The Road to Hell - eARC

by David Weber

  Ullery tested the tension on his straps and practiced deep breaths. If he had to go into the water, he needed to be able to match Silverstreak’s lung capacity. He’d give near anything for an air spell right now, but he’d’ve needed four of them, one for each of Silverstreak’s three heads and one of his own, for it to make any difference.

  Belftus had had short-duration breather spells, but Vacus hadn’t bothered to refresh anything to do with his belt crystal. Ullery figured he might have a few gasps left on an old air spell, but if he tried to use that enchantment it might empty the accumulator too much to maintain the control spells. Silverstreak had never yet tried to take a bite out of him, but if the fight ran on long enough she’d get extremely hungry.

  Ullery did his very best not to test his drake like that. He’d rather be eaten alive by something else.

  The massive slidercage dragged to a stop on empty sand in the middle of the island. And Ullery the Fool finished belting himself in. However bad this got, he’d have the best survival chance on his drake’s back.

  The horn sounded again, and the cage bellowed in response. Then all four sides clanged flat into the sand and the roof flew up and away to spiral high over the tops of the audience palanquins.

  Ullery didn’t wait to hear the splash. He hunkered Silverstreak down and clamped his precious belt tight against her back. The cloud of dust risen from the cage opening would give him the first and only cover he’d get during this fight. He urged Silverstreak to sidle around the island, feet and tail kept carefully out of the water.

  “The House of vos Sidus presents Blackfang Heartripper of their Sidus VI line! And awaiting on Arena Island, from the breeders at Belftus, we have Silverstreak Fleshrender!”

  Children cheered. Some threw down pieces of cookie, inadvertently giving away Ullery’s attempt at subterfuge.

  He let Silverstreak snap the sweets out of the air before they reached the sand and was rewarded with more substantial cuts of roast and sausages. Iridescent horned crests streaked down all three of his seadrake’s heads, straight to her great club of a tail. She was a lovely creature, and it wouldn’t hurt to have some of the audience on her side.

  Silverstreak preened at the sky, and from out of the cloud of sand in the center of Arena Island, a massive black seadrake raised two heads and howled fury. The third head twisted back and struck cobra fast to rip its handler out of the harness straps.

  Blackfang’s third head swallowed his handler’s skull. Then all three heads ripped at the corpse’s soft entrails, and gasps from the audience mixed with laughter and applause to acknowledge the fight’s first blood as Blackfang flung limbs and bits of flesh in all directions.

  Ullery patted Silverstreak’s neck. A leg still encased in loose trouser cloth landed nearby. It had a shoe.

  Blackfang’s sinister head paused long enough to hiss in Silverstreak’s direction. She hissed back and lifted her body high, trying to look bigger and intimidate the much larger beast.

  Ullery looked into the sinister head’s eyes and was all but certain it would be impossible to intimidate the uncontrolled monster. Blackfang was operating on pure instinct now, and the sinister head returned to gnawing the body, but the dexter head curled back to watch them. With the control spell broken so abruptly, the large Sidus drake might not even have a dominant head.

  Ullery took a wild chance and directed Silverstreak to do something he’d never thought he’d tell a drake to do.

  Silverstreak complied instantly. She snapped her center neck forward and closed her jaws around the still dripping human leg. Ullery prayed she would obey the rest of the order too, and somehow—miraculously—she did. She arched her neck and hurled the leg in a high arc. Up, and up…Then it hit the floor of the red palanquin and splashed into the ocean. Blackfang’s dexter head had tracked the full motion. The other two heads snapped back and forth, tracking the sharkbeasts circling the spot where the stolen piece of their kill had hit the water.

  The red palanquin veered back, and children clamored at the controls while sharkbeasts swarmed after the leg, some controlled and some not, fighting each other for the taste of blood in the water. That was a mistake, and all three Blackfang heads roared in chorus.

  The whole drake dove into the ocean. Nothing got between a seadrake and his kill, and Ullery imagined the points about his tactics that the vos Vacus tutors in the palanquins above would be making to their charges right now.

