The Road to Hell - eARC Read online

  Still, Division-Captain Arlos chan Geraith reflected bleakly as he swiped yet again at the film of sweat on his forehead, at least the humidity was blessedly low. And hot as it might be today, it was cooler than it had been last week…in far too many ways.

  The division-captain lacked even a trace of Talent, which meant he’d been unable to directly experience any of the Voice reports and images of the Arcanan attack on Fort Salby, but he had a keen imagination and there was more than enough physical evidence of what had happened. The carcasses of flying creatures which could only be described as dragons from the most fearsome fairy tales had littered the landscape. The Trans-Temporal Express’s work crews had used steam shovels and bulldozers to bury them, but the damned things were so enormous—estimates ran to over forty tons, and he believed them—that the work crews had been forced to cut (and blast) them into smaller pieces they could handle. Then there’d been the bodies of the “eagle-lions” strewn across the fort’s burned and blasted parade ground, the enormous horses—like no horse chan Geraith had ever seen before—which had been killed in the assault on the fort’s eastern wall, and the charred ruin of a solid brick and adobe tower which had been pulverized by one of the plummeting dragons.

  And there were the row upon row of graves, including, he thought with a pang which had become familiar without becoming one bit less agonizing, the imperial crown prince who’d stayed to fight beside the fort’s defenders, knowing he would die, to warn them of what was coming.

  It was Arlos chan Geraith’s duty to see that none of those men had died in vain. Janaki chan Calirath had entrusted him with that responsibility, and he intended to meet it.

  “According to Lisar here,” he said, looking up from the map and nodding in the direction of Company-Captain Lisar chan Korthal, his staff Voice, “your heavy artillery should to be arriving by mid-week, Braykhan.”

  “Yes, Sir,” Regiment-Captain Braykhan chan Sayro replied with a small grimace. “I wish we were in a better position to make use of it.”

  “Patience, Braykhan. Patience!” Chan Geraith smiled grimly at his staff artillerist. “Your ‘cannon-cockers’ will have their chance. I promise.”

  Chan Sayro nodded, and chan Geraith turned his attention to Regiment-Captain Therahk chan Kymo, his staff quartermaster. Chan Kymo was considerably taller and fifteen years younger than his division-captain, with a pronounced Delkrathian accent and the dark hair and eyes common to the majority of the Narhathan Peninsula’s people. He was also good at his job, which was handy, given that the 3rd Dragoons were at the far end of a thirty thousand-mile supply chain.

  “Lisar also tells me Brigade-Captain chan Khartan will be arriving along with Braykhan’s guns,” the division-captain said.

  “Yes, Sir. I already had that information,” chan Kymo acknowledged. “Exactly where I’m going to park them all’s going to be something of a puzzle, though, I’m afraid.”

  Chan Geraith snorted. Shodan chan Khartan commanded the 3rd Dragoons’ 2nd Brigade, which would add better than three thousand men to his current troop strength when it arrived. An infantry brigade was almost twice that size, but an infantry division had only two brigades, whereas a dragoon division had three, for a nominal total of just over ten thousand men, not counting the inevitable attachments. True, no unit was ever fully up to the numbers in its official table of organization. That was certainly true in the Third Dragoons’ case, at least! But moving even a slightly understrength division was a mammoth task, and a staggering total of locomotives and rolling stock would be required to move chan Geraith’s entire command down the Trans-Temporal Express’ rail line from Sharona.

  “I realize space is more than a little tight,” he told chan Kymo with massive understatement. “That would be true under any circumstances, and having Engineer Banchu’s work trains parked all over the sidings doesn’t help.”

  “We were lucky to have the sidings to park them on, Sir,” chan Kymo pointed out, and chan Geraith nodded.

  The Traisum Cut’s narrow slot had been blasted through the heart of a three thousand-foot sheer cliff to connect the universes of Traisum and Karys, which had cost well over four billion Ternathian falcons and taken more thousands of man-hours—and tons of explosives—than the division-captain cared to think about. In the process, Fort Salby and Salbyton, the town spreading out beyond the fort, had been heavily built up as thousands of construction workers and hundreds of thousands of tons of supplies and machinery had been shipped in for the task. TTE had since removed the temporary housing which had been thrown up for those workers, but the miles upon miles of rail sidings remained.

