The Road to Hell - eARC (62 page)

Of course, none of Regiment-Captain chan Kymo’s original calculations had included hauling the kerosene to fuel that many boilers. For that matter, his estimates for fuel consumption for the Bisons and Steel Mules were proving at least thirty percent low, mostly because the vehicles were spending more time slogging through mud than he’d allowed for. The abundance of steam drays eased much of the strain in that respect, and there were enough more of them than expected to manage—barely, but to manage—to haul forward enough fuel to meet the higher than anticipated requirements.

And at least fuel expenditure at the spear point of the movement should be dropping again soon. The one thing a high plains winter would provide was good, solid going once they got into Nairsom. Of course, they still had dozens of rivers—including the upper reaches of the Dalazan itself—and another seven hundred miles of jungle to cross before they got there.

But many of those rivers had already been bridged, and although the Bison’s tracks were taking a worse hammering than he’d hoped, they were also holding up extraordinarily well. Breakdowns were deadlining perhaps twenty percent of his total forward Bison strength at any given moment, but most of the problems were directly related to the pounding their tracks were taking. They’d been designed for the beginning for fast replacement of broken links, and the spares situation was actually better than chan Kymo had anticipated. The parts they needed for repairs were there; it was the time required to
make
those repairs which posed potentially serious problems.

But we’ll do it
, he told himself, settling behind his desk to deal with the day’s paperwork. That was one thing he wasn’t going to miss when he abandoned the train for one of the Steel Mules and headed forward tomorrow morning.

We’ll do it
, he repeated,
and when we have, the frigging
Arcanans will damned well wish they’d never been born
.

* * *

“
Chan Wahldyn!
Vothan’s Chariot, man! We’re supposed to be
building
the godsdamned road!”

Company-Captain Hyrus chan Derkail, CO of Silver Company, 1407th Mounted Combat Engineers, looked up. Senior Armsman Tyrail chan Turkahn, the senior noncom of his second platoon, stood atop one of the parked Bisons, hands on hips, glaring at another Bison which had just slithered across fifty feet of muddy roadway and demolished the approach to the crude felled-tree bridge across yet another of the Dalazan rain forest’s innumerable waterways.

It really wasn’t Armsman 1/c chan Wahldyn’s fault, and chan Turkahn undoubtedly knew that as well as chan Derkail did. Expecting him to admit anything of the sort was futile, of course. Senior armsmen simply didn’t do that. As the junior armsman of chan Derkail’s own first platoon had explained to him, one might be able to accomplish more with a spoonful of honey than a cup of vinegar, but one could accomplish even more with the toe of a boot applied smartly to an errant trooper’s arse.

At the moment, however, chan Derkail was more concerned with getting chan Waldyn’s Bison back out of the stream—or off the wreckage of the bridge, at least—and getting that bridge repaired. The Bisons could ford this particular river without undue difficulty, and the Mules could probably do the same, but the commercial drays couldn’t, and they were carrying a lot more of the logistical load than the operations plan had originally called for.

Fortunately, Senior Armsman chan Turkahn realized that as well as chan Derkail did. For all his red-faced outrage, he was already clambering down and wading into the confusion—and the waist deep stream—to sort things out. Platoon-Captain chan Gairwyn, 2nd Platoon’s CO, wasn’t afraid to get his own boots muddy, either. He arrived in a splatter of mud on an even more mud splattered Shikowr gelding, and dismounted quickly beside chan Derkail.

“Sorry about that, Sir,” he told his company commander. “Chan Wahldyn knows to be more careful than that. That’s why chan Turkahn’s playing traffic director.”

“Not his fault,” chan Derkail replied. “Or yours or Senior Armsman chan Turkahn’s, either.” He shrugged. “We’re getting at least two thunderstorms a day, Ersayl, and that stretch is more like porridge than mud at the moment. No wonder the Bisons and Mules wallow like pigs in shit trying to get through it! We just need to make a note to move the tracked vehicles’ fords farther from the bridges to give us a little more slack.”

“Agreed, Sir. And chan Farcos is already on it.”

