Into The Darkness

That wasn't efficiency, not the way Leudast saw things. It was just common sense. If either Swerninel. or Kyot had admitted he was the younger twin, Unkerlant would have been spared a lot of grief Armies had marched and countermarched across Leudast's farm - it had been his father's then, for he'd been born just as the civil war was finally petering out - stealing what they could and burning a lot of what they couldn't.

The countryside had been years recovering.

And now, when it finally had recovered, here was another war on the far frontier of the kingdom. For the life of him, Leudast couldn't see the efficiency of that. Again, though, he could see the inefficiency of saying so.

Captain Urgan came up to the fire and said, "Be alert, men. The Gyongyosians are planning something nasty."

"I've already warned them, sit," Magnulf said.

"Efficient," Urgan said crisply. "I have more news, too: over in the far east, all of Algarve's neighbors have jumped on her back."

"His Majesty was as efficient as all get-out to stand aside from that war," Magnulf said. "Let all those tall bastards kin each other."

"Forthwegians aren't tall bastards," Berthar said with fussy precision.

Magnulf gave him a glare undoubtedly practiced in front of a mirror.

"They may not be tall bastards, but they're bastards just the same," the sergeant growled. "If they weren't bastards, they wouldn't have thrown off Unkerlanter suzerainty during the Twinkings War, now would they?"

His tone strongly suggested that giving any kind of answer would be inefficient. Berthar didn't need to be a first-rank mage to figure that out.

He kept his mouth shut. Captain Urgan added, "And Forthweg has its own share ofKaunians. They're tall bastards, every bit as much as the lousy Algarvians."

Berthar did his best to look as if he'd never been so rash as to open his mouth. Leudast wouldn't have been so rash himself He did ask, "Sir, any word on what the Gongs have in rmind?"

"I'm afraid not," Urgan said. "I don't look for anything overwhelm ing, though - with so few ley lines charted in this powersforsaken stretch of the world, and with even fewer properly improved, they have as much trouble moving men and supplies as we do. This isn't the most efficient war ever fought, but Gyongyos started it, so we've got to respond."

A brief hiss of cloven air was the only warning Leudast had before an egg burst about fifty yards from the campfire. The blast of light and heat from the energies it released knocked him off his feet and made him won der if he'd been blinded: all he saw for a moment were purple smears in front of his eyes.

He did not need to hear the screech of a swooping dragon to know it would attack the men around the fire. Nor did he need to see it to know it would be able to see him if he stayed close by the flames. He rolled away, bumping over rocks and over little spiky-leafed mountain shrubs whose name he did not know: before the impressers took him away, he'd always been a man of the fladands.

He saw the flame that burst from the dragon's jaw, saw it and smelled the brimstone reek, too. Somewhere behind him, Wisgard shrieked. A moment later, a pale, thin beam of light shot from the ground toward the dragon. Leudast wished he'd had his own stick slung on his back. Then he could have blazed at the enemy, too, instead of seeking only to hide.

But the Gyongyosians, like the folk of most other realms these days, were sly enough to silver their dragons' bellies and the undersides of their wings. The beam that would have burned a hole in man was harmlessly reflected away. The dragon belched forth fire again. Another scream arose. No one blazed back at the beast as it flew off to the west. The wind from its great wingbeats blew Leudast's hair all awry.

Blinking frantically, he scrambled toward the sticks. As he groped for his own, Magnulf and Berthar came crawling up. "Where's the captain?"

Leudast asked.

"Back there, toasted like bread you forget over the fire," Magnulf answered. Somewhere west of them, someone kicked a rock. Magnulf cursed. "And here come the Gongs. Let's see how expensive we can make ourselves. Spread out - we don't want them getting around our flank."

Leudast scuttled toward a boulder fifteen or twenty feet away. A beam like the one poor Captain Urgan had aimed at the dragon zipped close to him, but did not strike. He dove behind the boulder, almost knocking the wind out of himself. Then, peering out into the night, he tried to find the spot from which the enemy had blazed at him.

The big disadvantage to using a stick at night was that, if you missed, the flash of light could tell the enemy where you were. If you were smart, you didn't stay there long. If you moved, though, you were liable to expose yourself, or to make some noise.