The Road to Hell - eARC (65 page)

He’d also decided, much to his own astonishment, that he rather liked most of the Arcanans in their…diverse party. He hadn’t expected that, even after they’d broken him and the other POWs out of their own brig, yet it was true. He’d spent too many years in uniform not to recognize the Arcanans’ hard core of professionalism, and those same years told him how hard it must have been for them to turn against their own superiors, whatever the provocation, over what amounted to a matter of principle and conscience. He wasn’t sure he bought into the notion that someone with motives of his own had deliberately fanned the flames for the current war, but he’d found he had no choice but to believe these men were simply doing their duty the best way they could in one hell of a messy situation. And the fact that they were said some things which were at least hopeful about the society and military which had produced men willing to run such risks in the name of their army’s honor.

“Have we lost anybody, Master-Armsman?” a voice asked quietly from beside him, and he snorted.

“Now why should we be losing anybody, Evarl?”

“Are telling me Regiment-Captain Velvelig didn’t discuss that possibility with you?” Thermyn Ulthar’s senior surviving noncom replied. “Fifty Ulthar and Fifty Sarma sure as hells both discussed it with
me!
”

“Ah, well, that’s the sort of thing officers’re paid to worry about, isn’t it?” Karuk turned to glance at the Arcanan, whose face was faintly visible in the backwash from his navigating crystal. “You and me, we’re a bit closer to the lads than that.”

“Have to admit that once they brought it up I was a little nervous,” Evarl Harnak acknowledged. “Couldn’t think of anyone who was likely to hightail it, though, once I put my mind to it.”

“Me neither,” Karuk told him. “Seems to me your boys are pretty solid.”

“Yours, too. ’Course for mine there’s the problem that if that bastard Thalmayr’s story’s gotten out, anybody we go running to might just shoot first and wonder whether we were innocent bystanders second. That’s got to weigh on the mind of any bastard who’d turn on his squad mates in the first place.”

“That kind does like to keep his skin in one piece, doesn’t he?” Karuk chuckled harshly. “Nice to know some things don’t change from universe to universe, isn’t it?”

“Kind of wish some of them
did
, just between you and me,” Harnak said.

“You think this Duke of yours really has the reach to straighten this mess out?” It was the first time Karuk had actually asked any of the Arcanans that question, and Harnak cocked his head, green eyes glinting in the light from his crystal.

“I’m not saying I don’t think he’ll try, understand,” Karuk continued. “I’ve got a pretty good idea about you Second Andarans by now, and I reckon your Duke’s probably about as stubborn as the Regiment-Captain. I know damned well what Regiment-Captain Velvelig’d do in a situation like this, and I expect your Duke’ll do the same. But seems to me that whoever’s pushing this thing probably has a line or two in his plans for dealing with the Duke, too. And even if he doesn’t, won’t having his own son right in the middle of this make it harder for him to get a hearing?”

“Trust me, the Fifty’s thought about that , too, whether he wants to admit it or not,” Harnak said after a moment. “On the other hand,
I
sure as hells wouldn’t want to be the poor sod who got in the Duke’s way when he thinks the Second Andarans’ honor is on the line. Sure, having Sir Jasak ‘in the middle of it’ may…complicate things for him, but not Shartahk himself could
stop
him in a case like this. And if there’s one Andaran duke in all the multiverse you
don’t
want pissed off at you, it’s Duke Garth Showma.”

Karuk nodded with immense satisfaction. It wasn’t as if Harnak had just said anything he hadn’t already heard before from Thermyn Ulthar and Jaralt Sarma, but over the years Hordal Karuk had seen quite a few officers with touching faith in fables, magic charms, moonshine, and the honesty of their superiors. Some of them seemed to feel there was some kind of code that required them to believe the official truth even when they knew better. He hadn’t thought Ulthar or Sarma fell into that category, but it was always a relief when a good levelheaded noncom who’d seen the bison confirmed their judgment.

“Well, in that case—” he began, only to stop in midsentence as Regiment-Captain Velvelig and Fifty Ulthar appeared out of the snowy darkness.

“Chelgayr, that feels good!” the regiment-captain said, and Karuk heard something suspiciously like a smothered laugh from Evarl Harnak’s direction.

