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forward with the escort sent to shepherd Olvyr Banchu and his engineers back to Fort Salby. His was a powerful Talent, and he’d used it to good effect scouting the Arcanans’ positions and troop strength. He’d tallied in excess of a hundred and fifty of their dragons and at least six thousand men, twice the 3rd Dragoons’ current strength in Traisum. There was no way to tell what might have lain outside his range, but chan Geraith was certain the Arcanan commander had strength chan Hopyr hadn’t Seen. Not that what he had Seen hadn’t been quite bad enough.
    “That’s essentially my own conclusion, Sir,” chan Gayrahn said. “Well, mine and Master-Armsman chan Vornos’. All indications are that Harshu is a determined, ruthless commander—more than ruthless enough to accept casualties and losses as the price of accomplishing his mission. Yet he hasn’t even tried to attack the rail line behind us.”
    “Perhaps he simply doesn’t realize how important it is,” chan Isail suggested, and chan Geraith nodded. One of the things he most valued about chan Isail was the chief of staff’s hardheaded pragmatism. Chan Geraith’s own tendency was to think in the most aggressive terms possible. Aggressively enough, in fact, that he sometimes found himself badly in need of chan Isail’s willingness to challenge (or at least critically examine) his underlying assumptions.
    “I think it’s entirely possible—even probable—that he doesn’t have a clear grasp of how much we can move, or how quickly we can move it, on rails,” the division-captain conceded now. “In fact, I don’t see how it could be any other way. They had to be as ignorant of our capabilities as we were of theirs when they set out to attack us, and Harshu wouldn’t have been so quick to let Banchu and the work crews go if he’d realized how badly he could hurt us by just hanging on to them.”
    “You’re probably right about that, Sir,” chan Kymo said thoughtfully. “I’ve been trying to get some sort of mental picture of how our transport capabilities stack up against theirs, now that we know about these dragon things of theirs.” The quartermaster shrugged. “I can’t be positive they don’t have something like our railroads, obviously, but I agree with you that Harshu would never have let Banchu’s people go so readily—at the very least, he would’ve insisted that all their equipment be left behind or destroyed—if he’d had any real grasp of their importance. In fact, I’m beginning to think it’s important we not let ourselves be so dazzled by how quickly they can move that we overestimate how much they can move.
    “Assume a sixty-ton dragon can carry its own weight. Frankly, that seems unlikely as hell for any flying beast, but given how ‘unlikely’ dragons are in the first place, I’m not going to say they can’t. But that’s still only sixty tons per dragon, whereas we can load a hundred and ten tons into a standard freight car, and the heavy-lift cars can carry almost twice that much. We hauled over ten thousand tons all the way from Sharona in a single train. Assuming their dragons really could haul sixty tons apiece, they’d still need over a hundred and seventy of them to match that total…and we currently have two more trains that size following us down the same line, with more loading up right behind them. If Harshu had any concept of what that means, he’d be moving heaven and all the Arpathian hells combined to stop us from doing it.”
    “Point taken,” chan Isail said after a moment.
    “I think Therahk may have an even better point then he realizes,” chan Geraith said. His subordinates looked at him, and he smiled thinly. “We have to remember both sides are dealing with opponents with completely unknown capabilities. I know I just said that, but it bears repeating because it’s something we have to keep in mind. At the moment, Harshu undoubtedly calculates—correctly, by the way—that he