The Road to Hell - eARC (40 page)

“We can do that. Of course, anything we come up with at this point’s going to be pretty much a WAG.”

“Understood. On the other hand, you’re going to have at least a month before the Division-Captain gets the main column as far forward as Kelsayr, and any of the infantry’s going to be more than a month behind
that
.”

“Granted, but sixty days isn’t anywhere near as long as it sounds, especially when we’ll need to be setting up forward fuel and supply dumps. Which brings me to another point. What kind of depths can one of these Bisons ford?”

“They’re designed to ford up to five feet of water,” chan Mahsdyr replied for his CO. “The Mules can ford up to about the same depth, and I’ve seen Bisons manage just over six. Of course that was crossing a streambed where we knew exactly what the bottom conditions were. I think the Mark Twos, at least, can be fitted with a deep fording kit that would get them across up to ten feet if they seal all the hatches and openings. At that point all that would be above water would be the exhaust and the snorkel, so steering would get problematical as all hells and the risk of stranding one of them permanently in the middle of a river goes way up. Crew risk goes up, too. And the Mules can’t go anywhere near that deep. On the other hand,
they
can use a standard scissors bridge or pontoon bridge, and the Bisons are too heavy for that. But you can probably count pretty solidly on five or six feet for either of them, especially if your fabricating crews are up to bashing a deep fording kit of our own.”

“Really?” Yanusa-Mahrdissa brightened. “That’s better than I expected. In fact, it’s probably good enough to get us across eighty or ninety percent of the water obstacles in Resym. That would ease the strain on our bridging crews a lot!”

“I know we have to worry about getting across Resym,” chan Yahndar said, “but all we really have to worry about there is the terrain. Once we hit Nairsom, we’re going to be crossing ‘only’ five or six hundred miles of Roantha and northern Thanos in the middle of winter. It’ll be a lot flatter, and we won’t have triple-canopy jungle to worry about, but the temperature’s going to be a bitch. And
then
, assuming a blizzard doesn’t come along and kill all the damned horses, we’ll hit the Chindar Portal in Thermyn.”

The others looked at him without saying a word, and he snorted mirthlessly at their expressions. From their entry portal just south of the small, dusty town of Chindar in the Kingdom of West New Ternath to Fort Ghartoun was only a little over a thousand miles, and the weather would be far milder than anything they were likely to experience on the winter-struck high plains of New Ternath. But the terrain was also far more rugged, water supplies would be few and far between, there would be far less to conceal them from enemies who could fly, and the minor obstacle of Coyote Canyon would have to be dealt with somehow.

At least there was some good news to go with the bad. Coyote Canyon was well over five hundred yards across and over eight hundred feet deep at the point the TTE survey crews had selected for Thermyn’s version of the Coyote Canyon Bridge. That was enough to give anyone pause, but in the carefree days before the Arcanans had darkened the horizon, work crews had been sent forward from Karys to begin work on the bridging project. They’d lacked the heavy construction equipment necessary to do a complete job of it, but they’d packed in enough picks, shovels, steam drills, and wagon loads of dynamite to make a serious start on the preliminaries. The access cut to the river had been blasted out of both sides of the canyon to permit heavy construction equipment to reach it once the railhead arrived. There was still a lot of spill from the blasting strewn about, which might well prove a major pain, but the maps and blueprints chan Yahndar had seen suggested that infantry and cavalry—and Bisons—would be able to negotiate the steep slopes, assuming they could get across the river itself.

And assuming the godsdamned Arcanans and their frigging “dragons” aren’t sitting right on top of us when we try
, he reminded himself grimly.
Of course, the whole idea’s that we’re coming at them from a direction they won’t expect, but still…

He decided to keep that particular concern to himself. If it should happen that the Arcanans were worrying about rats in the Thermyn woodwork, the preparation work already done at Coyote Canyon would certainly have a tendency to draw the eye. On the other hand, that work was four hundred and eighty miles from Fort Ghartoun as a bird—or a dragon—might fly. Even if the Arcanans had noticed it, that was a long way from anything worth defending.

And if they have noticed it and they’re thinking about possible threats that might be coming at them from the back, Hymair?

