David Weber - The Road to Hell

“That’s true, Sir,” Mahrkrai acknowledged. “We haven’t seen a lot of men coming and going from those tents, though.”

“And we haven’t been able to keep them under anything like continuous observation, either,” Toralk pointed out.

“I’d feel happier if we had been able to,” Harshu said sourly. “I don’t like not being able to count noses on the primary enemy force in our front.”

“There’s been one possibility playing around in the back of my mind,” Mahrkrai said thoughtfully. “Were you ever stationed in Farsh Danuth, Sir?”

“No.” Harshu looked at him. “Never wanted to be, either.” He grimaced. “I’ve been through the region a couple of times, but I was never actually stationed there, thank Graholis!”

Farsh Danuth was an ancient kingdom lying between the Farshian Sea in the west, the Tankara Gulf in the east, the Shansir Mountains in the northwest, and the Urdanha Mountains in the northeast. It was also the product of ancient Mythalan conquest across Mythal’s Stool, the triangular peninsula between the Hyrythian and Farshian Seas. As such, the kingdom had served as the buffer zone-and flashpoint-for hostility between Mythal and Ransar for centuries. Perhaps as a result, it was almost rabidly Mythalan in population, societal institutions, and attitudes, and Andarans were seldom made to feel welcome within its borders.

“Well, this portal’s up in the Hanahk Mountains west of Selkhara,” Mahrkrai said, “and there’s not a lot of grazing in the vicinity. Fort Salby’s farther east, on the edge of the Selkhara Oasis, and the grass is probably at least a little better there-it certainly is back home, at any rate, although the portal wind from Karys probably makes the local climate even worse. At any rate, what I’ve been thinking is that this is a dragoon brigade, according to all our information, and that means it has a lot of horses. And horses eat a lot. So if they aren’t planning on launching some sort of cavalry charge down the Cut, it would make sense for them to’ve pulled their horses back along the rail line to somewhere they can supplement fodder with grazing. Gods know we’re having enough trouble keeping our cavalry fed, and their horses don’t have the advantage of augmentation.”

“And if they’ve pulled the horses back,” Harshu said thoughtfully, “it would be logical to pull back the riders , as well, aside from whatever they thought they’d need to keep us from breaking through and hitting Fort Salby again.”

“It would ease the strain on local water supplies, too, Sir,” Mahrkrai pointed out.

“That’s true,” Toralk said, gazing down at the imagery before them, “and it makes a lot of sense. On the other hand, I’m beginning to wonder if they actually had as many men close enough to the front to get them here in the time window as Five Hundred Neshok’s interrogations suggested they could.”

The other two looked at him, and the Air Force officer shrugged.

“I’m not suggesting his…interrogation subjects were able to fool the verifier spells,” he said, unable to quite hide his distasteful tone, “but none of them ever had hard and fast confirmation of exactly what was coming down this railroad line of theirs to reinforce them. All they had was rumors, and gods know we’ve all heard enough wish-fulfillment rumors in our careers! Maybe the Sharonians were caught even more off-balance than we thought. More off-balance than the Sharonians between Hell’s Gate and Traisum thought they were. If so, and especially if they’re even shorter on railroad trains on this side of the Hayth water gap than we’ve been estimating, they may have sent a lot fewer men in the first echelon than we’d originally allowed for and they could be spending more time running the trains they do have back and forth.”

“I suppose that’s always possible, too,” Harshu said after a moment, pursing his lips as he considered it. “I don’t think it’s something we should count on, though. Especially since they obviously did manage to get these”-he tapped the outsized artillery pieces the Sharonians were busily digging in-“all the way up here. Neshok’s reports all indicate the Sharonians have cannon even they consider ‘heavy artillery,’ but that weapons that heavy aren’t normally attached to their maneuver formations. Especially not to their dragoons, since they don’t have levitation spells or-as Harek’s just pointed out about their cavalry-the kind of augmented draft animals we do, either. So if they can dip into their larger formations’ artillery and get it this far forward, it seems unlikely they couldn’t get infantry and cavalry forward at least as rapidly.”

“Agreed, Sir.” Toralk nodded. “And I’m not suggesting we make any plans based on an assumption that they didn’t get just as many men moved up to Fort Salby as we expected them to. On the other hand, we still haven’t gotten a recon gryphon close enough for a really good look at those big guns, either. It’s always possible they’re running a bluff-that these are actually dummy weapons the Sharonians are so busy digging in where we can see them because they haven’t been able to move up enough men to feel confident of holding a heavy attack. For all we know, they could be the sorts of things we might cobble up with camouflage spells. We haven’t seen any sign of that out of them yet, but gods only know what these Talents of theirs are capable of.”

“That’s true enough,” Harshu said even more sourly. “Of course, whether they’re really there or not, we’re still on the wrong end of an awful solid cork as far as any further advances are concerned.”

“The cork’s just as bad from their side,” Mahrkrai pointed out. “In fact, it’s a lot worse. They may be digging in to keep us from getting dragons through the portal, Sir, but they don’t have any dragons to put through in the first place! Trying to fight their way out of the Cut would be a nightmare, and the demolition spells are already in place to take out the rails-and the Cut-if they try. For that matter, even if those heavy guns of theirs are real, and even if they have the ability to reach four or five miles this side of the portal, all we have to do is fall back outside whatever their range is and start picking them apart from the air.”

“We’d need more battle dragons for that,” Toralk pointed out. “And what the dragons can do isn’t going to take them by surprise. Not again.”

“No, and they’ll undoubtedly factor the possibilities of air mobility into their thinking, at least as well as they can,” Harshu observed thoughtfully. “But how well can they factor it in without their own dragons to use as a measuring stick? And even if they manage to extrapolate a lot more accurately than I suspect they can, based on what they’ve seen so far, they can’t change the constraints their lack of air mobility imposes. Once they’re this side of the portal, we can circle as wide as we need to to get around behind them instead of trying to stuff your tactical and transport dragons through the mouth of a jar, Klayrman. We’ll be able to get at their lines of communication without running the gauntlet of those rotating cannon. In fact, the farther into Karys they advance, the more vulnerable they’ll make themselves.”

“Are you thinking about falling back from the Cut, Sir? Giving them a free pass into Karys?” Toralk asked.

“Oh, no! Keeping them out of Karys in the first place, at least until we’re properly reinforced, is a lot better idea. And one thing they’ve already demonstrated is that they aren’t idiots, Klayrman! If we were to suddenly and obligingly let them through the Cut without a fight, they’d have to wonder why we were being so helpful. I’m just saying that if they do decide to come after us, and if they do manage somehow to break out of the Cut, we’ll be able to hurt them a lot more badly than they may realize.”