  Under other circumstances, those sidings would have provided ample space in which to park the train which had delivered chan Geraith’s First Brigade to Fort Salby. Under the circumstances which actually obtained, however, space was once again at a premium. Gahlreen Taymish, TTE’s First Director, had sent his senior engineer, Olvyr Banchu, forward to push the railhead across Karys as rapidly as possible as soon as word of the Chalgyn Consortium’s survey team’s disastrous first contact with the Arcanans reached Sharona. Banchu had been with his work crews when the Arcanan invasion bypassed them on its way to Fort Salby, but the Arcanan commander had been more than willing to exchange Banchu and his civilian workers—over two thousand of them—and the bulk of their heavy equipment for the prisoners Regiment-Captain chan Skrithik’s men had taken during their successful defense of the fort. Chan Geraith very much doubted Two Thousand Harshu had any clear idea of just how valuable all that equipment and all those trained workers were going to prove, and he was delighted to get them back. Yet happy as he was, the massive work trains Banchu had brought back from Karys had already packed much of the sidings’ available room solid.

  And they’d go right on using up that parking space…unless someone found them something else to do.

  “I think we’ll be able to do a little something about the congestion,” the division-captain said now. “First, of course, we don’t have much choice but to send our own train back. We’re lucky TTE had already allocated so much heavy lift capability to Traisum, but Director Tyamish didn’t know we were going to need to supply a major military deployment this far from home. He’s building up for it as quickly as he can, but it’s not as if he can just turn off the tap on TTE’s other needs, especially if he’s going to build up the nodal infrastructure the Army needs out here. It’s going to be two months—at least—before we can get enough rolling stock this side of the Salym water gap to meet our requirement anything near what I’d call adequately. Until we do, we’re going to have to make the best use we can of what we have, which means getting the men unloaded and under canvas as quickly as we can.”

  “That will help, Sir,” chan Kymo agreed, “but we’re still going to be putting fifty pounds of manure into a twenty-pound bag, if you’ll pardon my saying so.”

  “Nonsense!” chan Geraith said bracingly. “It can’t possibly be much worse than trying to put fifty pounds of manure into a forty-pound bag! And unless I miss my guess, we should be able to clear out a little more space, as well.”

  His staff looked at him, and Regiment-Captain Merkan chan Isail, his chief of staff, raised one eyebrow silently. It wasn’t much of a change in expression, but chan Isail had been with chan Geraith a long time—certainly long enough for the division-captain to recognize a silently shouted question when he saw one.

  “I’m seriously considering pushing an advance down the Kelsayr Chain,” he said. Chan Isail’s other eyebrow rose, and chan Geraith snorted again.

  “I’m fully aware of the potential problems, Merkan.” The division-captain’s tone was almost as dry as the hot, motionless air outside his headquarters car. “All of them combined, however, can’t hold a candle to the problem of getting through the Cut against active resistance, and this entire portal’s so damned small—and the approach terrain’s so godsdamned bad—that the only option we’d have would be to bash straight down the Cut. Even with Bra
ykhan’s heavy guns in support, that’d be a frigging nightmare.”

  “That’s true, Sir,” chan Isail agreed after a moment. “But given these people’s ability to move troops and supplies by air, they’ll have an enormous mobility advantage whichever way we finally go at them. That’s going to be especially true in unimproved terrain without any road net or rail lines, and they’ve obviously been coming up the Kelsayr Chain as well as this one.”

