Out of the Darkness

As the dragonfliers scrambled aboard their mounts, Sabrino said, “Try not to get killed, gentlemen. Algarve will need you again later.” If they wanted to think he meant, Algarve will need you to fly more missions, that was all right with him. If they wanted to think he meant, Algarve will still need you after the war is over and lost, that was all right, too, and closer to the truth.

He whacked his dragon with the goad. The beast screamed with fury as it flung itself into the air; it liked flying at night no better than he. But it obeyed. As dragons went, it was a tractable mount--not that dragons went very far in that direction.

A bright moon, nearly full, spilled pale, buttery light over the landscape. Fires and bursting eggs and the flashes from blazing sticks of all weights added more. For night flying, this was pretty easy work.

Sabrino had no trouble finding the fighting front. For that matter, he could have found it with his eyes closed, just from the din of bursting eggs. Every time he took his forlorn little wing into the air, the front lay farther east. Unkerlanter armies were lapping around the defenders despite all the Algarvians could do to hold them back. Before long, Trapani would be caught in a ring of iron, a ring of fire.

I hope my wife had the sense to flee, the wing commander thought. The city is going to fall, and it won’t be pretty. The collapse of the Kaunian Empire more than a thousand years before came to mind. Then, though, Algarvic folk had been doing the sacking. Soon, they would be on the receiving end.

I don’t see anything we can do to stop that. Maybe we can still push the day back a bit. The image of a harried-looking Algarvian crystallomancer down on the ground appeared in the crystal Sabrino carried. “Powers above be praised!” the fellow said. “They’ve bridged the stream in front of us, and they’re pouring men and behemoths across. Can your wing take it out?”

“We can try,” Sabrino answered, thinking again of symbols on maps. “You should know, though, that my wing consists of eight dragons, no more.”

“Eight dragons? Eight?” The crystallomancer made a horrible face. “That isn’t what I was given to understand.”

“I don’t care what you were given to understand,” Sabrino said harshly. “Everything we’ve been given to understand about this whole fornicating war is a pack of lies. Now where’s this Unkerlanter bridge?”

The crystallomancer told him. He soon discovered he could have found it without help. The Unkerlanters had torches at both ends and along the bridge itself to guide their men and beasts to and across it. Arrogant bastards, Sabrino thought. They don’t even believe we’re still in the game. Time to show them they’ve made a mistake.

He ordered his dragon down in an attack run as perfect as any he’d ever made. He released the eggs it carried at exactly the right moment. They both burst in the center of the bridge, sending Unkerlanter soldiers and behemoths splashing into the stream. One after another, the men in his wing followed him down. By the time they were done, not much remained of the bridge.

“Nice job, boys,” Sabrino said into his crystal. “Now let’s go home and go back to bed.”

He’d just turned toward the dragon farm from which he’d come when the Unkerlanter dragons struck his wing. There were only a couple of squadrons of them--but that meant they outnumbered his comrades and him three or four to one. And their dragons were fresh, not worn out, and were full of cinnabar. They flamed twice as far as the Algarvian beasts could.

For all that, Sabrino’s men were wise in the ways of dragonflying, and quickly took out a couple of the enemy beasts--one with flame from behind, the other by a canny blaze that killed the Unkerlanter dragonflier and let the dragon fly wild. Sabrino thought they might yet break free and win their way back to the dragon farm once more.

He saw the dragon that got him and his own mount as nothing but a blur in the moonlight, and then a tongue of flame licking toward him. An instant later, he screamed, but his shriek was lost, drowned, in the great bellow of agony from his dragon. Wind beat in his face as the dragon lurched toward the ground, but he hardly noticed. His left leg felt on fire.