“The Division-Captain’s given me pretty much carte blanche on how I use the transport assigned to me,” chan Yahndar said. “Why don’t you and Battalion-Captain chan Hurmahl put your heads together and come up with the best estimate you can for how we divvy up our resources while we wait to find out about the Mules’ availability?”
“We can do that. Of course, anything we come up with at this point’s going to be pretty much a WAG.”
“Understood. On the other hand, you’re going to have at least a month before the Division-Captain gets the main column as far forward as Kelsayr, and any of the infantry’s going to be more than a month behind that.”
“Granted, but sixty days isn’t anywhere near as long as it sounds, especially when we’ll need to be setting up forward fuel and supply dumps. Which brings me to another point. What kind of depths can one of these Bisons ford?”
“They’re designed to ford up to five feet of water,” chan Mahsdyr replied for his CO. “The Mules can ford up to about the same depth, and I’ve seen Bisons manage just over six. Of course that was crossing a streambed where we knew exactly what the bottom conditions were. I think the Mark Twos, at least, can be fitted with a deep fording kit that would get them across up to ten feet if they seal all the hatches and openings. At that point all that would be above water would be the exhaust and the snorkel, so steering would get problematical as all hells and the risk of stranding one of them permanently in the middle of a river goes way up. Crew risk goes up, too. And the Mules can’t go anywhere near that deep. On the other hand, they can use a standard scissors bridge or pontoon bridge, and the Bisons are too heavy for that. But you can probably count pretty solidly on five or six feet for either of them, especially if your fabricating crews are up to bashing a deep fording kit of our own.”
“Really?” Yanusa-Mahrdissa brightened. “That’s better than I expected. In fact, it’s probably good enough to get us across eighty or ninety percent of the water obstacles in Resym. That would ease the strain on our bridging crews a lot!”
“I know we have to worry about getting across Resym,” chan Yahndar said, “but all we really have to worry about there is the terrain. Once we hit Nairsom, we’re going to be crossing ‘only’ five or six hundred miles of Roantha and northern Thanos in the middle of winter. It’ll be a lot flatter, and we won’t have triple-canopy jungle to worry about, but the temperature’s going to be a bitch. And then, assuming a blizzard doesn’t come along and kill all the damned horses, we’ll hit the Chindar Portal in Thermyn.”
The others looked at him without saying a word, and he snorted mirthlessly at their expressions. From their entry portal just south of the small, dusty town of Chindar in the Kingdom of West New Ternath to Fort Ghartoun was only a little over a thousand miles, and the weather would be far milder than anything they were likely to experience on the winter-struck high plains of New Ternath. But the terrain was also far more rugged, water supplies would be few and far between, there would be far less to conceal them from enemies who could fly, and the minor obstacle of Coyote Canyon would have to be dealt with somehow.
At least there was some good news to go with the bad. Coyote Canyon was well over five hundred yards across and over eight hundred feet deep at the point the TTE survey crews had selected for Thermyn’s version of the Coyote Canyon Bridge. That was enough to give anyone pause, but in the carefree days before the Arcanans had darkened the horizon, work crews had been sent forward from Karys to begin work on the bridging project. They’d lacked the heavy construction equipment necessary to do a complete job of it, but they’d packed in enough picks, shovels, steam drills, and wagon loads of dynamite to make a serious start on the preliminaries. The access cut to the river had been blasted out of both sides of the canyon to permit heavy construction equipment to reach it once the railhead arrived. There was still a lot of spill from the blasting strewn about, which might well prove a major pain, but the maps and blueprints chan Yahndar had seen suggested that infantry and cavalry-and Bisons-would be able to negotiate the steep slopes, assuming they could get across the river itself.
And assuming the godsdamned Arcanans and their frigging “dragons” aren’t sitting right on top of us when we try, he reminded himself grimly. Of course, the whole idea’s that we’re coming at them from a direction they won’t expect, but still…
He decided to keep that particular concern to himself. If it should happen that the Arcanans were worrying about rats in the Thermyn woodwork, the preparation work already done at Coyote Canyon would certainly have a tendency to draw the eye. On the other hand, that work was four hundred and eighty miles from Fort Ghartoun as a bird-or a dragon-might fly. Even if the Arcanans had noticed it, that was a long way from anything worth defending.
And if they have noticed it and they’re thinking about possible threats that might be coming at them from the back, Hymair?
That, he told himself firmly once again, looking back at the bulkhead maps, was something to stew over after it actually happened. Gods knew he had enough to worry about just getting there, first!
Chapter Twenty-One
January 9
The first indication of trouble came within hours of their arrival.
Shaylar and her husband, exhausted by the long journey, had gone to bed early after being shown to the enormous bedroom set aside for them in the duke’s Portalis townhouse. She jolted awake an unknown stretch of time later, groggy with lingering bone-deep fatigue, but gripped by a rising tide of fear, a brooding sense of danger she couldn’t shake. When she peered at the chronometer glowing beside their bed, she realized she’d been asleep less than thirty minutes, yet it was impossible to get back to sleep. Weariness dragged at her, left her feeling bruised, but her sense of impending danger kept getting stronger-so much stronger, she finally couldn’t bear to lie in bed any longer.
Not wanting to disturb Jathmar, she wrapped herself in a luxurious house robe made of velvet and tiptoed from the bedroom, out into the sitting room. The duchess had given them a beautiful suite, by far the most elegant and luxurious place Shaylar had ever stayed. Now silver light flooded through tall windows, nearly as bright as daylight thanks to the full moon visible high above the rooftop. She curled up on a cushioned window seat, resting her brow against the chill glass, trying to understand the disturbing mood that had gripped her so unexpectedly. She knew there was danger for them here, but she wasn’t accustomed to having waves and waves of threat crashing across her senses.
She bit her lip and wondered what was happening, out there in the capital city, tonight. The hummers with news of the initial conflict had beat them to Portalis by over a month followed by word of the failed negotiations and the resumption of hostilities, but it was clear Jasak and Gadrial were right about the effect the lack of official news since then was likely to produce. In some ways, she was grateful for the news blackout, if that was what it truly was. At least no one had associated her or Jathmar with the conflict brewing down-chain from Hell’s Gate when they went clothes shopping! But she dreaded what was likely to happen when the long-delayed news did reach Portalis.
She bit her lip harder, dreading everything that lay ahead of them. Because there was nothing whatsoever she could do about any of it, she sat in her window seat, peering out through the window, and tried to calm her unsteady nerves.
A large garden, right in the middle of the vast structure, split the duke’s townhouse in half. Open to the sky, it was filled with trees, carefully tended shrubbery, flowerbeds, beautifully fitted flagstone pathways, statuary, and a truly spectacular fountain, and it divided the public half of the house from the private portion. The offices from which Jasak’s father governed New Arcana lay on its far side, and she was unsurprised to see lights in many of the rooms in that half of the house as she gazed across the garden. Clearly, their arrival had inconvenienced a fair number of public officials and their support people.