  Silverstreak shivered and trembled with her need to follow, but Ullery held her back with every bit of will he could muster. He let her pick at a bit of cake, dropped from above and missed in the handler’s slaughter, but he had no desire to enter the fray he and Silverstreak had arranged for Blackfang.

  But then his drake shied right as a bottle was hurled down at them. It shattered on the beach nearby, and Ullery realized some of the yells above were directed towards him. He glanced up to see Kon vos Vacus gesturing urgently at him to enter the fight.

  Ullery didn’t go so far as to shake his head at the Master, but he had no intention of obeying. Still, the spectators needed a show, and as the only remaining handler, it was up to Ullery to give them one. If he didn’t, they’d change something about the arena fight, and it probably wouldn’t be survivable, so he urged the quivering Silverstreak to slink around the edge of the low dune island to give him a view of the ocean melee.

  Blackfang’s dexter head cracked the spine of a sharkbeast and tossed it high overhead. It missed the red palanquin but not by very much. Small arms reached out trying to touch this second bleeding projectile before it fell back into the sea.

  The crowd roared approval. And cookies rained down from the heavens.

  Mostly they fell on Silverstreak who caught them with elegantly arched necks and flicking tongues.

  Blackfang’s center head took a frosted coconut puff to the nose and went cross-eyed staring at the thing lodged between the horns of his muzzle.

  And that was the point at which Ullery’s drake, dancing in the fall of sweets, slid off the island into the waves herself.

  A sharkbeast bit her. Probably entirely by accident in the chum-thickened waters, but Silverstreak’s center head responded with a lightning-quick jawlock on the beast’s dorsal fin and a flip that snatched the creature into the air. And then, just before the jaw should have released for a clean upward toss, the center head spasmed.

  The stunned sharkbeast tumbled tail over rictus mouth directly at Blackfang.

  The drake’s dexter head caught it just by the tail fluke. The sinister head crunched through the shark’s skull, and the center curved back and forth watching Silverstreak.

  Ullery pressed his drake towards the island and she took an unwilling half step in the direction of partial safety.

  Then Blackfang’s center head tore out the sharkbeast’s liver and tossed it in a clean throw straight at Silverstreak who swallowed it whole.

  There weren’t enough sharkbeasts in the water to satiate both seadrakes, so in the end Silverstreak licked the frosted coconut puff off Blackfang’s nose while Ullery tried to keep his pulse steady and his breath even. Someone else, someone with magic, would have to be the one to tell Silverstreak Fleshrender and Blackfang Heartripper they wouldn’t be permitted to mate.

  High above, adults hurried to end the children’s party before the events on Arena Island became too explicit to explain to inquisitive young Mythlan nobles.

  Chapter Twenty

  January 4

  “Thank you for coming aboard, Master Yanusa-Mahrdissa,” Battalion-Captain Hymair chan Yahndar said, standing behind the desk in his cramped—extremely cramped—shipboard office. There was too little room, as his Karmalian grandmother would have said, to swing a sheep. Of course, chan Yahndar had never understood who’d want to swing a sheep, but the phrase certainly offered all of the earthy color anyone could have desired. And however tiny his office was, he was lucky to have it. TTE’s mass-produced steamships were scarcely noted for their palatial a
ccommodations, and Voyager Osprey was no exception to that rule, although—thank all the gods!—she’d at least been intended as a transport from the beginning. That meant he and his men hadn’t ended up stacked in six-high pipe-frame bunks in a converted cargo hold whose last contents had reeked to the gods themselves.

  “Well,” the dark-skinned Shurkhali said with an expression halfway between a grimace and a smile, “given all we’ve got to do, it seemed like a good idea to get started early. I’ve been practically camped on that damned dock for two days, now.”

  “Sorry about the delay.” Chan Yahndar’s expression was all the way over on the grimace side of the scale. “We lost thirty-six hours getting the horses loaded. They didn’t much care for the princely quality of their accommodations.”

  Which, he thought dryly, once again demonstrates how superior “horse sense” is to human sense.

  “And I don’t envy the crewmen who have to muck out the holds, either,” Yanusa-Mahrdissa observed.

