Rulers of the Darkness

Take it they did, though the Unkerlanters who hadn't been overwhelmed by Algarvian magecraft sold themselves dear and weren't finally driven back or killed till after sunset. By then, nobody on the blood-soaked field had any doubts left about whether the men of Plegmund's Brigade could fight. Algarvians and bearded Forthwegians sat down together and shared food and wine and water and lay down side by side to rest and ready themselves for the next day's horrors.

Spinello found himself trading barley bread he'd taken from a dead Unkerlanter for the sausages a couple of men from Plegmund's Brigade had. One of them looked more like a bandit than a soldier. The other was younger, but might have been grimmer. Speaking pretty good Algarvian, he said, "I hope they get rid of all the Kaunians. It's the only thing they're good for."

"Oh, not the only thing." Tired as he was, Spinello still laughed. "I was posted in Forthweg before I came here, in a little pisspot village named Oyngestun."

"I know it," the man from Plegmund's Brigade said. "I am from Gromheort."

"All right, then," Spinello said. "I found this Kaunian tart there named Vanai, who…" He'd been telling stories about her since coming to Unkerlant.

Tonight, to his astonishment, he was interrupted. "Vanai! By the powers above! I remember now," the Forthwegian exclaimed. "My cousin, the cursed fool, was sweet on a Kaunian bitch named Vanai, and she was from Oyngestun. Could it be…?"

"Don't ask me, for I don't know," Spinello said. "But I do know this: I was in there first." And he got to tell his bawdy stories after all, there in the brooding night filled with the stink of fire and the far worse stink of death.

***

Even in his dreams, Count Sabrino flew his dragon against the Unkerlanters. He had few dreams. He had little time for sleep. He and the men of his wing and Colonel Ambaldo's wing and all the other Algarvian dragonfliers on the eastern side of the Unkerlanter salient around Durrwangen had been flying as often as their flesh and that of their mounts would stand, or perhaps rather more than that.

But Sabrino was dreaming now. He'd blazed an Unkerlanter dragonflier and made the man's beast fly wild when suddenly his own beast was flamed from behind. It stumbled in midair, trying to right itself, but could not. It stumbled, it staggered, it shook. It shook…

Sabrino's eyes came open. He discovered a dragon handler shaking him awake. Sabrino groaned and tried to roll away. The handler was inexorable. "Colonel, you've got to get up," he said urgently. "The wing's got to fly. You've got to fly now."

"Powers below eat you," Sabrino said.

"Dowsers have spotted a great swarm of Unkerlanter dragons flying our way," the dragon handler said. "They'll want to catch us on the ground, drop their eggs all over the dragon farms hereabouts. But if we get into the air first…"

Sleep, and the need for sleep, fell away from Sabrino like an abandoned kilt. "Get out of the way," he growled, springing off his cot. He checked himself, but only for an instant. "No. Run and sound the alarm."

Before the dragon handler could ever begin to turn, horns blared in the predawn darkness. Sabrino grunted in satisfaction. He pulled on his boots, donned the heavy coat he'd been using as a blanket, and put his goggles on his head. Then he ran past the dragon handler and toward his own stupid, evil-tempered mount.

Other dragonfliers, from his wing and Ambaldo's, were dashing to their dragons, too. Sabrino grudged a quarter of a minute to cry out, "If we get into the air, we slaughter the Unkerlanters who are coming to call. If they catch us on the ground, the way they want to, we're dead. Come on. Mezentio!"

"Mezentio!" the dragonfliers shouted.

Behind them, in the east, the sky was going pink. Off to the west, the direction from which those rock-gray dragons would be coming, stars still shone and night still ruled. But not securely, not even there. Purple-black had lightened to deep blue, and the dimmer stars winked out one by one. Day was coming. By all the signs, trouble would get here first.

A handler released the chain that held Sabrino's dragon to the spike driven deep into the black soil of southern Unkerlant. Sabrino whacked the dragon with his goad. It screamed at him. He'd known it would. He whacked it again, and it bounded into the air as much from sheer rage as for any other reason.

Sabrino didn't care why the dragon flew. He only cared that it flew. As the ground fell away below them, he spoke into his crystal to his squadron commanders: "Get as high as you can. We don't want Swemmel's boys to know we're up here till we drop on them."