field guns” and “machine guns” in their advance from Hell’s Gate, and that loathsome bile toad Neshok had actually experimented with them and sent the results of his experiments forward. Toralk could tell himself—honestly—that Neshok’s experiments had been far from complete. That Neshok had both underestimated the range their “field guns” could attain, and provided no information at all about “shells” that exploded in mid-air and threw out hundreds of smaller projectiles. He suspected those were probably the “shrapnel shells” which had turned up in the intelligence summaries with a question mark behind them, so perhaps a fair-minded man (not that Toralk had the least desire to be fair-minded where Alivar Neshok was concerned) would have to admit the interrogator had at least given him the best information available. But Neshok hadn’t warned him at all about the weapons the Sharonians called “pedestal guns.” Not, Toralk admitted bitterly, that it would have made any difference. The thousand wanted to think that if he’d realized there was a weapon which could fire explosive shells at such a high rate he would have re-thought his plan to attack Fort Salby. Unfortunately, he knew better. He’d allowed himself—and the late Five Hundred Myr—to not simply expect the element of surprise but to make their entire attack plan
depend
upon it.

And it didn’t help anything when Myr took it upon himself to throw good money after bad
. Toralk felt his jaw muscles tensing again and forced himself to relax them.
If the idiot
—

He made himself let go of the thought. He’d been a strike dragon pilot himself in his day. He knew the breed, knew how their minds worked. And because he had been, and because he did know, he understood exactly what Cerlohs Myr had been thinking—or
not
thinking—after the Sharonians somehow managed to ambush his dragons on their way to the target.

Toralk still couldn’t see how the Sharonians could have known where to dig in those machine guns on either flank of the approach valley he and Myr had chosen from their maps, yet he’d come to the conclusion they
must
have known. There was no other possible explanation for why those machine guns had been positioned on those hot, dry hillsides so far away from the line of the Sharonian “railroad” and the road running beside it. They’d been in
exactly
the right spot, and nothing Neshok’s interrogation teams had wrung out of their prisoners explained how the Sharonians had gotten them there in time. So far, at least, there’d been no mention of any of the bizarre Sharonian Talents which could have predicted Myr’s approach route with the necessary precision.

Toralk wasn’t ready to conclude that that meant there
wasn’t
such a Talent, and Shartahk knew Neshok’s interrogation methods were unlikely to encourage anyone to volunteer information that wasn’t dragged out of him. If there
was
such a Talent, however, and if it operated with any degree of reliability, the implications were terrifying. How could anyone defeat an enemy who literally
knew
when, where, and how he was coming? But if that sort of Talent existed, how had the Sharonians been so surprised by the AEF’s initial attacks? And even assuming it had only come into play after the attack began, he came back again and again to the Sharonian possession of their Voice communications system. If anyone had possessed a Talent capable not simply of realizing an attack was coming but of predicting its exact route accurately enough—and far enough in advance—to dig in heavy machine guns on either side of exactly the one of several valleys the leading dragon strike might have followed, then surely the Voices could have passed that warning farther down-chain, as well. For someone without arcanely aided combat engineers, it must have taken the better part of at least three days’ hard labor to prepare the defenses of Fort Salby as thoroughly as they’d been prepared. So if some bizarre Talent farther up-chain from Traisum had managed to predict the attack in time for them to accomplish that much, why hadn’t the warning been passed still farther in that ample time window?

Stop beating your head against that particular wall, Klayrman
, he told himself again.
Maybe you were just lucky in Karys. Maybe they
did
send a warning to Fort Mosanik but they had too little advance notice for it to get there before you hit it and took out
its
Voice. File this one under the “Never
,
Never,
Ever
Take Liberties Against Sharonians Again Just Because You Think You Have The Advantage of
Surprise” heading and get on with where we go from here
.

He grimaced, wondering if one reason his mind insisted on fretting itself against the question of how the Sharonians had managed it was because of how little he wanted to contemplate the options available to the AEF in the aftermath of Fort Salby. Helika’s strike would arrive within the next eighteen to twenty hours, but there wouldn’t be any more battle dragons for at least another two or three months. Nor were there any replacements for the eighteen transport dragons who’d been killed or too badly wounded for the dragon healers to return to service. That left his 1st Provisional AATC Aerie with only a hundred and seventy transports, and that was too few for a field force operating the next godsdamned thing to thirty thousand miles beyond the nearest sliderhead.

A single transport could carry loads weighing up to about a quarter of its own mass, which on average came to about fifteen tons of cargo. For short hops that could be boosted to as much as twenty or even twenty-five tons, but the cost in endurance and operational range was high. Levitation spells could double normal capacities, but spells with that sort of power requirement was magister-level work, and the military never had enough magister-level Gifts to meet its needs. The Army Air Transport Command belonged to the Air Force, despite its name and despite strenuous efforts by the Army to hang onto it, and Toralk had put in his own time as a junior officer commanding transport strikes and even talons. As a result, he was well aware of the acute limits on the uniformed personnel who could charge levitation accumulators, especially once they got too far forward to tap the power nets established in more heavily inhabited universes. There were very good reasons the AATC operated from nodal bases where it could assemble its most strongly Gifted techs to charge as many accumulators as possible. It kept such valuable personnel safely out of harm’s way, rather than parceling them out in tenth-mark packets, working in isolation too close to the sharp end of the stick, and it was generally simpler and more efficient to ship the charged accumulators—which weighed barely two pounds each, after all—forward to where they were needed.

