The Road to Hell (Hell's Gate Book 3)

by David Weber

  A dark shadow blocked the sunlight streaming through the window. Glass shattered and knives struck her even as she turned to shield the precious bump with her back and spine. The movement was too slow with heavy weight wrapping her body in an aching layer of sustenance for her child, and hideous scarlet splashed the sundrenched playroom.

  The dream reset. She’d moved the baby’s chambers to an inner suite. No windows this time, for better security. Attacks still happened, as she’d expected, but the Guard stopped each of them before they could reach the nursery or her. She rested easily with the large tummy. No elaborate painting on the toes this time, but she still wiggled them back at herself.

  Again the dream reset. She sat down to a breakfast tray delivered by Lady Merissa. Some berries Andrin didn’t yet recognize filled half the tray. Somehow she knew they’d quickly become her favorite food, during her pregnancy—she’d want them day and night for their mix of tartness and sweet lusciousness—for all that they were seasonal and increasingly difficult to procure.

  Fast work with the spoon emptied the entire bowl. She only barely noticed the off flavor at the end. Then the cramps came sharp and hard. Blood splatter coated the hands she tried to use to hold the bleeding back and stop the too early, far too early birth. She vomited bile mixed with breakfast, but too late. Vomit and blood clogged her senses as she lay weeping on the matted child’s rug.

  The dream reset a dozen more times. Until finally she gave it all up for utter secrecy. No suite prepared, no special food requests. She vomited, normal healthy vomit, multiple times a day and hid it. Lady Merissa increased her makeup to hide the sallow tinge to her face. Her middle sister, Razial, pretended a renewed love of sweet jams and included the favorite berries in the mix. But the jar was tested carefully and measured out a bit at a time in no more than the consumption rate a boisterous young princess could reasonably manage. Andrin bore the pregnancy in deepest stealth. She had to keep this child alive.

  And still she failed. Again and again, she failed.

  She rose from the depths of sleep, weeping, and her tears stirred Howan Fai awake beside her. She hadn’t wanted to do that, but she clung to the strong, loving comfort of his embrace as she poured out the horrible dreams. And not simply because she needed his comfort. These weren’t Glimpses; she knew what they looked like entirely too well, and only Death Glimpses revealed the fate of the person to whom they came. She did die in some of the nightmares, but in most, she survived to grieve bitterly over the yawning ache of her murdered babe. Yet they were more than simple nightmares induced by anxiety: she was equally sure of that. She dared not trust the details of the fast changing dreams to paper, yet she needed to be sure they were remembered properly in the morning, and so she poured out her nightmares to him in a bare whisper while he held her sobbing body.

  “It will not happen, my love,” he told her sternly, kissing her earlobe while he stroked sweat and tear-soaked hair from her forehead. “Upon my life, it will not happen! We will keep our child safe and your pregnancy secret. Chava and his accursed agents will learn of it only when our babe is born!”

  Andrin nodded against his shoulder, limp with emotion, wrapping his love and his promise about her like another blanket. The Caliraths had already given up one heir to the throne, willingly and at great cost, she thought. But she and Howan Fai would see that this child reached Janaki’s years.

  “We can keep the secret for a while without too much trouble, I think,” she said after a moment. “If we’re careful, it’ll be at least two months, maybe three, before anyone’s going to notice anything just looking at me. But you know Chava’s watching like a hawk for any sign of something like this, and I’ll still have to attend state dinners. Won’t he start to wonder if I suddenly stop drinking the wines at them?”

  “No doubt you’re right about that viper,” Howan Fai agreed grimly. “But I think the solution to this problem is near at hand, Sister of White Fire. We will get you a Taster. Your father has Kallen, and as rare as Precogs are, Tasters are among the more common. They only need to Know food and drink with a Precog range of a few minutes, and you are the heir. We should already have assigned one specifically to you, too, and no one will be surprised if we correct that oversight. The Taster can switch any wine for juice of the right color, and with enough care we’ll be able to keep the news from leaking that way.”

