The Road to Hell - eARC (38 page)

Blackfang’s center head took a frosted coconut puff to the nose and went cross-eyed staring at the thing lodged between the horns of his muzzle.

And that was the point at which Ullery’s drake, dancing in the fall of sweets, slid off the island into the waves herself.

A sharkbeast bit her. Probably entirely by accident in the chum-thickened waters, but Silverstreak’s center head responded with a lightning-quick jawlock on the beast’s dorsal fin and a flip that snatched the creature into the air. And then, just before the jaw should have released for a clean upward toss, the center head spasmed.

The stunned sharkbeast tumbled tail over rictus mouth directly at Blackfang.

The drake’s dexter head caught it just by the tail fluke. The sinister head crunched through the shark’s skull, and the center curved back and forth watching Silverstreak.

Ullery pressed his drake towards the island and she took an unwilling half step in the direction of partial safety.

Then Blackfang’s center head tore out the sharkbeast’s liver and tossed it in a clean throw straight at Silverstreak who swallowed it whole.

There weren’t enough sharkbeasts in the water to satiate both seadrakes, so in the end Silverstreak licked the frosted coconut puff off Blackfang’s nose while Ullery tried to keep his pulse steady and his breath even. Someone else, someone with magic, would have to be the one to tell Silverstreak Fleshrender and Blackfang Heartripper they wouldn’t be permitted to mate.

High above, adults hurried to end the children’s party before the events on Arena Island became too explicit to explain to inquisitive young Mythlan nobles.

Chapter Twenty

January 4

“Thank you for coming aboard, Master Yanusa-Mahrdissa,” Battalion-Captain Hymair chan Yahndar said, standing behind the desk in his cramped—
extremely
cramped—shipboard office. There was too little room, as his Karmalian grandmother would have said, to swing a sheep. Of course, chan Yahndar had never understood who’d
want
to swing a sheep, but the phrase certainly offered all of the earthy color anyone could have desired. And however tiny his office was, he was lucky to have it. TTE’s mass-produced steamships were scarcely noted for their palatial accommodations, and
Voyager Osprey
was no exception to that rule, although—thank all the gods!—she’d at least been intended as a transport from the beginning. That meant he and his men hadn’t ended up stacked in six-high pipe-frame bunks in a converted cargo hold whose last contents had reeked to the gods themselves.

“Well,” the dark-skinned Shurkhali said with an expression halfway between a grimace and a smile, “given all we’ve got to do, it seemed like a good idea to get started early. I’ve been practically camped on that damned dock for two days, now.”

“Sorry about the delay.” Chan Yahndar’s expression was all the way over on the grimace side of the scale. “We lost thirty-six hours getting the horses loaded. They didn’t much care for the princely quality of their accommodations.”

Which
, he thought dryly,
once again demonstrates how superior “horse sense” is to
human
sense.

“And I don’t envy the crewmen who have to muck out the holds, either,” Yanusa-Mahrdissa observed.

“Don’t feel too sorry for them,” chan Yahndar said dryly. “The ship masters are pretty damned insistent about who’s doing what before our baggage gets released.”

“Trans-Temporal’s ship masters are about as ornery as they come,” Yanusa-Mahrdissa agreed with something suspiciously like a chuckle.

“True, but they got us to Shosara in handsome style once everyone was onboard,” chan Yahndar conceded. “And now that we
are
here,” he continued, waving his visitor into the sole vacant chair, “I suppose we’d best get down to it.”

He waited while the civilian seated himself, then swept his hand in a gesture which indicated the other two officers squeezed into the compartment.

“Master Yanusa-Mahrdissa, allow me to present Company-Captain Grithair chan Mahsdyr and Battalion-Captain Francho chan Hurmahl. Company-Captain chan Mahsdyr has Gold Company of Second Battalion, and Battalion-Captain chan Hurmahl has the Fourteen-Oh-Seventh Mounted Engineers.”

Yanusa-Mahrdissa nodded to the other two Ternathians, and chan Yahndar leaned back in his chair while he contemplated the task which confronted them. He’d always known Division-Captain chan Geraith wasn’t afraid to think outside the box, but this was considerably farther outside than even the division-captain was accustomed to straying, and if even one thing went wrong…

He shifted his contemplation to the maps on the office’s bulkheads and tried not to shudder as he thought about the sheer scale of the task before them. Even assuming the Arcanans truly didn’t know they were coming, and that they weren’t spotted en route by one of their godsdamned flying beasties, simple logistics were enough to make the mission a nightmare. But in the words of one of the Imperial Ternathian Army’s legendary commanders, if a job was easy, they wouldn’t need Ternathians to get it done.

And just your luck you’ve got no less than two deployments to the PAAF on your resume, isn’t it?
he thought dryly.
When the Division Captain needed someone who’d spent time crawling around the backside of nowhere, he didn’t have far to look. And it’s a
damned
good thing young Grithair can say the same
.