Except that no one in his worst nightmares had dreamed anyone might ever need to supply such a force this big out at the arse-end of nowhere, and Commander of Two Thousand mul Gurthak had been forced to strip the dozen closest universes of transports to give Toralk what he had. Anything mul Gurthak had left was absolutely essential to maintaining the Expeditionary Force’s rear area transport requirements, not to mention the forts and sparse civilian populations scattered through those universes. That cupboard was bare, and there wouldn’t be any more dragons popping out of it anytime soon.

That was bad enough, but there’d never been enough accumulators, either. Still worse, the nearest real stockpile had been in Ucala, at the end of the slider net from New Arcana, 24,300 miles behind Arcana’s first encounter with the Sharonians, and they’d advanced over four thousand miles since then. That was the next best thing to two hundred and fifty hours’ flight time for a transport dragon, and a transport needed periodic breaks in flight and at least several hours rest per day, not to mention downtime for things like eating. All of which meant it was a sixteen-day trip—one way—between Ucala and Toralk’s tent here in the universe Sharona had christened Karys. Even more unhappily, the Ucala stockpile had been completely depleted by the heavy transport demands required to build up the AEF’s main logistic base in Mahritha and keep moving this far forward. Commander of Five Hundred Mantou Lyshair, the acting CO of Toralk’s AATC detachment, was down to an accumulator inventory far below the minimum level specified by The Book, and that was another situation that wasn’t going to get better anytime soon.

And because it isn’t, the transports Lyshair
does
have are forced to fly without accumulators, which is exhausting the dragons faster and hauling half the tonnage to boot
.
And then there’s the little problem of fodder and dragon feed
, he reminded himself glumly.

The terrain between portals in both Karys and Failcham was hot, dry, and arid. There’d been little Sharonian civilian presence in either of them, which meant there’d also been little farmland to provide fodder for the cavalry’s horses or fresh food to vary the men’s diet, and there’d been neither domesticated animals nor large herds of wild animals to provide meat for the dragons or the cavalry’s unicorns. The wicked losses Gyras Urlan’s heavy dragoons had suffered in the final lunge at Fort Salby had reduced the number of horses they had to feed, but there were plenty of the hungry creatures left, and transporting enough food for all of the Expeditionary Force’s draft animals—
and humans; let’s not forget
them,
Klayrman
, he reminded himself—only increased the workload on the pilots and beasts of Lyshair’s exhausted aerie still further.

We don’t have a choice
, he decided.
I’m going to have to rotate the transport talons at least as far back as Thermyn to hunt
.

That would be better than two thousand miles, but the portal between Thermyn and Failcham was in central Yanko, and a relatively short hop from there would take them to the vast, rolling plains of western Andara with its endless herds of bison. The hunting would be good, the game would be plentiful, the talon he rotated back would have good eating while it was there, and hunting parties could take enough additional bison to be shipped forward to Karys when it returned.

Of course, it’s going to cost me a quarter of my transports
, he reflected glumly.
And given the number of carnivorous mouths we have to feed, I’ll have to authorize Lyshair to dip into his levitation accumulators to haul the meat back. At least we’re in good shape for food preservation spells, so it won’t rot before it gets eaten. That’s not going to help with the fodder, though
.

He frowned unhappily, then sighed. Two Thousand Harshu wasn’t going to like it, but they’d have to send the horses back along with the transports. A winter on the Western Plains of Andara would be no picnic, even for the arcanely enhanced cavalry mounts, but it would be better than trying to graze them here.

Sure, it’ll be better, but that’s sort of like saying amputation’s better than gangrene! Our biggest single advantage over the Sharonians is our mobility, and that’s oozing away from us while we sit here. Thank Trembo Fire Heel for the Traisum Cut! At least without dragons of their own those bastards aren’t going to be coming down it after us anytime soon. Unfortunately
…

He sighed again and paged to the brief report he was going to have to discuss with Harshu. Until that unmitigated bastard Carthos got here from the secondary advance Harshu had recalled, Klayrman Toralk, for his sins, remained the second ranking officer of the AEF. That made him Mayrkos Harshu’s senior officer, and that made it his unwelcome job to share his staff’s estimates—guesstimates, really—of
Sharonian
transport capabilities with his superior. Frankly, he was half convinced those guesstimates were wildly pessimistic, but only half. And if they weren’t, if the Sharonians really could pack two or three dragonweights of freight into a single one of their railroad cars…

If they
can,
they may be slower than we are, but they’ve got the godsdamned railroad built all the way to the portal. Once whatever they have in the pipeline starts arriving in Traisum, they’ll be able to build up quickly—probably even more quickly than we could if we had as many levitation accumulators as we wanted! Each load’ll take longer to make the trip, but a single “train” as long as the work trains that pulled out of Karys after the prisoner exchange can carry as much as all my transports together. And that’s assuming the transports have the accumulators to double up!