Hell's Foundations Quiver by David Weber Page A

insulating capacity.
    To protect his hands, each man wore heavy, multilayered mittens or thick fleece-lined gloves over an inner glove of knitted wool and a separate liner of steel thistle silk. The mittens were warmer than gloves because they gathered and held the heat of the entire hand, not individual fingers, but they were clumsy, to say the least, and the gloves allowed greater manual dexterity when it was required.
    Boots had been as carefully considered as the rest of the troops’ gear. Made of sealskin and lined with fleece, they had double soles and an inner, moccasin-like liner which could be removed to dry, or worn as a sort of house shoe inside one of the tents.
    The weight of all those garments was a significant burden, but one which allowed them to move and operate in temperatures far below freezing. Nature had provided the caribou and snow lizards with their own formidable insulation, and the High Hallows had been bred by centuries of Chisholmian breeders for conditions very similar to these. Nonetheless, arctic rugs had been provided for the horses as additional protection if the temperature plunged still lower.
    The snow made marching difficult, even with snowshoes, but it provided easy going for the sleds which followed in the broad, beaten-down lanes the infantry’s snowshoes provided. In many ways, conditions were actually less difficult than they might have been for dragons pulling conventional wagons cross-country in mid-summer.
    And best of all , Green Valley thought, no one on the other side has a clue of just how winter-mobile we are .
    If he’d ever entertained any doubts on that subject, the SNARC imagery of the Army of God’s outposts would have put them to rest. Very few of those half-frozen men, shivering in inadequate clothing as they crouched around fires in whatever structures they’d found or whatever huts they’d been able to piece together, had any interest in going anywhere else. Nor would they survive if their shelters were destroyed, Green Valley reflected, his expression bleak under the two layers of snow mask—what would have been called balaclavas back on Old Earth—and the ski goggles he and every other man in the column wore. Freezing to death was a very unpleasant way to die, and the baron took no pleasure in the thought of inflicting that particular death even on his enemies.
    Which wouldn’t stop him from doing it for a moment.

 
    .V.
    Two Recon Skimmers, Above East Haven, and Nimue’s Cave, The Mountains of Light, The Temple Lands
    â€œI never imagined clouds could look so beautiful from above,” Aivah Pahrsahn said softly. She sat in the recon skimmer’s rear seat, turned to the left to look down from the rear canopy over its wingtip as it banked, and the moon shining down through the thin, cold atmosphere turned the clouds’ summits into shining silver and their gulfs into bottomless ebon canyons far below. “I always knew God was an artist, but this.…”
    She shook her head, and Merlin smiled as he gazed out through his own canopy. They’d come two thousand miles from Siddar City in a little over three hours; they should reach their destination in the Mountains of Light in another hour and a half. He’d been a bit surprised by how calmly Aivah had taken the materialization of not one but two recon skimmers out of the snowy dark, but however calm she’d been, her sense of wonder had been obvious. If she’d felt any trepidation at climbing the access ladder into the needle-nosed, swept-wing skimmer, she’d concealed it admirably, and her enjoyment of the trip so far reminded Merlin irresistibly of Cayleb Ahrmahk’s first flight.
    He leveled the skimmer as he completed the turn, and glanced out over his starboard wing to where an identical skimmer kept meticulous station upon him. He hadn’t initially anticipated needing both of them, but each could carry only a single extra