The truth, unfortunately, was that for all its immense experience and proud traditions, the Imperial Ternathian Army had never operated as a unit outside its home universe. There’d never been any need for it to…which meant it had no experience as an institution of the rigors of moving from one universe to another. That wasn’t as simple as a walk in the park—not when the two sides of any given portal might literally be half way around the world from one another. The transition from scorching summer to the middle of a howling blizzard was nothing to take lightly. In fact, far too many men had died because of just that sort of shift, and the need to supply both tropical and arctic equipment—and to haul it along as they went—was a quartermaster’s nightmare.

And it’s exactly what we’ll have to do moving from Resym into Nairsom, too,
he thought grimly.

The good news was that the Army, like the Imperial Marines, had been loaning personnel to the PAAF for over seventy years now. Many of its senior noncoms and officers—like Hymair chan Yahndar himself—had amassed plenty of universe-hopping experience along the way. Which was how the 12th Dragoon Regiment in general and Gold Company in particular had been picked for their present duties.

“How thoroughly has Master Banchu briefed you, Master Yanusa-Mahrdissa?” he asked after a moment.

“Please, call me Ganstamar,” Yanusa-Mahrdissa said. “Most non-Shurkhalis seem to find my last name a bit of a mouthful.” He smiled crookedly. “And, in answer to your question, I think he brought me as close to up to date as anyone could.” His smile faded and he shook his head. “Frankly, I don’t envy you, Battalion-Captain.”

“There are times I don’t envy myself,” chan Yahndar admitted. “On the other hand, most of your sympathy should probably go to Grithair. And any you have left over should go to Francho. The rest of us will be pretty much following in their wake, after all.”

Yanusa-Mahrdissa nodded, but if he was taken in by chan Yahndar’s dismissal of the scope of his own task, he showed no sign of it.

“Well,” he said, “we’ve been extending the line like mad ever since Fallen Timbers.” His affable expression hardened. After all, Shaylar Nargra-Kolmayr had been a countrywoman of his. “Fortunately, there are no water gaps along the route—well, no
ocean
gaps, anyway; there’re more than enough rivers to be a pain in the arse—but our priority was reduced compared to the Failcham railhead even before we encountered the damned Arcanans, so we haven’t made as much ground as I might like. We can get you all the way across Lashai by rail and a thousand miles or so into Resym, and we’re laying more track like mad. But you’ll still have somewhere around two thousand miles, a lot of it rain forest and jungle, before you get out onto the plains in Nairsom, and you’ll be doing all of
those
miles the hard way.”

“Which, in winter, is going to be even harder than the hard way usually is once we get
out
of Resym,” chan Yahndar agreed.

“The good news is that the entire route’s been surveyed all the way to Fort Ghartoun and we’ve gotten a head start on improving some of the worst portions of roadbed,” Yanusa-Mahrdissa pointed out. “We started sending advanced parties down-chain the instant Division-Captain chan Geraith alerted us to his plans. They’ve already made a start on putting in the bridges—or improved fords, at least—through the Dalazan. Mind you, I don’t think some of our supervisors really believed the loadbearing requirements we gave them, but they’re used to working with locally available materials. Most of those bridges are going to be temporary—
very
temporary—structured, but they’ll get the job done. And given that we’ve surveyed the route clear through to New Uromath, we know exactly what you’re going to need in the way of bridging supplies once you get beyond our own advanced crews, too, and I’ve been working on running them up out of available materials. There’s not much I can do about the girders you’ll need in Thermyn, but I understand the shipyard’s working on that?”

He raised an eyebrow at chan Yahndar, but chan Yahndar tossed the question to Battalion-Captain chan Hurmahl with a sweep of his hand.

“Master Banchu assured us he has the situation in hand, Master Yanusa-Mahrdissa,” chan Hurmahl said. “I don’t think anyone’s exactly pleased over how difficult we expect it to be to make all of this come together, but Master Banchu went over the inventory you sent him with the Renaiyrton yardmaster, as well as kicking his requirements up the Voice chain. By the time Division-Captain chan Geraith’s ready to follow us across, he should be able to bring almost everything he’ll need with him.”

“The shipyard’s able to supply what we’ll need for Coyote Canyon?”

“Assuming the work crews’ diagrams and measurements are accurate, yes.” Chan Hurmahl grimaced. “I understand the main girders were already en route when all this blew up. In fact, they got shunted onto a siding in Camryn to clear the mainline for troop movements, so it’s only a matter of getting them inserted back into the pipeline behind us. The shipyard says it can run up everything
else
we’ll need—again, assuming the diagrams and measurements are good—and combine it with the girders into a single package. Getting all of that delivered to the Near Ternath side of the pond’s going to be a bit of a hassle, but the yard master says TTE’s used to that sort of challenge.

