Rulers of the Darkness

"If I weren't a brave man, I wouldn't have come in here to get you," Sabrino said. "Shall we be at it?"

Ambaldo got to his feet and bowed. "I wouldn't miss it for the world."

When Sabrino went out to his dragon, he found it loaded with eggs. The handler was tossing chunks of meat to it. The dragon caught them out of the air one after another. "How's the cinnabar holding out?" Sabrino asked the handler.

He got no more reassuring answers, as he had earlier in the fight. The fellow spread his hands and said, "If they'd known this stinking battle was going to last so bloody long, they should've given us more." Before Sabrino could say anything to that, the dragon handler added, "Of course, maybe they didn't have any more to give." On that cheerful note, he went back to feeding the dragon.

Sabrino climbed aboard the great scaly beast and fastened himself into his harness at the base of its neck. Distracted by raw meat, the dragon didn't even raise a fuss. Then the handler stopped feeding it and undid its chain from the iron spike driven deep into the soil of Unkerlant. Sabrino whacked the dragon with his goad, urging it into the air.

The dragon bellowed in fury at the idea that it should work for a living. As far as it was concerned, it had been hatched to sit on the ground so people could feed it to the bursting point. No matter how often Sabrino tried to give it other ideas with the goad, it was surprised and outraged every time.

It sprang into the air as much from fury as for any other reason. As usual, Sabrino didn't care why. As long as the dragon rose, he'd take that. The other dragons in his wing were every bit as offended at having to earn their keep as was his. They all screeched as they spiraled upward.

Colonel Ambaldo's dragons were flying, too. Sabrino, of necessity his own crystallomancer while on dragonback, murmured the charm that attuned the emanations of his crystal with that of the other wing commander. When Ambaldo's image appeared in his crystal, Sabrino said, "Now that you're awake, your Excellency, how do you want to handle the strike at Braunau? If you like, we'll go in first and then fly cover for your wing."

"Aye, good enough," Ambaldo said, and Sabrino cursed under his breath. He'd made the offer for form's sake, no more. Ambaldo's dragons had been worked hard in this fight, but were still fresher than Sabrino's. They would have made a better covering flight than Sabrino's wing. Ambaldo should have been able to see that for himself. If he couldn't, though, Sabrino had too much pride to point it out to him. Ambaldo did say, "We'll cover you on the way in."

"Thank you so much." Sabrino knew how little he meant that. Ambaldo was brave, but bravery didn't matter much, not here on the western front. The Unkerlanters were brave, too. What really set the Algarvians apart from them was brains. Without a guiding wit behind the fighting, it turned into nothing but a slugging match. King Swemmel's men could afford that better than Algarve could.

Sabrino's mouth turned down in discontent as he steered the dragon east toward Braunau. By the look of the battlefield far below, it had already turned into a slugging match. No more lightning thrusts around Unkerlanter positions to flank them out. The Algarvian attack had gone straight into the heart of the toughest and deepest set of field fortifications Sabrino had ever seen- on the eastern side of the Durrwangen salient and, by all the signs, on the western side as well.

No wonder progress was so painfully slow. No wonder so many dead men and horses and unicorns and behemoths lay on the ground. Where, Sabrino wondered, would their replacements come from? One thought ran through his mind. We'd better win here. If we don't, if we've thrown all this away with nothing to show for it, how are we going to carry the war to the Unkerlanters from here on out?

"Powers above," he muttered as his wing flew over what would have been the place where the Kaunians were sacrificed in front of Braunau, "we're even running out of blonds." King Swemmel's mages had helped there, too. Sabrino cursed softly, and the wind blew his words away. All things considered, maybe he should have called on the powers below instead.

And then he had no more time for such worries, for there lay battered Braunau, corking the Algarvians' advance. He spoke into his crystal again, this time to his own squadron leaders: "We'll dive to drop our eggs on the village, then climb quick as we can and cover Ambaldo's wing while they do the same."

"Here's hoping the Unkerlanters don't hit us," Captain Orosio said. "We've got tired beasts. We'll have trouble giving our best."