David Weber - The Road to Hell

Now, as chan Tylwyr’s Flicked message tubes reached their destinations, half a dozen mortars opened fire.

* * *

Gilthar Vurth was halfway across Thimanus Gorzalt’s parade ground when the first mortar bomb landed.

The two support platoons assigned to Gold Company were equipped with light, three-inch mortars, not the much heavier four-and-a-half-inch weapons of a heavy mortar company, and chan Mahsdyr had brought only one platoon across the riverbed. The three-inch projectiles weighed less than a third as much as those of their bigger brethren and, at four thousand yards, they had only two thirds the range. But they had ample reach for the task in hand, and their seven-pound bombs came sliding down the frigid air with the sound of whispering silk.

Vurth just had time to register the mortars’ muted coughs. It wasn’t much to hear, really, because they were emplaced in the dead ground behind the hill upon which chan Mahsdyr had taken up his position. The fifty’s head came up, turning as he tried to determine the peculiar sounds’ direction. Unfortunately for him, he’d never heard mortar fire before. He had no idea what he’d heard, and the incoming fire arrived long before he could figure it out.

He’d never heard mortars firing before, and he’d never hear them again, either. One of the plunging bombs landed barely fifteen feet from him and the blast hurled his broken, bleeding body back into the front wall of the mess hall. He oozed down it in a broad, crimson streak of blood, his eyes already settling into the dull, fixed stare of death.

* * *

Commander of One Hundred Thimanus Gorzalt jerked upright in his chair as the explosions thundered. He sprang to his feet, eyes wide, expression incredulous, and wheeled toward the single window in the chansyu hut’s southern wall.

He got there just as another mortar bomb impacted on the hut’s roof almost directly above him.

* * *

Sword Trymayn Ilkathym heard a voice bellowing orders, fighting to bring some sort of order out of the sudden, terrifying chaos. It took him a moment to realize the voice belonged to him …and that he didn’t hear a single one of C Company’s officers. He knew he wouldn’t hear Gilthar Vurth’s. He’d been waiting for the fifty on the far side of the parade ground when the first Sharonian fire exploded like Shartahk’s own thunderbolts. He’d seen his fifty blown backwards, seen him smash into the mess hall’s wall and ooze down it, and he’d seen more than enough dead men to recognize one more.

Then he heard something no Arcanan had ever heard before. He heard the high, fiercely snarling wolf’s howl of ancient Ternathia and the wild music of the war pipes of the mountains of Delkrathia. The Imperial Ternathian Army had adopted those pipes more than two millennia ago, and their savage voice had played Ternathia’s soldiers to victory on more battlefields than even the best military historian could have counted.

And then the Faraika machine guns which had been wrestled forward opened fire from the ridgeline on which Grithair chan Mahsdyr stood watching.

“Move, gods damn you! Move! ” Ilkathym’s sword was in his hand, somehow, and he jabbed it at the steep valley side from which that spreading thundered came. “Get your weapons and fucking follow me!”

Perhaps a half-dozen voices answered, and he snarled. He already knew how this was going to end, but he’d been a soldier for seventeen years. That was more than half his entire life, and here at the end, he discovered that he didn’t know how to be anything else.

“ Follow me, boys! ” he screamed and charged across the valley.

He got fifty yards before a.40 caliber bullet hit him squarely at the base of his throat.

* * *

“Mother Jambakol!”

Kilvyn Forstmir whirled towards the sudden sound of explosions and gunfire, his face gaunt with shock in the afternoon light pouring through from the far side of the portal. The main encampment was over four miles from Fort Rensar’s charred remains, but sound carried extraordinarily well in the cold, still air. He’d never heard anything like it, and he didn’t really know what he was hearing now, but he knew who had to be behind it.

How? How in the names of all the gods could Sharonians have gotten this far down-chain from Traisum so quickly? And how could they have done it without anyone spotting them?

The questions hammered through him, and his jaw tightened as he realized the answer to the last one, at least. They’d gotten into position to attack Hundred Gorzalt’s position because C Company had let them. He’d known- known -Gorzalt hadn’t even tried to properly picket the portal. And instead of trying to do anything about it himself, instead of finding some way to prod his own fifty into doing something about it, he’d sat on his own mental arse and wasted his energy bitching at his officers. It was damned well an officer’s job not to let something like this happen, but when they didn’t step up and do it, someone else had to.

And he hadn’t.

“What the hells is all that racket, Sword?!”

He turned to see Fifty Ustmyn bursting out of his tent, buckling his sword belt as he came.

“Only one thing it can be, Sir,” he said grimly.

“But how in Shartahk’s name could Sharonians have gotten all the way down-chain to Nairsom?!”

“Don’t know, Sir.” Forstmir’s tone was flat. “Hells, maybe they do have their own version of dragons! Doesn’t really matter right now though, does it?”

“You’re right about that,” Ustmyn said after half a breath and squared his shoulders. “If they’re here, they’re twenty-five hundred miles closer to Hell’s Gate than Two Thousand Harshu. And if they got here this quickly-”

He and his platoon sword looked at one another sickly. To get to this point, the Sharonians had traveled almost eighteen thousand miles-six thousand of them across the Treybus Ocean in the middle of winter-in no more than four months…and that assumed they’d started instantly. And if they could reach Nairsom that quickly, they could almost certainly beat Two Thousand Harshu to Hell’s Gate and cut his communications behind him.

“Must’ve missed us somehow, Sir,” Forstmir said quietly. “Either that, or they figure they can tidy us up anytime after they deal with the rest of the Company. But they’ll be coming.”

“I know.” Ustmyn rubbed his chin, then inhaled sharply. “Get the men turned to, Kilvyn. It probably won’t matter, but we can at least try. And in the meantime, these bastards must not’ve realized we have a hummer cot of our own.”

“Yes, Sir.”

“Tell Galvara I need him.”

“Yes, Sir!”

Forstmir slapped his breastplate in salute and headed off into the gathering twilight, shouting orders to the shaken men of 2nd Platoon. Ustmyn looked after him for a moment, then sat on one of the fort’s burned timbers, pulled a recording crystal out of his belt pouch, and began dictating his report.

* * *

“You wanted me, Sir?”

Ustmyn looked up as Lance Gordymair Galvara, the leader of the three-man hummer section Hundred Gorzalt had attached to 2nd Platoon, slid to a halt beside him. Gorzalt hadn’t sent his most capable hummer master out to share 2nd Platoon’s misery, but at least Galvara didn’t seem to be panicking.

Probably lack of imagination , the fifty thought mordantly.

“Yes, Galvara,” he said out loud and extended the crystal. “Get this transferred and into the air as soon as possible. It’s critical this message get through, so copy it to every hummer you’ve got.”

“But if we send them all off, Sir, we won’t have any left for additional messages,” Galvara pointed out.