But then he did. "Domiziano!" he shouted into the crystal. "Pull up, Domiziano! They've all got heavy sticks, and they're waiting for us!"
Usually, dragons took behemoths by surprise, and the men aboard those behemoths had scant seconds to swing their sticks toward the dragonfliers diving on them. Usually, too, more behemoths carried egg-tossers- useless against dragons- than heavy sticks. Not this column. Swemmel's men had set a trap for Algarvian dragonfliers, and Sabrino's wing was flying right into it.
Before Domiziano and his dragonfliers could even begin to obey Sabrino's orders, the Unkerlanters started blazing at them. The behemoth crews had seen the dragons coming, and had had the time to swing their heavy sticks toward the leaders of the attack. The beams that burst forth from those sticks were bright and hot as the sun.
They struck dragon after dragon out of the sky, almost as a man might swat flies that annoyed him. A heavy stick could burn through the silver paint that shielded dragons' bellies from weapons a footsoldier might carry, or could sear a wing and send a dragon and the man who rode it tumbling to the ground so far below.
Domiziano's dragon seemed to stumble in midair. Sabrino cried out in horror; Domiziano had led a squadron in his wing since the war was new. He would lead it no more. His dragon took another couple of halfhearted flaps, then plummeted. A cloud of snow briefly rose when it smashed to earth: the only memorial Domiziano would ever have.
"Pull up! Pull back!" Sabrino called to his surviving squadron commanders. "Gain height. Even their sticks won't bite if we're high enough- and we can still drop our eggs on them. Vengeance!"
A poor, mean vengeance it would be, with half a dozen dragons hacked down. How many Unkerlanter behemoths made a fair exchange for one dragon, for one highly trained dragonflier? More than were in this column: of that Sabrino was sure.
Another dragon fell as one of his own men proved less cautious than he should have. Sabrino's curses went flat and harsh with despair. Some of his dragonfliers started dropping their eggs too soon, so they burst in front of the Unkerlanters without coming particularly close to them.
But others had more patience, and before long the bursts came among the behemoths, as nicely placed as Sabrino could have wished. When the snow cleared down below, some of the beasts lay on their sides, while others lumbered off in all directions. That was how behemoths should have behaved when attacked by dragons. Even so, Sabrino ordered no pursuit. The Unkerlanters had already done too much damage to his wing, and who could say what other tricks they had waiting?
"Back to the dragon farm," he commanded. No one protested. The Algarvians were all in shock. Not till they'd turned and been flying northeast for some little while did he realize that, for perhaps the first time in the war, the Unkerlanters had succeeded in intimidating him.
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.