Through the Darkness

Or maybe he had it wrong. He recognized the possibility. A lot was going on here, in the ocean, on the shore, and in the air above the little Valmieran village called Dukstas. Lagoan dragons flew overhead, dropping eggs all over the surrounding countryside and, with luck, keeping Algarvian footsoldiers from coming forward. Along with the saboteurs and spies who rode leviathans, Lagoan ships had brought along several regiments of soldiers. They were going up onto the beach even as Cornelu watched. For the first time, Lagoas was bringing the war home to the occupiers of Valmiera.

“But what do they expect?” Cornelu asked his leviathan, as if it knew and could answer. “Will a few regiments throw all the Algarvians out of this kingdom? Will the Valmierans rise up and fight the occupiers? Will it be a great victory? Or are they only throwing their men away to no purpose?”

Columns of smoke rose into the sky from Dukstas. King Vitor’s thrust here had caught whatever Algarvian garrison the seaside hamlet held by surprise. For the moment, it belonged to the Lagoans. But now that they had it, what would they do with it?

“They do not think these things through,” Cornelu said. Now that the leviathan had served him well for a while, he talked to it almost as he would have to Eforiel. “Will they storm on to Priekule, chasing Mezentio’s men before them as they go? I have my doubts.”

Maybe the Lagoans didn’t have any doubts, because more and more men paddled ashore in small boats. Cornelu supposed the Lagoans had chosen to attack Dukstas because a ley line ran close by the beach. Even if naval vessels couldn’t come right up to the shore, they could let soldiers off close by. And they certainly had taken the Algarvians by surprise.

Even so, Mezentio’s men were fighting back. Eggs splashed into the water around the Lagoan warships. One of them burst alarmingly close to Cornelu. The shock wave buffeted him and the leviathan. The beast, which felt it far more acutely than a man would, quivered in pain. A burst too near a leviathan could kill, as Cornelu knew too well.

But Mezentio’s men didn’t even know he and his leviathan were there. They were after the ships, which they could see. The naval vessels fought back with eggs of their own, and with heavy sticks. Those set more fires on the shore. Despite everything the navy could do, despite the dragons, an Algarvian egg struck home. A ship staggered in the water, staggered and fell off the ley line. Whether any more eggs hit it or not, it wouldn’t be going home to Setubal.

Cornelu looked up into the sky. Dragons wheeled and twisted there now. The Lagoans weren’t having it all their own way, as they had when the attack on Dukstas began. The Algarvians were flying in beasts of their own from the interior of Valmiera. If they flew in enough of them--if they had enough of them to fly in--the ships here would be in a lot of trouble. One of the lessons of this war was that ships needed dragons to ward them from other dragons.

An older lesson, one dating from the Six Years’ War, was that ships needed leviathans to ward them from other ships and leviathans. How long would the Algarvians take to start moving patrol craft from ports along the Strait of Valmiera to attack the Lagoan interlopers? Not long--Cornelu was sure of that.

He urged his leviathan away from the little Lagoan fleet. If--no, when-- Mezentio’s sailors moved to the attack, he wanted to be ready to give them an unpleasant surprise. He knew the ley line along which the ships would be coming. As for leviathans. . . He grinned. With the beast he rode, he was willing and more than willing to take on any Algarvian leviathan around. He hadn’t thought he would feel that way about any beast save Eforiel, but he’d turned out to be wrong.

An Algarvian dragon dove on one of the Lagoan ships. Cornelu could see the eggs slung under the dragon’s belly. Beams from heavy sticks reached up for it. One of them found it before the dragonflier let the eggs drop. Burning and tumbling, the dragon fell into the sea. The ship kept gliding along the ley line.

“Up, my friend,” Cornelu told his leviathan, and it rose in the water. He, of course, rose with it. Taking advantage of that, he peered inland. He couldn’t see so much as he would have liked; smoke from the fires already burning in the seaside village obscured his view. But he could see that the Lagoan soldiers seemed to be making for some specific place in back of Dukstas, not fanning out all over the countryside. Maybe that meant they really did know what they were doing. He hoped so, for their sake.

Nobody’d bothered to tell him what they were doing, though. He sighed. That was no tiling out of the ordinary.