“Yes, Sir, it does,” the master-armsman agreed, pointedly not looking at his Arcanan colleague. And it was true. The portal’s vestibule was a bubble of blessed warmth. The steady portal wind wasn’t especially strong—or, rather, most of it was going straight up instead of blowing outward at ground level—but there was at least a ninety-degree difference between its starting temperature and snowy northern New Ternathia. That heat bled off quickly, but not before it had produced a zone perhaps three hundred yards deep in which there wasn’t a trace of snow, and the sky on the other side—actually visible, thanks to the clearing that abutted the portal—was a deep, moonlit sapphire sprinkled with the stars of another hemisphere.

“I suppose we should get our arses over where it’s warmer, then,” Velvelig continued and glanced at the two senior noncoms. “Should I assume in your customary efficient manner the two of you have confirmed our nose count?”

“Yes, Sir,” Karuk replied. “Evarl and I’ve been the sort of keeping an eye on that all the way here.”

“I thought you had.” Velvelig produced another of his infinitesimal smiles. “Good noncoms are an officer’s greatest treasure, Hordal. Now we just have to find me one.”

“You go right on looking, Sir,” the master-sword said easily. “Be a comfort to retire and put my feet up in front of the fire when you finally find one.”

Velvelig snorted, conceding the exchange, and twitched his head at the portal.

“Take us through, Hordal.”

“Yes, Sir! Chan Byral!”

“Here, Master-Armsman!”

The tall but slightly built—and very young—Distance Viewer appeared out of the darkness.

“I apologize for disturbing your beauty rest, young Hanyl,” Karuk said in his most fatherly tone, “but if it would be possible for you to spare the Portal Authority a moment of your time, I’d appreciate your taking yourself to the other side of that portal and Looking around. I’m sure Sword Harnak would be happy to ride along and keep you out of mischief.”

“Yes, Master-Armsman.” The youthful Distance Viewer glanced at Evarl Harnak, and the Arcanan shook his head with a smile.

“No rest for the weary,” he observed. “Oh well, Hanyl, I guess we’d best be about it before the Master-Armsman thinks of something else for us to do.”

Chan Byral smiled and sent his unicorn pacing forward.

Behind him, the rest of the column was closing up with remarkable speed, given the weather conditions and terrain. The Portal Authority wagons, floating on the dwindling Arcanan levitation spells, had moved through the treacherous, burned out, snow-covered forest with an ease the Sharonians still found profoundly unnatural. Welcome, yes, but
definitely
unnatural.

From Namir Velvelig’s perspective, those levitation spells had offered another advantage. The passage of so many unicorns had churned the snow badly enough, but not to the same extent wagons would have under normal circumstances. Given the current heavy snowfall, the traces of their journey between portals should be completely obscured by dawn. He hoped so, anyway. He had a suspicion that tracks in the snow would be glaringly visible to an aerial observer once the clouds broke, and the last thing he wanted were any arrows pointing in the direction of their flight.

Platoon-Captain Sedryk Tobar and Platoon-Captain chan Brano, the most junior of his four surviving line officers, brought up the rear. None of the Arcanans had commented on the fact that their column’s rearguard was solidly Sharonian, or on the fact that Company-Captain Halath-Shodach and Platoon-Captain Larkal just happened to be commanding the scout parties on either flank for tonight’s march. To be honest, he wouldn’t have expected them to complain about it, but he’d seen no sign of
silent
resentment on their part, either. He doubted very many of them could have failed to understand why Tobar and chan Brano were keeping an eye on things, but rather than resenting it, what he’d seen the most evidence of was satisfaction. They knew what would happen to them if they fell into the wrong hands, and they were strongly in favor of anything likely to prevent that from happening.

Now the regiment-captain watched through the portal as Harnak and chan Byral rode into the humid, blessedly warm rain forest and paused. Not for the first time he wished they had at least one Plotter, although a rain forest was probably so stuffed with living critters as to knock any Plotter’s reach back to little more than range of sight. He also would have liked to send chan Byral through the portal’s other aspect, as well, to let him get a good Look around the huge blind spot it created, but they didn’t have enough time for that.

Several minutes passed. Then chan Byral’s unicorn came trotting back across into Hell’s Gate.

“I don’t See anything I shouldn’t, Sir,” he told Velvelig with a salute. “I’m not saying there isn’t anything out there—just that if there is, it’s well enough hidden I’m not going to pick it up in the dark. There’s no sign of any Arcanan pickets, anyway.”