  Chan Geraith nodded, his eyes dark. Traisum was one of the half-dozen or so “triples” the Portal Authority had explored—universes which possessed three portals rather than the customary two. The Chernoth portal, linking Traisum and Kelsayr, and the Salbyton Portal, linking Traisum and Karys, had been discovered within a year of each other. Unfortunately, Chernoth lay in the heart of New Ternath on the far side of the Vandor Ocean, which had made getting to it just a tad difficult. By the same token, however, the Salbyton portal (only there hadn’t been a Salbyton then, of course) had been one of the most inaccessible ones ever discovered, lying as it did in the heart of the Narshathan Mountains. Given their sheer distance from home and all the manifold difficulties inherent in their development, the PA and TTE had given both of them relatively low priority, at least initially.

  When the Powers That Be finally got around to them, the outlay in infrastructure had been enormous. Since the journey between Vankaiyar, the Ricathian city closest to the portal linking Traisum and Salym, and New Ternath included a water gap of over six thousand miles—practically the entire length of the Mbisi and the width of the Vandor—TTE had built a shipyard from the ground up at Renaiyrton, on the same site as the Ricathian Mbisian seaport of Nymara. The yard—established simultaneously with the enormous railhead at Salbyton—had gone up fairly quickly. It was a bare-bones operation, with a work force of only a few thousand, but that was quite enough to assemble the prefabricated ships required to transport its work crews and heavy equipment across the Vandor. Once that was accomplished, exploration of Kelsayr had gone on apace, and the portal from that universe to Lashai had been discovered within another several months.

  In the meantime, work had begun on the Traisum Cut, which had soaked up well over three quarters of the TTE’s freight capacity down the line from Salym. The line through Kelsayr had been given a lower priority than work on the Cut, but the railhead had moved steadily, if slowly, forward toward Lashai. It had been anticipated that construction priority would shift back to the Kelsayr Chain once the Cut was completed, and that was exactly what had happened…until the Chalgyn Consortium’s push forward through the newly opened Failcham had reordered everything. Chalgyn had surveyed portals in Failcham, Thermyn (yet another triple), New Uromathia, and Nairsom before they hit Hell’s Gate, and the Portal Authority had been astounded to discover that Nairsom connected directly to Resym in the Kelsayr Chain.

  It was the first time anyone had ever encountered two universe chains which intersected one another. No one had expected it, for obvious reasons, and Kelsayr and Karys had been considered completely separate chains. No one was certain exactly how to designate them now—chan Geraith suspected one of them would end up being dubbed a “loop” or something of the sort—but the unique configuration made for some interesting logistic considerations.

  If the TTE had expected the two chains would merge, it might well have simply abandoned the hugely expensive Traisum Cut entirely. The route from Fort Salby to Hell’s Gate, the original point of contact with the Arcanans, along the Kelsayr Chain was better than four times as long as the one along the Karys Chain, but over ten thousand miles of it lay in Traisum, and at least it wouldn’t have required the removal of so many tons of drilled and blasted rock. For that matter, the cost to cross Kelsayr, even allowing for the Renaiyrton shipyard, had been little more than two billion falcons.

  As it was, since TTE and the PAAF had both operated on the reasonable assumption that the two chains would never link back up, Kelsayr and Lashai were both more heavily inhabited and had better road and rail development than anything down-chain from Traisum in the Karys Chain. The route from Lashai to Thermyn, on the other hand, was almost totally unimproved. There were trails, and the future route of the TTE’s roadbed had been surveyed all the way to Nairsom, but as chan Isail had just pointed out, there was nothing remotely like an adequate road net to support the advance of thousands of men with all of their weapons and supplies beyond Lashai. And while it was still a bit difficult for a Sharonian to wrap his mind around all the advantages the Arcanans’ “dragons” bestowed upon them, one thing was abundantly clear: they could project force much farther—and much more rapidly—than Sharona could, even through totally undeveloped terrain.

  And the total, ominous silence of the Voices beyond Resym was grim evidence that Sharona’s enemies had been advancing along both axes.

  “You’re right.” The division-captain acknowledged chan Isail’s point. “But let’s think about the other side’s situation for a moment. Chimo and I have been giving that some thought, so I’ll let him lay it out for you. Chimo?”