The platoon-captain pointed, and chan Derkail grunted in satisfaction as a Mark 2 Bison came churning up the roadway. The massive vehicle was over twenty feet long and ten feet wide, and its kerosene-fueled monotube boiler produced almost twice the steam pressure of the Mark 1’s pelletized coal-fired boiler. In fact, it had better than twice the horsepower of the TTE’s famous “Devil Buff” bulldozers, and Battalion-Captain chan Hurmahl had decided to fit a quarter of the 1470th’s Mark 2s with bulldozer blades of their own. Now Junior-Armsman Urmahl chan Farcos, the senior noncom of 2nd Platoon’s third squad, lowered the blade on his vehicle and went grinding forward.

Jungle trees toppled and deep, soft rain forest loam rose in a bow wave as the Bison began broadening the cleared approach to the stream, and chan Derkail watched it with a sense of wonder experience had yet to dull. He’d grown up as a combat engineer of the Imperial Ternathian Army well before Division-Captain chan Stahlyr had first proposed his radical concept of “mechanization.” In those long forgotten days—all of five years ago—scores of men and dozens of horses would have spent the better part of two full days laboring on the task chan Farcos and his Bison would accomplish in no more than a couple of hours. There were times—many of them, especially when he found himself cursing a breakdown or dragging yet another of the massive vehicles out of the muck when they hit a swamp deep enough to mire even them—when he missed those simpler days of muscle-powered shovels and transports with hooves. But without the Bisons, without the additional bulldozers, graders, steamrollers, and steam shovels the TTE was driving forward behind the spear point of the 1407th Engineers, this entire operation would have been flatly impossible.

As it was, it was simply very, very difficult.

So far, at least.

The company-captain removed his hat and mopped at the perspiration coating his shaven scalp. It didn’t make any difference, of course. By the time he put the hat back on, the sweat would be just as deep and just as irritating. But at least it gave him the temporary illusion of having done something about it.

At the moment, Silver Company was five hundred miles from the current railhead and barely two hundred from the Nairsom portal at Lake Wernisk. According to the Voice messages from their rear, the TTE was doing wonders improving the roadway behind them, as well as extending the rails, but that was still five hundred miles of heat, snakes, monkeys, insects, crocodiles, and mud. Frankly, chan Derkail was astounded they weren’t suffering even more delays.

More trees crashed down as chan Farcos bulldozed them into the river, and chan Derkail nodded in approval. Even with all the powered equipment, they were the better part of a week behind schedule. The good news was that the schedule had built in a certain amount of cushion for slippage. The bad news was that they were rapidly using up that cushion, and somewhere far out in front of them, on the far side of the Nairsom portal, Battalion-Captain chan Yahndar’s patrol was already nearing Lake Wernisk. It would be weeks yet before 3rd Dragoons main body overtook its 12th Regiment, but when that happened, this muddy, mucky, hot, humid, rain soaked, bug-infested wound gouged through the rain forest would be the entire division’s logistical lifeline. The task of building and, even more importantly,
sustaining
that lifeline was in the hands of Hyrus chan Derkail and his men, and they weren’t about to fail at it.

He shoved his sweat-sodden bandanna back into his pocket, settled his hat on his head, and nodded to chan Gairwyn.

“I’ll be moving up towards the head of the line, Ersayl. If you need me, have chan Kostyr Flick a note to chan Dorth.”

“Yes, Sir. I’ll let you know as soon as we’ve finished widening the ford, as well.”

“Good.” Chan Derkail patted the platoon-captain on the shoulder. “And don’t forget we’ll need a four or five hundred more feet of timbers tomorrow. It might be a good idea to start felling the trees while chan Farcos is working on the ford. Company-Captain chan Kilstar will be coming along behind you later this afternoon. He should have the transport to haul the logs forward.”

“Yes, Sir.” Chan Gairwyn saluted, and chan Derkail gave his shoulder another thump before he climbed back onto his own horse and started across the stream.

Chapter Thirty-Four

February 16

“Well,” Namir Velvelig sighed, dismounting to lean against the side of his unicorn, “there it is.”

