Through the Darkness

And the dragon had no trouble seeing the Lagoans, even if he did. As soon as he gave it leave, it folded its wings and hurtled toward them in as terrifying a dive as Sabrino had ever known. The dive was terrifying for a couple of reasons: not only was he afraid the dragon would smash into the ground without being able to pull up, he also feared a heavy stick would blaze it--and him with it.

But the heavy sticks some of the Lagoan behemoths carried weren’t so accurate when the behemoths were on the move. And the enemy started blazing later than they might have; maybe they thought for too long that the Algarvians didn’t know they were there.

If they thought that, they were wrong. Sabrino’s dragon flew along just above their heads. The Algarvian wing commander gave the great beast what it wanted: the command to flame. He thought it would have flamed the Lagoans without the command, and didn’t want it breaking away from his control like that.

Fumes loaded with brimstone and quicksilver made him cough. This can’t be good for my lungs, he thought, as if any dragonflier really expected to live long enough to have his lungs wear out. But breathing the fumes from dragonfire was better by far than being bathed in it. Some Lagoans shriveled and died where they stood. Others writhed on the ground or ran screaming, human torches who could ignite their friends.

He and his wing hadn’t had such an easy time wrecking an enemy column since the early days of the war against Unkerlant. The Lagoans, aiming at surprise, hadn’t brought their dragons with them, so the Algarvians had the air to themselves. And even when King Vitor’s men did blaze down an Algarvian dragon, the dead beast fell among them and wrecked most of a company in its death throes.

Sabrino’s dragon clawed its way higher. It was ready and more than ready for another run at the Lagoans. Looking down on them, though, Sabrino saw they’d been thrown into enough disorder. Their attack on the Algarvian expeditionary force would not come off. No sooner had that thought crossed his mind than Captain Domiziano’s image appeared in his crystal. “Enemy dragons flying hard out of the east,” the squadron commander reported.

Sabrino looked that way. Sure enough, he saw them himself. “Back to our own men,” he said. “We can defend them, and they can defend us with their heavy sticks. And now, instead of the Lagoans’ moving on our soldiers on the ground, we’ll move on theirs. Try and pull the wool over our eyes, will they?”

“We’ve already taught ‘em a good lesson,” Domiziano said.

“So we have,” Sabrino agreed, waving for the wing to break off the attack on the Lagoans. “We’ve taught ‘em the magic the shamans of the Ice People use isn’t as good as they thought it was.”

“We ought to see if we can find some friendly shamans ourselves, though, and use it along with everything else we’ve got,” Captain Domiziano said. Sabrino started to tell him that was nothing but foolishness. He stopped with the words unspoken. The more he thought about the idea, the better he liked it.

Somewhere above Sergeant Istvan and his comrades, the moon and stars shone down. He couldn’t see them, though, except in brief, scattered glimpses through the treetops as he crept along on hands and knees. He knew they looked down on the whole world. The vast forests of western Unkerlant only seemed to cover the whole world. He’d been in them for what felt like forever, but that stood to reason.

From a few feet away, Szonyi whispered, “Good thing we don’t need to see where we’re going, not for a while, anyway.”

“Aye.” Istvan chuckled and sniffed. “We can follow our noses instead.”

Kun was off to the other side of Istvan. He said, “Smells a lot better than anything our cooks have dished out lately.”

Kun could always find something to complain about. As often as not, Istvan thought he was complaining to hear himself talk. This time, he thought Kun was dead right. The rich, meaty odor that wafted from an Unkerlanter cook pot somewhere up ahead would have draw him as rubbed amber attracted straws and bits of parchment even if his squad hadn’t been ordered out on a night raid against King Swemmel’s forward positions.

One of the other troopers in the squad let out an all but voiceless hiss: “There’s their fire up ahead.”

Istvan didn’t see the light till he’d scrambled past the trunk of a pine so huge, it might have been standing there since the day the stars chose the Gyongyosians, out of all the peoples of the world, as the folk they claimed for their own. Once he did spy it, he moved even more slowly and carefully than before. The Unkerlanters had proved time and again they were more woods-wise than his countrymen. The last thing he wanted was to give the game away before his comrades and he got the chance to steal that stew.