Hell's Gate m-1

by David Weber

  None of which invalidates a single thing he's said, of course.

  The division-captain shook his head. He'd known going in that managing his logistics down a single supply line as long as this one was going to be a … challenge. No one in history had ever before even considered attempting such a thing, far less planned for it, and the urgent need to get his division loaded up and moving in the right direction had kept him from giving it the sort of attention and preplanning any peacetime maneuver would have permitted. He'd been painfully aware of that, but he'd also known he and his staff were going to have literally weeks in transit to work out the details.

  "Train Master," he said after moment, "would it be possible for you to assign someone from your operations staff to me on a temporary basis? My staff and I are reasonably competent when it comes to planning moves around the Empire, or across a single planet. I'm beginning to think, though, that we need someone with a better feel for genuine trans-universal movements. Besides, we're accustomed to simply telling the quartermaster how much lift capacity we need. This time around it looks like we're going to need an expert just to tell us how much capacity there is!"

  "Now that, Division-Captain, is a very good idea," Chusal said warmly. "And, as it happens, I think I have just the man for you." chan Geraith arched one eyebrow, and Chusal chuckled. "I've assigned Hayrdar Sheltim as your train master. He just happens to be one of our more experienced train masters … and he also just finished a three-month assignment to operations right here at Larakesh Central. If you've got questions, Hayrdar can answer them as well as anyone I can think of."

  "Thank you, Train Master. I appreciate that?a lot."

  "It doesn't look like much, does it?" Second Lord of Horse Garsal grumbled.

  "Perhaps not," Lord of Horse Jukan Darshu, Sunlord Markan replied quietly as they watched the first of his Uromathian cavalry troopers climb down from the passenger cars which had carried them as far as Fort Salby.

  They were moving slowly, stiffly, and the sunlord's lips quirked in a wry sympathy he would never have admitted to feeling. The last twelve days had been a severe jolt to their systems, he thought. The rail trip from Camryn to Salym hadn't been all that bad, but then there'd been the move to the hastily improvised transports in Salym for the voyage from Barkesh to New Ramath. The horses had hated it, the heavy weather they'd encountered en route had left half the men miserably seasick, and at the end of it, they'd had to climb back into the rail cars for the trip from New Ramath to Fort Tharkoma covering the portal between Salym and Traisum.

  New Ramath was only a few hundred miles from Tharkoma, but they were mountainous, inhospitable miles, and the slow, swaying trip along the steep tracks which twisted like broken-backed serpents between the port city and the fortress had been exhausting, especially for the men who hadn't yet fully recovered from their seasickness. Yet even that hadn't been the end of it, for the Traisum side of that portal was located in the equivalent of the Kingdom of Shartha.

  Shartha lay on the west coast of Ricatha, which lay thousands of feet lower than?and three thousand miles south of?the Salym side of the portal, and it had been snowing hard in Salym. The change as their train wheezed through the portal from sub-freezing Tharkoma to the brutal, brilliant heat of the Shartha Plain had been stunning even for hardened trans-universal travelers. The cold, insufficiently heated passenger cars had gone from icebox to oven in what had seemed mere minutes as the ice and snow which had encrusted them turned abruptly into water. Indeed, Markan rather thought that most of it had probably gone straight to vapor without even bothering with the intermediate liquid stage. The shock to the system had been profound, and the day and a half it had taken to get from there to Salby had offered insufficient time for men?or horses?to adjust.

  "Impressive or not," Markan continued now, "it will serve neither the need of the moment nor the Emperor to reflect upon that fact too loudly."

  He glanced levelly at his second-in-command. The two of them stood on the front platform of the palatial passenger car which had been assigned to Markan's senior officers for the move, and a flicker of what might have been mere irritation or might have been anger showed in Garsal's eyes. Whatever it was, it was gone as quickly as it had come, however, and he nodded.

  "Point taken, Sunlord," he said.

  Markan nodded back. There was no need to do more, for several reasons. First, Jukan Darshu was a sunlord, what a Ternathian would have called a duke, whereas Tarnal Garsal was only a windlord, or earl. Second, despite Garsal's fastidious, finicky dislike for frontier conditions (and his undeniable arrogance), he truly was a highly competent officer. And third, because Garsal was a distant relative of Chava Busar, and knew better than to disappoint his imperial cousin.