  “Don’t feel too sorry for them,” chan Yahndar said dryly. “The ship masters are pretty damned insistent about who’s doing what before our baggage gets released.”

  “Trans-Temporal’s ship masters are about as ornery as they come,” Yanusa-Mahrdissa agreed with something suspiciously like a chuckle.

  “True, but they got us to Shosara in handsome style once everyone was onboard,” chan Yahndar conceded. “And now that we are here,” he continued, waving his visitor into the sole vacant chair, “I suppose we’d best get down to it.”

  He waited while the civilian seated himself, then swept his hand in a gesture which indicated the other two officers squeezed into the compartment.

  “Master Yanusa-Mahrdissa, allow me to present Company-Captain Grithair chan Mahsdyr and Battalion-Captain Francho chan Hurmahl. Company-Captain chan Mahsdyr has Gold Company of Second Battalion, and Battalion-Captain chan Hurmahl has the Fourteen-Oh-Seventh Mounted Engineers.”

  Yanusa-Mahrdissa nodded to the other two Ternathians, and chan Yahndar leaned back in his chair while he contemplated the task which confronted them. He’d always known Division-Captain chan Geraith wasn’t afraid to think outside the box, but this was considerably farther outside than even the division-captain was accustomed to straying, and if even one thing went wrong…

  He shifted his contemplation to the maps on the office’s bulkheads and tried not to shudder as he thought about the sheer scale of the task before them. Even assuming the Arcanans truly didn’t know they were coming, and that they weren’t spotted en route by one of their godsdamned flying beasties, simple logistics were enough to make the mission a nightmare. But in the words of one of the Imperial Ternathian Army’s legendary commanders, if a job was easy, they wouldn’t need Ternathians to get it done.

  And just your luck you’ve got no less than two deployments to the PAAF on your resume, isn’t it? he thought dryly. When the Division Captain needed someone who’d spent time crawling around the backside of nowhere, he didn’t have far to look. And it’s a damned good thing young Grithair can say the same.

  The truth, unfortunately, was that for all its immense experience and proud traditions, the Imperial Ternathian Army had never operated as a unit outside its home universe. There’d never been any need for it to…which meant it had no experience as an institution of the rigors of moving from one universe to another. That wasn’t as simple as a walk in the park—not when the two sides of any given portal might literally be half way around the world from one another. The transition from scorching summer to the middle of a howling blizzard was nothing to take lightly. In fact, far too many men had died because of just that sort of shift, and the need to supply both tropical and arctic equipment—and to haul it along as they went—was a quartermaster’s nightmare.

  And it’s exactly what we’ll have to do moving from Resym into Nairsom, too, he thought grimly.

  The good news was that the Army, like the Imperial Marines, had been loaning personnel to the PAAF for over seventy years now. Many of its senior noncoms and officers—like Hymair chan Yahndar himself—had amassed plenty of universe-hopping experience along the way. Which was how the 12th Dragoon Regiment in general and Gold Company in particular had been picked for their present duties.

  “How thoroughly has Master Banchu briefed you, Master Yanusa-Mahrdissa?” he asked after a moment.

  “Please, call me Ganstamar,” Yanusa-Mahrdissa said. “Most non-Shurkhalis seem to find my last name a bit of a mouthful.” He smiled crookedly. “And, in answer to your question, I think he brought me as close to up to date as anyone could.” His smile faded and he shook his head. “Frankly, I don’t envy you, Battalion-Captain.”

  “There are times I don’t envy myself,” chan Yahndar admitted. “On the other hand, most of your sympathy should probably go to Grithair. And any you have left over should go to Francho. The rest of us will be pretty much following in their wake, after all.”

  Yanusa-Mahrdissa nodded, but if he was taken in by chan Yahndar’s dismissal of the scope of his own task, he showed no sign of it.

  “Well,” he said, “we’ve been extending the line like mad ever since Fallen Timbers.” His affable expression hardened. After all, Shaylar Nargra-Kolmayr had been a countrywoman of his. “Fortunately, there are no water gaps along the route—well, no ocean gaps, anyway; there’re more than enough rivers to be a pain in the arse—but our priority was reduced compared to the Failcham railhead even before we encountered the damned Arcanans, so we haven’t made as much ground as I might like. We can get you all the way across Lashai by rail and a thousand miles or so into Resym, and we’re laying more track like mad. But you’ll still have somewhere around two thousand miles, a lot of it rain forest and jungle, before you get out onto the plains in Nairsom, and you’ll be doing all of those miles the hard way.”

