Darkness Descending

He’d never been fond of beets, especially plain boiled ones. He was still picking at them when a commotion outside penetrated the noise of the rain drumming on his tent. “Have the Unkerlanters managed to sneak raiders past our lines?” Captain Domiziano said, half rising from his seat.

But then one of the shouts out there in the night came clear: “Your Majesty!” A moment later, a dragon handler burst into Sabrino’s tent. “Sir, the king honors us with his presence!” he exclaimed.

“Powers above,” Sabrino said softly. “I wish I were better placed to honor him in turn than in this miserable bog. Well, it can’t be helped. See if you can delay him long enough for the cooks to bring in another serving of supper, anyhow.”

As things worked out, King Mezentio and the servitor bringing more fish and beets arrived at the same time. “Go on,” Mezentio told the cook. “I can’t very well eat that till you set it down, now can I?”

The wind had blown his umbrella inside out. He was almost as wet as the dragonfliers had been. Sabrino and his squadron commanders sprang to their feet and bowed. “Your Majesty!” they said in unison.

“Save the ceremony for later, can’t you?” Mezentio said. “Let me eat, and if you’ll pour me some of that, whatever it is, I’ll thank you for it, too.” He knocked back a slug of the spirits as if his gullet were already lined with metal.

After the king had demolished his supper--beets fazed him no more than the spirits had--Sabrino presumed to ask, “What brings you to the front, your Majesty? And why this particular part of the front?”

“Not just the pleasure of your company, my lord Count,” Mezentio answered. He poured from the jar again, then drank. “Ah, that warms me, curse me if it doesn’t. No, not the pleasure of your company. I probably wouldn’t have come if the Unkerlanters hadn’t stalled us.” His lips pulled back from his teeth in what was more nearly snarl than smile. “But they have, and so I’m going to watch what we do with a victory camp.”

“Ah.” Orosio beamed. “That’s fine, your Majesty. That’s very fine.”

Sabrino’s stomach lurched again. “Has it truly come to that?”

“It has.” King Mezentio’s voice brooked no argument. “If we delay, we risk not taking Cottbus. And if we fail to take Cottbus, the war grows longer and harder than we ever thought it would be when we embarked on it. Is that true, or is it not?”

“Aye, your Majesty, it is,” Sabrino answered, grimacing, “but--”

Mezentio made a sharp chopping gesture with his right hand. “But me no buts, my lord Count. I did not come to this miserable, cursed place to argue with you, and nothing you can say will change my mind. The mages are here, the soldiers are here, the stinking Kaunians are here, and I am here. I came here to see it done. We shall go forward, and we shall go forward to victory. Is that plain, sirrah?”

Sabrino’s squadron commanders were staring with wide eyes, as if wondering how he presumed to argue with his sovereign. With King Mezentio glaring at him, he also wondered how he presumed. “Aye, your Majesty,” he said. But then, being the descendant of a long line of freeborn Algarvian warriors, he added, “It had better do all we--you--hope it will, or we’d be better off never having tried it.”

“You leave such worries to the mages and me,” Mezentio growled. “Your duty to the kingdom is to fly your dragons, and I know you do it well. My duty to the kingdom is to win the war, and I aim to do exactly that. Need I make myself any plainer?”

“No, your Majesty,” Sabrino said. He took another swig from his glass of spirits--he needed fortifying. As the spirits mounted to his head, he reflected that he’d done everything he could; more, probably, than he should have. King Mezentio had overruled him. He inclined his head, “I shall obey.”

“Of course you shall.” For a moment, Mezentio sounded very much the way King Swemmel was supposed to sound. But then he softened his words: “After we parade through Cottbus in triumph, I am going to say, ‘I told you so.’ “ He grinned engagingly at Sabrino.

“I’ll be glad to hear it then,” Sabrino said, and grinned back.

Mezentio did his best to set his battered umbrella to rights. “And now I have to go find the tent they’ve got waiting for me--somewhere. Always a pleasure to see you, my lord Count, even if not always to argue with you.” He nodded to Sabrino’s squadron commanders. “Gentlemen.” Without waiting for a reply, he went out into the wet, wet night.

“You don’t live dangerously, sir,” Captain Domiziano said to Sabrino. “Not half you don’t.”

“It’s war, sir,” Orosio added. “Anything we can do to kick the lousy Unkerlanters’ teeth down their throats, we’d better do it.”

“I suppose you’re right,” Sabrino said. “I have no choice but to suppose you’re right. His Majesty made that clear enough, didn’t he?” Discovering he could still laugh at himself came as something of a relief. All the same, he drank himself to sleep.