“I suppose that’s the best we’re going to get,” the regiment-captain said simply. “Let’s go.”

He touched his unicorn with his heel and started across the interface between universes. The air grew steadily warmer as he approached the actual portal; by the time he crossed it, he was shedding his gloves, unbuttoning his heavy coat, and already sweating heavily. Not that he had any intention of complaining.

The damp, powerful, earthy smells of riotous vegetation enveloped him, and the sound of night birds and gods only knew what other night-roaming creatures filled the darkness with a welcome chorus of living things. After the cold winter weather of their journey, the sudden flood of noise was as welcome as the gentle breeze stirring the night and he drew rein to remove his coat completely and hang it on the pommel of his saddle while he turned and watched the rest of the column follow him into the nameless universe.

He couldn’t see much, and all he really knew about this particular universe was that the portal
probably
opened somewhere in the Dalazan Rain Forest. There’d been no time for any further exploration before everything went to hell, which meant that probability had never been definitively confirmed. They’d probably get a chance to do something about that, assuming they could find another break in the overhead canopy and establish exactly when local noon occurred. The PAAF was as accustomed to taking noon sights to establish latitude and longitude as any mariner, for obvious reasons. The problem would be finding the aforesaid break. The area immediately around the portal was choked with thick, luxuriant herbaceous varieties: vines, leafy ferns, low-growing shrubbery. Clearly something—possibly the formation of the portal itself—had killed back the towering hundred-foot high trees beyond that tangle and let in the sunlight which had created such an explosion of growth. He had no intention of hanging about this close to the portal, however, and once they’d gotten a few hundred yards further in-universe, they’d be back in typical triple-canopy jungle, where undergrowth was blessedly uncommon and the sun and stars were seldom seen.

The column flowed past him, not without difficulty given the thickness of the ground cover. Even the floating wagons found the going difficult. The vegetation was dense enough—and tall enough—to catch at their wheels as they floated over it, and even if it hadn’t been, the draft animals had to work hard to force their own way forward, far less haul the wagons with them. Velvelig was trying very hard not to glower at the column’s glacial progress when one of Platoon-Captain Zynach Larkal’s men trotted up to him.

“There’s some sort of game trail to the east, Sir,” Armsman 1/c Shalsan Thykyl reported, and Velvelig wasn’t even tempted to ask how he could be so sure of that in the dark. Thykyl was the best of the 127th Regiment’s scouts and the finest hunter Namir Velvelig had ever seen anywhere. If he said there was a game trail, there was a game trail.

“Is it wide enough for these damned wagons?”

“’Pears to be, Sir.” Thykyl turned in the saddle to point back the way he’d come. “Wouldn’t be if they had to run on their wheels, but on the Arcanans’ crystals the unicorns should be able to get ’em through. There’s a nasty steep ridge up there ahead of us, too. Trail looks like our best way up it.” He turned back with a smile. “Always trust animals to find the easy way, I say, Sir.”

“Or the easi
est
way, at least,” Velvelig agreed. “All right. Go find Master-Armsman Karuk and tell him we’re changing course. Then show him this trail of yours.”

“Yes, Sir.” Thykyl saluted and sent his unicorn in search of the master-armsman singular while Velvelig moved back to the very edge of the portal to halt the rest of the column until they got its head straightened out.

* * *

“Well thank Hali Thykyl found that trail,” Therman Ulthar said with profound gratitude.

He rode once again at Regiment-Captain Velvelig’s side, as the weary column reassembled itself back into a semblance of order behind them. There’d been times while they wrestled the wagons through the undergrowth—even with the game trail, that had been no picnic—when Ulthar had entertained serious doubts about the practicality of using this universe as their refuge. Dense jungle might be as ideal for evading pursuers as Velvelig said it was, but one had to get
to
it first and it had seemed unlikely the wagons would let them do that.

The game trail had made it possible, but no one in his right mind would have called the task easy. Once or twice, he’d been tempted to suggest simply abandoning their vehicles. The thought of leaving behind all of the Sharonian weapons and ammunition they’d hauled with them—especially the mortars and machine guns—had been unpalatable, but they probably could have packed the truly essential supplies on unicornback. Of course, leaving the wagons just inside the portal would also have been a dead giveaway to anyone looking for them who happened to glance this way, and there were plenty of things in those wagons which might not be truly essential but were certainly very good to have along. So it was fortunate they hadn’t had to abandon anything after all.