Through the Darkness

“Not if the men know you’re useless, and run away instead of fighting,” Orosio said. Sabrino grimaced; the Yaninans had done that more often than he cared to remember. His squadron commander went on, “Every Algarvian and every dragon we use to prop up King Tsavellas’ men is one we can’t use against King Swemmel.”

“I know. I’ve said as much. I’ve made myself unpopular saying as much.” Sabrino was old enough that he didn’t care too much about making himself unpopular. So long as his wife put up with him and his mistress remained compliant, he wouldn’t worry about the rest of the world.

He guided his dragon down a little lower, trying to assess how much harm this latest assault had done the Lagoans. With dust still rising from where eggs had burst, that was hard to do. And the enemy, he’d found, was cursed clever at making things on the ground seem worse than they were in the hope of luring Algarvian dragons to destruction.

Though tempted to loiter in the air till all the dust cleared, Sabrino decided that wouldn’t be a good idea. He spoke into the crystal again, this time to all his squadron leaders: “Let’s go back to the dragon farm so the groundcrew men can give us some more eggs. With the sun shining almost all the time, the more we can pound the Lagoans, the better.” A moment later, he passed that on to Colonel Broumidis, too.

“Aye, Colonel!” The enthusiastic cry came not from Broumidis but from Captain Domiziano, senior to Orosio in time spent commanding a squadron-- he came from a family with better bloodlines and better connections--but far junior in overall experience. Domiziano never failed to remind Sabrino of a happy puppy, always ready to rush ahead. The wing commander knew that was an insult to a brave and talented officer, but couldn’t drive the thought from his mind.

As the Algarvian dragons began flying off toward the west, several Lagoan heavy sticks that had stayed quiet up till then blazed at them. Sabrino waggled a finger down at the ground. “I thought you might have some surprises waiting,” he said, as if the Lagoans far below could hear. “You won’t see us coming down to peek at you as trustingly as we did when this round of fighting started.”

Seeing that they were doing the Algarvians no harm, the Lagoan sticks soon fell silent again. Sabrino nodded in reluctant approval. Aye, King Vitor’s men knew what they were doing, all right. No point to wasting charges they might really need in some later fight.

He led the wing of Algarvian dragons and their Yaninan hangers-on toward the positions Tsavellas and Mezentio’s footsoldiers and behemoths were holding. As they neared them, Broumidis’ face with its black hairy caterpillar of a mustache appeared in Sabrino’s crystal. “If you look to the left of my dragons, my lord Count, you will see some of the Lagoan beasts coming east,” the Yaninan officer said. “Is it your pleasure that we assail them?”

Sabrino turned his head to the left. Sure enough, he did see Lagoan dragons over there, a long way off. “You have good eyes,” he told Broumidis; he made a point of complimenting Yaninans whenever he found even the vaguest occasion to do so. After a little pause for thought, he shook his head. “No, we’ll let them go. They’re likely trying to entice us into an ambush: look like easy meat and then lead us low over some sticks the Lagoans have hidden away somewhere. Best thing we can do is tend to our business and drop some more eggs on their army. If we hit it hard enough, sooner or later they’ll have to come up and fight us on our terms.”

“Let it be as you wish, of course.” Broumidis was, as always, impeccably polite. “But I wanted to make sure you were aware of the possibility.”

“For which I thank you.” Sabrino matched courtesy with courtesy. And then, after one more glance over toward the Lagoans to make sure they weren’t trying to double back after his own wing, he put them out of his mind.

That turned out to be a mistake. The dragon farm wasn’t very far behind the line to which the Yaninan and Algarvian ground forces had advanced. Peering west, Sabrino spied a ragged column of smoke rising into the air. He frowned. Nothing in the neighborhood had been burning when the wing set out.

When he got a little closer, he exclaimed in horror. A moment later, Broumidis’ face appeared in the crystal again. “My lord Count,” he said, “I think we now know the true reason we saw the Lagoan dragons, may the powers below eat them, flying back toward the east.”

“Aye,” Sabrino agreed dully. He wished he’d ordered his wing and the Yaninan dragons after the Lagoans. If he had, they might have enjoyed a measure of revenge. But that wouldn’t have brought the dragon farm back into being. The Lagoans must have loaded their handful of dragons with all the eggs they could carry, then struck as hard a blow as they could at their enemies’ base.