David Weber - The Road to Hell

Sure, he thought now, no doubt there are all sorts of advantages to good, old-fashioned Sharonian technology, but don’t pretend you aren’t glad to have Arcanan “technology” backing you up this time around, Namir!

Well, of course he was, since he wasn’t an idiot. At the same time, he’d been at least equally delighted when he got a look inside Fort Ghartoun’s armory and discovered the Arcanans had neither removed nor destroyed the weapons which had been stored there. Some of those weapons had disappeared, presumably collected for study and analysis, but most were right where Velvelig had left them. The expeditionary force’s commanders had probably planned on disposing of them one way or another whenever they got around to it, but for the moment they’d settled for locking them up securely.

He’d been a bit surprised, despite the fact that Ulthar and Sarma had agreed that the Arcanan mutineers and the erstwhile Sharonian prisoners had no option but to cooperate fully, when neither of them had objected to the PAAF personnel’s re-arming themselves. It had been something of an acid test of the Arcanans’ sincerity, really, since for all their crystals’ capabilities, an individual Arcanan was considerably less lethal than an individual Sharonian equipped with a Model 10 and an H amp;W revolver. To their credit, the mutineers had passed the test with remarkably calm expressions. In fact, they were clearly as relieved to have that Sharonian lethality on their side for a change as Velvelig was to have their magic on his.

They were short on horses and mules-apparently, most of the Fort Ghartoun stud had been used to feed dragons and unicorns-but one of Fifty Cothar’s responsibilities had included looking after a sizeable pool of reserve unicorns for the main expeditionary force. They’d been left at Fort Ghartoun in no small part to take advantage of the opportunity to “graze” on the more mundane draft animals which had been captured with the fort, which left Velvelig and his men with rather mixed feelings where the creatures were concerned. The fact that unicorns appeared to have fractious personalities didn’t make them any happier about it, either. But if the mutineers were to be believed (and Armsman chan Dersain’s Sifting Talent insisted they were telling the truth) the carnivorous unicorns were capable of incredible feats of speed and endurance. Cothar insisted that they were routinely capable of covering a hundred and fifty to two hundred miles per day even cross country. They weren’t as efficient as the PAAFs powerful, big-boned mules as draft animals-not surprisingly, when those mules went to a thousand pounds each and a unicorn was little more than seven or eight hundred-but they could handle that job when they needed to. And because Fort Ghartoun had been turned into a remount depot, they had enough of them to provide teams for all seventeen of the wagons available to them and still mount all thirty-seven of Cothar’s dragoons and half of Velvelig’s surviving troopers.

The mutineers’ total strength consisted of sixty-three infantry, most from Sarma’s platoon, plus Cothar’s understrength cavalry troop and the three Healers and eleven of their assistants in addition to Velvelig’s surviving forty-one men. A hundred and fifty-five men fell just a bit short of an overwhelming host, but they’d helped themselves to the machine guns and the half-dozen 4.5-inch mortars from the armory, and the Arcanans had over a dozen of the crystal staffs which served them as heavy weapons. They couldn’t possibly have enough firepower to stand off the force Two Thousand Harshu could dispatch to run them to earth, but they had enough to ensure that anyone who caught up with them would have one hell of the fight. And between the wagons and the saddle unicorns, they could move much more rapidly than any PAAF mounted force had ever moved before. Each of the wagons had been fitted with its winter canopy, as well-a lightweight, well-insulated shell that bolted into place and turned the vehicle into a reasonably snug hut on wheels. They were fitted with ducted flues to allow the use of coal-fired stoves, but that was unlikely to be needed with the Arcanan crystals to keep them warm.

The majority of what had been Hadrign Thalmayr’s garrison had no interest in joining the mutineers’ “treason,” so they’d been left behind-deprived of weapons, mounts, draft animals, and the “hummers” the Arcanans used as carrier pigeons-while the fugitives decamped. Velvelig wasn’t happy about the sorts of troublemaking they were likely to get up to, but he couldn’t very well insist that men who’d mutinied to prevent prisoners from being tortured and killed turn around and kill their loyal fellows just to keep their mouths shut and their hands out of mischief. So, since they had to be left behind anyway, Sarma and Ulthar had been careful to “let slip” the deserters’ intention to dash across the portal into Failcham.

The arid terrain on the other side of the portal was hardly inviting, but hopefully their supposed route would make sense to any pursuers. The barren desert was no picnic, but it wasn’t likely to be lashed with New Ternath’s bitter blizzards, either, and they could reach the Sarlayn Valley and follow the mighty river for almost six hundred miles, all the way to the Mbisi Sea. Conversely, they could keep heading east for another hundred and fifty miles until they reached the Finger Sea and cross into Failcham’s version of Shurkhal. In either case, the PAAF wagons were designed for ready conversion into pontoons or even sailing craft-not, admittedly, the fleetest and most maneuverable of vessels, but surprisingly stable-which would provide fugitives with a wide option of possible destinations (and hiding places) that wouldn’t be frozen solid.

Which, Namir Velvelig conceded as he felt the cold setting its teeth in his bones, actually had quite a lot to recommend it.

“I wish I didn’t feel so guilty about leaving the civilians behind, Sir,” Golvar Silkash said from beside him, his voice half-lost in the snow-sharpened wind sighing through the pines, and Velvelig turned to look at the surgeon.

Fort Ghartoun’s garrison had been badly understrength at the time it was attacked. Unlike the Imperial Ternathian Army, the PAAF’s regiments contained only two battalions at the best of times, and out here on the bleeding edge of the frontier, it wasn’t unusual for a regiment to have its battalions deployed to widely separated locations. In Fort Ghartoun’s case, 2nd Battalion of Velvelig’s 127th Regiment had been heavily raided for reinforcements for New Uromath and Hell’s Gate following the initial clash at Toppled Timber, while 1st Battalion was still somewhere up-chain from Salym, as far as Velvelig knew. There’d been no great urgency to get them forward to Thermyn prior to the confrontation with the Arcanans, and even after that, Velvelig hadn’t expected their arrival for at least another month or two.

The single understrength battalion under his command when the Arcanan attack crashed over the fort had taken heavy casualties, and those casualties had been worst among its officers. Only four of them had survived: Company-Captain Halath-Shodach, Gold Company’s CO; Platoon-Captain chan Brano and Platoon-Captain Tobar, who had commanded Gold Company’s 2nd and 4th Platoon, respectively; and Platoon-Captain Larkal, who’d commanded 1st Platoon of Silver Company. Although Silkash outranked all four of them in terms of seniority, he was a medical officer, which meant he stood outside the direct line of command. He was ten years older than Halath-Shodach, however, and better than twice young Larkal’s age, and he’d become Velvelig’s executive officer, for all intents and purposes. It wasn’t something Silkash and ever been trained for, but as he’d pointed out just a bit sourly, it wasn’t as if the regiment really needed his services as a surgeon at the moment, since Fifty Maisyl and his Gifted healers had the magic touch-literally-when it came to medical needs. And, despite his tendency to deprecate his own competence outside sick bay, Silkash had been a tower of strength during the organization of this hasty withdrawal.