David Weber - The Road to Hell

And that was why the next few days were going to be critical.

According to chan Mahsdyr’s detailed reports, the entire garrison of Fort Ghartoun couldn’t amount to much more than half a battalion. There was perhaps a company of their unicorn-mounted light cavalry and what certainly looked from the Voice reports like no more than a couple of infantry companies. It was obvious, reading between the lines of the company-captain’s reports that chan Mahsdyr was confident Gold Company could have successfully seized the fort out of its own resources, and given how expeditiously they’d secured the entry portal from Nairsom, chan Geraith was prepared to believe he was right. He had no intention of finding out, however. When the time came, Battalion-Captain chan Yahndar’s entire battalion would storm the fort. Hopefully, 2nd Battalion’s attack would come as as much of a surprise to Fort Ghartoun as chan Mahsdyr’s assault had been for the Arcanan encampment on the Tyrahl River. Unfortunately, the Fort Ghartoun hummer cots were inside the fort’s sturdy walls. Not even a Talented sniper like Fozak chan Gyulair could hit a target on the other side of a solid, clay-reinforced timber palisade, and unfortunately, the engineers who’d chosen Fort Ghartoun’s site had picked one which offered no handy vantage points simultaneously high enough and close enough to target the fort’s interior over its walls.

Chan Yahndar had devised a plan to deal with that, and chan Geraith had approved it because it offered an excellent chance of success. Without the ability to specifically and directly target the hummer cots, however, no one could guarantee that the fort’s garrison-chan Geraith hesitated to use the noun “defenders” to describe a body of troops which appeared to spend so much time sitting on its collective arse-couldn’t get off a message. That was unfortunate, because it was less than three hundred miles from Fort Ghartoun to Hell’s Gate across New Uromath, and even with the Bisons and Steel Mules, 3rd Dragoons would need at least three days-more probably four-to cover that distance. In fact, it might well take five, given the forests on the New Uromath side of the portal, and he had no idea how close the nearest Arcanan reaction force might be.

At least he could count on the Arcanans’ lack of Voices. Fast as their hummers were, they were far slower than a Voice message, so it would take them a lot longer than it would have taken a Sharonian commander to begin responding to any message from Fort Ghartoun. Unfortunately, once they did respond they had those never-to-be-sufficiently-damned dragons. They could move troops far, far faster than he could, so it would be a race between his powerful, concentrated ground force and a dragonborne Arcanan force which would probably be far more scattered initially than his own. And that being the case, he needed his main body as close to Fort Ghartoun as he could get it before he attacked it.

It would be an interesting challenge in a training exercise , he reflected, but it’s a pain in the arse when I have to do it for real. How close can I get to Fort Ghartoun before one of those transiting dragon riders glances down and happens to notice several hundred vehicles churning towards it? The direct route to Failcham may be north of us, but the closer we get to Ghartoun, the more likely it is that someone’s going to spot us and our damned dust clouds .

He’d decided that a hundred miles was the absolute maximum he could rely upon in that regard. He’d already spotted Plotters and Distance Viewers along his route to Fort Ghartoun, tied together by Flickers and Voices to warn him of any dragon which might chance close enough to detect them, but once he got within a hundred miles, he was going to assume detection by the Arcanans was effectively inevitable.

At least according to chan Malthyn the idiots garrisoning the fort aren’t doing a dawn stand-to , he reminded himself, then grimaced.

It probably really wasn’t entirely fair to think of the garrison as “idiots,” this far in what they “knew” was their own army’s rear. As far as they knew, the nearest possible threat was thousands upon thousands of miles away. Still, he liked to think a Ternathian CO would have been taking more precautions than the Arcanans appeared to be.

And whether they’re really idiots or not, the fact that they’re sleeping in instead of manning the firing steps is going to cost them when the time comes , he reflected more grimly.

His smile would not have looked out of place on a hungry lion, and he raised his glasses once more, gazing down at the bridge and willing the engineers to work even faster.

April 6

Commander of One Hundred Verchyk Gorsatan contemplated the day’s paperwork with sour disgust. It wasn’t that he objected to paperwork per se ; as an officer who’d come up through logistics, he was really more of an administrator than a warrior, anyway, and he knew it. In fact, he was very good at paperwork, and as a general rule, he took a quiet pride in the fact that it was men like him whose ability to manage supply chains, troop movements, and transportation resources-and generally massage the system-made possible advances like the one Two Thousand Harshu had driven so brilliantly forward until that unfortunate business at Fort Salby.

Which, although he had no intention of pointing it out, had clearly been the fault of the warriors, not the despised bureaucrats who kept them fed.

No, the reason Gorsatan objected to the reports floating in his crystal’s depths this morning was that warrior or not, he recognized the shit storm certain to descend upon his head at some point in the still thankfully indeterminate future. What made it even more revolting was the fact that none of it would be his fault, despite the fact that he was the one who’d be holding the can when that storm inevitably made landfall.

The only good news, he reflected, was that even more of it would descend upon Hadrign Thalmayr, who deeply deserved every single thing that was going to happen to him. That had become abundantly clear to Gorsatan since his arrival as Thalmayr’s replacement at Fort Ghartoun. Fifty Varkan and Fifty Yankaro, the senior officers of the fort’s rather tattered garrison, had done their best to gloss over Thalmayr’s excesses. Their very silence on the subject of prisoner misconduct, torture, and violations of the Kerellian Accords spoke volumes, however. Gorsatan was well aware he wasn’t regarded as one of the Union of Arcana Army’s sharpest blades, and he suspected he’d drawn Fort Ghartoun at least in part on the theory that he wouldn’t poke into matters which predated his own assumption of command. For that matter, he didn’t want to stick his nose into things which were none of his affair, and he especially didn’t want to turn over any rocks that might reveal scorpions ready to sting his hand or Two Thousand Harshu.

Much as he respected Harshu, however, he knew those scorpions were waiting, and that their venom was going to be painful. And, despite that same respect, he’d come to the conclusion Harshu would deserve whatever came his way. Gorsatan was well aware that Harshu had never approved Thalmayr’s personal, vicious cruelty. But he was equally well aware that Harshu had, at the very least, turned a blind eye to the activities of Alivar Neshok. How the two thousand could have thought for a moment that men like Thalmayr wouldn’t take Neshok’s brutality as a license to commit their own atrocities passed Gorsatan’s understanding. Verchyk Gorsatan had never seen a better illustration of the old Chalaran proverb about a fish rotting from the head.

And when it all hit the fan and the inevitable investigators arrived at Fort Ghartoun, he’d be one who went down in the Army’s memory either as the man who’d provided the information that started the catastrophic implosion of the career of an officer he deeply admired or else as the man who’d tried to conceal evidence of profoundly criminal activity in an effort to protect an officer he deeply admired.