The Road to Hell - eARC (4 page)

“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 to 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.”

“There’s another point to consider, too,” chan Geraith put in. The staffers looked at him, and the division-captain shrugged. “Trying to retake Karys, we could only get at them by fighting our way down the Cut on the ground; their godsdamned dragons can literally fly out of the portal any time they want to. Once Lyskar here”—he nodded at Lyskar chan Serahlyk, his chief combat engineer—“finishes digging in the portal defenses, that’ll change. And once Braykhan’s guns get here, we’ll be able to think about pushing them farther back on the approaches, but for now they’ve got damned close to completely free passage. That means they have an open road to attack our line of communication, but they aren’t doing it. Why not? They have to realize we can’t have pedestal guns and heavy Faraikas everywhere, so why
aren’t
they trying to circle wide around the fort and the fixed defenses to get at the rail line or our fatigue parties?” He looked around the map table. “Any commander with a scrap of initiative would be probing our rear area defenses, if nothing else, and does anyone in this compartment want argue that someone who managed to advance over four thousand miles in
twelve days
doesn’t have at least a trace of initiative? The fact that this ‘Two Thousand Harshu’ of theirs isn’t doing exactly that suggests to me that he has to be extraordinarily sensitive to additional losses for
some
reason. And according to young chan Hopyr he appears to have plenty of men, which seems to add point to the theory that it’s his logistics, not manpower, that’s the problem.”

Platoon-Captain Rynai chan Hopyr was the Distance Viewer who’d gone forward with the escort sent to shepherd Olvyr Banchu and his engineers back to Fort Salby. His was a powerful Talent, and he’d used it to good effect scouting the Arcanans’ positions and troop strength. He’d tallied in excess of a hundred and fifty of their dragons and at least six thousand men, twice the 3rd Dragoons’ current strength in Traisum. There was no way to tell what might have lain outside his range, but chan Geraith was certain the Arcanan commander had strength chan Hopyr hadn’t Seen. Not that what he
had
Seen hadn’t been quite bad enough.

“That’s essentially my own conclusion, Sir,” chan Gayrahn said. “Well, mine and Master-Armsman chan Vornos’. All indications are that Harshu is a determined, ruthless commander—more than ruthless enough to accept casualties and losses as the price of accomplishing his mission. Yet he hasn’t even tried to attack the rail line behind us.”

“Perhaps he simply doesn’t realize how important it is,” chan Isail suggested, and chan Geraith nodded. One of the things he most valued about chan Isail was the chief of staff’s hardheaded pragmatism. Chan Geraith’s own tendency was to think in the most aggressive terms possible. Aggressively enough, in fact, that he sometimes found himself badly in need of chan Isail’s willingness to challenge (or at least critically examine) his underlying assumptions.

“I think it’s entirely possible—even probable—that he doesn’t have a clear grasp of how much we can move, or how quickly we can move it, on rails,” the division-captain conceded now. “In fact, I don’t see how it could be any other way. They had to be as ignorant of our capabilities as we were of theirs when they set out to attack us, and Harshu wouldn’t have been so quick to let Banchu and the work crews go if he’d realized how badly he could hurt us by just hanging on to them.”

“You’re probably right about that, Sir,” chan Kymo said thoughtfully. “I’ve been trying to get some sort of mental picture of how our transport capabilities stack up against theirs, now that we know about these dragon things of theirs.” The quartermaster shrugged. “I can’t be positive they don’t have something like our railroads, obviously, but I agree with you that Harshu would never have let Banchu’s people go so readily—at the very least, he would’ve insisted that all their equipment be left behind or destroyed—if he’d had any real grasp of their importance. In fact, I’m beginning to think it’s important we not let ourselves be so dazzled by how
quickly
they can move that we overestimate how
much
they can move.

“Assume a sixty-ton dragon can carry its own weight. Frankly, that seems unlikely as hell for any flying beast, but given how ‘unlikely’ dragons are in the first place, I’m not going to say they can’t. But that’s still only sixty tons per dragon, whereas we can load a hundred and ten tons into a standard freight car, and the heavy-lift cars can carry almost twice that much. We hauled over
ten thousand
tons all the way from Sharona in a single train. Assuming their dragons really could haul sixty tons apiece, they’d still need over a hundred and seventy of them to match that total…and we currently have two more trains that size following us down the same line, with more loading up right behind them. If Harshu had any concept of what that means, he’d be moving heaven and all the Arpathian hells combined to stop us from doing it.”

