The Road to Hell

Chapter Four

December 8

The magnificent imperial Ternathian peregrine gave a shrill cry of disapproval, spread her four-foot wings, and launched from the saddle-mounted perch. She soared effortlessly into the clean blue sky, and Regiment-Captain Rof chan Skrithik looked enviously after her. There was more than a touch of sorrow in that envy, an aching grief for the death of a prince which had brought him and Taleena together, yet there was also a fierce joy as he watched her spiraling higher and higher against the cloudless blue.

Unfortunately, it was far from cloudless at ground level, and chan Skrithik tried to be philosophical about that as he climbed down from his horse, handed the reins to an under-armsman, and made his way through the incredible racket and blowing wall of dust towards the officer who stood waiting for him.

Regiment-Captain Lyskar chan Serahlyk was a tallish man, only an inch or two shorter than chan Skrithik himself, and although he’d been born in Teramandor and spoke with a distinct Teramandoran accent, he had the tightly curled hair and dark complexion of his Ricathian father. Of course, the dust rolling steadily eastward on the permanent, powerful wind from the Karys Portal to coat everything in sight made it difficult to judge anyone’s skin color just at the moment. It was ironic, really. Given the mechanics of portal dynamics, the dust cloud-laced with coal smoke from the heavy equipment helping to spawn it-blew steadily east and west here in Traisum, away from the portal in both directions like two fog banks fleeing from one another, which meant there was no way to approach the portal without getting grit blasted between one’s teeth.

Chan Skrithik tied a bandanna to cover his nose and mouth as he walked, and chan Serahlyk’s eyes narrowed in amusement above a matching, dust-caked bandanna. The unseasonably hot weather-for a Shurkhali winter, at least-had finally broken, which was a vast relief. Now if only there’d been anything remotely like rain on the horizon from either side of the portal…

“Good morning, Rof,” the Third Dragoons’ senior engineer said as soon as chan Skrithik was close enough to hear anything through the background din. He still had to raise his voice, but at least they could talk without shouting.

“Good morning,” chan Skrithik acknowledged, reaching out to clasp forearms. “Seen any dragons lately?”

Chan Serahlyk chuckled. It was a serious question, but like most Sharonians, he still found the notion of dragons absurd, despite the fact that his combat engineers had helped to bury the last of the rotting carcasses.

“Not today,” he said. “Haven’t seen any since that little problem they ran into last week, as a matter of fact.”

The engineer’s voice was grimly satisfied, and chan Skrithik smiled in satisfaction of his own. The Karys aspect of the Traisum-Karys Portal was four and a half miles across but the entire portal was relatively low-lying, especially from its Traisum aspect. On that side, it was buried-literally-in the heart of the Ithal Mountains, which reached altitudes of over six thousand feet. Getting to it was difficult from ground level, yet it could be done, as the existence of the Traisum Cut indicated. Approaching that aspect from the west, the terrain was even more challenging than from the east.

The Trans-Temporal Express-and the Imperial Ternathian Army and Imperial Corps of Engineers-had dealt with lots of rough terrain over the centuries, however. Division-Captain chan Geraith had made dealing with this particular rough terrain an urgent priority, and Olvyr Banchu had dipped into his copious supply of bulldozers and earthmoving machinery to help chan Serahlyk’s 123rd Combat Engineers with their task.

Elevations on opposite sides of portals seldom aligned anything like neatly, and this one was no exception. On the Karys side, the Queriz Depression was over a hundred feet below sea level, which explained the unending wind blowing through from the higher air pressure on that side of it. The portal was also both wider and higher in Karys, where it rose to a height of over four miles above ground level. On the Traisum side, because so much more of its circular diameter was underground, the portal was barely a mile and a half across and its highest point cleared Mount Karek’s summit by less than twenty-four hundred feet. Given the mountain’s slope and the fact that the portal was somewhat east of its crest, the portal reached to a point about thirty-six hundred feet above local ground level, while its apex was effectively between one and two hundred yards lower than that from the west.

