The Road to Hell - eARC (68 page)

Well, we’ll just have to go on hoping they haven’t and operating on the worst-case assumption that they
have…
or will sometime very soon now, at any rate
, he thought.

“I’ll want to pass a formal message down-chain to Battalion-Captain chan Yahndar and the Company-Captain after breakfast,” he said out loud, and chan Korthal nodded, making a mental note to remind his superior in the extremely unlikely event that chan Geraith forgot.

“In the meantime,” the division-captain went on, “I assume Master Yanusa-Mahrdissa’s been his usual efficient self and updated our vehicle availability numbers?”

“Yes, Sir.”

“In that case, if you’ll step into my office,” chan Geraith twitched his head in the direction of t his headquarters Mule, “we’ll just get out of the cold and enjoy a mug of hot tea while you bring me up to date on that.”

Chapter Thirty-Nine

March 17

“Sir, I’m thinking you’d best hear this.”

Grithair chan Mahsdyr looked up at Senior-Armsman chan Golar from the sustaining (but not very appetizing) ration can of lima beans and yellow corn. Under normal circumstances, he would have been pleased by any excuse to divert his attention from its overcooked contents, but chan Golar’s expression wasn’t that of a man who’d come to exchange idle pleasantries.

“Hear what, Tersak?” the company-captain said, mess kit fork still in hand. He swallowed and pointed the fork at the young junior-armsman at the senior-armsman’s heels. “Should I assume I won’t like whatever chan Ynclair has to tell me?”

“Probably not, Sir,” chan Golar replied.

“In that case, Ignathar, you might as well get started.” He stuck the fork into the can and set it aside. “Whatever it is, at least it’ll distract me from lunch!”

Chan Ynclair smiled at the company-captain’s tone, but his eyes were serious.

“Tairkyn got close enough to the portal for a good Plot, Sir,” he said, and chan Mahsdyr’s lips tightened.

“And when he did, he found something, right?”

“Right, I’m afraid, Sir.”

“And did you get close enough to See what he’d Plotted?”

“Yes, Sir.”

“Well, don’t make me pull it out of you one ‘Yes, Sir,’ at a time?” chan Mahsdyr said a bit tartly.

“Sorry, Sir. We didn’t See anything on this side of the portal, so we crossed the threshold to take a look at Fort Rensar. Once we were over the threshold, Tairkyn got a good Plot and told me he’d picked up forty or fifty men, a couple of dozen of those unicorn things of theirs, and something he’d never Plotted before, so I took a look. I make it forty-five men, ten of their unicorns, and a coop full of what I guess are those ‘hummers’ you’ve had us looking for. Well, ‘a coop full’ is probably a bit of an overstatement. There’re only six of them.”

“Wonderful.” Chan Mahsdyr sat back on the rock he was using as a chair and gazed sourly for several long, thoughtful moments into the small fire over which he’d heated his unappetizing meal. Chan Golar and chan Ynclair stood waiting patiently until he looked back up at them once more.

“Are they parked in Fort Rensar?” he asked.

“Not exactly, Sir. Looks like the fort burned to the ground when the Arcanans came through. These boys’re camped out on the hill behind it.”

“Camped out this time of year?” Chan Mahsdyr smiled nastily. “They’re actually under canvas?”

“Yes, Sir, they are. And they don’t seem too happy about it, either.”

“Can’t blame them for that, Sir,” chan Golar put in. Chan Mahsdyr glanced at him, and the senior-armsman’s expression was sour. “Not ’s bad as it was crossing Naisom, Sir, but I still wouldn’t half like spending the winter under canvas in these parts. Unless these bastards have some kind of magic windproof tent!”

“That they don’t, Senior-Armsman,” chan Ynclair said. “They do have some of those glowing rocks they use instead of fires, but these are some
very
unhappy troopers, and I don’t think blue’s their natural color.”

“Well, that’s nice to know, anyway,” chan Mahsdyr said thoughtfully. He scratched his chin, then looked up at chan Golar.

“Go find Platoon-Captain chan Sabyr, Tersak. I think this might be right up First Platoon’s alley. And tell him I think we’ll need chan Gyulair.”

“Yes, Sir!” Chan Golar’s eyes gleamed with satisfaction as he touched his chest in salute and turned on his heel. As the senior-armsman headed off through the damp chill, chan Mahsdyr turned his attention back to chan Ynclair.

“And while the Senior-Armsman’s doing that, Ignathar, you can start drawing me a sketch map.”

* * *

“What a sorry-arsed collection of fuck ups,” Armsman 1/c Fozak chan Gyulair observed. “Bastards’re acting like they didn’t have an enemy in the world!”