That, he told himself firmly once again, looking back at the bulkhead maps, was something to stew over after it actually happened. Gods knew he had enough to worry about just getting there, first!

Chapter Twenty-One

January 9

The first indication of trouble came within hours of their arrival.

Shaylar and her husband, exhausted by the long journey, had gone to bed early after being shown to the enormous bedroom set aside for them in the duke’s Portalis townhouse. She jolted awake an unknown stretch of time later, groggy with lingering bone-deep fatigue, but gripped by a rising tide of fear, a brooding sense of danger she couldn’t shake. When she peered at the chronometer glowing beside their bed, she realized she’d been asleep less than thirty minutes, yet it was impossible to get back to sleep. Weariness dragged at her, left her feeling bruised, but her sense of impending danger kept getting stronger—so much stronger, she finally couldn’t bear to lie in bed any longer.

Not wanting to disturb Jathmar, she wrapped herself in a luxurious house robe made of velvet and tiptoed from the bedroom, out into the sitting room. The duchess had given them a beautiful suite, by far the most elegant and luxurious place Shaylar had ever stayed. Now silver light flooded through tall windows, nearly as bright as daylight thanks to the full moon visible high above the rooftop. She curled up on a cushioned window seat, resting her brow against the chill glass, trying to understand the disturbing mood that had gripped her so unexpectedly. She knew there was danger for them here, but she wasn’t accustomed to having waves and waves of threat crashing across her senses.

She bit her lip and wondered what was happening, out there in the capital city, tonight. The hummers with news of the initial conflict had beat them to Portalis by over a month followed by word of the failed negotiations and the resumption of hostilities, but it was clear Jasak and Gadrial were right about the effect the lack of official news
since
then was likely to produce. In some ways, she was grateful for the news blackout, if that was what it truly was. At least no one had associated her or Jathmar with the conflict brewing down-chain from Hell’s Gate when they went clothes shopping! But she dreaded what was likely to happen when the long-delayed news did reach Portalis.

She bit her lip harder, dreading
everything
that lay ahead of them. Because there was nothing whatsoever she could do about any of it, she sat in her window seat, peering out through the window, and tried to calm her unsteady nerves.

A large garden, right in the middle of the vast structure, split the duke’s townhouse in half. Open to the sky, it was filled with trees, carefully tended shrubbery, flowerbeds, beautifully fitted flagstone pathways, statuary, and a truly spectacular fountain, and it divided the public half of the house from the private portion. The offices from which Jasak’s father governed New Arcana lay on its far side, and she was unsurprised to see lights in many of the rooms in that half of the house as she gazed across the garden. Clearly, their arrival had inconvenienced a fair number of public officials and their support people.

She leaned listlessly against the glass, and her head throbbed as the sense of danger tightened like a steel band around her head. It wasn’t getting better; it was getting
worse
, and she was finally driven to seek assistance. The duchess had told her to press a small plate set into the wall of each room in the house if she needed to summon a servant. Now she slid out of the window seat and padded barefoot across the room, locating the faintly glowing bell-plate in the moonlight, rather than switching on the main lights. She didn’t think she could bear bright lights with her head throbbing like this. She wasn’t sure what Arcanans did about headaches, but she was in pain and needed assistance. At home or even in the field, she would simply have reached for a packet of herbs to calm the throbbing, but here she had nothing.

She touched the wall plate, which began to glow softly. Aside from that, however, nothing happened. She stood there for several moments, wondering if she’d misunderstood the instructions. After waiting for a minute or two—and feeling both awkward and a little silly standing there in the dark—she retreated to the window seat.

She was still sitting there, massaging her pounding temples, five minutes later, when a brisk knock rattled the door. It was sudden enough, and loud enough, to startle her, and she twitched in surprise before she stood, shook herself, and headed across the room to the door. She opened it—then hissed aloud and stumbled backward two full steps. The
hatred
seething in the housemaid’s eyes sent a jolt of pure terror through her and her breath froze in her lungs under the brutal force of the woman’s murderous glare.

“You wanted something?” the servant snarled.

