Out of the Darkness

“Aye, I think that,” Sabrino answered. “Don’t you?” Reluctantly, the squadron commander nodded. “All right, then,” Sabrino said. “What do we do next?”

“Fight as hard as we can as long as we can,” Orosio said. “What else is there?”

“Nothing I can see,” Sabrino told him. “Not a single fornicating thing.” As Orosio had, he spat into the muck. “And I’m not doing it for King Mezentio. This for King Mezentio.” He spat again. “If it weren’t for what Mezentio did back in the first autumn of the war with Unkerlant, we’d have a better chance now--and nobody would hate us quite so much.”

Had Orosio taken that back to the ears of men who cared about such things--to King Mezentio’s equivalent of inspectors, Sabrino thought scornfully-- the wing commander would have found himself in trouble ... as if trying to keep up the fight against the Unkerlanters weren’t trouble enough. But Sabrino knew his squadron commander well enough to be sure Orosio would sooner be flamed out of the sky than betray him. What Orosio did say was, “Well, if it’s not for the king and it’s not for the kingdom, why not just pack it in?”

“Who says it’s not for the kingdom?” Sabrino looked back toward that unending stream of Algarvians fleeing eastward. “The longer we keep going, the longer we hold back Swemmel’s whoresons, the more people will have the chance to get away. That’s worth doing, curse it.”

“Ah.” Orosio didn’t need long to think it over this time. “You’re right, sir. We’ve got to do what we can.”

“However much that is--or however little.” Sabrino raised his voice to call to the chief dragon-handler: “Sergeant! A word with you, if you please.”

“Aye, sir?” The fellow hurried up to him. “What can I do for you, sir? We were just going to feed the beasts.”

“That’s what I wanted to ask you about,” Sabrino said. “Did that shipment of cinnabar you were talking about ever get down here from the north? Without it, our dragons are only flaming half as far as the ones the Unkerlanters fly.”

“Oh. That. Sorry, sir. No.” The sergeant shook his head. “I don’t think we can expect any more, either. I heard today Swemmel’s men have overrun the mines south of Bonorva. That was about the last cinnabar we had left, sir, and we had to try and parcel it out amongst all the dragons we’ve still got in the air.”

“The last of the cinnabar.” Sabrino didn’t know why it surprised him. He’d seen this day coming when the Algarvians were driven out of the cinnabar-rich austral continent--after their murderous magic went wrong there, as foreign magic had a way of doing, and wrecked their own army--and especially after they didn’t swarm past Sulingen and into the cinnabar mines of the Mamming Hills in southern Unkerlant. He’d seen it coming, and seen it coming . . . and it was finally here.

Orosio put the best face on things he could: “Well, sir, our job just got a little harder, that’s all.”

Their job, for most of the past two years, had been impossible. Orosio surely knew that as well as Sabrino did. Sabrino let out another weary sigh. “Fishing without a net or a line, that’s what we’ll be doing. How many minnows can we grab out of the water with our bare hands?”

“Fish, sir?” The sergeant of dragon-handlers looked confused. A solid, capable man when doing what he knew how to do, he wouldn’t have known a metaphor had one strolled up wagging its tail. Sabrino almost envied him. He wished he were more ignorant himself these days.

He ducked into his tent. A meal of sorts waited there: rye bread and a little crock of butter and a jug of spirits. Sabrino shook his head. Change the spirits to ale and his barbarous ancestors would have eaten like this in the days before they ever dreamt of challenging the might of the Kaunian Empire.

New barbarians at the gates now, Sabrino thought. He wondered whether he meant the Unkerlanters or his own people. He shrugged a fine, flamboyant Algarvian shrug. What difference did it make, really? He drank more of his supper than he ate, and went to bed with wits whirling.

When he woke up the next morning, his throbbing head seemed altogether in keeping with the general state of the world, or the Algarvian portion thereof. His head would eventually improve. He had his doubts about the Algarvian portion of the world.

Bread liberally smeared with butter did nothing to beat back his hangover. They did grease his stomach so the slug of spirits he poured down after them didn’t hurt so much. When the spirits mounted to his head, he felt human again, in a melancholy way. How any Algarvian could feel anything but melancholy these days was beyond him.

The day was cool and cloudy, with a threat of rain in the air. Sabrino wouldn’t have wanted to face bright sunshine just then. He started over to the crystallomancers’ tent to find out where along the tattered front his dozen or so dragons could do the most good. Before he got there, someone called his name. He turned.