Out of the Darkness

“You’re right,” Sabrino said with a sigh. Orosio looked relieved. But the two of them didn’t mean the same thing, even if they said the same words. Orosio would go on fighting because fighting was all he had left. Sabrino would go on because he had nothing whatsoever left.

Maybe we aren‘t so different after all, he thought, and drained his mug.

Off to the west, the sound of bursting eggs was a continuous low rumble, and it had been getting closer. It might have been an approaching thunderstorm. It’s a storm, all right. It will blow away the whole kingdom. But, when Sabrino cocked his head the other way, he heard bursting eggs off to the east, too: Unkerlanter dragons, tormenting Trapani. Before long, he’d be in the air again, doing his best to knock some of them out of the sky. And I will. And it won’t change a

“Sir…” Orosio hesitated, then went on, “That mage who wanted to fly with you? Maybe you should have let him.”

“That filthy bastard? No.” Even without the spirits he’d poured down, Sabrino’s voice would have held no doubts. “He wouldn’t have thrown back Swemmel’s army, and you know it as well as I do. He’d have just given all our enemies one more reason to hate us and punish us. Don’t you think they’ve got enough already?”

“I don’t know, sir.” Orosio yawned enormously. “I don’t know anything, except I’m bloody tired.”

“Let’s both go to sleep, then,” Sabrino said, “and see how long till somebody kicks us out of bed.”

It wasn’t nearly long enough. Sometime in the middle of the night, a crystallomancer shook Sabrino awake and said, “I’m sorry, sir, but they’re screaming for dragonfliers up at the front.”

“When aren’t they?” Sabrino answered around a yawn. He climbed out of his cot and yawned again. His head hurt, but not too bad. “All right. We’ll do what we can.”

Popular Assault men and a few real dragon-handlers were loading eggs under the bellies of the wing’s surviving beasts as Sabrino and the handful of dragonfliers he still led strode out toward their mounts. “Northwest,” the crystallomancer told him. “That’s where the most trouble is.”

Sabrino shook his head. “The most trouble is everywhere. But if they want us to fly northwest tonight, northwest we shall fly.”

He didn’t like flying by night, either. Telling where he was going and what he was supposed to be doing was much harder then. No one had asked his opinion. If some officer thought things were desperate enough to need dragons in the darkness. . Well, with the war in its present state, the poor whoreson was all too likely to be right.

As the dragonfliers scrambled aboard their mounts, Sabrino said, “Try not to get killed, gentlemen. Algarve will need you again later.” If they wanted to think he meant, Algarve will need you to fly more missions, that was all right with him. If they wanted to think he meant, Algarve will still need you after the war is over and lost, that was all right, too, and closer to the truth.

He whacked his dragon with the goad. The beast screamed with fury as it flung itself into the air; it liked flying at night no better than he. But it obeyed. As dragons went, it was a tractable mount-not that dragons went very far in that direction.

A bright moon, nearly full, spilled pale, buttery light over the landscape. Fires and bursting eggs and the flashes from blazing sticks of all weights added more. For night flying, this was pretty easy work.

Sabrino had no trouble finding the fighting front. For that matter, he could have found it with his eyes closed, just from the din of bursting eggs. Every time he took his forlorn little wing into the air, the front lay farther east. Unkerlanter armies were lapping around the defenders despite all the Algarvians could do to hold them back. Before long, Trapani would be caught in a ring of iron, a ring of fire.

I hope my wife had the sense to flee, the wing commander thought. The city is going to fall, and it won’t be pretty. The collapse of the Kaunian Empire more than a thousand years before came to mind. Then, though, Algarvic folk had been doing the sacking. Soon, they would be on the receiving end.

I don’t see anything we can do to stop that. Maybe we can still push the day back a bit. The image of a harried-looking Algarvian crystallomancer down on the ground appeared in the crystal Sabrino carried. “Powers above be praised!” the fellow said. “They’ve bridged the stream in front of us, and they’re pouring men and behemoths across. Can your wing take it out?”

“We can try,” Sabrino answered, thinking again of symbols on maps. “You should know, though, that my wing consists of eight dragons, no more.”