Through the Darkness

“I’m going to slow you down,” Affonso said. “I have to hope the spell will last long enough to get you to a ship where the dragon can rest. They’ll have a mage there to renew it, so just give yourself to the magic. Let it take you, let it sweep you away....” Fernao wished it would sweep him into oblivion. After what seemed far too long, it did.

But when he woke, he was in just as much torment as he had been before Affonso began the spell. For a moment, he forgot the magic altogether, lost as he was in his own pain. Then he realized that, added to all his other torments, he was swaying suspended in space. Instead of Affonso, he saw a dragon’s scaly belly above him. When he turned his head--actually, when it flopped to one side--he got a view of iron-gray ocean far below.

He never knew how long the dragon kept flying. Long enough for him to wish several times he were dead--he knew that. Thanks to, or rather on account of, Affonso’s spell, no time seemed to have passed for him between the magic and his awakening. He hadn’t healed a bit in the interim.

At last, after what seemed like a little longer than forever, the dragon glided down to a ship sliding along a ley line. As dragons had a way of doing, it landed clumsily. The pallet on which he’d been lashed thudded down onto the deck. The jolt made him shriek and faint. Unfortunately--or so he thought of it--he woke up again.

When he did, a man he’d never seen before was staring down at him. “I’ll soon have you out again,” the stranger promised. “I hope my spell will hold long enough to get you back to Lagoas. They’ll put you together again. Powers above willing, you’ll be good as new again in a while.”

Fernao couldn’t imagine being as good as new again. He had trouble even imagining being conscious and out of pain. “Hurts,” he groaned.

“Oh, I bet it does,” the ship’s mage said. “Now, just give yourself to the magic. Let it take you, let it sweep you away. . . .”

Again, oblivion descended on Fernao. Again, it swept over him so abruptly, he had no idea it was there. Again, he woke to agony--but agony of a different sort, for now he found himself on a soft bed with a cast on his leg, another on his arm, and a bandage round his battered ribs. When he whimpered, a nurse said, “Here. Drink this.”

Drink it he did, hoping it was poison. It wasn’t; it tasted overwhelmingly of poppy seeds. It was so concentrated, he wondered if he could keep it down. Somehow, he did. After a while, the pain receded. No, he thought dreamily. It’s still there, but I’ve floated away from it. With the drug in him, it didn’t seem to matter so much. Nothing seemed to matter very much.

“Where am I?” he asked. He didn’t particularly care about the answer, either, but asking about anything but the pain that had crushed him seemed a delightful novelty.

“Setubal,” the nurse told him.

“Ah,” Fernao said. “With any luck at all, I’ll never leave again.” Then the poppy juice made him sleep, a natural sleep different from the time-frozen comas the emergency sorcery had brought on. Little by little, his body began to repair itself.

King Swemmel’s long, pale face stared out of the crystal, straight at Marshal Rathar. Everywhere in the broad kingdom of Unkerlant--everywhere the Algarvians hadn’t overrun, at any rate--peasants and soldiers and townsfolk who could get to a crystal were listening to the king.

“Durrwangen has fallen,” Swemmel said without preamble. “Unkerlant is in danger. We tell you that some of the soldiers who were posted there ran away instead of doing all they could against the invaders who want to enslave us. They have been punished as they deserve for their cowardice, and shall never have the chance to betray the kingdom again.”

General Vatran, who shared an abandoned peasant hut with Rathar, grimaced. “He executed more men than he needed to,” Vatran said. “A lot more men than he needed to.”

Rathar agreed with him, but waved him to silence all the same. He counted himself lucky not to be among the executed, and counted Vatran even luckier. And he wanted to hear what Swemmel had to say.

“Not one step back!” the king shouted, his tiny image clenching a tiny fist. “Not one step back, we say again. We shall never yield another inch of our sacred soil to the Algarvian savages. If they advance, they shall advance only over the bodies of our warriors, warriors who will never again turn their backs to the barbarous foe. Attack, we say! Attack and triumph!”

King Swemmel’s image vanished from the crystal, which flashed and went dark. With another grimace, Vatran said, “I wish it were as easy as he makes it sound.”

“So does the whole kingdom,” Rathar answered. “But he’s right about one thing: if we don’t fight the Algarvians, we won’t drive them away. We haven’t got much room for retreat, not anymore.”