Because of that weight of gloom, the flight back to the dragon farm seemed against the wind all the way. When he finally got his dragon down on the ground, Sabrino discovered he had been flying against the wind. Instead of endlessly blowing out of the west, it came from the north, and carried warmth and an odor of growing things with it.
"Spring any day now," a dragon handler said as he chained Sabrino's mount to a crowbar driven into the ground. He looked around. "Where's the rest of the beasts, Colonel? Off to a different farm?"
"Dead." Whatever the wind said, Sabrino's voice held nothing but winter. "The Unkerlanters set a snare, and we blundered right into it. And now I have to write Domiziano's kin and tell them how their son died a hero for Algarve. Which he did, but I'd sooner he went on living as a hero instead."
He was writing that letter, and having a tough go of it, when Colonel Ambaldo stuck his head into the tent. Ambaldo was beaming. "We smashed them!" he told Sabrino, who could smell brandy fumes on his breath. With a scornful snap of his fingers, the newcomer from the east went on, "These Unkerlanters, they are not so much of a much. The Lagoans and Kuusamans are ten times the dragonfliers you see here in Unkerlant. We smashed up a couple of squadrons over Durrwangen, and dropped any number of eggs on the town."
"Good for you," Sabrino said tonelessly. "And now, good my sir, if you will excuse me, I am trying to send my condolences to a fallen flier's family."
"Ah. I see. Of course," Ambaldo said. Had he left the tent then, everything would have been… if not fine, then at least tolerably well. But, perhaps elevated by the brandy, he added, "Though how anyone could easily lose men to these Unkerlanter clods is beyond me."
Sabrino rose to his feet. Fixing Ambaldo with a deadly glare, he spoke in a voice chillier than any Unkerlanter winter: "A great many things appear to be beyond you, sir, sense among them. Kindly take your possessions and get them out of this, my tent. You are no longer welcome here. Lodge yourself elsewhere or let the powers below eat you- it's all one to me. But get out."
Colonel Ambaldo's eyes widened. "Sir, you may not speak to me so. Regardless of what you claim to be the rules of the front, I shall seek satisfaction."
"If you want satisfaction, go find a whore." Sabrino gave Ambaldo a mocking bow. "I told you, we do not duel here. Let me say this, then: if you ever seek to inflict your presence upon me here in this tent again, I will not duel. I will simply kill you on sight."
"You joke," Ambaldo exclaimed.
Sabrino shrugged. "You are welcome to make the experiment. And after you do, somebody will have to write to your kin, assuming anyone has any idea who your father is."
"Sir, I know you are overwrought, but you try my patience," Ambaldo said. "I warn you, I will call you out regardless of these so-called rules if provoked too far."
"Good," Sabrino said. "If your friends- in the unlikely event you have any- speak to mine, they need not inquire as to weapons. I shall choose knives."
Sticks were common in duels. They got things over with quickly and decisively. Swords were also common, especially among those with an antiquarian bent. Knives… A man who chose knives didn't just want to kill his opponent. He wanted to make sure the foe suffered before dying.
Ambaldo licked his lips. He wasn't a coward; no Algarvian colonel of dragonfliers was likely to be a coward. But he saw that Sabrino meant what he said and, at the moment, didn't much care whether he lived or died. With such dignity as he could muster, Ambaldo said, "I hope to speak to you again someday, sir, when you are more nearly yourself." He turned and left.
With a last soft curse, Sabrino sat down again. He re-inked his pen, hoping the fury that had coursed through him would make the words come easier. But it didn't. He'd had to write far too many of these letters, and they never came easy. And, as he wrote, he couldn't help wondering who would write a letter for him one day, and what the man would say.
Sidroc took off his fur hat and stowed it in his pack. "Not so cold these days," he remarked.
Sergeant Werferth made silent clapping motions. "You're a sly one, you are, to notice that. I bet it was all the stinking snow melting that gave you the clue."
"Heh," Sidroc said; Werferth being a sergeant, he couldn't say any more than that without landing in trouble. He could and did turn away from the sergeant and walk off down one of the lengths of trench north of Durrwangen Plegmund's Brigade was holding. His boots made squelching, sucking noises at every step. Werferth had been rude, but he hadn't been wrong. The snow was melting- indeed, had all but melted. When it melted, it didn't just disappear, either. Things would have been simpler and more convenient if it had. But it didn't: it soaked into the ground and turned everything to a dreadful morass of mud.
A couple of eggs came whizzing out from Durrwangen to burst close by, throwing up fountains of muck. It splatted down with a noise that reminded Sidroc of a latrine, only louder. He threw his hands in the air, as if that would do any good. "How are we supposed to go forward in this?" he demanded, and then answered his own question: "We can't. Nobody could."
"Doesn't mean we won't," Ceorl said. The ruffian spat; his spittle was but one more bit of moisture in the mire. "Haven't you noticed? -the redheads would sooner spend our lives than theirs."
"That's so." Sidroc didn't think anyone in Plegmund's Brigade hadn't noticed it. "But they spend plenty of their own men, too."
Ceorl spat again. "Aye, they do, and for what? This lousy stretch of Unkerlant isn't worth shitting in, let alone anything else."
Sidroc would have argued with that if only he could. Since he agreed with it, he just grunted and squelched along the trench till he came to a brass pot bubbling over a little fire. The stew was oats and rhubarb and something that had been dead long enough to get gamy but not long enough to become altogether inedible. He filled his mess tin and ate with good appetite. Only after he was done, while he was rinsing the mess tin with water from his canteen, did he pause to wonder what he would have thought of the meal were he still living soft back in Gromheort. He laughed. He would have thrown the mess tin at anyone who tried to give it to him. Here and now, with a full belly, he was happy enough.
He was also happy that none of the Brigade's Algarvian officers looked to be around. As long as they weren't there, nothing much would happen. He'd seen that they didn't trust the Forthwegian sergeants to do anything much. Forthwegians were good enough to fight for Algarve, but not to think or to lead.
The Unkerlanters launched more eggs from the outskirts of Durrwangen. These burst closer than the others had, one of them close enough to make Sidroc throw himself down in the cold, clammy mud. "Powers below eat them," he muttered as bits of the thin metal shell that had housed the egg's sorcerous energy hissed through the air. "Why don't they just run off and make things easy on us for once?"
But, despite the pounding the Algarvians had given Durrwangen, Swemmel's men showed no inclination whatever to run off. If the Algarvians wanted them gone, they would have to drive them out. After the eggs stopped falling, Sidroc stuck his head up over the parapet and peered south. "Get down, you fool!" somebody called to him. "You want a beam in the face?"
He got down, unblazed. The outskirts of Durrwangen lay a mile or so away. The Unkerlanters held on to the city, from the outskirts to its heart, like grim death. He couldn't see all the fortifications they'd put up, but that proved nothing; he'd already discovered the gift they had for making field-works that didn't look like much- till you attacked them. Whatever they had waiting in Durrwangen, he wasn't eager to find out.