“Point taken,” chan Isail said after a moment.

“I think Therahk may have an even better point then he realizes,” chan Geraith said. His subordinates looked at him, and he smiled thinly. “We have to remember both sides are dealing with opponents with completely unknown capabilities. I know I just said that, but it bears repeating because it’s something we
have
to keep in mind. At the moment, Harshu undoubtedly calculates—correctly, by the way—that he has every tactical advantage there is in our current standoff. He can’t know how good our heavy artillery is, and I think it’s obvious that until he hit chan Skrithik here at Fort Salby, none of our people had an opportunity to use their weapons and doctrine effectively against him. He’d’ve been one hell of a lot more cautious about how he went after Salby if they had. But he’s got a better feeling for our capabilities by now, and he’s probably licking his chops thinking about what he can do to any assault we might launch down the Cut, right into his teeth. If nothing else, those damned dragons of his mean he could put explosive charges into the sides of the Cut anywhere he wanted to. We’ve already seen what their equivalent of dynamite can do to a fort’s wall, so there’s no reason to assume they couldn’t do the same things to the
Cut’s
walls, now is there?”

He looked around their expressions. Most of them looked as if they’d really like to disagree with him; none of them did.

“One thing we have to remember, though,” he continued after a moment, “is that they
have
had the opportunity to observe our capabilities on their advance from Hell’s Gate. By now, for example, they must realize our draft animals are nowhere near as big or as powerful as theirs are, judging by those cavalry horses of theirs.”

Chan Isail nodded sourly. The “horses” the Arcanans had used in their final assault on Fort Salby were bigger than the largest Chinthai draft horse he’d ever seen, yet according to all of the witnesses, they’d charged the fort’s eastern wall cross-country at a speed few Sharonian thoroughbreds could have matched on a racetrack. Obviously, the Arcanans’ magic—or whatever the hells they called it—had been at work there, as well.

“I think we also have to assume that they’ve captured accurate maps of both the Karys and Kelsayr Chains,” chan Geraith pointed out. “If they have, they probably realize just how unimproved both chains are beyond Karys and Lashai, not to mention the water gap here in Traisum. Where Kelsayr’s concerned, they’ll probably assume—logically—that six thousand miles of ocean and another forty-six hundred miles overland must constitute a pretty severe bottleneck here in Traisum, and they’ll evaluate our mobility beyond the railheads on the basis of piss-poor roads and trails, wagons, and pack animals. By the same token, even if Therahk’s completely correct about Harshu’s not realizing how much we can transport by rail, I’ll guarantee you he
does
realize we can move one hell of a lot more in a freight car than we could in a six-horse wagon down a dirt trail. So if I were him, and if I could move my entire army four thousand miles in less than two weeks, I wouldn’t be especially worried by the possibility of being flanked on a seventeen thousand-mile march by an enemy restricted to horse-drawn transport. Even if he knows about the shipyard at Renaiyrton and the rail line through Kelsayr and Lashai, he’ll figure he has plenty of defensive depth on that front.”

He paused as if to see if any of his staffers wanted to disagree with him. No one did, and he shrugged.

“So what
I’d
do,” he said, “is send word however quickly I could to whoever I’d had advancing up the Kelsayr Chain to turn himself around, backtrack to Thermyn, and then move up to support me in Karys as quickly as he could. I’m sure Harshu committed dragons to support the other advance, as well, so by recalling them, he should be able to regenerate at least a little of the dragon strength chan Skrithik and Prince Janaki cost him here. That would strengthen him against any attack we were foolish enough to launch down the Cut, and it might also give him enough strength to actually try cutting or at least damaging the rail line between here and Salym with deep strike raids into our rear. I think he’s expecting to be reinforced—probably pretty damned heavily—as soon as his superiors can get additional men and dragons forward to him. At that point, if I were him, I’d be thinking in terms of using the additional dragons to send a major force through our portal here to drop in somewhere several hundred miles in our rear to cut the rail line and
hold
it. If I could manage that, then eventually I’d be able to starve out Salbyton and any field force protecting the Cut, and if I could interdict movement from Salym
into
Traisum. I’d have both the Kelsayr and Karys Chains without having to deal with the water gap between Chernoth and Renaiyrton. I don’t care how ‘magical’ their damned dragons are, they
can’t
be up to a six thousand-mile flight without stopping, or they’d’ve been one hells of a lot farther up-chain than they are before we even knew they were coming!”