Fortunately, that problem was in a fair way to being alleviated here at Coyote Canyon itself, given the amount of water brawling its way along the Stone Carve. The engineers had set up a water collection and purification point five miles upstream from the bridging site, and through his glasses he could see several hundred men splashing around in the river itself. He suspected the water was a bit too cold for his own tastes, but he was glad to see them washing away the dust. No doubt at least some of them were also trying to soak up as much moisture as they could through the pores of their skin, he thought with a grin.
He moved his attention to the bridge itself. He couldn’t hear much from his present position except for the constant, sighing voice of the wind, but the bridge’s prefabricated steel spans swarmed with workmen. It was almost completed, and the bulldozer blade-fitted Bisons were improving the approach to it. More of them, as well as hundreds of men with shovels and picks, were working to improve the steep, rugged ramp up to the notch blasted out of the canyon’s farther wall.
Tomorrow, he thought. Yahnday at the latest. And that’s when the pressure really starts.
He lowered the glasses and turned to look back to the east. The sprawl of vehicles, orderly rows of tents, and industriously employed soldiers stretched as far as the eye could see, and the inevitable cluster of shirtless, sunburned mechanics swarmed over a half-dozen Bisons, shielded from the intense desert sun by overhead canvas flies. From the occasional curse riding the stiff breeze to his ears, he suspected that at least one of the recalcitrant vehicles was likely to find itself being cannibalized to get the others running again. He hated the thought of losing yet another of them, but his instructions to Therahk chan Kymo’s quartermasters had been uncompromising.
The next six or seven days would be critical. The indefatigable Company-Captain chan Mahsdyr and his Gold Company were once again far out ahead of 3rd Dragoons’ main body. In fact, he and his men were ensconced in the rugged country along the White Snake River east of Fort Ghartoun, keeping a cautious and surreptitious eye on its Arcanan garrison. As long as they stayed at least a few miles back, the rough terrain-made considerably rougher by the violence of the portal wind which must have come screaming through the New Uromath portal, probably for centuries, when it originally formed-offered an abundance of concealment for troops as experienced at keeping out of sight as imperial Ternathian dragoons. Chan Geraith knew that. And despite knowing that, his nerves tightened every time he thought of all of the ways in which they might betray their presence to any semi-alert Arcanan.
Fortunately, there seemed to be few of those in Fort Ghartoun. Nor had chan Mahsdyr’s Plotters or Distance Viewers seen any dragons permanently attached to the fort. For that matter, they hadn’t seen any of the eagle-lions the Arcanans appeared to use as unmanned reconnaissance vehicles, either. That undoubtedly explained how the thousands of Sharonians along the Stone Carve, barely four hundred miles from them, had so far eluded their attention. The fact that the shortest route between Fort Ghartoun and Fort Brithik at the Failcham portal lay well over two hundred and fifty miles north of their present position probably didn’t hurt; a dragon would have to detour pretty far out of its direct flight path to Failcham to spot them way down here. But even if there weren’t any dragons permanently stationed at Fort Ghartoun, plenty of them were certainly passing along that route to Failcham farther to the north, and the closer his main body got to Fort Ghartoun, the more likely one of those transiting dragons was to spot his column. He’d cheerfully have sacrificed his left hand for the sort of aerial reconnaissance capability the Arcanans enjoyed, but in its absence, the best he could do was to take the threat into consideration and try to plan around it.
And that was why the next few days were going to be critical.
According to chan Mahsdyr’s detailed reports, the entire garrison of Fort Ghartoun couldn’t amount to much more than half a battalion. There was perhaps a company of their unicorn-mounted light cavalry and what certainly looked from the Voice reports like no more than a couple of infantry companies. It was obvious, reading between the lines of the company-captain’s reports that chan Mahsdyr was confident Gold Company could have successfully seized the fort out of its own resources, and given how expeditiously they’d secured the entry portal from Nairsom, chan Geraith was prepared to believe he was right. He had no intention of finding out, however. When the time came, Battalion-Captain chan Yahndar’s entire battalion would storm the fort. Hopefully, 2nd Battalion’s attack would come as as much of a surprise to Fort Ghartoun as chan Mahsdyr’s assault had been for the Arcanan encampment on the Tyrahl River. Unfortunately, the Fort Ghartoun hummer cots were inside the fort’s sturdy walls. Not even a Talented sniper like Fozak chan Gyulair could hit a target on the other side of a solid, clay-reinforced timber palisade, and unfortunately, the engineers who’d chosen Fort Ghartoun’s site had picked one which offered no handy vantage points simultaneously high enough and close enough to target the fort’s interior over its walls.
Chan Yahndar had devised a plan to deal with that, and chan Geraith had approved it because it offered an excellent chance of success. Without the ability to specifically and directly target the hummer cots, however, no one could guarantee that the fort’s garrison-chan Geraith hesitated to use the noun “defenders” to describe a body of troops which appeared to spend so much time sitting on its collective arse-couldn’t get off a message. That was unfortunate, because it was less than three hundred miles from Fort Ghartoun to Hell’s Gate across New Uromath, and even with the Bisons and Steel Mules, 3rd Dragoons would need at least three days-more probably four-to cover that distance. In fact, it might well take five, given the forests on the New Uromath side of the portal, and he had no idea how close the nearest Arcanan reaction force might be.
At least he could count on the Arcanans’ lack of Voices. Fast as their hummers were, they were far slower than a Voice message, so it would take them a lot longer than it would have taken a Sharonian commander to begin responding to any message from Fort Ghartoun. Unfortunately, once they did respond they had those never-to-be-sufficiently-damned dragons. They could move troops far, far faster than he could, so it would be a race between his powerful, concentrated ground force and a dragonborne Arcanan force which would probably be far more scattered initially than his own. And that being the case, he needed his main body as close to Fort Ghartoun as he could get it before he attacked it.
It would be an interesting challenge in a training exercise, he reflected, but it’s a pain in the arse when I have to do it for real. How close can I get to Fort Ghartoun before one of those transiting dragon riders glances down and happens to notice several hundred vehicles churning towards it? The direct route to Failcham may be north of us, but the closer we get to Ghartoun, the more likely it is that someone’s going to spot us and our damned dust clouds.
He’d decided that a hundred miles was the absolute maximum he could rely upon in that regard. He’d already spotted Plotters and Distance Viewers along his route to Fort Ghartoun, tied together by Flickers and Voices to warn him of any dragon which might chance close enough to detect them, but once he got within a hundred miles, he was going to assume detection by the Arcanans was effectively inevitable.