The trees around him rattled mournful, leafless branches that did absolutely nothing to cut the frigid wind. He’d been far colder than this upon occasion back in Arpathia, but that made the current weather no less unpleasant. Getting wagons through the broad belt of woodland hadn’t been a happy experience either, even with the Arcanan levitation spells, and it had slowed them considerably. The trees had also provided welcome cover for the last several miles, however, and he’d been careful to halt well back within their concealment before he dismounted.

“You sound surprised, Regiment-Captain,” Therman Ulthar said, looking down from his own saddle with a tired, crooked smile. “Someone might almost think you hadn’t expected to get here.”

“They might, might they?” Velvelig cocked his head to give the young Arcanan a moderate glare. “Can’t imagine why they should’ve.”

“Neither can I,” Ulthar assured him, and swung down from his unicorn.

A growl rumbled deep in the beast’s muscular throat, and the fifty swatted its nose with a casual assurance Velvelig still found disturbing. He wasn’t accustomed to “horses” with five-inch fangs capable of effortlessly removing a man’s hand…or his
head
, for that matter. That wicked ivory horn was equally daunting; he’d seen spears that were less sharply pointed, and the thing was over two feet long. It would never have done for an Arpathian septman to admit fear of anything that went on four feet, but he knew damned well he wasn’t the only Sharonian in the column who hadn’t entirely come to grips with the notion of riding a seven or eight hundred-pound carnivore. Nor had any of them developed the degree of comfort—or the confidence to smack them to remind them who was in charge—Ulthar and the other Arcanans demonstrated.

Yet whatever reservations he might retain, he’d become devoutly thankful for their presence. Without them, the mutineers and escaped prisoners would never have made it this far, and certainly not this quickly. The unicorns were just as fast and just as hardy as Ulthar and Jaralt Sarma had assured him they were. Keeping them fed was a greater challenge than simply grazing a horse or a mule normally presented, but given the season and the speed with which they’d been moving, the chore wasn’t that much worse than hauling along fodder would have been. And little though the horse lover in him cared to admit it, he suspected that something with a predator’s instincts probably made a better combat mount than a creature whose best natural defense to a threat was to run away from it. Of course, there
were
downsides, and one thing he’d observed was that unicorn dung had the reek of carnivore excrement, rather than the homier scent of horse manure. Fortunately, that hadn’t been much of a factor on their open air jaunt, but he really didn’t like to think about mucking out a stable full of unicorns.

He smiled wearily at the thought and uncased his binoculars as he gazed at the portal between Thermyn and New Uromath.

And however…unpleasant that might be, the critters really
are
tough as hill demons
, he reflected.
They aren’t as sensitive to sudden climate changes as horses are, either
.
More of that damned magic, I’ll bet. They sure as hell didn’t grow any sudden furry coats along the way!

And that was one more thing to be profoundly grateful for, he acknowledged. For that matter, although their gait took some getting used to—a man who’d learned to post on a horse had required quite a bit of minor adjustment before his mount had stopped complaining and his own arse and thighs had acclimated—it was actually smoother than any he’d ever before experienced. And those clawed feet made them incredibly surefooted and nimble in rough terrain. The Arpathian in him resisted being seduced away from the horses he’d always loved, but he couldn’t deny there were profound advantages to these unnatural beasts.

He raised the binoculars and suppressed a desire to wince as the skin around his eyes made contact with the rubber eye shields and his gloved fingers adjusted the focusing knob. At this time of year, the average temperatures here on what should have been the location of Wyrmach ought to have averaged well above freezing, but that was an
average
temperature. Daily highs and lows peaked twenty or thirty degrees outside that range, and the town was subject to occasional bouts of bitter cold…one of which they—of course—had arrived in the middle of. And just to make the situation even better, the Thermyn side of the portal was a thousand feet higher than the New Uromath side. Although this portal was old enough for the portal wind to have stabilized quite a lot, the current of air pouring through from New Uromath remained far too powerful to call a “breeze,” and while that would normally have been a good thing, the weather on the far side of the portal had decided to drop well below
its
normal range, as well. It was marginally warmer than the Thermyn side, but not enough to evoke any handsprings of delight.