  Battalion-Captain Chimo chan Gayrahn was the Third Dragoons’ planning and operations officer, which meant—despite his relatively junior rank—that he was also in charge of chan Geraith’s intelligence assessments. The red-haired, green-eyed Bernithian was substantially younger than the rest of the division-captain’s staff officers, but he had the confidence of competence and his expression was calm as all of the others turned to look at him.

  “Of course, Division-Captain,” he said and laid a folder on the map table in front of him. It was quite a fat folder.

  “These are the notes I’ve been working on for Division-Captain chan Geraith,” he continued, looking around the other officers’ faces. “They’re based on interviews with Regiment-Captain chan Skrithik, Sunlord Markan, and Fort Salby’s other surviving officers and noncoms. And my assessment based on them, which I’ve already shared with the Division-Captain, is that Regiment-Captain chan Skrithik and his men hurt the Arcanans even more badly than we’d assumed.”

  He flipped the folder open and extracted half a dozen sheaves of thin, tightly typed paper, stapled at the corner, and passed them around the table.

  “Obviously,” he continued once each of them had a copy, “most of this has to be highly speculative, but at the Division-Captain’s instructions, I’ve tried to speculate as intelligently as possible. Fortunately, I had Master-Armsman chan Vornos available to help speculate and, ah…restrain any excessive enthusiasm.”

  Most of the others smiled, and Brigade-Captain Renyl chan Quay, First Brigade’s CO, chuckled out loud. Master-Armsman Caryl chan Vornos was close to twice chan Gayrahn’s age, and thirty-odd years ago, Junior-Armsman chan Vornos had taken Under-Captain chan Quay under his wing. He’d been polishing officers in the Imperial Ternathian Army ever since, and it was obvious from chan Gayrahn’s tone that chan Vornos regarded the battalion-captain as yet another work in progress.

  “What became apparent as we looked at the combat reports and our interviews,” chan Gayrahn went on more soberly, “is that Regiment-Captain chan Skrithik and his men severely mauled the enemy’s ‘dragons.’ Obviously, the ones killed in the attack, even if we combine the ones picked off in Prince Janaki’s ambush with the ones shot out of the sky here at the fort, represent only a relatively small percentage of the total number of dragons the Regiment-Captain’s men observed. But it seems to have been a significant percentage, judging by their unwillingness to risk additional losses. I think it’s worth noting that in their final attack on the fort, they used their…airborne capabilities only as a feint. They sent in the actual assault on the ground, and once that was broken, they declined to risk their remaining dragons in range of our weapons. I realize Windlord Garsal took several more down with his artillery, but that’s almost certainly because they’d underestimated his guns’ range. Everything from the way they approached, to the timing, and—of course—to Prince Janaki’s Glimpse indicates they never intended t
o expose the creatures to our fire.”

  “I agree about their sensitivity to additional losses, Chimo,” Regiment-Captain Urko chan Miera, chan Geraith’s staff cartographer, said after a moment. “On the other hand, they may just’ve decided they weren’t going to be able to take the fort whatever they did and declined to lose more of the beasties in a losing cause.”

  “That’s certainly possible, Sir,” chan Gayrahn agreed. “However, the dragons which actually attacked all seem to have been rather smaller than the ones they appear to use for transport purposes.” He grimaced as chan Miera’s eyebrows arched. “I know ‘smaller’ is a purely relative term when we’re talking about creatures that weigh forty tons or more, but Chief-Armsman chan Forcal, Fort Salby’s senior Distance Viewer, Saw them quite clearly. He confirms the size differential, and there’s general agreement that the ones who attacked the fort were all either red or black in coloration. The red ones were the ones who breathed or spat or whatever fire, and the black ones produced the lightning bolts. Chan Forcal and the other Distance Viewers who Saw the remaining dragons during the final attack all agree they Saw less than half a dozen reds and blacks in the diversionary attack. It looks very much like they didn’t have many of the…‘battle dragons,’ let’s call them, to begin with, and they had one hell of a lot less after they tangled with Fort Salby’s machine guns and pedestal guns.”