Unfortunately, Fort Salby, despite the thickness of its walls, hadn't really been intended to be defended against an attack by modern heavy weapons. The fighting steps simply weren't deep enough to mount true artillery—especially not artillery on field carriages, instead of fortress carriages—and the gun platforms had never been intended for anything heavier than machine guns, so Mesaion's filed artillery had to be deployed outside the walls, along the foot of the stair-step-like bluff upon which Salby stood, if the guns were going to be used at all.
That explained a lot of the dust Janaki gazed down upon. The gun pits were going to be only a bit deeper than usual, but chan Skrithik—or, rather, Janaki, to be scrupulously honest—had insisted upon the thickest possible overhead cover. Firing a four-inch breech-loader, or one of the three-point-four-inch quick-firers, with a roof of heavy sandbags only a few feet over the gunners' heads promised to be ... exciting. But not as "exciting" as things might have been with dragons raining fire or lightning into the gun pits with them.
Janaki wished chan Skrithik had had more field guns available. Even with the light horse guns Sunlord Markan and Windlord Garsal had brought along, though, the regiment-captain had little more than a dozen pieces. He and Janaki had spent an arduous couple of hours bent over the map table, matching terrain against Janaki's fragmentary Glimpses, to pick the best places to put the guns he did have, but neither of them was happy about the total numbers they had to deploy.
The single three-gun section of 4.3-inch howitzers and the nine heavy mortars Mesaion had available could probably take up at least some of the slack. They, however, couldn't be used from positions with overhead cover, which was why they'd been deployed inside the fort itself. From their position on the parade ground they were protected from direct counter-fire and had excellent three-hundred-sixty-degree command, as long as the targets were far enough away for their high-trajectory fire to clear the walls.
Of course, if the Arcanans' dragons got through to the fort ... .
Tin roofs, laid over appropriated railroad ties and covered with layered sandbags, were going up all along the fort walls' fighting steps, as well. They weren't as sturdy as Janaki would have preferred, but they were a hells of a lot better than nothing, and they should offer significant protection against plunging dragons' breath. He hoped so, anyway.
Covered rifle pits were also springing up outside the walls, placed to cover the artillerists as well as to protect the ground-level approaches to the fort, and there were quite a few cavalry troopers wielding shovels, picks, and axes out there.
Sunlord Markan and Company-Captain Vargan, in a rare bout of agreement which had probably surprised them even more than it had chan Skrithik, had both looked more than a little affronted at how emphatically Janaki had informed them that Sharonian cavalry had no business at all on the same battlefield as Arcanan cavalry. Actually, they'd been even more affronted because of the Arcanans' lack of modern small arms. Only fools—which neither Markan nor Vargan were, however little they might care for one another—would have even contemplated committing cavalry against dug-in riflemen, machine guns, and field guns, but both Markan and Vargan were cavalry troopers of the old school.
Against crossbows the possibility of one last, anachronistic, glorious charge had suggested itself to both of them, which had turned them into unlikely allies in this one case.
Janaki had used both booted heels to stamp on that notion just as hard as he could. Vargan had accepted the veto with something which might have been described as good grace by a sufficiently charitable observer. Markan, on the other hand, had accepted it with scrupulous, icy courtesy. Of the two, Janaki considerably preferred Vargan's reaction.
Still, the sunlord had agreed that under the circumstances his precious cavalry horses were less important than human lives. Fort Salby's stables had been emptied of their intended occupants, and all of the command's horses had been moved down to the paddocks built around the oasis some several miles east of the fort to make room to pack in still more civilians. The men who might otherwise have ridden those horses were out there behind those shovels, digging in as riflemen, instead. And Janaki had to admit that however much Markan might have longed for one final charge, he'd turned energetically to the task of integrating his troopers into chan Skrithik's defensive plan when that charges was denied him.
Now we just have to see whether or not it does any good, Janaki thought grimly.
"I'd be happier if we could hit them earlier, Sir," Commander of Five Hundred Myr said.
He and Klayrman Toralk stood outside the Operations Tent, looking out across the improvised dragonfield. The transports were beginning to show signs of accumulating fatigue, Toralk noted, and several of the battle dragons were showing fatigue in their own fashion. Which, unfortunately, consisted of being even more irritable than usual.
"I can understand that," Toralk agreed, and he could. But even dragons' eyes needed some light. This Fort Salby had the potential to turn into a nasty handful, and this time the approach was going to be tricky enough all by itself. It was no time for battle dragons and their pilots to fly into hillsides they couldn't quite see in time ... or discover that not even dragon eyes had enough light to pick out their targets accurately.
"It's not another damned wooden fort with just a handful of men in it, Sir," Myr pointed out in what Toralk couldn't quite call a wheedling tone. "You've seen the plans."
"Yes, I have," Toralk agreed once again.
The detailed maps of this portal chain which they'd captured at Fort Ghartoun included one of Traisum, and the modified image-interpreting spellware had worked perfectly. They knew precisely where Fort Salby was, and exactly what the terrain around it looked like. They'd even found what one of their prisoners had identified as a map of Fort Salby itself, and "tougher nut" was a grossly inadequate way to describe the difference between it and something like Fort Ghartoun.
Salby's walls were taller, thicker, and stronger. They were also going to be far more resistant to fire, and the buildings inside the fort were made of the same materials, which would make the reds' breath weapons much less effective. If taking those walls and those internal structures turned into any sort of hand-to-hand fight, it was going to be bloody. Very bloody.
One thing the map didn't show was what sort of cellars or underground passages might be integrated into the fort. There had to be some, and they were going to pose problems of their own, however the expeditionary force went about attacking the place.
"Listen, Cerlohs," Toralk said, turning to face his Talon commander fully, "I understand what you're saying. And I agree that our chances of taking them completely by surprise would be better if we hit them in the dark. But your chances of losing a dragon—or two or three of them—on the approach would also be a lot higher."
Myr looked unhappy, but he couldn't really argue that point. The approach route they'd selected took advantage of the mountainous terrain between the portal and their objective, using it to screen and conceal the incoming strike until the very last minute. But while battle dragons were trained for nap-ofthe- earth flight, threading the needle of the valley which would lead them to Fort Salby wasn't something to try in pitch blackness.
"Assuming all your dragons survive the approach," Toralk continued, "you've still got the problem that, as you just pointed out, this is going to be a really hard target, and it's got a garrison at least four or five times as big as anything we've hit so far, with artillery and more of those damned 'machine gun' things of theirs. If they have time to get their heavy weapons into action, we're going to get hurt. Remember what happened to your reds at the swamp portal."
"That's exactly what I am remembering, Sir," Myr replied. "If we hit them fast enough, with enough surprise, we'll be on top of them and knock those weapons out before they even know we're coming.
They won't get a chance to bring those weapons into action at all, and, frankly, I'd like that one hells of a lot better than the alternative!"