“Sort of the point to our having snuck up on them, Fozzy,” Armsman Wendyr chan Jethos replied. He lay on his belly beside chan Gyulair on a hilltop just over a mile east of the Tyrahl River, peering down through powerful field glasses at the burned out shell of what had been a Portal Authority fort. The fort had been built on moderately high ground between their present position and the eastern bank of the river, far enough above the normal water level to keep its garrison’s feet dry during the spring floods. The enormous arc of the portal connecting this universe to universe of Thermyn towered above them, effortlessly dominating the entire horizon. It was three hours earlier on the Thermyn side of the portal, and that vast arc was still purple with the light of early dawn. Its extreme northern end crossed the riverbed at an angle to their left, just south of the roughly two mile-long island below the ruined fort. It was unusual for a portal to actually intersect the course of a major river. For all the blue lines crawling across any topographical map,
major
streams were relatively few in number compared to the amount of space in which a portal might appear. When they did intersect, however, interesting things could happen. In this instance, the mile-wide Tyrahl simply poured itself into the portal and disappeared, leaving its bed downstream from the portal dry and empty. It also created a trans-universal river on the Thermyn side, where it met—and just about doubled the flow of—the Sand Rock River about eight miles south-southwest of Chindar.

The bed didn’t stay empty forever on the Nairsom side, of course. The Tyrahl was the longest river in all of New Ternath, longer even than the mighty Vandor which flowed all the way from the Inland Seas to the Gulf of Cordara. A riverbed that long, draining that much watershed, could always find enough water to resurrect itself over the six or seven hundred miles from their current location to the Vandor. Still, it was impressive to watch that much water go pouring from one universe to another. And the fact that the riverbed was dry vastly simplified the problem of how to get the company—and the rest of 3rd Dragoons—across it when the time came.

Their attention wasn’t on the river just now, though.

“Looks like Ignathar’s sketch was just about perfect,” chan Jethos went on, rising on his elbows as he swept his field glasses across the encampment. Unlike his partner, he was no Distance Viewer. He
was
a very powerful Plotter, however. “I See the coops for their ‘hummers’ about fifty yards due east of their bivouac. Got ’em?”

“Got ’em,” chan Gyulair confirmed in a grimmer, harder tone and smuggled down behind his big, bipod-mounted Mark 12 rifle. The weapon had a barrel just over thirty-four inches long and a double-set trigger. In trained hands it was capable of delivering a killing shot at over a thousand yards…and in
some
people’s hands, it could do the same thing at
two
thousand yards.

Fozak chan Gyulair had the hands—and the Talent—to take full advantage of his weapon’s capabilities.

“Don’t See anyone moving around near them at the moment,” chan Jethos continued, his voice taking on a faintly singsong note as he closed his physical eyes to focus more fully on his own Talent. He was chan Gyulair’s regular spotter, with a Talent which was relatively short ranged but capable of very fine degrees of discrimination over the range it had.

“Just let me know if that changes,” chan Gyulair said flatly.

* * *

“Who’s got lookout duty this afternoon?” Nyk Phiery asked.

He was the squad shield for 1st Squad, 2nd Platoon, C Company, 2nd Battalion, 451st Regiment, of the Union of Arcana Army, and he didn’t sound happy.

“That would be Dhugahl, I believe,” Sword Kilvyn Forstmir replied. “Why?”

“Because it’s an hour past chow time and no one’s relieved Jelmart and Vermahka. They’re getting a little
hungry
, Sword.”

Forstmir frowned, and not at the bite in Phiery’s voice. The 1st Squad leader did his best to keep his own people on their toes and sharp, just as Forstmir tried to do for the entire understrength platoon, but both of them were fighting—and losing—an uphill battle. It wasn’t surprising the platoon should feel thoroughly crapped on, stuck out here at the arse-end of nowhere and under canvas in the middle of a northern Yanko winter. It was the most miserable, godsforsaken assignment Forstmir had ever caught, and gods knew he’d caught more than a few in the course of his fifteen-year career. And it didn’t help that every member of the platoon knew Commander of One Hundred Thimanus Gorzalt, C Company’s CO, had chosen them for this blissful duty because he’d taken a profound dislike to Commander of Fifty Zakar Ustmyn.

Forstmir wasn’t supposed to know that, but it would be a cold day in Shartahk’s hell when a platoon sword didn’t know everything that might affect
his
platoon. Forstmir knew all about the feud between Gorzalt and Ustmyn. He also knew Thousand Carthos had left Gorzalt—who might most kindly be described as a bit of a dud as an officer—to keep an eye on the “backdoor” portal between Nairsom and New Uromath because he’d figured not even Gorzalt could do much harm stuck way out here. It wasn’t as if the dragon-less Sharonians were coming pouring through Nairsom anytime soon, after all, especially when they had their hands full with Two Thousand Harshu and the rest of the AEF in Traisum. Unfortunately, Gorzalt seemed to be aware of Carthos’ reasoning, and he resented the hells out of it. And, also unfortunately, Commander of Fifty Ustmyn was not the most socially adroit youngster to ever don the Union of Arcana’s uniform. In fact, he was pretty
mal
adroit, when you came down to it, and he’d managed to put his foot squarely on Gorzalt’s injured pride in an overheard conversation with one of the company’s other fifties.