  Not to mention the minor fact that our entire multiverse?Ternathia and Uromathia alike?is at risk this time, Markan reflected.

  It felt … unnatural to think of the Empire and the long-resented Ternathians facing a common threat. For as long as Markan (or any other Uromathian) could remember, Ternathia had been if not precisely the enemy, the next closest thing available. And, he admitted, since Chava had come to the throne, the long-standing rivalry between the two great Sharonian empires had once again grown both more intense and nastier.

  I suppose it's a little silly of us, the sunlord reflected. Or, at least, it was in the beginning. By now, it's taken on a life of its own.

  Markan knew he was rather more sophisticated, in many ways, than most Uromathians, including all too many members of the high aristocracy. Despite that, however, deep down inside, he still suffered from that ingrained Uromathian sense of … not inferiority, really, but something close.

  The truth was that Uromathia could never quite forgive Ternathian for being almost four millennia older than it was. Ternathia had made Tajvana its capital thirty-three centuries ago, and the Caliraths had stayed there until less than three centuries ago. In the interim, their empire had lapped as far east as the Cerakondian Mountains, in the south, and eventually as far as Lake Arau, in the north, until it finally stopped against the Arau Mountains in far eastern Chairifon. It had reached the Araus just under nine hundred years ago, and on the far side of that mountain barrier, it had finally encountered another empire almost as large as it was.

  That empire had been Uromathia, which had controlled everything beyond the Cerakondians and the Araus as far south as Harkala. In terms of territory, Uromathia had been the smaller of the two; in terms of population, they'd been very nearly evenly matched. But Uromathia had been far younger, hammered together only over the previous three or four centuries as the various Uromathian kings and, eventually, emperors had watched the Ternathian tide sweeping steadily and apparently unstoppably towards them.

  There hadn't really been a Uromathia until that steadily approaching Ternathian frontier?and example?had created it. In fact, Markan's ancestors had been too busy fighting and slaughtering one another in the service of their innumerable nobles and kinglets to pay the notion of "civilization" a great deal of attention. The threat of being ingested by Ternathia had concentrated the minds of the more powerful Uromathian kingdoms marvelously, however, and they'd begun cheerfully eliminating one another by conquest in an effort to build up a powerbase sufficient to remain uningested. Strictly, of course, out of a patriotic sense of their mission to resist foreign occupation. Perish the thought that personal power could have had anything to do with it!

  They'd succeeded. In fact, they'd built a very respectable empire of their own by the time Ternathia arrived on their doorstep. They'd actually been even more centralized, since they had deliberately constructed their imperial bureaucracy for streamlined, military efficiency, whereas the Ternathian bureaucracy had been the product of millennia of gradual evolution and periodic bouts of reform. Their military capability had been impressive, as well, and they'd already acquired most of the Talents by intermarriage. Taken altogether, it had been an enormous accomplishment, one of which anyone could have been proud, and
they had been.

  But the thing which had stuck in the Uromathians' collective psyche was the lingering suspicion that Ternathia had stopped where it had not because Uromathia's power had given the Winged Crown pause, but because Ternathia had chosen to stop. The two great empires had sat there?coexisting more or less peaceably, with occasional, interspersed periods of mutual glaring?for the better part of six hundred years. Until, in fact, the Calirath Dynasty had begun its long, steady disengagement from the Ternathian Empire's high-water mark borders. And in all that time, there had been only three true wars between them … each of which Ternathia had won quite handily.

  Ternathia had never made any effort to conquer Uromathia. That had never really been the Ternathian way, as Markan was prepared to admit, at least privately. But Uromathia had never quite been able to forgive the Ternathians for never?not once?letting the Uromathians beat them. The Uromathian Empire had fought its own wars, established its own prowess, but always in the Ternathian shadow. Never as Ternathia's equal. In fact that Chava Busar's was the fourth dynasty to rule Uromathia while the Caliraths were only the second dynasty and Ternathia's history (and that they had ruled Ternathia in unbroken succession for over four thousand years) didn't exactly help the situation, either. Uromathia had become the perpetual younger, smaller, weaker brother who deeply resented his older brother's patronizing attitude … even?or perhaps especially?when that older brother didn't even mean to be patronizing.