Shaylar stood frozen in place, so stunned by the other’s fury that she literally couldn’t speak. She could only stand there, staring up at the tall servant and wondering what to do if the woman actually attacked her, and the hatred in the housemaid’s eyes was overlaid with something else: contempt. The Arcanan woman waited a moment longer and then, when Shaylar still couldn’t speak, growled something under her breath which sounded like a curse, whirled around, and stormed off, yanking the door closed behind her. It slammed shut with a bang, rattling framed pictures on the wall, and Shaylar sagged to her knees, trembling. The servant’s lethal hatred had been so strong, even her dimmed Talent had felt it without physical contact.

She crouched there in the moonlight, gasping for breath, bludgeoned by a blow far more vicious than any physical attack. That sort of concentrated hate would have constituted a savage assault on a Voice under any circumstances; coming totally unexpectedly, with no warning, no opportunity to shield or brace herself in any way, its effect had been devastating. Her mind literally refused to work, yet she felt the tears beginning, felt her heart pound with the need to flee, to find some sanctuary, some hiding place. But there
was
no sanctuary, not here in his hideous alien world with its monstrous creatures, its hate-filled people and grotesque magic! There would
never
by any sanctuary! Never any—

And then Jathmar was at her side, jolted awake by the slamming door and her terror, and his arms closed around her like a fortress against her horror.

“What just happened?” he demanded urgently, and she trembled against him, clutching him with desperate strength.

“I don’t know!” she cried. “I had a terrible headache. I woke to a feeling of danger. I couldn’t sleep, it kept getting stronger, and my head was aching, throbbing. So I did what the duchess told us, pushed the wall plate, there.” She pointed to the still-glowing rectangle in the wall. “The maid who answered the call wanted to
kill
me. I could feel it, like a sledgehammer. She wanted to murder me, Jathmar, and I have no idea why!”

He held her tightly while reaction tremors shook through her. None of the servants had done anything like that earlier in the day. What in Marthea’s name had brought it on
now?
When a second, much quieter knock, sounded at their door, she flinched and clutched Jathmar even harder.

“Who’s there?” he snarled.

“It’s Gadrial. Please unlock your door. I have to talk to you! I need to show you something important.”

Jathmar stood, glaring at the closed door for at least ten seconds, his arms still around his trembling wife. Then he growled something under his breath, released Shaylar with obvious reluctance, and opened the door.

Gadrial stood in the hall, in a house robe as elegant as the one Shaylar had donned, and her expression tightened as she saw Shaylar’s ashen, tear streaked face.

“You already know,” she whispered.

Shaylar shook her head. “I don’t
know
anything! I just woke up. Something felt dangerous. My head ached. So I rang for servant. The maid wanted to kill me.”

Jathmar closed and locked the door behind Gadrial, then drew Shaylar across the room and eased her down in one of the comfortable chairs. The magister crossed to a handsome sideboard, found a decanter of some kind of spirits, and splashed some of it into a glass.

“Sip this,” she said.

Shaylar took a deep sip, shuddered, and gulped down the rest. Then she looked up to find Gadrial with a crystal in one hand, biting her lip in obvious distress.

“What’s happened, Gadrial?” she demanded. “Why did that woman want to kill me?”

“Jasak is furious. Cursing and snarling.” Gadrial’s voice was tight with obvious anger of her own, and also with something that sounded almost like…shame. “Even the Duke is in a towering rage, and
I’m
so upset, I can’t stop shaking. It’s this,” she held up the crystal. “It’s dreadful, what they’ve said in the headlines, the articles, the picture captions, everything.”

“Show us,” Jathmar growled.

Gadrial touched a lamp, which lit with a mercifully soft light. Then she handed the crystal to Shaylar and tapped it with a stylus. It immediately began to glow and a sheet of light appeared above it, looking for all the world like a Sharonian newspaper page, although no newspaper Shaylar had ever seen printed its banner headlines in blood-red ink that
flashed
as a reader looked at it. That was her first thought…but then the one-word headline actually registered:

MURDERED!

