"Here's hoping," Sabrino said, and drank to the hope. His junior officers drank with him.
An orderly stuck his head into the officers' club. Spying Sabrino, he immediately looked relieved. "Ali, here you are, sir," he said. "A message on the crystaI just came in: your wing is ordered to join in the attack on the town of Wihtgara." He pronounced the uncouth Forthwegian syllables as well as an Algarvian might be expected to do.
Sabrino drew a map from the vest pocket of his uniform tunic. He spread it out on the table so Domiziano and Orosio could study it, too.
After a moment, Sabrino's forefinger stabbed out. "About fifty miles northwest of here," he said, and turned to the orderly once more. "Ten the crystallomancer to reply that we shall be flying within half an hour."
He knocked back the rest of his port - it wasn't really good enough to linger over - and nodded to his companions. "Time to give the
Forthwegians another dose, lads."
As usual, Sabrino had to pick his way among the tethered dragons to keep from fouling his boots with their noxious droppings. As usual, his own mount had forgotten he'd been flying it for years. As usual, it hissed and flapped and spluttered, doing its best to keep him from climbing aboard. It did refrain from trying to flame him down; that was beaten into war dragons from hatchlinghood. For small favors, Sabrino gave thanks.
He gave thanks again when the dragon's enormous batwings thundered behind him and the ground dropped away below. The view he got from on high was almost worth putting up with the stupidity and viciousness of dragons. The view of the rest of the dragons in his wing, bellies silvered, backs painted in red and white and green, was splendid, too.
"Come on," he said, and tapped his dragon with the goad to bring its course farther north of west. "We can do it."
The dragon, predictably, didn't want to. As far as it was concerned, was up in the sky to hunt. Sabrino's purposes mattered little to it. It had been perfectly content to fly along in the direction it had chosen. When he tried to get it to change the small stubborn spot that passed for his mind, it twisted its head back along the length of its long, sinuous nec and did its best to pluck him off his perch with its teeth.
Even though it didn't flame him, its breath, full of the stinks of brirr stone and old meat, was nearly enough to knock him over. "Son of worm!" he shouted, and whacked it in the snout with the iron-she goad. "Daughter of a vulture! I am your better! You shall obey me!"
Every once in a while, a dragon forgot the most fundamental part its training - in which case, the dragonflier never got another chance I curse it. Sabrino refused to let that risk enter his mind. He whacked dragon's scaly snout again. With an irate hiss, it straightened its neck once more. He gave it another tap, and this time, however sullenly, it swum its path more in the direction of Wihtgara.
Down below, Algarvian columns filed down roads and across field.
Here and there, scattered Forthwegian companies tried to withstand them. They had little luck. Sabrino shook his fist at them. "This is what you get for invading Algarve!" he cried, though only his dragon could hear him. "What you visited on us, we visit on you a hundredfold."
He'd been worried when the Forthwegians approached Gozzo. [..H..] the city fallen, King Penda's soldiers could have spread across the plain of northern Algarve and done untold damage. But behemoths a: dragons had turned the battle in front of Gozzo, and turned every fig since, too. However brave the Forthwegians were, they could not sta up against such force.
Here and there, the retreating Forthwegians had set fire in the fie. and woods to slow the Algarvians' advance. Had they done that in( systematically, they would have got more good from it. As things we occasional whithin of smoke rose to Sabrino's nostrils: hardly what t enemy could have hoped to accomplish.
More smoke rose above Wihtgara. Sabrino's countrymen I bypassed the town to the north and south and joined hands beyond it, they'd done with Gromheort a few days before. The Forthwegt trapped inside the jaws of the pincers still battled to break free, but it had little chance. Unicorn cavalry, tiny as dots down below, charged squadron of behemoths. The egg-tossers and heavy sticks the behemoths bore on their backs wrecked the charge before the Forthwegians got to close quarters.
Dragons wheeled above Wihtgara. Till Sabrino drew near, he thought them Algarvian beasts dropping eggs on the defenders below. Then he saw they were painted in blue and white: Forthwegian colors. There were only a dozen of them or so. Without hesitation - or without any more hesitation than balky dragons usually caused - they hurled them selves at his entire wing.
Sabrino waved to his dragonfliers. "If they want it, we'll give it to them!" he shouted, though he didn't think any of the other men could hear. That they would give it to the Forthwegians, he had no doubt.
Even after losses in the fighting thus far, he still commanded four times as many dragons as the foe had.
Like the unicorn cavalry down on the ground, the Forthwegian dragonfliers cared nothing about the odds. On they came. Sabrino's dragon made a noise that reminded him of hot oil sizzling in a frying pan about the size of a small duchy: a challenge. Sabrino raised his stick and blazed at the nearest Forthwegian. If he didn't have to fight at close quarters, he didn't want to, no matter how eager his mount was to flame the Forthwegian dragon out of the sky.
But blazing straight wasn't easy, not with both him and the
Forthwegian moving at high speed along courses that changed unpre dictably as one dragon or the other took it into its ferocious, empty head to dodge a little. Fighting in the air wasn't just man against man. It was also dragon against dragon, and the beasts wanted nothing more than to bum each other and tear each other to shreds.
Here came the Forthwegian. He had some idea of what he was about, and a dragon that, by Forthwegian standards, was decently trained: the beast rose to give him a clear blaze at Sabrino, instead of simply trying to close with the Algarvian's dragon. Sabrino flattened himself against his mount's neck to present a harder target as he goaded his dragon to climb, too.
And Forthwegian standards did not measure up to those practiced in `Km~ Mtze_ntio's domain. Moreover, Sabrino's dragon was larger and stronger and swifter than his foe's. He outclimbed the Forthwegian and got routed behind him, despite the enemy's best efforts to twist in the air.
When Sabrino's dragon flamed, fire licked the other beast's back and left wing.
The Forthwegian dragon's hissing shriek of anguish was music to Sabrino's ears. Very likely, the Forthwegian dragonflier shrieked, too, but his cry, if he made one, was lost in the greater cry of his mount. The enemy dragon plummeted out of the sky, not just burnt but burning.
Because of the brimstone and quicksilver that had helped fuel it, dragon fire clung and clung.
Sabriino's dragon bellowed its triumph and spurted more flame. He whacked it with the goad to make it stop. It Inlight need that fire in future fights. His head swiveled as he tried to see which of his dragonfliers needed help. He spied none who did. Most of the Forthwegian dragons were falling in flames (so, he was sad to see, were a couple painted in Algarvian colors). A couple of the enemy flew west, off to the shrinking stretch of territory Forthweg still held. And one, its flier blazed off it, struck out at the dragons around it like the wild beast it was till it too tumbled out of the sky.
More dragons were flying in out of the east, these lower, and with eggs slung under their bellies. As the eggs began falling on Wihtgara, Sabrino smiled broadly. "A splendid little war!" he cried, exultation in his voice.
"Splendid!"
Occupied. Ealstan had heard the word before the war, of course. He'd heard it, and thought he'd known what it meant. Now he was learning the bitter difference between knowledge and experience.