Through the Darkness

He looked east across the broad, rolling plains where the austral continent sloped down from the Barrier Mountains to the Narrow Sea. Somewhere out there was the Lagoan army. It had been driven a long way back from Heshbon, but it was still there, still dangerous, still very much in the fight. Both the Lagoans and Sabrino’s army kept dragons in the air all the time now, watching one another’s movements and making sure nobody got any unpleasant surprises.

“If we had more men, more behemoths, more dragons, we could drive the Lagoans into the sea,” Caratzas remarked.

“Well, so we could, but that might mean we didn’t have enough men to finish off the Unkerlanters, too,” Sabrino said. “The fight up on the Derlavaian mainland is more important than the war here.”

Something glowed for a moment in Caratzas’ dark eyes, then vanished in their depths before Sabrino was sure he saw it. The Yaninan said, “In getting into a fight, or several fights, it is better to be sure one has enough men beforehand, not afterwards.”

That was a painfully obvious truth. “If we’d taken Cottbus ...” Sabrino’s voice trailed away. “Well, one way or another, we’ll just have to lick Swemmel’s men. We’re driving them in the south. The cinnabar there and the cinnabar we get here should keep us going till we beat all our enemies.”

“Now there is a thought,” Caratzas said, sozzled awe in his voice. “Beating all of one’s enemies . . .” Had he been an Algarvian, he would have bunched his fingers and kissed their tips. Yaninans used different gestures, but the naked longing on Caratzas’ face said more than any of them.

For a Yaninan, beating all of one’s enemies had to be a dream, and an impossible dream at that. For an Algarvian ... Sabrino remembered the heady days of the summer before, when Unkerlant looked on the point of collapse. Had Swemmel fled off into the uncharted west, how long could Lagoas have lasted without coming to terms with King Mezentio? Not long, by his way of thinking. And Kuusamo had still been neutral then. Sabrino sighed. Algarve had been on the brink, right on the brink.

“It could still happen,” Sabrino murmured. “By the powers above, it could.” Unkerlant hadn’t been knocked out of the war, but she might yet be. If that happened, Lagoas and Kuusamo together could hardly stand against the united might of the entire continent of Derlavai. The world would be Mezentio’s--if Swemmel couldn’t contest it any more.

Horns blew the alarm, startling Sabrino out of his reverie. Cries of alarm shredded dreams of all-embracing victory. “The Lagoans!” someone shouted from the direction of the crystallomancers’ tent. “The Lagoans are on our flank!”

Cursing foully, Sabrino sprang from the rock on which he’d been sitting. “How did they get there?” he demanded, as if Caratzas would know.

To his surprise, the Yaninan did, or at least had an idea: “I wonder if they made an arrangement with shamans from the Ice People. Magic down here is a funny business. I don’t pretend to understand all of it.”

“Do you understand that we’re all liable to get killed if we can’t throw the Lagoans back?” Sabrino snapped. “How did they come up on our flank?” Like any Algarvian, he had trouble taking the Ice People seriously.

The Lagoans, on the other hand, were deadly dangerous. He knew that. He’d known it since his days as a footsoldier during the Six Years’ War, when he’d faced them in southern Valmiera. Come to think of it, he’d been lucky to come through in one piece then.

His dragonfliers rushed up to their beasts as the handlers got them ready to fly and to fight. Sabrino scrambled aboard his own mount while a handler detached the chain that bound it to its stake. He whacked the dragon with his goad. It let out a hideous, raucous screech and bounded into the air.

As the ground fell away beneath him--and as, at the same time, his field of vision widened--Sabrino discovered how, if not why, the Lagoans had managed to escape the Algarvian scouts’ notice. Even knowing they were there, he had trouble seeing them. It was as if his eyes wanted to rest anywhere but on marching men and hurrying horses and bulky behemoths.

That struck him as magecraft closely linked to the land, the sort of thing the shamans might do. The military mages attached to the army hadn’t tried any serious sorcery down here because the land felt strange, alien. It wasn’t alien to the hairy nomads who’d roamed it for eons. If they’d thrown in with the Lagoans . . .

“In that case, we have to smash them, too,” Sabrino told his dragon. It screeched again. Maybe that was approval--dragons liked nothing better than smashing things. More likely, it was random chance.