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

factor the possibilities of air mobility into their thinking, at least as well as they can,” Harshu observed thoughtfully. “But how well can they factor it in without their own dragons to use as a measuring stick? And even if they manage to extrapolate a lot more accurately than I suspect they can, based on what they’ve seen so far, they can’t change the constraints their lack of air mobility imposes. Once they’re this side of the portal, we can circle as wide as we need to to get around behind them instead of trying to stuff your tactical and transport dragons through the mouth of a jar, Klayrman. We’ll be able to get at their lines of communication without running the gauntlet of those rotating cannon. In fact, the farther into Karys they advance, the more vulnerable they’ll make themselves.”
    “Are you thinking about falling back from the Cut, Sir? Giving them a free pass into Karys?” Toralk asked.
    “Oh, no! Keeping them out of Karys in the first place, at least until we’re properly reinforced, is a lot better idea. And one thing they’ve already demonstrated is that they aren’t idiots, Klayrman! If we were to suddenly and obligingly let them through the Cut without a fight, they’d have to wonder why we were being so helpful. I’m just saying that if they do decide to come after us, and if they do manage somehow to break out of the Cut, we’ll be able to hurt them a lot more badly than they may realize.”
    He smiled almost whimsically.
    “I’d like that,” he said. “I’d like that a lot.”

Chapter Five
    December 9
    “Twenty for your thoughts,” Jathmar Nargra said quietly, leaning back in the comfortable deck chair.
    “I don’t know that they’re worth that much,” his wife, Shaylar Nargra-Kolmayr, told him with a wan smile.
    “Oh, they have to be worth that much!” Jathmar disagreed.
    Shaylar chuckled, although that chuckle was edged by sorrow and more than a hint of bitterness. A twentieth-falcon was the smallest Ternathian coin, so putting that price on her thoughts didn’t set their value very high. But Jathmar shouldn’t have needed to ask her about them in the first place. Oh, the details of what might be running through her mind at any moment, yes. But their marriage bond was so strong, ran so deep, he’d always known what she was thinking, feeling, on a level far below words.
    Except that now he didn’t. She still wasn’t certain exactly when the bond had started fraying, but it continued to grow weaker day by day, almost hour by hour, and that terrified her. It was all they had left to cling to as they traveled steadily across the faces of far too many universes towards their black, bleak future of captivity, and it was slipping away, like Shurkhali sand sifting between her fingers. The tighter she clenched her grasp, the more clearly she felt it seeping away, blood dripping from a wound neither of them could staunch.
    No , she thought, gazing out through the porthole. It’s not weakening day by day; it’s weakening mile by mile . The farther we get from home, the weaker it grows, and Sweet Mother Marnilay, but what in the names of all the gods could cause that?
    She didn’t know. All she knew was that it was happening, and she turned away from Jathmar—from the husband who felt as if he were somehow drifting away from her even as he held her hand tightly and warmly in his own—to gaze up at stars which were achingly familiar.
    She and Jathmar could at least have an illusion of privacy, and she was grateful to Sir Jasak Olderhan for allowing that. There was no place they could possibly have escaped to from a ship in the middle of the Western Ocean’s vast empty reaches, but that wouldn’t have stopped all too many Arcanans they’d met on this endless journey from posting guards over them, anyway. After all, they were both Sharonian, with who knew what sort of still undisclosed terrible, “unnatural” Talents? Never mind that the Arcanans could work