  “Which, in winter, is going to be even harder than the hard way usually is once we get out of Resym,” chan Yahndar agreed.

  “The good news is that the entire route’s been surveyed all the way to Fort Ghartoun and we’ve gotten a head start on improving some of the worst portions of roadbed,” Yanusa-Mahrdissa pointed out. “We started sending advanced parties down-chain the instant Division-Captain chan Geraith alerted us to his plans. They’ve already made a start on putting in the bridges—or improved fords, at least—through the Dalazan. Mind you, I don’t think some of our supervisors really believed the loadbearing requirements we gave them, but they’re used to working with locally available materials. Most of those bridges are going to be temporary—very temporary—structured, but they’ll get the job done. And given that we’ve surveyed the route clear through to New Uromath, we know exactly what you’re going to need in the way of bridging supplies once you get beyond our own advanced crews, too, and I’ve been working on running them up out of available materials. There’s not much I can do about the girders you’ll need in Thermyn, but I understand the shipyard’s working on that?”

  He raised an eyebrow at chan Yahndar, but chan Yahndar tossed the question to Battalion-Captain chan Hurmahl with a sweep of his hand.

  “Master Banchu assured us he has the situation in hand, Master Yanusa-Mahrdissa,” chan Hurmahl said. “I don’t think anyone’s exactly pleased over how difficult we expect it to be to make all of this come together, but Master Banchu went over the inventory you sent him with the Renaiyrton yardmaster, as well as kicking his requirements up the Voice chain. By the time Division-Captain chan Geraith’s ready to follow us across, he should be able to bring almost everything he’ll need with him.”

  “The shipyard’s able to supply what we’ll need for Coyote Canyon?”

  “Assuming the work crews’ diagrams and measurements are accurate, yes.” Chan Hurmahl grimaced. “I understand the main girders were already en route when all this blew up. In fact, they got shunted onto a siding in Camryn to clear the mainline for troop movements, so it’s only a matter of getting them inserted back into the pipeline behind us. The shipyard
says it can run up everything else we’ll need—again, assuming the diagrams and measurements are good—and combine it with the girders into a single package. Getting all of that delivered to the Near Ternath side of the pond’s going to be a bit of a hassle, but the yard master says TTE’s used to that sort of challenge.

  “In a normal sort of situation, that’s certainly true,” Yanusa-Mahrdissa said. “But this situation’s just a bit abnormal, and that brings us to what’s really my major concern. Once you’re beyond the railhead, transporting that kind of tonnages is going to be a nightmare, especially when you think about the Coyote Canyon loads and all the coal I understand you’re likely to need.”

  “No one in this office is stupid enough to think it’ll be easy,” chan Yahndar replied. “On the other hand, if the Bisons perform as advertised, it should at least be possible. Under the circumstances, that’s about the best anyone could ask for.”

  “I’m not familiar with them myself,” Yanusa-Mahrdissa said. “How likely are they, really, to be up to the task?”

  It was a very good question, and every man in that small cabin knew it. The Bison—technically, the Transport Tractor of 5051, from its year of adoption—was a completely new departure in military transport. In fact, it was so new there was still a fair degree of confusion in nomenclature, with most people referring to it by its assigned name of “Bison” while others referred to it as the Tractor 51.

  “We’ll be swaying the first of them ashore in about two hours,” chan Yahndar told him. “Hopefully, you’ll be able to form your own opinion. All I can say is that they’ve performed remarkably well in our exercises at Fort Erthain. We had some initial problems with breakdowns, but, frankly, I think that’s mainly because dragoons are more accustomed to horses than machines. Grooming, horseshoes, and riding tack we understand, but we tend to be a little short on steamer mechanics. If we can’t feed it or muck out its stall, we’re not real sure what to do with it.”