Thirty-six hundred feet-twelve hundred yards-was well within the maximum range of the Model 10 rifle, but the Model 10’s effective range was only about eight hundred yards, although trained snipers with telescopic sights could score killing hits at twice that range. The twin-barreled, crank-driven Faraika I machine gun fired exactly the same round, and although its ballistics were a little better than the rifle’s due to its heavier, longer barrel, its accuracy in aimed fire was poorer, giving it approximately the same effective range. The heavier Faraika II, with its massive.54 caliber bullet, had slightly less maximum range than the Faraika I, but its effective range was actually greater: over fifteen hundred yards. That range would be reduced firing vertically because of gravity, but the Faraika II should still be able to reach thirty-three hundred feet.

Fatigue parties armed with mattocks and shovels had hacked machine gun and rifle pits into Mount Karek’s recalcitrant soil on either side of the portal even before chan Serahlyk and Banchu’s bulldozers-assisted by liberal applications of dynamite-had gouged out proper approach roads. They couldn’t be provided with overhead cover if the weapons in them were going to have sufficient elevation to cover the portal’s airspace against the Arcanan dragons, but judging from the attack on Fort Salby, the heavy machine guns outranged the dragons’ weapons significantly. Nonetheless, chan Geraith had regarded rifles and machine guns as a purely interim stopgap until better arrangements could be made, which was precisely what chan Serahlyk was doing at the moment. His engineers were emplacing dozens of two-point-five inch Yerthak pedestal guns in permanent concrete-footed and protected positions placed to sweep the portal faces. The four-barreled Yerthaks had become at best obsolescent in their designed role as light anti-torpedo boat weapons for the Navy’s capital ships, but they had a maximum range of over six thousand yards and a vertical range of twenty-four hundred. They also had a peak firing rate of forty-five rounds per minute, and if their explosive six-pound shells were too light to stop warships, the Arcanans had discovered the hard way what they could do to dragons.

If there’d been any doubt in their minds on that point, it had probably been resolved last week when a trio of dragons attempted to pass through from Karys. One of them had slammed to earth less than half a mile east of the portal, killing its pilot and nine of the twelve Arcanan infantry aboard when it crashed. A second, obviously badly wounded had made it back through the portal despite a savagely shredded wing. It had plunged through the opening in obvious distress and clearly out of control, yet somehow avoided plummeting to earth-undoubtedly thanks to yet another of the Arcanans’ unnatural magical spells-and staggered in to a clumsy, just-short-of-disaster landing. The third, made wise by its companions’ misfortune, had wheeled and fled before it ever crossed the portal threshold into the Yerthaks’ range.

Ultimately, the pedestal guns would be augmented or even completely replaced by the heavier “Ternathian 37.” Formally the Cannon of 5037, from the year of its introduction, the 3.4 inch weapon was the most deadly field gun in the world, using cased ammunition and firing a nineteen-pound shell at a maximum rate of twenty rounds per minute. It had been in service less than twenty years, but the “37’s” reputation for reliability, toughness, and lethality had already attained legendary proportions. The Model 1, the lightweight version designed for high mobility with mounted units like the 3rd Dragoons, had an effective range of nine thousand yards; the Model 2, with a split trail to permit greater elevation and a slightly longer barrel, could reach eleven thousand. First Brigade’s artillery had been reinforced when it was dispatched from Sharona, and Division-Captain chan Geraith had peeled off enough of its guns to cover both sides of the portal. Figuring out how to mount even the handy 37 to engage rapidly moving aerial targets offered a nontrivial challenge, but chan Skrithik was confident the Imperial Ternathian Army’s artillerists were up to the task, and Windlord Garsal had already demonstrated what shrapnel shells could do to dragons.

On the other hand…

“What about eagle-lions?” he asked, and chan Serahlyk grimaced.

“They got one of those through yesterday,” he acknowledged sourly, “but the sniper teams bring down about half of them, and it doesn’t look like the bastards have an unlimited supply of the things. They seem to be getting more sensitive to losses, anyway. I just wish we knew why they’re sending them through.”