  “Yes. That should work.” Andrin hugged him. “Thank you. I’m so worried, but you’re right. We can make this work. But what about after that? I’d hoped that because I was tall the baby would just sort of stretch out lengthwise, but that doesn’t seem to be this child’s intention. In all my dreams, I get huge.”

  Frustration and dismay mingled with the worry in her tone, and Howan Fai chuckled and kissed her fingertips.

  “Large you may get, My Lady, but you can never be anything save beautiful to me. And how could you be anything but lovely in my eyes when you carry the child of both our hearts beneath your own? But even if you are to become ‘huge,’ it need not present an insurmountable difficulty. We could take a honeymoon cruise. Go visit Eniath maybe? My mother’s family’s island is closer to Uromathia, but it’s isolated and a virtual citadel. We can defend it, and keep the wrong people out much more easily than we can here at the Grand Palace. I think we could keep you safe. Were any of the nightmares in an island fortress?”

  Andrin pondered that.

  “No. I recognized all the rooms. Every time we tried another place it was within Tajvana. We could do that. We should do that. Take me home, Howan. I just need a safe place to have this baby. I don’t know why this can’t be made to work at Tajvana, but there doesn’t seem to be a single way to have the child here safely. And in some of the dreams a lot of the Imperial Guard die, too.

  “They serve to save us, but they shouldn’t die for nothing.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  Fairsayla 28, 5053 AE

  [March 16, 1929 CE]

  It was even colder than he’d expected it to be, and the ice-edged wind didn’t help a bit.

  The snow-covered plains stretched away in every direction, as far as the eye could see. It was no longer actively snowing—there was that much to be grateful for, he supposed—and a brilliant sun burned down out of a cloudless blue sky. It offered at least the specious illusion that there was warmth somewhere in the world, and Arlos chan Geraith stood on the running board of his Steel Mule headquarters vehicle, his head haloed in sunstruck breath steam, and slapped his gloved palms together for warmth.

  He stopped pounding his hands together, pushed back his parka’s fur-lined hood, and raised the field glasses hanging around his neck to sweep the impossibly distant horizon, although that was purely a reflex action on his part. His scouts were ten miles out from the main column, with Plotters and Distance Viewers scattered among them; nothing was going to get past them unnoticed.

  He lowered the glasses and glanced around their overnight laager. Tiny vortexes of white danced above the previous day’s powdery snow, which had covered without concealing the deep tracks scores of vehicles had cut into the virgin prairie, and he grimaced. That pounded-down swath gave new meaning to the term “bison wallow,” and he doubted even a blind Arcanan dragon pilot could miss that broad spoor if he happened to pass overhead. That hadn’t happened yet—that they knew of, at any rate—and hopefully, it wouldn’t happen, either.

  He snorted at the thought, expelling another spurt of steamy breath, and looked at the vehicles parked around him. The Bisons and Mules were firing up for the day’s travel, sending up the wind-shredded scent of burning kerosene, and heat shimmer danced over their exhausts. The Bisons were all the Mark Two, kerosene-fired variant; their flash boilers could produce enough pressure to be up and moving from a cold start in less than five minutes even in these weather conditions, although it took a bit longer to reach full pressure, and he imagined more than one crew had the heavily insulated hatch into the boiler compartment latched back this morning to take
advantage of the welcome heat.

  The Bisons’ tracks were heavy with snow, and he heard sledgehammers pounding as the crews broke up the ice that had a tendency to form around drive sprockets and track bogies before firing them up. That ice had broken—or thrown—more than a few tracks, but the Bison’s tracks seemed more tolerant of that particular form of abuse than the Steel Mules’. The halftracks’ crews had to spend even more time and effort on keeping them moving, and the long route back to the railhead was dotted with over a hundred and fifty abandoned Mules. No doubt most of them would be recovered and put back into service eventually; in the meantime, they—like at least fifty or so Bisons—had been stripped for spares to keep their more fortunate brethren running.

