Through the Darkness

Behemoths carrying egg-tossers were deadly dangerous to footsoldiers, but not to dragonfliers. Hitting a dragon with an egg was possible, but anything but likely. And the behemoth crews’ personal sticks weren’t strong enough to blaze down dragons unless they caught one in the eye. Of course, if they blazed a dragonflier instead, his dragon turned back into a wild animal on the instant.

The Unkerlanters knew all that as well as he did. The column broke up, behemoths lumbering off in every direction. The more scattered the target they presented, the harder time the dragon would have hunting them down.

As Sabrino’s mount flew over the road where his wing had first assailed the column, a stink of burnt flesh filled his nostrils for a breath. Sure as sure, they’d roasted the behemoths in their own pans. They’d roasted some Unkerlanters in their own armor, too; charred man’s-flesh was part of the stench.

During the winter before, Algarvian footsoldiers had eaten slain behemoths, eaten them and been glad to have them. Sabrino’s dragon, and others in the wing, had fed on such flesh, too. As a dragonflier, he hadn’t had to eat of it himself. Rank and prestigious service had their privileges.

Choosing an Unkerlanter behemoth, he urged his dragon along after it. The behemoth was running as hard as it could, snow and dirt flying up from its feet at every bound. Compared to the speed a dragon made, it might as well have been standing still. Sabrino drew close enough to see that the Unkerlanters even covered the beast’s tail in a sleeve of rusty chainmail. That might have warded it against a footsoldier’s stick, but not against dragonfire.

Again, the tongue of fire his mount loosed wasn’t long enough to suit Sabrino. But he’d deliberately waited till he was almost on top of the behemoth before freeing the dragon to flame. That meant he had to lie low along the beast’s neck to present as small a target as he could to the Unkerlanters. He’d done that before; he did it again now.

After a couple of stumbling steps, the behemoth went down. Sabrino looked around for another one to pursue, and hoped his dragon had enough flame left to do what needed doing. He’d just spotted a beast he thought he could reach when Captain Domiziano’s visage appeared in his crystal. “Unkerlanters dragons,” the squadron commander said. “They’re coming up out of the south, and closing fast.”

Sabrino’s head whipped around. Domiziano was right. King Swemmel’s dragonfliers were getting closer in a hurry. Sabrino cursed again--they were already closer than they should have been. The rock-gray paint the Unkerlanters slapped on them made them demonically hard to spot.

Still cursing, Sabrino said, “We’ll have to pull up and deal with them. Then, if we can, we’ll get back to the behemoths.”

Once he’d given the order, his men knew what to do. They were better trained than the Unkerlanters opposing them, and they flew better-trained dragons, too. But Swemmel kept throwing fresh dragonfliers and fresh men into the fight, and Algarve didn’t have so many of either.

For a couple of minutes, the skies above the plains of southern Unkerlant were a mad melee. The Unkerlanter dragons might not have been well-trained, but they were well-rested. And the flames that spurted from their jaws proved their meat had been dusted with plenty of brimstone and quicksilver. Two Algarvian dragons plummeted to the ground in quick succession.

Then Sabrino’s wing, though outnumbered, rallied. Two of their dragons would attack one Unkerlanter. When the Algarvians were attacked, they came to one another’s aid quickly and without any fuss. Sabrino blazed an Unkerlanter flier, whose dragon promptly attacked the rock-gray beast closest to it.

By the time the Unkerlanters had lost half a dozen dragonfliers, they decided they’d had enough. Off they flew, back the way they’d come. “A good day’s work,” Domiziano said in the crystal. “We made ‘em pay.”

“Aye.” But Sabrino’s agreement felt hollow. His wing had smashed up the column of Unkerlanter behemoths, and they’d given better than they got in the air. At the level Domiziano was talking about, that did make a good day’s work. But did it bring the Algarvians much closer to being able to break through to Sulingen? Not that Sabrino could see. To him, that was the level that mattered. At that level, the wing had hardly done anything at all.

Rain pattered down on Hajjaj’s roof. And, as it had a way of doing almost every winter, rain pattered down through Hajjaj’s roof. The Zuwayzi foreign minister stood with hands on hips, watching the leaks plop into pots and pans servants had set out. Turning to his majordomo, he said, “Refresh my memory. Did we or did we not have the roofers out here last year?”

“Aye, young fellow, we did,” Tewfik answered in his usual gravelly tones.