David Weber - The Road to Hell

Isn’t any different from relying on any other report from a forward scout, Grithair , he told himself firmly. Just keep remembering that .

And, if the Distance Viewers were correct about that element of surprise, it meant Gold Company and the rest of 2nd Battalion had gotten all the way to the very doorstep of Thermyn without any Arcanan seeing a thing.

Of course, that just puts even more pressure on us to make sure the bastards behind them stay equally fat, dumb, and ignorant. It’s still thirteen hundred miles to Fort Ghartoun, even after we’re through the portal. Plenty of time for them to arrange something nasty if we fuck up at this point!

At least the terrain favored them. The only really tricky bit was getting past the miserable, cold squad or two of Arcanans who’d staked out the ruins of the fort. The dry riverbed below the portal provided quite a lot of cover for men as well trained at wringing every possible advantage out of any terrain feature as those of the 3rd Dragoons. Its depth gave excellent cover against anyone at the level of the riverbank, at least until they were most of the way across. Better yet, the angled portal itself created a huge blind spot. If he’d been in charge of picketing it, he’d have had positions for two or three section-sized outposts stretched across each aspect, but especially on the southern side, where the river had disappeared into Thermyn. That would have given him an excellent chance of spotting anyone trying to sneak across the river towards him.

But the Arcanans hadn’t done that. Fort Rensar had been designed as an administrative node, not a serious defensive work, and while it had an excellent view of the portion of the Tyrahl River which still had water in it, its view of the empty bed beyond the portal was badly restricted by the portal itself. By moving a mile or so downstream, chan Mahsdyr’s men had been able to cross the channel without anyone at the fort seeing a thing. Worse-or, actually, better from his perspective-it was obvious the idiot who’d picked the location for their main encampment hadn’t thought about the fact his forward pickets had such an enormous blind spot. If there’d been one approach route chan Mahsdyr would have worried about, it was the empty riverbed, not the one that was still full of icy cold, rushing water, yet the southwesternmost edge of the portal completely concealed it from anyone in the Graystone’s valley just as completely as from Fort Rensar. They literally couldn’t see anything coming around the portal’s eastern aspect. Why in Chindarsu’s name they hadn’t pulled their encampment all the way back to the Thermyn side of the portal if they weren’t going to picket this side adequately was more than chan Mahsdyr was prepared to guess.

He wasn’t about to complain, however. His maps were both detailed and highly accurate, updated by the TTE’s surveyors to account for any discrepancies between the purely local geography of Nairsom and that of Sharona. With that advantage, it hadn’t been difficult to pick his approach route to the spot he wanted. He imagined his men-especially those of the mortar platoon-were inventing imaginative curses for him at the moment as they struggled across the rugged terrain, but he was fine with that. And they’d be fine with it, too, if they managed to get into position without being spotted.

“Well, Doc, I guess it’s time we were heading out, too.”

* * *

Commander of Fifty Gilthar Vurth closed the door of 2nd Platoon’s mess hall chansyu hut and stood on the front step, idly picking his teeth with a toothpick. It was getting on towards evening-days were short this early in the year and this far north-and the cooks were about ready to start serving dinner. As Thimanus Gorzalt’s senior platoon commander and acting executive officer, it was one of Vurth’s self-appointed duties to sample each meal and make certain it was worthy of the Union of Arcana’s fighting men.

It wasn’t like he had anything else to do out here in the middle of absolutely nowhere.

He grimaced at the thought and wondered once again what god or demon he’d offended to end up under Gorzalt’s command. Of course, the 451st Regiment was a far cry from one of the Army’s elite units, like the 2nd Andaran Scouts. No doubt there was some sort of seismic settling process which inexorably moved less than scintillating officers into its ranks and away from those more elite units. The only problem with that theory was that while it explained how Gorzalt had ended up in the 451st, it didn’t explain what Vurth was doing here.

Or I hope to hells it doesn’t, anyway , he reflected.

He shrugged and turned toward the barren, unkempt “parade ground” Gorzalt had insisted on laying out between the mess hall and his HQ hut. It hadn’t gotten a lot of use since Thousand Carthos pulled back to rejoin the main expeditionary force in Traisum. Vurth tried to make sure all the men were inspected at least weekly and got at least some time on the firing range every week. It shouldn’t have been difficult, but Gorzalt seemed to have withdrawn into a sulk when he realized who was being left behind to picket the portal, and the rest of C Company appeared to have caught the malaise from its CO. Well, aside from Zakar Ustmyn, at least, and look what Ustmyn’s attitude had gotten him!

Vurth shook his head in disgust-disgust directed almost as much at himself as at Gorzalt-and started across the “parade ground” as the shadows cast by the high ground to the northwest began to creep over it.

* * *

“Platoon-Captain chan Urhal’s in position, Sir.”

Grithair chan Mahsdyr took the hastily scribbled note from Armsman 1/c chan Tylwyr, his company Flicker, and managed-somehow-not to say “At last!” It would have been unprofessional, unfair to Jersalma chan Urhal’s 3rd Platoon, and a case of blaming the wrong person, anyway. He’d been right about the way the terrain would cover his approach, but he’d made insufficient allowance for how it would slow that approach. For the last hour or so, he’d been afraid he was going to lose the light before all of his men were in place. That would have left him with the choice of mounting a night attack or waiting in position-without cover and without bedrolls-until dawn. Neither was a palatable alternative, although he was pretty sure he’d have gone with the first if it came to it. Surprise and darkness should let them sweep up the entire Arcanan encampment, but that same darkness would make it much easier for someone to get away with word of Gold Company’s presence.

Now, fortunately, he wouldn’t have to. He still had at least forty-five minutes, more likely an hour and a half. That should be plenty of time.

“All right, Shodan,” he told chan Tylwyr. “It’s time. Pass the word.”

“Yes, Sir!”

The Flicker gave him a quick, broad smile, and then concentrated on the neat row of metal message tubes laid out in front of him. They vanished in rapid, silent succession, as quickly as a Faraika spat out bullets, and chan Mahsdyr raised his field glasses and looked down from the ridgeline.

He stood barely eight hundred yards from the center of the Arcanan outpost, looking down from the top of a five hundred-foot hill. The Graystone’s valley widened at this point, so its further side was almost fourteen hundred yards from his present position. That was farther than he really liked, but the contour lines were also much steeper and he’d gotten chan Urhal’s platoon down onto the valley floor itself. That was one reason this had taken so long; 3rd Platoon had been forced to swing substantially wider than the rest of his attack force. That was the bad news. The good news was that chan Urhal had managed to use the Graystone’s bed to infiltrate to within little more than three hundred yards of the encampment without being spotted.