David Weber - The Road to Hell

And he was also one of the officers who’d swallowed the official version of Sharonian “war crimes” and what had happened to Magister Halathyn. Sarma doubted Wentys would have had the nerve to beat one of the Sharonian POWs, but he would certainly have held Thalmayr’s truncheon for him between blows.

“Well, no. Not if you put it that way,” he conceded.

“Wentys officially cleared the file for transmission and sealed it with his personal cipher,” Ulthar said. “It’s unlikely anyone up-chain’s going to go to the trouble of breaking it just to double check. They can’t do it openly without leaving tracks I doubt anyone involved with some kind of cover-up wants to leave, and if they do it clandestinely, it’ll be almost impossible for them to hide the fact. And whether they do it openly or covertly, Valnar set the file to self-destruct if anyone other than Arylis tries to access it. Of course, Arylis won’t know she’s accessing it until it pops out at her. At which point,” his smile turned very, very cold, “she goes straight to the Duke with it.”

“You’re sending your wife directly to Duke Garth Showma?” Sarma blinked.

“He’s the hereditary commander of the Second Andarans,” Ulthar replied simply. “If she takes it to him, he’ll read it. And when he does, and when he realizes what one of his officers has been doing, hell won’t hold what’ll come down on Hadrign Thalmayr’s head.”

“Or anyone else’s, I imagine,” Sarma said slowly.

“Or anyone else’s,” Ulthar agreed, but then he shrugged. “Unfortunately, it’s going to take over a month for that letter to reach Arylis, and Velvelig’s healers’ll be dead long before that happens. For that matter, once he actually beats a couple of them to death, I’m pretty sure Thalmayr’ll decide all the Sharonian POWs were shot trying to escape. Dead witnesses don’t tend to dispute live witnesses’ version of what happened.”

“No, they don’t. And you’re right about what’s going to happen to them if someone doesn’t stop it. It’s nice to know the Duke’s going to bring the hammer down eventually, but I’m afraid it’s still up to you and me to do something about Thalmayr in the short term.”

“Yes, it is. And I’m glad you stopped me from going after him all by myself, Jaralt. I hadn’t thought about involving anyone else, especially what’s left of my men. In fact, if I’m going to be honest, I’m so frigging furious I wasn’t really ‘thinking’ at all. Now that you’ve jogged my brain back into functioning, though, I’d really prefer to work out a solution where anybody who gets killed is one of the bad guys. And it occurs to me that you and I probably aren’t the only members of this garrison who loathe Thalmayr and his toadies. If we’re going to be charged with mutiny, we might as well go the whole dragon, don’t you think?”

December 8

The magnificent imperial Ternathian peregrine gave a shrill cry of disapproval, spread her four-foot wings, and launched from the saddle-mounted perch. She soared effortlessly into the clean blue sky, and Regiment-Captain Rof chan Skrithik looked enviously after her. There was more than a touch of sorrow in that envy, an aching grief for the death of a prince which had brought him and Taleena together, yet there was also a fierce joy as he watched her spiraling higher and higher against the cloudless blue.

Unfortunately, it was far from cloudless at ground level, and chan Skrithik tried to be philosophical about that as he climbed down from his horse, handed the reins to an under-armsman, and made his way through the incredible racket and blowing wall of dust towards the officer who stood waiting for him.

Regiment-Captain Lyskar chan Serahlyk was a tallish man, only an inch or two shorter than chan Skrithik himself, and although he’d been born in Teramandor and spoke with a distinct Teramandoran accent, he had the tightly curled hair and dark complexion of his Ricathian father. Of course, the dust rolling steadily eastward on the permanent, powerful wind from the Karys Portal to coat everything in sight made it difficult to judge anyone’s skin color just at the moment. It was ironic, really. Given the mechanics of portal dynamics, the dust cloud-laced with coal smoke from the heavy equipment helping to spawn it-blew steadily east and west here in Traisum, away from the portal in both directions like two fog banks fleeing from one another, which meant there was no way to approach the portal without getting grit blasted between one’s teeth.

Chan Skrithik tied a bandanna to cover his nose and mouth as he walked, and chan Serahlyk’s eyes narrowed in amusement above a matching, dust-caked bandanna. The unseasonably hot weather-for a Shurkhali winter, at least-had finally broken, which was a vast relief. Now if only there’d been anything remotely like rain on the horizon from either side of the portal…

“Good morning, Rof,” the Third Dragoons’ senior engineer said as soon as chan Skrithik was close enough to hear anything through the background din. He still had to raise his voice, but at least they could talk without shouting.

“Good morning,” chan Skrithik acknowledged, reaching out to clasp forearms. “Seen any dragons lately?”

Chan Serahlyk chuckled. It was a serious question, but like most Sharonians, he still found the notion of dragons absurd, despite the fact that his combat engineers had helped to bury the last of the rotting carcasses.

“Not today,” he said. “Haven’t seen any since that little problem they ran into last week, as a matter of fact.”

The engineer’s voice was grimly satisfied, and chan Skrithik smiled in satisfaction of his own. The Karys aspect of the Traisum-Karys Portal was four and a half miles across but the entire portal was relatively low-lying, especially from its Traisum aspect. On that side, it was buried-literally-in the heart of the Ithal Mountains, which reached altitudes of over six thousand feet. Getting to it was difficult from ground level, yet it could be done, as the existence of the Traisum Cut indicated. Approaching that aspect from the west, the terrain was even more challenging than from the east.

The Trans-Temporal Express-and the Imperial Ternathian Army and Imperial Corps of Engineers-had dealt with lots of rough terrain over the centuries, however. Division-Captain chan Geraith had made dealing with this particular rough terrain an urgent priority, and Olvyr Banchu had dipped into his copious supply of bulldozers and earthmoving machinery to help chan Serahlyk’s 123rd Combat Engineers with their task.

Elevations on opposite sides of portals seldom aligned anything like neatly, and this one was no exception. On the Karys side, the Queriz Depression was over a hundred feet below sea level, which explained the unending wind blowing through from the higher air pressure on that side of it. The portal was also both wider and higher in Karys, where it rose to a height of over four miles above ground level. On the Traisum side, because so much more of its circular diameter was underground, the portal was barely a mile and a half across and its highest point cleared Mount Karek’s summit by less than twenty-four hundred feet. Given the mountain’s slope and the fact that the portal was somewhat east of its crest, the portal reached to a point about thirty-six hundred feet above local ground level, while its apex was effectively between one and two hundred yards lower than that from the west.

Thirty-six hundred feet-twelve hundred yards-was well within the maximum range of the Model 10 rifle, but the Model 10’s effective range was only about eight hundred yards, although trained snipers with telescopic sights could score killing hits at twice that range. The twin-barreled, crank-driven Faraika I machine gun fired exactly the same round, and although its ballistics were a little better than the rifle’s due to its heavier, longer barrel, its accuracy in aimed fire was poorer, giving it approximately the same effective range. The heavier Faraika II, with its massive.54 caliber bullet, had slightly less maximum range than the Faraika I, but its effective range was actually greater: over fifteen hundred yards. That range would be reduced firing vertically because of gravity, but the Faraika II should still be able to reach thirty-three hundred feet.