  At the moment, the broad, flat backs and the roofs of the Bisons around him and the enclosed box trailers were crusted with snow, and more snow had gathered in the folds of the canvas tarps covering the flatbed trailers. Many of the flatbeds had been fitted with an adapted version of the PAAF’s and Trans-Temporal Express’s cold-weather wagon covers: multiple layers of canvas separated by tightly woven blankets of Kyaira cotton from the Chuldair tree. The fiber was light, water resistant, and a good insulator, and the covers provided a shell that was both weathertight and windproof and did an excellent job of retaining heat. Fitting the Steel Mules with the covers had been relatively straightforward; since the always logical Portal Authority had sized their wagons to the same dimensions as a standard steam dray and the Mules were based on the same standard dray chassis, the covers could be easily fitted to them. The Bison trailers were harder, since no one had considered providing that sort of protection for something that size, but the Authority and TTE workshops had managed to provide at least enough of them to meet the Army’s minimal needs.

  The Steel Mules were just as snow burnished as the Bisons, and he saw several vehicle crews doing morning walk-around inspections. Two of the Bisons were parked to one side with their outer engine hatches hooked back on both sides while mechanics leaned in and did something to the boilers or the fire boxes. He wasn’t sure which it was, but he knew they were lucky to have only two of the massive vehicles on the disabled list this morning. Breakdowns had been manageable, so far, at least…but they were suffering more than enough mechanical failures to make him nervous. Worse, the breakdown rate was increasing, and it had become evident several weeks earlier that the 3rd Dragoons still didn’t have enough trained maintenance people of its own. He’d borrowed all the mechanics he dared from Ganstamar Yanusa-Mahrdissa, and he knew the TTE engineer would have given him more if he’d asked for them, but it was even more important to keep the logistics corridor behind his advance open and steadily growing. The TTE crews who’d taken over responsibility for that corridor and the chain of supply dumps dotting his back-trail needed enough mechanics to keep their own drays and the Bison Ones they’d acquired from 5th Corps up and running. If the price of supplying his men with all the supplies—especially fuel—they needed was to slow their rate of advance, he’d just have to smile and bear it.

  And at least he hadn’t had to do that yet, he reminded himself.

  His command group was traveling with the 16th Dragoon Regiment—Regiment-Captain Teresco chan Urlman’s command and the second regiment in Renyl chan Quay’s 1st Brigade. The 12th Dragoons, 1st Brigade’s other regiment, was six days and six hundred miles east of his present position, closing in on the Thermyn portal, while the 9th Dragoons, leading Brigade-Captain Shodan chan Khartan’s 2nd Brigade, was about twenty-five miles behind him. The 23rd Dragoons (2nd Brigade’s second regiment), followed just thirty miles behind the 23rd. But the lead elements of Brigade-Captain chan Sharys’ 3rd Brigade, unfortunately, trailed almost a hundred miles behind the 23rd, while Brigade-Captain chan Bykahlar’s infantry brigade had only reached Kelsayr the day before yesterday.

  A foot crunched, breaking through last night’s fresh snow to the crusty layer of ice beneath it, and he turned his head to look over his shoulder.

  “Why do I think you have another message from Corps-Captain chan Rowlan, Lisar?” he asked with a slightly skewed smile as Company-Captain chan Korthal came to attention and saluted.

  “Perhaps because of my cheerful expression, Sir,” his staff Voice replied.

  “Oh, come now!” chan Geraith chided. “The corps-captain isn’t that bad!”

  “It’s not so much the corps-captain. Or not as directly him as it is Platoon-Captain chan Valdyn, anyway,” chan Korthal said. “He’s a very good Voice, you know, Sir, but he does like to add his personal commentary on how the corps-captain’s day is going. I think the phrase he used this time was ‘snowbear with a sore tooth,’” he added with a grin which might have been just a bit devoid of sympathy for his fellow Voice.

