Darkness Descending

Cursing even so, Sabrino forced his dragon up through and past the enemies attacking his men and beasts. Most of the two squadrons he led followed his example. They were, almost to a man, veteran dragonfliers; they knew what needed doing. Dragonfights were war in three dimensions. Height mattered.

By the way the Unkerlanters flew, a lot of them were new aboard their bad-tempered mounts. They didn’t try to keep Sabrino’s men from gaining altitude; they were intent on destroying Olindro’s squadron. Under that waxed mustache--which was icing up again--Sabrino’s lips skinned back from his teeth in a savage grin. Inexperience could and, he vowed, would be an expensive business.

He chose the enemy dragon he wanted, then urged his own beast into a dive. The Unkerlanter dragonflier had no notion he was there. Without the slightest twinge of conscience--the Unkerlanter would have exulted at doing it to him--he blazed the fellow in the back.

The Unkerlanter threw out his hands. His stick flew from one of them. He slumped down onto his dragons neck. The beast, no longer under his control, showed its true nature: it struck out wildly at friend and foe alike, then flew off to prey on the frozen countryside below. The war had left it plenty of carrion on which to feed.

Sabrino blazed at another Unkerlanter dragonflier. He missed again, and cursed again. But his dragon was flying faster than the enemy’s mount. Nearer and nearer he drew. This Unkerlanter was a little more wary than the other one had been, but not wary enough. He’d only started to swing his dragon around to face Sabrino when the count ordered his own dragon to flame.

Again, fire burst from the dragon’s jaws. It caught the Unkerlanter beast in the flank and, more important, in the membranous wing. Bellowing horribly, flaming back with fire falling short, the Unkerlanter dragon fell out of the sky toward the ground far below. Sabrino thought he heard the dragonflier’s fading scream.

More Unkerlanter dragons were plummeting to earth or flying off under no man’s control. So were some of his own. He howled his fury at the losses. Algarve couldn’t afford them--and the men were friends as well as comrades.

But, before long, the Unkerlanters had had enough and fled back toward the west, the direction from which they’d come. Sabrino didn’t order a pursuit. He didn’t care to face the fresh squadrons King Swemmel’s men might send up with his own beasts tired. Instead, he waved back toward the east, toward the Algarvians’ own chilly makeshift of a dragon farm.

When they flew over the front, he quietly thanked the powers above that he wasn’t down there fighting on the ground. One reason he’d started flying dragons--and the best one he’d ever found--was that it beat the stuffing out of the footsoldier’s life.

Bembo wished he were back in Tricarico. Walking a constable’s beat in a provincial town in northeastern Algarve hadn’t been the most exciting job in the world, but now he realized he hadn’t appreciated it enough while he had it. Compared to some of the things he had to do here in Gromheort and in the surrounding villages, that beat seemed like paradise.

The plump constable didn’t mind--well, he didn’t mind too much--being plucked out of his comfortable home and sent west to help keep order in one of the kingdoms Algarve had conquered. Somebody had to do it. And besides, serving as a constable in occupied Forthweg, while harder than doing it in his own home town, was in most ways infinitely preferable to being issued a stick and sent off to the front in Unkerlant.

In most ways, but not in all. Along with the rest of a squad of constables from Tricarico, Bembo led several dozen trousered Kaunians through the streets of Gromheort toward the towns ley-line caravan depot. Some of the blonds walked along as if they had not a care in the world. But most had trouble hiding the fear they surely felt. Husbands comforted wives; mothers comforted children. Even as they did so, though, those husbands and mothers were biting their lips and fighting back tears themselves.

A man turned toward Bembo and stretched out his hands. “Why?” he asked in Algarvian; a fair number of people in Gromheort spoke some of the constable s language. “What did we do to deserve this?”

“Keep moving,” was all Bembo said. “Keep moving, or you’ll be sorry.” He was always sorry to draw this duty, but the Kaunian didn’t have to know. The people over me know what they’re doing, Bembo thought. If we’re going to win the cursed war, we have to do what we have to do. It’s only Kaunians, after all. Can’t make an omelette without breaking eggs. At the thought of an omelette, his stomach rumbled hungrily.