  And that attitude lingered, even today.

  Of course, Fort Salby didn't belong to Ternathia, the sunlord reminded himself. It was a Portal Authority base, which?theoretically, at least?meant it was a multinational installation, belonging to neither empire. The fact that the Portal Authority Armed Forces had seen fit to adopt Ternathian rank structures, weapons, tactical doctrines, and even military tailoring might, perhaps, explain the fact that it didn't feel that way.

  But this time, we were the ones close enough to respond when the lightning struck, Markan thought with a certain grim satisfaction. I only wish the Emperor had seen fit to send us more detailed instructions.

  Part of Chava's vagueness was undoubtedly due to the Emperor's suspicions of the Voice network. Unlike Zindel of Ternathia, Chava of Uromathia was completely unTalented, and he cherished a deep and abiding distrust for those who were. Despite all evidence and experience to the contrary, he was absolutely convinced that the Portal Authority Voices would violate their sworn confidentiality any time it suited their purposes. And, of course, their purposes?whatever in all the Arpathian hells they might be, Markan thought waspishly?were inevitably hostile to Chava's own.

  In this case, however, it was at least equally probable that the Emperor's failure to provide detailed instructions had as much to do with the totally unprecedented nature of the threat as with his undeniable paranoia. It was certainly enough to strain Markan's … mental flexibility, at any rate.

  The sunlord wasn't especially fond of Shurkhalis, whether as individuals or corporate entities, like the Chalgyn Consortium. While he might sometimes feel his Emperor took his hatred for all things Ternathian to unnecessary extremes, the fact remained that Shurkhal had been a part of the Ternathian Empire for almost three thousand years and that it had stubbornly aligned its national interests and foreign policy with its one-time imperial masters, rather than its much closer neighbor in Uromathia, since regaining its nominal independence. As a consequence, it was normally a bit difficult for him to work up a great deal of sympathy for any minor misfortunes which might befall the desert kingdom.

  Then there was the fact that this particular survey crew had included Shaylar Nargra-Kolmayr. Markan had never met the woman, and had nothing against her personally, but her exploits had been a direct affront to his own notions of proper female behavior, and he was scarcely alone in that. Not in Uromathia, at least. Nor did the fact that the Portal Authority had been using her so heavily in its own propaganda leave him feeling much more cheerfully inclined towards her, given how unfond of the Authority he was.

  Like most Uromathians, Markan had always resented the Portal Authority. His resentment was less pointed than that of many Uromathian aristocrats, especially those closest to the Emperor, but it was nonetheless real. No Uromathian could quite forget that the Authority stemmed directly from a Ternathian demand (although courtesy had required that it be called only a "proposal," of course) for the internationalization of the Larakesh portal. Nor could any Uromathian forget that the then-Emperor of Uromathia's efforts to assert control over the portal and the proposed international authority had been stymied by a direct threat of Ternathian military action. Or that it was Ternathia which had insisted that the Authority's board of directors must represent all major nations yet remain completely and rigorously politically independent of any of them.

  If pressed, Markan was prepared to admit?grudgingly?that Ternathia had no more direct control over the Authority than Uromathia did. Unfortunately, it didn't need direct control. Not when the "independent" Authority had fallen all over itself adopting Ternathian models for everything from its internal organization and exploration techniques to its military forces. Including, probably, the way they wiped their arses.

  Stop that, the sunlord told himself sharply. You're letting your own paranoia get the better of you again!

  He snorted in wry amusement, then shook his head when Garsal looked at him inquiringly.

  "Just a thought, Tarnal," he said. "Just a thought."

  He looked around for a moment longer.

