Through the Darkness

Somehow--not even the finest mages knew how--leviathans and their dumpy cousins the whales could unerringly find their way through the sea. The first Cornelu knew of the beast his mount had sensed was when it twisted away to keep his leviathan’s fanged jaw from tearing a great hole in its flank.

He got a brief glimpse of an Algarvian clinging to the other leviathan’s back as he was clinging to his. That other leviathan tried to bite his beast, too. It also missed, though Cornelu saw its teeth glitter. He pulled his knife from its sheath. He couldn’t do much against the Algarvian leviathan, but he might be able to harm the rider if the fight came to the surface.

His own mount writhed in the water, almost as lithe and limber as a serpent. It butted the Algarvian beast with its closed beak. The enemy leviathan writhed in pain. Cornelu understood why; a leviathan could stave in the side of a good-sized wooden vessel with a blow like that.

And, with the other beast hurt, Cornelu’s leviathan bit at it again. This time, the Algarvian’s mount could not escape. Blood gushed forth and darkened the water. All thought of fight forgotten, the other leviathan fled. Cornelu’s pursued, and bit another chunk out of its flank and one from a tail fluke. Either of those bites--to say nothing of the first one--would have been plenty to devour half a man, or maybe all of a man.

Cornelu wouldn’t have wanted to be the Algarvian aboard that wounded leviathan. The fellow would have a cursed hard time getting the animal to pay attention to him rather than to its own torment. And the blood pouring from it would surely draw sharks. Normally, a shark wouldn’t dare come near a leviathan, but normal rules didn’t hold with blood in the water. And the rider would be in at least as much danger as his mount.

How was the rest of the fight, the bigger fight, going? Cornelu needed a while to find out. Victory had made his leviathan nearly as hard to control as defeat had the Algarvian’s. Eforiel would have behaved better; the Sibian naval officer was as sure of that as he was of his own name. But Eforiel was dead, gone. He had to do the best he could with this less responsive beast.

At last, he got the leviathan to rear up in the water, lifting him so he could see farther. Few Lagoan dragons were still in the air; most had indeed flown back toward the dragon farms from which they’d set out. But the Algarvian dragons, flying close to the conquered islands, kept on attacking the Lagoan warships that had come to raid Sibiu. A couple of more Lagoan ships had already lost ley-line power, and drifted helplessly in the water. Before long, either dragons or leviathans would sink them.

The Algarvians were getting more and more ships out of Lehliu harbor, too. They had fewer in the fight than the Lagoans, but plenty to be dangerous, especially with so many dragons overhead. Cornelu had heard the Lagoans were building ships that could carry dragons and from which the big scaly beasts could fight. That struck him as a good idea, though he didn’t know whether it was true. If it was, none of those ships had come to Sibiu.

He scowled. More and more, this was looking like a losing fight. The thought had hardly crossed his mind before a couple of Lagoan ships hoisted the red pennant that meant retreat. Every Lagoan vessel in the flotilla turned away from Sigisoara. “Curse you for cowards!” Cornelu cried. Sibiu wasn’t the Lagoans’ kingdom. Why should they fight hard for it?

And he had no choice but to turn away from his own native islands, either. His salt tears mingled with the salt sea. He wondered why. The life he’d had back in Tirgoviste had taken more wounds than the Algarvian leviathan. Even if the war ended on the instant, he had nothing to come home to.

But still he grieved. “It is my kingdom, curse them,” he said, as much to hear the sounds of his own language--different from both Algarvian and Lagoan--as for any other reason.

When he brought his leviathan back into Setubal, he found the Lagoan sailors who’d returned before him celebrating as if they’d won a great victory. He wanted to kill them all. Instead, he found a bottle of plum brandy that wasn’t doing anyone any good, took it back to the barracks set aside for Sibian exiles, and drank himself into a stupor.

“Ham,” Fernao said reverently. “Beefsteak. Mutton. Endive. Onions.” Longing filled his sigh.

“Don’t!” Affonso’s voice was piteous. “You’re breaking my heart.” The other Lagoan mage did look as if he were about to weep.

“I’m breaking my belly.” Fernao sat on a flat rock. The first-rank mage stared in distaste--aye, that’s the right word, he thought--at the charred chunk of camel meat and the half a roasted partridge on his tin plate. The camel would be fatty and gamy; the ptarmigan would taste as if Fernao were eating pine needles, which were the bird’s favorite food and imparted their flavor to its flesh.