The Road to Hell - eARC by David Weber, Joelle Presby Page B

the acting CO of Toralk’s AATC detachment, was down to an accumulator inventory far below the minimum level specified by The Book, and that was another situation that wasn’t going to get better anytime soon.
    And because it isn’t, the transports Lyshair does have are forced to fly without accumulators, which is exhausting the dragons faster and hauling half the tonnage to boot . And then there’s the little problem of fodder and dragon feed , he reminded himself glumly.
    The terrain between portals in both Karys and Failcham was hot, dry, and arid. There’d been little Sharonian civilian presence in either of them, which meant there’d also been little farmland to provide fodder for the cavalry’s horses or fresh food to vary the men’s diet, and there’d been neither domesticated animals nor large herds of wild animals to provide meat for the dragons or the cavalry’s unicorns. The wicked losses Gyras Urlan’s heavy dragoons had suffered in the final lunge at Fort Salby had reduced the number of horses they had to feed, but there were plenty of the hungry creatures left, and transporting enough food for all of the Expeditionary Force’s draft animals— and humans; let’s not forget them, Klayrman , he reminded himself—only increased the workload on the pilots and beasts of Lyshair’s exhausted aerie still further.
    We don’t have a choice , he decided. I’m going to have to rotate the transport talons at least as far back as Thermyn to hunt .
    That would be better than two thousand miles, but the portal between Thermyn and Failcham was in central Yanko, and a relatively short hop from there would take them to the vast, rolling plains of western Andara with its endless herds of bison. The hunting would be good, the game would be plentiful, the talon he rotated back would have good eating while it was there, and hunting parties could take enough additional bison to be shipped forward to Karys when it returned.
    Of course, it’s going to cost me a quarter of my transports , he reflected glumly. And given the number of carnivorous mouths we have to feed, I’ll have to authorize Lyshair to dip into his levitation accumulators to haul the meat back. At least we’re in good shape for food preservation spells, so it won’t rot before it gets eaten. That’s not going to help with the fodder, though .
    He frowned unhappily, then sighed. Two Thousand Harshu wasn’t going to like it, but they’d have to send the horses back along with the transports. A winter on the Western Plains of Andara would be no picnic, even for the arcanely enhanced cavalry mounts, but it would be better than trying to graze them here.
    Sure, it’ll be better, but that’s sort of like saying amputation’s better than gangrene! Our biggest single advantage over the Sharonians is our mobility, and that’s oozing away from us while we sit here. Thank Trembo Fire Heel for the Traisum Cut! At least without dragons of their own those bastards aren’t going to be coming down it after us anytime soon. Unfortunately …
    He sighed again and paged to the brief report he was going to have to discuss with Harshu. Until that unmitigated bastard Carthos got here from the secondary advance Harshu had recalled, Klayrman Toralk, for his sins, remained the second ranking officer of the AEF. That made him Mayrkos Harshu’s senior officer, and that made it his unwelcome job to share his staff’s estimates—guesstimates, really—of Sharonian transport capabilities with his superior. Frankly, he was half convinced those guesstimates were wildly pessimistic, but only half. And if they weren’t, if the Sharonians really could pack two or three dragonweights of freight into a single one of their railroad cars…
    If they can, they may be slower than we are, but they’ve got the godsdamned railroad built all the way to the portal. Once whatever they have in the pipeline starts arriving in Traisum, they’ll be able to build up quickly—probably