Just below was a picture of the man Shaylar and Jathmar had met so briefly at the swamp portal, the man who’d made the fire rose, who’d been a second father to Gadrial. The fact that Halathyn vos Dulainah’s picture was printed in color, not the black and white of a Sharonian photograph, registered only as a mild surprise. What caught her attention was the caption:

“The death of Magister Halathyn vos Dulainah, above, beloved of millions, at Sharonian hands has been confirmed.”

Other article headlines jumped out from the page as she swept disbelieving eyes across it.

Arcanan Diplomats Murdered in Midst of Peace Talks.

Casualties Much Heavier Than Initially Reported: Mass Funerals Planned.

Garth Showma Heir Arrives in Disgrace!

Shardonai War Criminals? No Explanation from Duke

The articles were even worse than the headlines. The words were a blur, hard to read because Shaylar’s eyes kept filming over with tears of shock and horror. She had to scrub her eyes again and again just to see them.

The Portalis
Herald Times
has received information which makes it disturbingly clear that the initial confrontation with the so-called “Sharonians” was far more catastrophic than the citizens of the Union had been led to believe.

As previously reported in these pages, the first contact between Arcana and the violently aggressive “Sharonians” ended in a total slaughter. Magister Gadrial Kelbryan escaped death by a hair’s breadth and Commander of One Hundred Sir Jasak Olderhan, only son and heir to the Duke of Garth Showma, was nearly killed when an entire platoon of his company of the 2nd Andaran Temporal Scouts was butchered. He barely escaped the ambush with his life, a tiny remnant of his shattered platoon, and Magister Gadrial.

As our readers know, the entire remaining strength of his company was killed or captured in a nighttime sneak attack through the portal between Mahritha and the universe which has since been dubbed “Hell’s Gate.” What our readers
did
not know, however, was that Hundred Olderhan had succeeded in capturing two of the murderous Sharonians alive following the original, savage attack on his platoon and had been ordered to return them with them to New Arcana for interrogation. Despite some concern over freedom of information, this journal must concede that it was proper for that information to be withheld from the public in the interest of security. What this journal has only now learned, however, is what
else
was withheld.

Magister Halathyn vos Dulainah, a national hero in Ransar, founder of the New Arcanan Academy of Theoretical Magic, and the most Gifted magister Arcana has ever known, has been foully murdered. The unarmed magister, present with Hundred Olderhan’s company purely as a civilian consultant—without uniform or weapon—was shot down without pity or mercy when the brutal Sharonian attack overran the 2nd Andarans. Armed with weapons even more terrifying and destructive than initial reports had suggested—weapons capable of hurling explosive spells
through
a portal—the attack overwhelmed our troops almost immediately. And as Magister Halathyn attempted to aid a wounded soldier, one of the attackers cold-bloodedly shot the elderly, unarmed magister with one of their hellish weapons.

Despite the brutality of the attack, whose full details have not been officially acknowledged even now, Governor Nith mul Gurthak attempted to establish diplomatic contact with the Sharonians in hopes of avoiding additional bloodshed. As our readers will recall from earlier articles, he directed Rithmar Skirvon and Uthik Dastiri or the Union Arbitration Commission to seek a truce with the Sharonians for the purpose of negotiating some peaceful alternative to the carnage which appeared to be their preferred mode of contact. Our readers will also recall that those negotiations failed and active operations were subsequently renewed.

What we did not know, and have only now learned, is precisely
how
those negotiations failed. The exact details remain unclear, but the
Times Herald
has learned that the murdered bodies of every member of our diplomats’ security detail were discovered—left lying where they fell and badly burned by a fire clearly set by the Sharonian murderers to cover their own flight from retribution. The body of Envoy Dastiri was also recovered, and Army forensic Healers have determined that he was shot directly between the eyes at very short range by one of the devilish Sharonian weapons. Perhaps even worse—and far more ominous—the body of Envoy Skirvon has
not
been recovered, leaving one to wonder what still worse fate may have befallen him.

In the meantime, personal messages beginning to arrive from the handful of prisoners from the 2nd Andarans who have been rescued tell grim tales of torture and brutal mistreatment in which even rudimentary Healing was denied out heroic wounded. In other news just received from the front—