  Chan Geraith shook his head reprovingly, but his heart wasn’t in it. Chan Korthal and Zendar chan Valdyn, Corps-Captain Fairlain chan Rowlan’s Voice, were very close friends. Unlike the dark-haired, dark-complected chan Korthal, who’d been born within sight of the Fist of Bolakin in southern Narhath and thought a day below fifty degrees was a foretaste of the Farnalian demon Gynarshu’s frozen hell, the red-haired, very fair-skinned chan Valdyn had been born and reared in the northern reaches of the Republic of Hanyl in New Ternath. He probably would have found their present surroundings downright balmy…which, of course, was why he was still stuck at Fort Salby, where Corps-Captain chan Rowlan had established his current forward headquarters.

  It was difficult to imagine two people who looked less like one another, but the Voices were very much alike under the skin. In particular, both of them shared the same…respectfully irreverent outlook, and chan Geraith was very much afraid that chan Valdyn’s chosen simile was probably well taken. Of course, chan Rowlan wasn’t exactly a towering giant—not for a Ternathian, at any rate; he was only a few inches taller than chan Geraith himself—but his growing impatience at being stuck so far behind his corps’ lead elements probably made him seem quite a bit larger. In fact, on a bad day, he probably did remind chan Valdyn of the enormous white bears of his homeland.

  “I think it would be wise of you and the platoon-captain to refrain from exchanging observations about the irascibility of your superior officers,” he said now, as severely as he could.

  “Yes, Sir. Of course, Sir!”

  The earnest sincerity of chan Korthal’s response was undermined by the twinkle in his eye, and chan Geraith sighed. He hadn’t expected anything else, nor did he truly want it. The Imperial Ternathian Army was less invested in excruciating military courtesy and protocol than many militaries—the Imperial Uromathian Army and (for that matter) the Imperial Ternathian Navy came rather forcefully to mind. It understood discipline and the consequences of insubordination, but as a rule, it preferred its people got on with the job rather than salute one another at the drop of a hat, and both he and chan Rowlan were even less concerned with taut punctilio than was the Ternathian norm.

  There were times when that bit both of them on the arse, but it also produced enthusiastic, engaged subordinates. All things considered, that was well worth any…minor quirks in those subordinates’ gallop.

  “So how, aside from his irascibility quotient, is the corps-captain this fine morning?” he asked. “I assume your good friend chan Valdyn didn’t contact you just to describe the state of the corps-captain’s dental work, you understand.”

  “Actually, Sir,” chan Korthal said much more seriously, “Tymar’s transcribing the latest dispatches right now. He should have the morning’s traffic in the next half hour or so.”

  Chan Geraith nodded. Chan Korthal was fully capable of reproducing every Voice message he’d received verbatim, or even relaying them mentally to anyone who (unlike Arlos chan Geraith, who lacked even a trace of Talent) could Hear them directly. Normally, however, unless the message was truly urgent, he delivered it initially not to its addressee but to Javelin Tymar chan Forsam, chan Geraith’s staff Scribe. Scribes were capable of producing flawless transcrip
tions of anything they’d seen or heard, which was essential for message distribution and record purposes. What made chan Forsam especially valuable was that, unlike all too many Scribes, he also had a minor Talent for Mind Speaking. That meant he could take “dictation” directly from a Voice, and he was a highly skilled typist, capable of over a hundred and fifty words a minute. In fact, that typing speed and his Mind Speaking Talent were the primary reason he’d been assigned to the unTalented chan Geraith. The division-captain couldn’t Hear chan Korthal directly, but between them, the Voice and the Scribe could get him written copies of any critical dispatch very quickly indeed.

  Of course, the current message traffic was enough to keep even the two of them busy for several hours a day, chan Geraith reflected.

  “Just give me the highlights for now, then.”

  “Yes, Sir. I don’t think there’s anything really critical at the moment. Tymar will have the complete movement report for Regiment-Captain chan Isail and Regiment-Captain chan Kymo shortly, but Brigade-Captain chan Bykahlar’s brigade should be detraining at the Resym railhead by sometime tomorrow afternoon, our time. Everything else is pretty much where it was with last night’s situation report.”