"One way or another, we'll make the redheads go hungry," Beocca said, stamping down the ripening grain with great relish. Leofsig, sweating in the hot sun, hadn't the energy to stamp. He just nodded and kept marching.
More shouts produced lanes between blocks of men. Unicorn and horse cavalry trotted forward to screen the footsoldiers who would do the bulk of the fighting. Forthwegian dragons flew overhead, some so high as to be only specks, others low enough to let Leofsig hear their shrill screeches.
"I hope they drop plenty of eggs on Gozzo," Beocca said.
"I hope they keep the Algarvians from dropping eggs on us," Leofsig added. After a moment, Beocca grunted agreement.
As the Forthwegians drew nearer to Gozzo, Leofsig kept cocking his head and looking up into the sky every so often. Even so, he was cautiously skirting a hedgerow when the Algarvian dragons came racing out of the east to challenge those of his kingdom.
The first he knew of the battle overhead was when a dragon fell out of the sky and smashed to earth a hundred yards or so in front of him.
The great beast writhed in its death agony, throwing now its silvered belly, now its back - painted Forthwegian blue and white - uppermost.
Its flier lay motionless, a small, crumpled heap, a few feet away. Flame spurted from the dragon's jaw, cremating the man who had taken it into action.
Leofsig looked up again: looked up and gasped in horror. He had seen very few Algarvian dragons till now. That had led him to believe the enemy had very few, or very few they could commit against the Forthwegians, at any rate. Since they were also fighting Jelgava and Valmiera and Sibiu, that made sense to him.
It might have made sense, but it proved untrue. Suddenly, two or three times the Forthwegians' numbers beset them. Dragons tumbled to earth, burned or even clawed by their foes. Most were marked in blue and white, not Algarvian green, red, and white. Other dragons, their fliers killed by an enemy's stick, either flew off at random or, mad with battle, struck out at friends and foes alike.
In what seemed the twinkling of an eye, the Forthwegian dragon swarm was shattered. The remnant not sent spinning to their doom or flying wild without a man to guide them fled back toward Forthweg.
They might fight another day. Against overwhelming odds, they would not fight above this field. Inside half an hour, Algarve, not Forthweg, ruled the skies.
Beocca made a rumbling noise, deep in his throat. "Now we're in for it," he said. Leofsig could only nod. The same thought, in the same words, had gone through his mind, too.
Most of the dragons that had driven off the Forthwegian swarm had flown without eggs, making them faster and more maneuverable in the air. Now still more flew in from the direction of Gozzo. Some of their fliers released their eggs from on high, as was the usual Forthwegian practice - the usual practice everywhere, so far as Leofsig knew.
But the enemy, with Algarvian panache, had also found a new way.
Some of the Algarvian fliers made their dragons stoop on the Forthwegian forces below like a falcon stooping on a mouse. They loosed the eggs the dragons carried at what seemed hardly more than treetop height, then pulled out of their dives and flew away, no doubt laughing at their foes' discomfiture.
One of them, off to Leofsig's night, misjudged his dive and smashed into the ground. The egg he carried erupted, searing flier and dragon both in its burst of flame. "Serves you right!" Leofsig shouted, though the flier was far beyond hearing. But the Algarvian's swooping comrades kept on, placing their eggs far more precisely than did those who did not dive, they tore terrible holes in the Forthwegians' ranks.
"Forward!" an officer shouted. Leofsig heard him through stunned and battered ears. "We must go forward, for the honor of King Penda and of Forthweg!"
Forward Leofsig stumbled. Around him, men raised a cheer. After a moment, he J oined it. Turning to Beocca, he said, "Once we close with the Algarvians, we'll crush them."
"Aye, belike," Beocca answered, "if there are any of us left to do the closing."
As if to underscore that, more eggs started falling among the advancing Forthwegians. Not all of them - not even most of them - came from the dragons overhead. The army had come into range of the egg-tossers outside Gozzo. Dragons carried larger eggs than the tossers flung, but could not carry nearly so many; Leofsig, head down and hunched forward as if walking into a windstorm, trudged past a broken-backed unicorn, one side of its body all over burns, that dragged itself along on its forelegs and screamed like a woman.
Forthwegian egg-tossers answered the rain of fire as best they could.
But they'd had trouble keeping up with the rest of the army: horse-drawn wheeled tossers clogged roads and moved slowly going crosscountry, while the retreating Algarvians had sabotaged ley lines as they fell back.
Forthwegian mages had reenergized some, but far from all. And, to make matters worse, the diving dragons paid special attention to the egg-tossers that were on the field.
Up ahead, Forthwegian cavalry was skirmishing with Algarvian troop ers on horses and unicorns. Leofsig cheered when a Forthwegian officer's white unicorn gored an enemy horseman out of the saddle. He squatted down behind a bush and blazed at the Algarvian cavalry. The range was long, and he could not be sure his was the beam that did the job, but he thought he knocked a couple of redheads out of the saddle.
And then, when he blazed, no beam shot from the business end of the stick. He looked around for a supply cart, spied none, and then looked around for a casualty. On this field, casualties were all too easy to find.
Leofsig scurried over to a Forthwegian who would never need his stick again. He snatched up the stick and dashed back to cover. An Algarvian beam drew a brown line in the grass ahead of him, but did not sear his flesh.
As more Forthwegian footsoldiers came forward to add their numbers to those of the cavalry, the Algarvian horsemen and unicorn riders began to fall back. Leofsig grunted in somber satisfaction as he advanced toward a large grove of orange trees. This skirmish, though bigger than most, fit the pattern of the fights that had followed Forthweg's invasion of вщцтдщфвAlgarve. The Algarvians might have won the battle in the air, but they kept on yielding ground even so.
Under the shiny, dark green leaves of the orange trees, something stirred. Leofsig was too far away to blaze at the motion, too far away even to identify what caused it till a great force of behemoths came lumbering out of the grove. Their armor glittered* in the sun. Each great beast bore several riders. Some behemoths had sticks larger and heavier and stronger than a man could carry strapped on to their backs. Others carried egg tossers instead.
Forthweg used behemoths to help break into positions infantry could not take unaided, parceling the animals out along the whole broad fighting line. Leofsig had never seen so many all gathered together before. He did not like the look of them. He liked that look even less when they lowered their heads, pointing their great horns toward the Forthwegian force, and lumbered for-ward. They moved slowly at first, but soon built up speed.
They smashed through the Forthwegian cavalry as if it hadn't been there, trampling down horses and unicorns. As they charged, the crews of soldiers on their backs blazed and flung eggs, spreading havoc far and wide. The behemoths were hard to bring down. Their armor warded them against most blazes, and, while they were moving, the men on their backs - who, Leofsig saw, were also armored - were next to impossible to pick off.
The cavalry, or as much of it as could, fled before them, as the Forthwegian dragons had fled before those of Algarve. The Algarvian dragons now redoubled their attacks against the Forthwegians on the ground as the behemoths broke in among them. Leofsig blazed at the warriors aboard the closest one - blazed and missed. An egg burst close by him, knocking him off his feet and scraping his face against the dirt.