“In a normal sort of situation, that’s certainly true,” Yanusa-Mahrdissa said. “But this situation’s just a bit
ab
normal, and that brings us to what’s really my major concern. Once you’re beyond the railhead, transporting that kind of tonnages is going to be a nightmare, especially when you think about the Coyote Canyon loads and all the coal I understand you’re likely to need.”

“No one in this office is stupid enough to think it’ll be easy,” chan Yahndar replied. “On the other hand, if the Bisons perform as advertised, it should at least be
possible
. Under the circumstances, that’s about the best anyone could ask for.”

“I’m not familiar with them myself,” Yanusa-Mahrdissa said. “How likely are they, really, to be up to the task?”

It was a very good question, and every man in that small cabin knew it. The Bison—technically, the Transport Tractor of 5051, from its year of adoption—was a completely new departure in military transport. In fact, it was so new there was still a fair degree of confusion in nomenclature, with most people referring to it by its assigned name of “Bison” while others referred to it as the Tractor 51.

“We’ll be swaying the first of them ashore in about two hours,” chan Yahndar told him. “Hopefully, you’ll be able to form your own opinion. All I can say is that they’ve performed remarkably well in our exercises at Fort Erthain. We had some initial problems with breakdowns, but, frankly, I think that’s mainly because dragoons are more accustomed to horses than machines. Grooming, horseshoes, and riding tack we understand, but we tend to be a little short on steamer mechanics. If we can’t feed it or muck out its stall, we’re not real sure what to do with it.”

The Shurkhali snorted, although he’d had enough experience introducing neophytes to steam-powered machinery and the mysteries of hydraulics and pneumatic drills and machine tools to understand exactly what the battalion-captain meant. By the same token, chan Yahndar was certainly exaggerating. There were more than enough steam drays and personal steamers on the Ternathian Empire’s roads for at least some of the Third Dragoons’ personnel to be comfortable with wrenches and screwdrivers.

“I understand they’re based on our Ricathian Buffalo?”

“They are,” chan Hurmahl replied, “and I’ve had plenty of time during the crossing to watch Battalion-Captain chan Yahndar’s men performing routine maintenance.” He smiled slightly as his eyes met Yanusa-Mahrdissa’s, and the TTE engineer nodded. Even vehicles parked in a freighter’s hold or—especially—secured as deck cargo needed constant monitoring and maintenance if they were going to be ready for use at the end of the voyage. A lot of people didn’t understand that, and he was glad the 3rd Dragoons did. “Trust me,” chan Hurmahl went on, “the Battalion-Captain’s men are better mechanics than he chooses to admit. In fact, I was almost as impressed with their crews’ proficiency as I was with the Bisons themselves.”

“I don’t doubt that,” Yanusa-Mahrdissa said, “but I can’t say I’m not worried about reliability, especially given the tightness of the schedule. The ‘Devil Buffs’”—the TTE’s personnel had bestowed the nickname of the enormous, ferociously-horned, unpredictable, and usually vicious Ricathian Buffalo on its huge, steam-powered bulldozers—“can move the gods’ own pile of dirt, but nobody ever called them
fast
.”

“Maybe not, but they’ve always had plenty of horsepower and plenty of torque,” chan Hurmahl pointed out. “And the Bison’s suspension and tracks were completely redesigned. All the engineers really used out of the Buffalo was the power plant and the basic chassis; everything else is new, and I’ve seen one of them moving along a prepared surface with a thirty-ton trailer at better than thirty miles an hour.”

Yanusa-Mahrdissa blinked, impressed despite himself. Of course, the army officer was right about the Devil Buff’s sheer power. It wasn’t at the very top of Ram’s Horn Heavy Equipment’s line of bulldozers. That distinction belonged to the Black Rhino, the largest and most powerful bulldozer ever built (yet), but the Devil Buff was no slouch. Like everything else in RHHE’s catalog, it was built “Ram Tough” and its uniflow six-cylinder engine—two banks of three cylinders each mounted back-to-back—produced pressures of up to five hundred pounds per square inch and gave the bulldozer almost sixteen horsepower per ton. The obstacle it couldn’t move was rare, but its maximum speed was no more than ten miles per hour under ideal circumstances, and even then the operator was taking far too many hours off its tracks’ design life.

“When the Army approached RHHE about the Bison, their track designers thought the Quartermaster General was out of his mind,” chan Mahsdyr put in with something suspiciously like a grin. “The Artillery was already experimenting with steam tractors as prime movers, especially for the heavy guns, but Division-Captain chan Stahlyr’s ideas were a lot more…ambitious than that. In fact, I think at least half the Army thinks he’s out of his mind.” The dragoon company-captain shook his head. “He has this idea the entire Army—infantry, dragoons, artillery, and all—should be what he calls ‘mechanized.’ He wants to move
everything
cross-country as fast or faster than cavalry could cover the same terrain.”