Rulers of the Darkness

"Aye, Colonel." That was gloomy Captain Orosio. He was the senior squadron commander left alive. He'd been juniormost when the war started- or had he even had a squadron then? After close to four years, Sabrino couldn't remember anymore. He marveled that he himself still survived. If fighting on the ground in the Six Years' War didn't kill me, nothing here will, he thought.

Light spread in the sky as he urged his dragon ever higher. Before long, he spied the sun, low and red in the east. Its rays hadn't yet reached the ground, and wouldn't for some little time to come. He might have been on a mountaintop, looking down into some still-dark valley.

And then, as he'd hoped he would, he saw things moving in the air below his squadron. He whooped with glee. "There they are!" he shouted into the crystal, and pointed for good measure.

"Aye, Colonel." That was Orosio again. "I saw 'em a little while ago." Dour, laconic- he hardly seemed like an Algarvian, but he was a good officer. Had he come from a more prominent family, he would have had a better chance to prove it. No matter how fierce the casualties among dragonfliers, he wasn't likely to rise above his present rank.

Flashes of light from the ground said the Unkerlanters were plastering the dragon farm with eggs, no doubt thinking they were wreaking havoc on the Algarvian beasts. Sabrino hoped the handlers had found holes. King Swemmel's dragonfliers would do some damage down below, but they hadn't yet awakened to the realization that they were about to take damage, too.

With astonishing speed, the Unkerlanter dragons swelled beneath Sabrino. He had his pick of targets; sure enough, the enemy had no idea he and his comrades were above them. This time, the dowsers had been right on the money. "And now the Unkerlanters will pay," Sabrino muttered. "How they will pay."

The wind from his dive swept the words away. For once, it mattered not at all. Sabrino blazed not just one Unkerlanter dragonflier, as he had dreamt, but two in quick succession. Even as the beasts they'd ridden went wild and useless, his own dragon flamed another Unkerlanter's mount. Sabrino brought his dragon in as close as he dared before letting it flame. Quicksilver was in short supply, and without it a dragon's flame grew short, too. But his mount had enough. The dragon painted rock-gray fell out of the air.

Sabrino looked around the brightening sky, looked around and howled with savage glee. Almost every Algarvian dragonflier was having luck to match his. The Unkerlanters had hoped to catch them by surprise, but ended up caught themselves. In hardly more than the twinkling of an eye, the air was free of them. The ones left alive flew back toward the salient as fast as their dragons' wings would take them.

"Pursuit, sir?" Captain Orosio's voice came from the crystal.

Reluctantly, Sabrino said, "No. We take the dragons down, we get them fed- we get ourselves fed, too, while we're at it- and then we go back to hammering the Unkerlanter positions on the ground. I wish we could rest them more, but we haven't got the time. We land." He emphasized the words with hand signals, so all the dragonfliers could see what he meant.

They obeyed him. He would have been astonished- horrified- if they hadn't. Down they went. Now the sun had reached the Unkerlanter plains. Dead dragons, almost all of them painted rock-gray, cast long shadows across those plains. Sabrino whistled softly to see how many he and his comrades had knocked out of the sky.

"A good morning's work," he said to the handler who started tossing his dragon gobbets of meat. "The dowsers gave us a hand today."

"Aye," the handler agreed. "Wouldn't have been much fun if those buggers had caught us unawares."

"No." Sabrino shuddered at the thought of it. As he freed himself from his harness and slid to the ground, he asked the handler, "How's the cinnabar holding out?"

"All right so far," the fellow told him. "We'll get through this fight without any trouble, I think. Don't know what we'll do about the next one, though."

"Worry about it later. What else can we do?" Sabrino hurried off toward the mess tent. He would rather have gone back to his cot, but that wouldn't do. He yawned enormously. Falling asleep aboard his dragon wouldn't do, either. He gulped hot, strong tea, gulped it and gulped it till it pried his eyelids open. Breakfast was more of the stew that had been in the pot for supper the night before. He recognized barley, buckwheat, carrots, celery, onions, and bits of meat. He couldn't tell what the meat was. Maybe that was for the best.

Colonel Ambaldo raised his mug of tea in salute, as if it held wine. "Here's to the Unkerlanters outsmarting themselves," he said.

"I'll gladly drink to that," Sabrino said. "This morning's ours. Till they can bring more dragons forward, we'll pound 'em to our hearts' content."

"Sounds good to me, by the powers above," Ambaldo said. "The lads down on the ground need all the help they can get."