Chan Skrithik nodded, although he suspected Battalion-Captain chan Gayrahn was probably right about that. Since the eagle-lions weren’t attacking anyone and instead seemed content to fly high overhead, chan Gayrahn had suggested they were probably carrying out reconnaissance, and that was a very unhappy thought. The observation balloons in use in Sharona for decades hugely extended visual horizons, and only someone who’d ascended in one could begin to imagine how much detail could be made out from them. No one knew how intelligent the eagle-lions might be, either, or if there was some Arcanan equivalent of the Animal Speaker Talent. There might well be, however, and if an eagle-lion was remotely as intelligent as a dolphin or porpoise, the creatures could be bringing back more detail than anyone could wish.

“Well,” he said philosophically, turning beside chan Serahlyk as the two of them considered another dust-spewing worksite about a mile further east, “I doubt getting a handful of eagle-lions past us will tell them all that much about the Division-Captain’s plans.”

* * *

It was, perhaps, as well for Commander of Two Thousand Mayrkos Harshu’s blood pressure that he was unable to overhear chan Skrithik’s observation as he and Klayrman Toralk stood on opposite sides of the floating map table, with Commander of Five Hundred Mahrkrai, Harshu’s chief of staff, to one side. At the moment, a selection of imagery from a gryphon reconnaissance crystal was playing out on that table, and Harshu’s expression was not a happy one.

The current selection ended, and the two thousand looked up at Mahrkrai.

“That’s it?” he asked.

“I believe it covers all the salient points, Sir.” The chief of staff’s oddly colorless eyes met Harshu’s steadily. “There are several hours of total imagery,” he continued, “and I’ve got the analysts going back over it to see if we missed anything on the first run, but I doubt young Brychar did.”

Harshu’s acknowledging nod was more than a bit brusque, but not because he disagreed with Mahrkrai. Commander of One Hundred Brychar Tamdaran was very young indeed-less than half Harshu’s age-and one of the relatively rare Ransarans in the Union of Arcana’s armed forces. At the moment, he was none too happy with his two thousand’s decision to wink at Alivar Neshok’s interrogation methods. Tamdaran didn’t know everything Neshok had been up to-Neshok (and Harshu) had kept his operations tightly compartmentalized on a need-to-know basis-but he’d heard more than enough rumors to write up a formal protest, even though he was obviously aware Harshu had tacitly approved the five hundred’s actions. That was going to make things even more difficult in the fullness of time, but that was nothing the two thousand hadn’t bargained on from the beginning, and he didn’t blame the boy. He was rather proud of him, actually.

And however disapproving Tamdaran might be, he was also good at his job. In fact, he’d been responsible for the spellware which allowed his intelligence section to scan captured Sharonian printed maps into properly formatted files and generate accurately scaled and oriented paperless versions. And he also had the patience to wade through hours of recorded images looking for the one key element which might tell Harshu what the Sharonians were up to.

Aside from “no good,” that is, Toralk thought sourly. I think we can count on that much being true, at least.

“Tamdaran’s sure about their ‘trains’?” Harshu asked after a moment. “I’d be a lot happier if we had clear imagery of that.”

“The Sharonians’ve gotten damned good at taking out gryphons that come in too low, Sir,” Toralk replied before Mahrkrai could respond. Harshu’s eyes flicked to him, and the Air Force officer grimaced. “I suspect they’re wasting a lot more ammunition than we realize on each gryphon they nail, but they appear to have unlimited quantities of it. And, frankly, the cupboard’s pretty close to bare where recon gryphons are concerned. We didn’t have anywhere near as many of them as of the strike gryphons when we started out, and we’ve been losing more than we’d expected to from the outset. I’ve instructed the handlers to do what they can to hold down additional losses, and they’ve gotten more cautious about altitudes and evasive routing as a result. I’m afraid it’s costing us resolution and detail, but if we send them in for close passes, we’ll lose our long-range eyes completely in painfully short order.”

“That wasn’t a criticism, Klayrman,” Harshu said-rather mildly for him. “I do wish we had clearer, more definitive imagery, but I’m not in favor of running any more risks with our reconnaissance assets than we have to.”

“Understood, Sir.”

“Are we sure we’re actually losing them to Sharonian fire?” the two thousand asked, raising one eyebrow, and Toralk sighed.