Now, personally, Forstmir couldn’t fault Ustmyn’s opinion of their CO, but he wished to Seiknora that the fifty had been able to keep his mouth shut when Gorzalt was in hearing range. And, truth be told, the sword was more than a little pissed off with his own fifty at the moment, too. Zakar Ustmyn was only twenty-three, but he was generally serious about doing his job and did it one hell of a lot better than Gorzalt did his. At the moment, though, he was spending most of his time resenting Gorzalt’s decision to stick him out in the wreckage of the old Sharonian fort—under canvas—while the rest of the company not only enjoyed a much nicer (and far better sheltered) campsite on the local equivalent of the Jerdyn River, six miles away, but also monopolized the limited number of chansyu huts Thousand Carthos had left behind. In fact, Ustmyn was spending far more time resenting the unfairness of it all than thinking about his own responsibilities.

Forstmir didn’t mind kicking the platoon’s arse when it needed kicking. After all, everyone knew the senior noncoms actually ran the Army while the officers simply commanded it! But he did like to think that his own fifty had at least some notion of which arses needed kicking and why. At the moment, it appeared Ustmyn neither had nor wanted a clue about that. And there was always someone like Shield Mahk Dhugahl, 2nd Squad’s leader, who’d see just how far he could exploit a superior’s lack of interest.

“I’ll go kick Dhugahl’s arse up between his ears,” he told Phiery now. “Tell Jelmart and Vermahka that their reliefs’ll be on the way shortly.
Very
shortly.”

* * *

“Not a sound.” Junior-Armsman Saith chan Kilvaryk’s voice was barely audible, but none of 2nd Squad’s men had any trouble understanding him. “The Senior said he’d have your guts for boot laces if anybody gives this away, but I wouldn’t worry about him. First you’d have to live through what
I’ll
do to you.”

The squad nodded as one. They didn’t really think chan Kilvaryk would murder them out of hand…but they weren’t prepared to place any bets on that.

“All right,” the junior-armsman said after sweeping his dark eyes back and forth across them for several seconds. “Chan Nysik, a lot of this is on you. You need to get into position fast.”

“Gotcha, Junior.”

Chan Nysik was a couple of years older than chan Kilvaryk, and while he’d never had any ambition to rise above his present rank of Armsman 1/c, he was as solid and reliable as the rocky crags of his native Mulgethia’s mountains. He was also very tall and powerfully built. The Faraika machine-gun weighed over a hundred and twenty pounds, but he carried it with little apparent effort while his assistant made heavy going of its tripod, which weighed barely fifty. Now he gave chan Kilvaryk a lazy, confident smile.

“Don’t you worry, Junior,” he said. “Once Larthy and me are in position with old Maragleth”—he hefted the machine gun in his arms with a smile which showed a missing tooth—“ain’t none of them Arcanans getting past us.”

“Glad to hear it,” chan Kilvaryk said dryly. He gave his entire squad one more beady-eyed look, then jerked his head in a “follow me” gesture, turned on his heel, and started forward.

* * *

“I hope this works as well as I’ve convinced everyone else it will, Doc,” Grithair chan Mahsdyr muttered to the man beside him as his company moved forward.

Platoon-Captain Fezar chan Birhahl, Gold Company’s senior healer, snorted in amusement.

“Well, you certainly didn’t sound to me as if
you
had any doubts about it, Sir,” he said.

“Of course I didn’t!” Chan Mahsdyr shook his head. “First thing they teach you is to always
sound
like you know what you’re doing even if you don’t have a clue. In this case, I’m pretty sure I do have a clue. I’m just not sure what else I have.”

“Surprise, for one thing,” chan Birhahl replied much more seriously, and chan Mahsdyr grunted.

“Looks like it, anyway,” he acknowledged. “And that’s the most dangerous weapon there is, really, when you come down to it.”

Chan Birhahl was a healer, but he’d been around soldiers who
weren’t
healers long enough to understand exactly what the company-captain meant, and he nodded in agreement.

All the Distance Viewers attached to Gold Company agreed that both the Arcanans in the ruins of Fort Rensar and those in the far more substantial—and comfortable—permanent bivouac in the valley of the Graystone River showed absolutely no awareness that there were any Sharonians in their vicinity. It was remotely possible they knew all about Gold Company and were setting some sort of subtle trap based on yet another unknown magical ability, but it seemed unlikely. This was one of the times when chan Mahsdyr passionately wished that he had at least a touch of the Distance Viewer Talent himself and could have avoided the need to rely on the reports of the observations of others.