  It was appropriate, he supposed, that Fort Salby was located in what would have been Shurkhal on Sharona. At the moment, they stood on a plateau in the rugged Mountains of Ithal, which fringed the western coast of Shurkhal along the Finger Sea. Back home, the location was the site of the city of Narshalla, built around an oasis and bounded by an extensive lava field to the east and by the arid hills of the Ithal Mountains on the other three sides. In Traisum, where thousands of years of human habitation hadn't completely deforested the Shurkhali Peninsula, those hills were less arid than their Sharonian equivalent. They weren't what Markan would have called lush or luxuriant, even here, but they were far less forbidding and desolate than the ones Shaylar Nargra-Kolmayr must have known.

  Despite any improvement in the local climate, driving the rail lines from Traisum's entry portal on the flat coastal Plain of Shartha to Salby had been a gargantuan task. The straight-line distance between Fort Galsar and Fort Salby was over fourteen hundred miles; the actual distance imposed by the terrain was at least half again that far. To reach the rail ferry across the southern terminus of the Finger Sea while avoiding the rugged, tangled mountains of the Shartha Highlands, the engineers had been forced to run their lines clear up and around both sides of the Horn of Ricathia. The route from the ferry's western terminus through the Ithals hadn't been any picnic, either, he reflected, although at least they'd been able to make up some of the lost time in the fast, fairly straightforward run along the coastal plain at the Ithals' feet until they had to turn inland to reach Fort Salby.

  He'd been impressed, as always, by the accomplishments of the TTE construction crews. Especially by the fact that they'd already more than half completed the construction of a multitrack bridge across the Strait of Tears which connected the Finger Sea to the Gulf of Shurkhal. The coral-encrusted Strait of Tears was shallow and constricted?back home, it required constant blasting and dredging to keep it open for deep-draft shipping, and the span across the narrower, two-mile-wide eastern channel was already complete. They were well advanced on the longer, sixteen-mile length required to cross the western channel, as well, and work on it was proceeding twenty-four hours a day.

  No doubt, he thought sardonically, recent events further down-chain have something to do with all the overtime TTE is accumulating at the moment. I wonder who'll get the final bill for that?

  "I suppose you'd better look after getting our people off the train while I go find this Regiment-Captain chan Skrithik
," he said finally.

  "Better you than me," Garsal muttered, but quietly enough Markan could pretend he hadn't heard. Then the windlord saluted. "I'll see to it, Sir," he said much more crisply.

  "Good," Markan replied, and climbed down from the platform.

  Actually, "go find" was scarcely the correct choice of verbs, he admitted as a tall Ternathian officer?and aren't they all tall? Markan thought wryly?stepped up to greet him.

  "Lord of Horse," the Ternathian said in barely accented Uromathian. "Welcome to Fort Salby. I'm delighted to see you."

  "Regiment-Captain," Markan responded in Ternathian, offering his right hand for a Ternathian-style handclasp. He was impressed by chan Skrithik's command of Uromathian, which was actually better than his own Ternathian. Nonetheless, there were appearances to maintain. A Uromathian lord of horse?and a pedigreed sunlord, to boot?could scarcely permit a Ternathian to be more cosmopolitan than he was, after all, he told himself sardonically, and rather suspected that he saw a matching flicker of amusement in chan Skrithik's eyes.

  "We got here as quickly as we could," Markan continued. "Indeed, I was rather astonished by how quickly the TTE was able to arrange things once our troop movement was authorized."

  "TTE's always been good at improvised movements," chan Skrithik agreed. "And just so we get off on the right foot, let me say that I'm as grateful as I am delighted to see you. I realize there's always been a certain degree of friction between Ternathia and Uromathia, and I don't imagine your men are going to be any more immune to that tradition than the Ternathians in my own garrison are. However, this isn't about Ternathia or Uromathia?it's about Sharona, and I've seen to it that everyone under my command understands that. As one Sharonian to another, then, welcome to Fort Salby."

  "Thank you," Markan replied. He was impressed by chan Skrithik's willingness to confront the situation so openly. And pleased, as well. And the Ternathian had shown considerable tact in suggesting that the "friction" existed only between his own empire and Uromathia, he thought. Any Arpathians and Harkalans in the Fort Salby garrison were probably torn between welcoming Markan's troopers with open arms and shooting them in the back at the first opportunity.