“No, Sir,” he admitted. “But we’re not sure we aren’t, either. Hundred Kormas and the other handlers are still unhappy about their control spells, and Kormas says he suspects at least some of the attack gryphons broke guidance in the attack on Fort Salby. Unfortunately, we don’t have any evidence to prove or disprove the possibility. The strike evaluation crystals on the ones that came back don’t show any evidence of it, but they wouldn’t, since all of them came back, whatever others might have done. We almost lost an enlisted handler day before yesterday, though.”

“Spellware failure?” Harshu’s eyes had sharpened, and Toralk nodded.

“That’s what it looks like, I’m afraid. The safety team put the gryphon down before it could do serious damage-well, damage too serious for the Healers to put right, at least-so we can’t be positive. Forensics didn’t show any holes in the control spells, though, and the crystal itself tests clean, so we don’t have anything concrete we can point to. And the recon gryphons are all females. That means they’re less aggressive and at least a little smarter than the strike gryphons”

“Wonderful,” Harshu grunted.

He looked back down at the map table, using his stylus to page back through the imagery selections until he found the overhead of the Sharonian rail sidings. It was a low-angle shot from farther away than he could have wished, and no one on the Arcanan side was familiar enough with the Sharonians’ “railroad trains” for him to feel truly comfortable with Tamdaran’s interpretation, but the hundred was probably right.

He was certainly right that the massive trainloads of construction machinery Harshu had allowed the Sharonians to retrieve from Karys had disappeared, and that was one of many things contributing to the two thousand’s unhappiness. He’d come to the conclusion he’d made a mistake there, especially after successive gryphon overflights of the thickening portal defenses showed just how rapidly the Sharonians could push construction projects without the spell-powered tools Arcanans would have used. It seemed those heavy earthmoving machines and gods-only-knew-what other equipment were going to prove far more useful to his adversaries than he’d imagined. If he was right about that, and if he’d been in the shoes of Division-Captain chan Geraith, who’d assumed command in Traisum, he’d have kept it handy…unless he’d had something even more important for it to be doing someplace else.

On the one hand, the work trains had used up a lot of the available sidings, and it wasn’t as if they were sliders that could be shunted off the track and parked until they were needed. Given that, it only made sense for the Sharonians to clear as much space as possible for the additional loads of troops and weapons which were undoubtedly headed his way. On the other hand…

I can think of at least one other good reason for them to be elsewhere-like working to increase their supply line capability behind Salbyton, for example, he thought grimly. He’d come to the conclusion that their captured maps were less accurate-or up to date, at least-than he’d initially hoped, for the rail line up-chain from Fort Salby was double-tracked rather than the single-track they showed. His recon flights had gotten that much info for them at least. That meant he had even less of an idea of his opponents’ logistics capability than he’d thought he did. And whatever they’re capable of, the bastards can always make them better. That has to’ve been true of every military commander in history! So that’s probably what those work trains are doing right this minute, Shartahk take them.

That was not a happy thought, but at least as long as he kept the cork firmly in the Traisum Cut, all the specialized railroad-building machinery in the multiverse wasn’t going to do them a great deal of good right here and now.

And it wasn’t as if they hadn’t unloaded quite a lot of nonspecialized machinery before the work trains pulled out, he acknowledged glumly.

He’d vastly underestimated the extent to which Sharonian weapons could deny portal access on the Traisum side, and from the look of things, that was going to get even worse. The rotating cannons which had wreaked such carnage on Toralk’s dragons in the attack on Fort Salby were bad enough, more than sufficient to make the notion of sending SpecOps raiding forces through to Traisum suicidal. It was unfortunate he hadn’t realized that sooner, and he couldn’t pretend Toralk hadn’t warned him before last week’s fiasco. Unless he missed his guess, though, the longer, heavier weapons the Sharonians were busy digging in on either side of the portal-the ones their prisoners had called “37s”-were going to be even worse.

Bad as that was, though, there was potentially much worse, and he zoomed in for a close-up of the positions the Sharonians were working on well back from the portal. Those were some really enormous “guns,” with differences from the only ones any Arcanan had ever observed that he didn’t begin to understand, and they worried him. They worried him a lot, because he rather doubted they were being put into place to shoot the Sharonians’ own men. That implied the Sharonians expected to fire them through the portal, and they were over three miles from the portal. Admittedly, they obviously needed to be emplaced on fairly flat ground, of which here was very little any closer to the portal, but that still suggested an awesome maximum range. It also suggested the Sharonians might well be able to lay down heavier fire than his most pessimistic assumptions had allowed for in support of any attack down the Cut. The only good thing about it was that those massive weapons obviously were nowhere near as mobile as the “field guns” and “mortars” his men had already encountered.

