Darkness Descending

Only after Gyongyosian dragons returned and dropped great swarms of eggs on the fortress did the blazing from it ease enough to let the footsoldiers mount an assault. Even then, Unkerlanter survivors kept fighting in the wreckage until, at last, almost all of them were slain. Only a couple of dark-haired men came out of the works with their hands held high.

And when Istvan went into the battered fortress, he discovered something that set him shouting for Captain Tivadar. After a while, the company commander picked his way through the wreckage and stood beside his sergeant. “Well,” he said at last, “now we know why they were able to blaze so well for so long.”

“Aye, sir,” Istvan said. “So we do.” Ten Unkerlanters lay side by side, each of them with his throat cut. The Gyongyosians had not done that; the Unkerlanters’ own countrymen had. “Do you suppose they volunteered, or did their officers draw straws, or would they just pick the men they liked least?”

“I don’t know,” Tivadar answered. “Maybe the captives will be able to tell us.” He gulped, looking for something more to say. At last, he managed, “It was bravely done, though. See?--none of them has his hands tied. They gave themselves up so their comrades would have plenty of sorcerous energy in their sticks to keep blazing at us.”

“So they did.” Istvan looked down at the neat if bloody row of corpses. He gave them the best tribute he could: “They died like warriors.” He wondered how many Gyongyosians would have yielded themselves up for their fellows’ sake like that. Then he wondered what the Unkerlanters would do at the next position they chose to defend with all their strength. And then he wondered if he’d be lucky enough to see the Unkerlanter stronghold after that.

Seen from Setubal, the Derlavaian War had a curious feel, almost as if it were happening in a distant room. The Strait of Valmiera protected Lagoas from invasion. So did Algarve’s enormous fight with Unkerlant; thus embroiled, King Mezentio’s men could not afford to do much against the Lagoans. Occasional dragons dropped eggs on Setubal and the other towns of the northern coast. Occasional warships tried to sneak in and raid the shoreline. Rather more Lagoan dragons flew against the Algarvian-held ports of southern Valmiera. Other than that. . .

“They fear us,” a second-rank mage named Xavega said to Fernao as the two of them sat drinking fortified wine in a dining room of the Grand Hall of the Lagoan Guild of Mages.

Fernao bowed in his seat, an almost Algarvian courtesy. “I thank you, milady,” he said. “You have proved, without leaving the tiniest particle of room for doubt, that being a woman does not keep one from being a fool.”

Xavega glared at him. She was in her early thirties, a few years younger than he, and had a fierce scowl somehow made fiercer by her being quite good-looking. “If Algarve did not fear us,” she said, “Mezentio would have tried settling accounts with us before turning his eye westward.”

“You’ve never traveled outside Lagoas, have you?” Fernao asked.

“As if that should make a difference!” Xavega tossed her head. Her mane of auburn hair flipped back over her shoulders.

“Ah, but it does,” Fernao said. “You may not believe me, but it does. People who’ve never left Lagoas have no sense of... of proportion--I think that’s the word I want. It’s true of anyone who hasn’t traveled, but more so with us, because our kingdom is only the smaller part of an island, but we naturally think it’s the center of the world.”

By Xavega’s expression, no other thought had crossed her mind. And, by her expression, she wasn’t interested in having other thoughts cross her mind. The thought of bedding her later in the evening had crossed Fernao’s mind; he suspected he’d just dropped an egg on his chances. She said, “Setubal contains the world. What need to go farther?”

That held some truth--some, but not enough. “Proportion,” Fernao repeated. “For one thing, Mezentio couldn’t very well jump on us when Swemmel was ready to jump on him from the west. For another, if he did jump us, he’d bring Kuusamo into the war against him, and he can’t afford that.”

“Kuusamo.” Xavega waved her hand, as Lagoans had a way of doing when they thought of their neighbors on the island.

“Kuusamo outweighs us two or three to one,” Fernao said, an unpleasant truth his countrymen preferred to forget. “The Seven Princes look east and north for gain more than they do toward us or toward the mainland--easier pickings in those directions--but they don’t have to.”

“They’re Kuusamans,” Xavega said with a sneer, as if that explained everything. For her, evidently, it did. Pointing to Fernao, she went on, “Just because you have their eyes, you don’t need to take their part.”