He gazed through the binoculars, sweeping his gaze steadily across as much of the fourteen-mile wide portal as he could see from his present location. The combination of the way the woods straggled off and the nice, flat terrain around Wyrmach meant he could see most of it, which didn’t make him especially happy as he contemplated the small cluster of chinked-log structures parked on a low rise almost squarely in the center of the portal’s arc.

Miserable as it might have been to cross, the rugged terrain between Bitter Lake and Fort Ghartoun had given a lot of cover. The fact that the best land route—indeed, the only truly practicable land route, especially this time of year—had wandered far afield from the straight-line route available to dragons had helped even more. Despite which, Valnar Rohsahk, Ulthar’s “recon crystal specialist,” had detected six separate overflights by dragons. Rohsahk was what the Arcanans called a “javelin,” according to the literal translation their talking crystals provided. That was roughly the equivalent of a junior-armsman, and despite his youthfulness, the Arcanan—who was from what ought to have been the Republic of Syskhara in New Ternath—had the solid, unflappable competence Velvelig normally associated with strongly Talented noncoms. The regiment-captain had no idea how the Arcanans’ “spellware” worked, but he was willing to take their word that it did. They had as much to lose as the Sharonians did if they were overtaken, after all, so they had no vested interest in pretending it could accomplish things it couldn’t. And it didn’t hurt his confidence in their abilities any that Under-Armsman Haryl chan Byral, his own junior headquarters clerk-specialist (who was even younger than Rohsahk), had been assigned as Fort Ghartoun’s Distance Viewer. Despite his youth, chan Byral was powerfully Talented, and twice he’d Seen the passing dragon Rohsahk had detected.

Fortunately, none of them had flown directly overhead, and apparently none of them had been actively seeking the fugitives at the time they passed. All of those near escapes had occurred in the first few days of their flight, however. By Ulthar and Sarma’s most optimistic estimates, Thalmayr must have gotten his story into someone senior’s hands by now, which meant any additional overflights were unlikely to be benignly negligent. And the terrain had been depressingly open for the last four or five hundred miles. In fact, here in the approaches to Wyrmach, it reminded Velvelig of a pocket-ball table, and he felt remarkably like the strike-ball as he stood surveying the portal. He’d done his best to keep clear of that straight-line flight path between here and Fort Ghartoun, but trying to balance the extra time to circle wide of crossing dragon traffic against the threat that orders to find them might come racing down-chain from Two Thousand Harshu at any moment had been a nerve-racking business.

Now, unfortunately, they had no choice but to move squarely back onto the flight path. The portal was the critical bottleneck, the funnel through which they
had
to pass to reach New Uromath…and through which
any
Arcanan traffic, whether specifically searching for them or not, must also pass.

“What do you see?” Ulthar asked, and Velvelig’s lips gave the slightest of twitches…which would have been a broad grin in anyone who wasn’t Arpathian.

He and his Sharonians found the Arcanans’ casual use of magic fascinating, yet the
Arcanans
seemed at least equally fascinated by routine, everyday bits and pieces of Sharonian technology. They’d never seen anything like a pair of binoculars, for example. Instead of learning to grind and polish lenses, they’d learned how to polish and enchant “
sarkolis
” crystals to let them see distant objects. And as nearly as Golvar Silkash and Tobis Makree had been able to figure it out, their “magistrons” could Heal nearsightedness, farsightedness, and even cataracts, so no one needed spectacles. The thought of being able to duplicate a Distance Viewer’s Talent with a shiny piece of rock was certainly impressive—and seductive—but Velvelig was well content with his binoculars, and Ulthar and his people appeared to be just as deeply impressed by the notion of a distance viewing apparatus that required no Gift to produce or use.

“Nothing in the air, right now,” he replied, answering the fifty’s question. “What about your Rohsahk?”