And even if they could bring that heavier fire to bear…

“Where the hells did they all go?” he murmured.

“I beg your pardon, Sir?” Mahrkrai asked.

“Eh?” Harshu looked up, then realized he’d spoken aloud and shrugged. “Where did that first trainload of Sharonians go?” He tapped the tabletop image in front of him. “This is an entirely different train, Herak. Look-it doesn’t even have the same number of ‘locomotives’ on the front.”

“No, Sir,” Mahrkrai agreed.

“I know you and Tamdaran are right in at least one respect, Klayrman,” the two thousand said, turning his attention to the Air Force officer. “They can’t send individual sliders down those railroads of theirs the way we could, so obviously they have to turn around entire trains. And they can’t have an unlimited number of cars and locomotives out here at the arse-end of nowhere any more than we’ve got a slider line running right up to our backdoor. So it makes sense for them to have sent that lead train back up the line for another load. But where did all the men who were on it go?”

“I’m not sure they went anywhere, Sir,” Toralk replied. “They’ve got work parties out all over the place, obviously building a very substantial permanent encampment. And there’s an entire tent city over here to the southeast.” He used his own stylus to bring up the relevant imagery. “There’s more than enough tentage to cover two or three thousand men, and we still don’t have any clear idea how many men they have in one of their ‘brigades.’”

“That’s true, Sir,” Mahrkrai acknowledged. “We haven’t seen a lot of men coming and going from those tents, though.”

“And we haven’t been able to keep them under anything like continuous observation, either,” Toralk pointed out.

“I’d feel happier if we had been able to,” Harshu said sourly. “I don’t like not being able to count noses on the primary enemy force in our front.”

“There’s been one possibility playing around in the back of my mind,” Mahrkrai said thoughtfully. “Were you ever stationed in Farsh Danuth, Sir?”

“No.” Harshu looked at him. “Never wanted to be, either.” He grimaced. “I’ve been through the region a couple of times, but I was never actually stationed there, thank Graholis!”

Farsh Danuth was an ancient kingdom lying between the Farshian Sea in the west, the Tankara Gulf in the east, the Shansir Mountains in the northwest, and the Urdanha Mountains in the northeast. It was also the product of ancient Mythalan conquest across Mythal’s Stool, the triangular peninsula between the Hyrythian and Farshian Seas. As such, the kingdom had served as the buffer zone-and flashpoint-for hostility between Mythal and Ransar for centuries. Perhaps as a result, it was almost rabidly Mythalan in population, societal institutions, and attitudes, and Andarans were seldom made to feel welcome within its borders.

“Well, this portal’s up in the Hanahk Mountains west of Selkhara,” Mahrkrai said, “and there’s not a lot of grazing in the vicinity. Fort Salby’s farther east, on the edge of the Selkhara Oasis, and the grass is probably at least a little better there-it certainly is back home, at any rate, although the portal wind from Karys probably makes the local climate even worse. At any rate, what I’ve been thinking is that this is a dragoon brigade, according to all our information, and that means it has a lot of horses. And horses eat a lot. So if they aren’t planning on launching some sort of cavalry charge down the Cut, it would make sense for them to’ve pulled their horses back along the rail line to somewhere they can supplement fodder with grazing. Gods know we’re having enough trouble keeping our cavalry fed, and their horses don’t have the advantage of augmentation.”

“And if they’ve pulled the horses back,” Harshu said thoughtfully, “it would be logical to pull back the riders, as well, aside from whatever they thought they’d need to keep us from breaking through and hitting Fort Salby again.”

“It would ease the strain on local water supplies, too, Sir,” Mahrkrai pointed out.

“That’s true,” Toralk said, gazing down at the imagery before them, “and it makes a lot of sense. On the other hand, I’m beginning to wonder if they actually had as many men close enough to the front to get them here in the time window as Five Hundred Neshok’s interrogations suggested they could.”

The other two looked at him, and the Air Force officer shrugged.

