The Road to Hell - eARC

by David Weber

  “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 maladroit, 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.

  Isn’t any different from relying on any other report from a forward scout, Grithair, he told himself firmly. Just keep remembering that.

  And, if the Distance Viewers were correct about that element of surprise, it meant Gold Company and the rest of 2nd Battalion had gotten all the way to the very doorstep of Thermyn without any Arcanan seeing a thing.

  Of course, that just puts even more pressure on us to make sure the bastards behind them stay equally fat, dumb, and ignorant. It’s still thirteen hundred miles to Fort Ghartoun, even after we’re through the portal. Plenty of time for them to arrange something nasty if we fuck up at this point!

  At least the terrain favored them. The only really tricky bit was getting past the miserable, cold squad or two of Arcanans who’d staked out the ruins of the fort. The dry riverbed below the portal provided quite a lot of cover for men as well trained at wringing every possible advantage out of any terrain feature as those of the 3rd Dragoons. Its depth gave excellent cover against anyone at the level of the riverbank, at least until they were most of the way across. Better yet, the angled portal itself created a huge blind spot. If he’d been in charge of picketing it, he’d have had positions for two or three section-sized outposts stretched across each aspect, but especially on the southern side, where the river had disappeared into Thermyn. That would have given him an excellent chance of spotting anyone trying to sneak across the river towards him.

  But the Arcanans hadn’t done that. Fort Rensar had been designed as an administrative node, not a serious defensive work, and while it had an excellent view of the portion of the Tyrahl River which still had water in it, its view of the empty bed beyond the portal was badly restricted by the portal itself. By moving a mile or so downstream, chan Mahsdyr’s men had been able to cross the channel without anyone at the fort seeing a thing. Worse—or, actually, better from his perspective—it was obvious the idiot who’d picked the location for their main encampment hadn’t thought about the fact his forward pickets had such an enormous blind spot. If there’d been one approach route chan Mahsdyr would have worried about, it was the empty riverbed, not the one that was still full of icy cold, rushing water, yet the southwesternmost edge of the portal completely concealed it from anyone in the Graystone’s valley just as completely as from Fort Rensar. They literally couldn’t see anything coming around the portal’s eastern aspect. Why in Chindarsu’s name they hadn’t pulled their encampment all the way back to the Thermyn side of the portal if they weren’t going to picket this side adequately was more than chan Mahsdyr was prepared to guess.

  He wasn’t about to complain, however. His maps were both detailed and highly accurate, updated by the TTE’s surveyors to account for any discrepancies between the purely local geography of Nairsom and that of Sharona. With that advantage, it hadn’t been difficult to pick his approach route to the spot he wanted. He imagined his men—especially those of the mortar platoon—were inventing imaginative curses for him at the moment as they struggled across the rugged terrain, but he was fine with that. And they’d be fine with it, too, if they managed to get into position without being spotted.

  “Well, Doc, I guess it’s time we were heading out, too.”

  * * *

  Commander of Fifty Gilthar Vurth closed the door of 2nd Platoon’s mess hall chansyu hut and stood on the front step, idly picking his teeth with a toothpick. It was getting on towards evening—days were short this early in the year and this far north—and the cooks were about ready to start serving dinner. As Thimanus Gorzalt’s senior platoon commander and acting executive officer, it was one of Vurth’s self-appointed duties to sample each meal and make certain it was worthy of the Union of Arcana’s fighting men.

  It wasn’t like he had anything else to do out here in the middle of absolutely nowhere.

  He grimaced at the thought and wondered once again what god or demon he’d offended to end up under Gorzalt’s command. Of course, the 451st Regiment was a far cry from one of the Army’s elite units, like the 2nd Andaran Scouts. No doubt there was some sort of seismic settling process which inexorably moved less than scintillating officers into its ranks and away from those more elite units. The only problem with that theory was that while it explained how Gorzalt had ended up in the 451st, it didn’t explain what Vurth was doing here.

  Or I hope to hells it doesn’t, anyway, he reflected.

  He shrugged and turned toward the barren, unkempt “parade ground” Gorzalt had insisted on laying out between the mess hall and his HQ hut. It hadn’t gotten a lot of use since Thousand Carthos pulled back to rejoin the main expeditionary force in Traisum. Vurth tried to make sure all the men were inspected at least weekly and got at least some time on the firing range every week. It shouldn’t have been difficult, but Gorzalt seemed to have withdrawn into a sulk when he realized who was being left behind to picket the portal, and the rest of C Company appeared to have caught the malaise from its CO
. Well, aside from Zakar Ustmyn, at least, and look what Ustmyn’s attitude had gotten him!

  Vurth shook his head in disgust—disgust directed almost as much at himself as at Gorzalt—and started across the “parade ground” as the shadows cast by the high ground to the northwest began to creep over it.

  * * *

  “Platoon-Captain chan Urhal’s in position, Sir.”

  Grithair chan Mahsdyr took the hastily scribbled note from Armsman 1/c chan Tylwyr, his company Flicker, and managed—somehow—not to say “At last!” It would have been unprofessional, unfair to Jersalma chan Urhal’s 3rd Platoon, and a case of blaming the wrong person, anyway. He’d been right about the way the terrain would cover his approach, but he’d made insufficient allowance for how it would slow that approach. For the last hour or so, he’d been afraid he was going to lose the light before all of his men were in place. That would have left him with the choice of mounting a night attack or waiting in position—without cover and without bedrolls—until dawn. Neither was a palatable alternative, although he was pretty sure he’d have gone with the first if it came to it. Surprise and darkness should let them sweep up the entire Arcanan encampment, but that same darkness would make it much easier for someone to get away with word of Gold Company’s presence.

  Now, fortunately, he wouldn’t have to. He still had at least forty-five minutes, more likely an hour and a half. That should be plenty of time.

  “All right, Shodan,” he told chan Tylwyr. “It’s time. Pass the word.”

  “Yes, Sir!”

  The Flicker gave him a quick, broad smile, and then concentrated on the neat row of metal message tubes laid out in front of him. They vanished in rapid, silent succession, as quickly as a Faraika spat out bullets, and chan Mahsdyr raised his field glasses and looked down from the ridgeline.

  He stood barely eight hundred yards from the center of the Arcanan outpost, looking down from the top of a five hundred-foot hill. The Graystone’s valley widened at this point, so its further side was almost fourteen hundred yards from his present position. That was farther than he really liked, but the contour lines were also much steeper and he’d gotten chan Urhal’s platoon down onto the valley floor itself. That was one reason this had taken so long; 3rd Platoon had been forced to swing substantially wider than the rest of his attack force. That was the bad news. The good news was that chan Urhal had managed to use the Graystone’s bed to infiltrate to within little more than three hundred yards of the encampment without being spotted.