Rulers of the Darkness

In Sabrino's eyes, Ambaldo wasn't too much more than a lad himself. That didn't make him wrong. Sabrino said, "Swemmel's men have been waiting for us too cursed long in these parts. Row on row of fieldworks, and they fight to hold every miserable, stinking little village as if it were Sulingen."

"Too right they do," Ambaldo agreed. "Brigades go into those places and companies come out. It's butchery, is what it is."

"Never saw anything like this in Valmiera, did you?" Sabrino couldn't resist the jab.

Colonel Ambaldo shook his head. "Never once. Not even close. They're madmen, these Unkerlanters. They fight like madmen, anyhow. No wonder we started killing Kaunians to shift 'em. Though from what I hear, we're using up the blonds so fast, we're liable to run short."

"Swemmel won't ever run short on people to kill to power his magecraft," Sabrino said gloomily. "Unkerlant has more peasants than it knows what to do with." He scowled. "That's not quite right. Swemmel knows too bloody well what to do with them- and to them."

Both wing commanders slammed down their empty mugs at the same time. They hurried out of the mess tent, shouting for their men to join them. Sabrino spent a little while cursing because the dragon handlers hadn't finished securing the eggs under all the dragons in his wing.

But the delay was only short. It might even have worked to the dragonfliers' advantage, though Sabrino wouldn't have admitted that to the handlers. Feeling how his dragon labored under him, Sabrino knew it needed rest, rest it couldn't have. A few more quiet minutes on the ground had surely done it some good.

Not having many fresh Unkerlanter dragons to face did the Algarvians a lot of good, too. Most of Swemmel's dragonfliers wouldn't have been allowed to mount an Algarvian beast, but they had more dragons than did Sabrino and his countrymen. A bad dragonflier on a fresh beast could match a master aboard a worn, overworked dragon.

A fresh Algarvian attack was just going in against the village of Eylau. The wreckage of a couple of previous assaults still lay outside the place: dead men and behemoths. By all the signs, the new brigades assailing the Unkerlanter strongpoint would have had no easier time of it. But, after two wings of Algarvian dragons delivered an all but unopposed attack on Eylau, the strongpoint wasn't so strong anymore. The footsoldiers and behemoths battled their way into the village.

They fought their way in, but would they fight their way out? Already, more Unkerlanter soldiers were moving forward to try to hold them there. Even if the Algarvians did advance, how much good would it do them? Eylau was less than ten miles west of the point from which the assault had begun. At that rate, how long would this army take to join the one pushing east toward it? And would either of them have any men left alive by the time they joined?

Sabrino had no answers. All he could do was command his wing as best he could and hope those set over him knew what they were about. He ordered his dragonfliers back to the farm. More meat for the dragons, more eggs loaded under them, a little food and a lot of tea for the men, and back into the fight once more.

***

Sidroc wondered why he still breathed. Everything he'd been through before this great fight on the flank of the Durrwangen bulge, however horrid and terrifying it seemed at the time, was as nothing beside reality here. He'd always thought a fight would start, and then it would end. This one had started, aye, but it showed no sign of ever wanting to end.

"A week and a half," he said to Sergeant Werferth, who by some miracle also had not been blazed or gone up in a burst of sorcerous energy or been butchered by a flying fragment of egg casing or flamed by a dragon or had any other lethal or disabling accident befall him. "Have we won? Are we winning?"

"Futter me if I know. Futter me if I know anything any more." Werferth scratched his hairy chin. "I've got lice in my beard. I know that."

"So do I," Sidroc said, and scratched like a Siaulian monkey.

Smoke stained the sky above them. Somewhere not far away, eggs burst: Unkerlanter eggs, pounding the Algarvians, pounding the men of Plegmund's Brigade who fought at their side. Werferth said, "Every time we think we've knocked those buggers flat, they pop up again."

"If we kill enough Kaunians-" Sidroc began.

But Werferth shook his head. "What good would it do us? They'd just kill some more of their own, and we'd be back where we started. We've seen that happen too cursed often already."

Sidroc wanted to argue. He wanted Kaunians dead. What else were they good for? -except the enjoyment that Algarvian major had taken from the one his cousin was sweet on. "Vanai," Sidroc muttered under his breath. It had gone clean out of his head till the Algarvian spoke- knocked out when Cousin Ealstan slammed his head against the wall while they were fighting. But he remembered now. Aye, the pieces fit together again.