“I’m not suggesting his…interrogation subjects were able to fool the verifier spells,” he said, unable to quite hide his distasteful tone, “but none of them ever had hard and fast confirmation of exactly what was coming down this railroad line of theirs to reinforce them. All they had was rumors, and gods know we’ve all heard enough wish-fulfillment rumors in our careers! Maybe the Sharonians were caught even more off-balance than we thought. More off-balance than the Sharonians between Hell’s Gate and Traisum thought they were. If so, and especially if they’re even shorter on railroad trains on this side of the Hayth water gap than we’ve been estimating, they may have sent a lot fewer men in the first echelon than we’d originally allowed for and they could be spending more time running the trains they do have back and forth.”

“I suppose that’s always possible, too,” Harshu said after a moment, pursing his lips as he considered it. “I don’t think it’s something we should count on, though. Especially since they obviously did manage to get these”-he tapped the outsized artillery pieces the Sharonians were busily digging in-“all the way up here. Neshok’s reports all indicate the Sharonians have cannon even they consider ‘heavy artillery,’ but that weapons that heavy aren’t normally attached to their maneuver formations. Especially not to their dragoons, since they don’t have levitation spells or-as Harek’s just pointed out about their cavalry-the kind of augmented draft animals we do, either. So if they can dip into their larger formations’ artillery and get it this far forward, it seems unlikely they couldn’t get infantry and cavalry forward at least as rapidly.”

“Agreed, Sir.” Toralk nodded. “And I’m not suggesting we make any plans based on an assumption that they didn’t get just as many men moved up to Fort Salby as we expected them to. On the other hand, we still haven’t gotten a recon gryphon close enough for a really good look at those big guns, either. It’s always possible they’re running a bluff-that these are actually dummy weapons the Sharonians are so busy digging in where we can see them because they haven’t been able to move up enough men to feel confident of holding a heavy attack. For all we know, they could be the sorts of things we might cobble up with camouflage spells. We haven’t seen any sign of that out of them yet, but gods only know what these Talents of theirs are capable of.”

“That’s true enough,” Harshu said even more sourly. “Of course, whether they’re really there or not, we’re still on the wrong end of an awful solid cork as far as any further advances are concerned.”

“The cork’s just as bad from their side,” Mahrkrai pointed out. “In fact, it’s a lot worse. They may be digging in to keep us from getting dragons through the portal, Sir, but they don’t have any dragons to put through in the first place! Trying to fight their way out of the Cut would be a nightmare, and the demolition spells are already in place to take out the rails-and the Cut-if they try. For that matter, even if those heavy guns of theirs are real, and even if they have the ability to reach four or five miles this side of the portal, all we have to do is fall back outside whatever their range is and start picking them apart from the air.”

“We’d need more battle dragons for that,” Toralk pointed out. “And what the dragons can do isn’t going to take them by surprise. Not again.”

“No, and they’ll undoubtedly factor the possibilities of air mobility into their thinking, at least as well as they can,” Harshu observed thoughtfully. “But how well can they factor it in without their own dragons to use as a measuring stick? And even if they manage to extrapolate a lot more accurately than I suspect they can, based on what they’ve seen so far, they can’t change the constraints their lack of air mobility imposes. Once they’re this side of the portal, we can circle as wide as we need to to get around behind them instead of trying to stuff your tactical and transport dragons through the mouth of a jar, Klayrman. We’ll be able to get at their lines of communication without running the gauntlet of those rotating cannon. In fact, the farther into Karys they advance, the more vulnerable they’ll make themselves.”

“Are you thinking about falling back from the Cut, Sir? Giving them a free pass into Karys?” Toralk asked.

“Oh, no! Keeping them out of Karys in the first place, at least until we’re properly reinforced, is a lot better idea. And one thing they’ve already demonstrated is that they aren’t idiots, Klayrman! If we were to suddenly and obligingly let them through the Cut without a fight, they’d have to wonder why we were being so helpful. I’m just saying that if they do decide to come after us, and if they do manage somehow to break out of the Cut, we’ll be able to hurt them a lot more badly than they may realize.”

He smiled almost whimsically.

“I’d like that,” he said. “I’d like that a lot.”