“Nothing,” Ulthar said. “Unfortunately, there could be fifty dragons hovering on the other side of that portal and Valnar wouldn’t be able to detect them from here.”

Velvelig grunted in combined understanding, unhappiness, and worry. It was interesting that the Arcanans’ Gifts and spells were no more capable of crossing a portal threshold than a Sharonian’s Talent. Learning that minor fact had made it abruptly clear how Balkar chan Tesh had managed to ream what were clearly elite troops so easily when he’d attacked the Swamp Portal. Of course, it had helped that the idiot in command of those elite troops had been Hadrign Thalmayr. Velvelig remembered a conversation with Silkash in which he’d tried to explain his suspicion about the quality of the prisoners chan Tesh had sent up-chain from Hell’s Gate. Now he knew he’d been right, although he supposed he ought to cut Thalmayr at least a
little
slack. The man
was
an idiot, and his defensive deployment and tactics (such as they were and what there’d been of them) had reflected that, but they’d been based on his understanding of his own weapons. None of the Arcanans at the Swamp Portal had ever imagined that anything more lethal than an arbalest bolt or a grenade could be thrown
through
a portal. Velvelig liked to think a Sharonian commander wouldn’t have made any comfortable assumptions about that, but the fact that the Arcanans had taken five entire universes with such absurd ease suggested he might have been wrong about who had a monopoly on overconfidence.

What mattered at the moment, however, was that the handful of Arcanans who were now his allies couldn’t tell him anything more about the far side of that portal than he could see with his own two eyes and the assistance of his binoculars, and that was limited enough to make anyone unhappy.

What he
could
see from here was that the Arcanans appeared to have placed their picket on the Thermyn side of the portal rather than the New Uromathian side. Given the normal weather in New Uromath, Velvelig completely agreed with their decision. The rainfall and seasonal temperature variation in Malbar, the Sharonian city nearest to the New Uromathan portal’s site, was less pronounced than in Wyrmach, but Malbar also got around four times the annual precipitation, and he preferred surroundings which were a bit less damp. It did leave him with a bit of a problem, though.

“You were right about where they put their fort,” he said, studying the offending structures through the binoculars. “It’s right damned in the middle of this side of the portal.” He lowered the glasses and showed the Arcanan his teeth. “I suppose there’s only one way to be sure they haven’t switched things around on you on the far aspect, though.”

“Part of me hopes they have,” Ulthar admitted. “Not the
smart
part of me, of course. It just offends me to think that the Union Army could be sloppy enough to’ve left things this way.”

“Peacetime thinking dies hard,” Velvelig replied. “Here on the frontiers, it’s always been
our
policy to locate our forts on the down-chain side of each portal as we explored it, so it’s probably not too surprising your people operate the same way in what they think are their rear areas.”

Ulthar nodded, although his expression remained an odd mixture of hopefulness and disgust.

The New Uromath Portal was fourteen miles across—what Ulthar had described as a Class Six portal. Sharonians didn’t bother about classification systems; they simply measured a portal’s diameter and got on with exploring it. This one happened to be quite a bit wider than most and aligned roughly on a north-south axis…on this side. On the
far
side, it was aligned almost exactly on an east-to-west line, however, and that was where the “counterintuitive” nature of portals came into play. Standing west of the Thermyn aspect of the portal and gazing through it, one looked due south into New Uromath; if one circled around to the
eastern
aspect of the portal, however, one looked due
north
into New Uromath. It was impossible to look across or through a portal within a single universe—all you could see was the
other
universe, as if you were peering through a picture window, and in this instance, vision was as useless as spells or Talent. The only way for an observer in one universe to find out what was happening on the far side of a portal in the
same
universe was to move around the perimeter of the portal until he had a direct, unobstructed line-of-sight.

Which meant that unless the Arcanans had gone ahead and constructed a second position—a lookout post, at least—on the far side of this portal, they’d left a fourteen-mile wide blind spot. The blind spot in question happened to be fourteen miles
high
at its tallest point, as well…which didn’t do Velvelig any good since he didn’t have any handy dragons of his own.