One Algarvian started running back toward Lohr: not out of cowardice, Garivald judged, but to try to get help. The fellow hadn’t gone far when a beam caught him in the middle of the back and stretched him facedown in the dirt of the roadway.
“Gather up their sticks,” Munderic called. “Cut the throats of any of ’em still breathing. Then we’d better get out of here. All safe?” The irregular who’d asked Garivald for a song didn’t come out of his hole. Somebody went to check, and found he’d taken a beam just above the ear. He was as dead as the Algarvians. Munderic stamped his foot. “Curse it, I wanted a clean job. Almost, but not quite.”
“We did what we set out to,” Garivald said, “and the redheads aren’t about to.” He started off toward the forest with two sticks on his back and two lines for a new song going through his mind.
Sabrino’s dragon raced east through the crisp, cold air of the austral continent. The Algarvian commander could look left and see the waves of the Narrow Sea crashing against the rocky shore of the land of the Ice People. He could look to the right and see the dazzling glitter of the Barrier Mountains, still sheathed in snow and ice even though spring was rounding toward summer.
He wondered what lay beyond the Barrier Mountains. The Ice People traveled beyond them at this season of the year. So had a few intrepid explorers from civilized kingdoms. He’d read some of their accounts. They differed so wildly, he wondered if the explorers had all gone to the same country. Tempting to think about turning his dragon to the south and flying and flying and flying…
“But there’s a war to be fought,” he muttered, and looked ahead once more. The Lagoan army was still retreating, though not much pursued it: a few battalions of Yaninans stiffened by even fewer Algarvian footsoldiers and a couple of companies of behemoths. But the Lagoans did not have the dragons to be able to stand against the force he led.
That the Lagoans had any dragons at all had come as a nasty surprise the first time his fliers ran up against them. But the enemy, outnumbered four to one by his wing and Colonel Broumidis’ beasts, could scout and warn their ground forces when danger was on the way, but could not block that danger.
A beam from a heavy stick down on the ground blazed up at the Algarvian dragons. Even had it struck one, it would have done no more than infuriate the beast. But it was a warning: come no lower. Sabrino nodded to himself. The Lagoans were playing their half of the game as well as it could be played. He leaned to one side and peered down past his dragon’s scaly neck. As he’d expected, King Vitor’s men were digging in like so many moles. He nodded again. Aye, the Lagoans had plenty of professional competence. Without enough dragons, though, how much good would it do them?
“Drop your eggs, lads.” He spoke into the crystal he carried with him. For good measure, he waved the hand signal that meant the same thing.
His own dragon carried eggs, too. He slashed the cords that held them to the huge, bad-tempered beast. Down they fell, along with the eggs from the dragonfliers he led. He watched them tumble toward the ground. The moment they were gone, his dragon flew more strongly, more swiftly. He would have walked faster after shedding a heavy pack, too.
Balls of fire sprang up as the eggs, releasing the sorcerous energy stored in them, burst on the Lagoans. “That ought to hit them a good, solid lick,” Captain Orosio said.
“Aye.” Sabrino nodded. “But we won’t destroy them. The most we can do is make their lives miserable. We’ve done pretty well at that, I’d say.”
“So we have.” Orosio rolled his eyes. “But if we have to rely on the Yaninans to hunt them down and kill them, we’re going to be in for a long wait. If the Yaninans could have done it, we wouldn’t need to be here.”
“Don’t I know it,” Sabrino answered. A little nervously, he glanced down at the crystal. He used a slightly different spell to talk with Broumidis, who wouldn’t be able to hear this. He wanted to be very sure Broumidis couldn’t hear this. “We’re going to have to bring in more of our own footsoldiers and behemoths-more dragons, too-if we’re going to drive the Lagoans off the austral continent once for all. The Yaninans just aren’t up to the job.”
“Oh, I know that, sir.” Orosio was a longtime veteran, too-not one with so much service as Sabrino, who’d fought as a footsoldier in the Six Years’ War a long generation before, but with plenty to give him a healthy cynicism about the way the world worked. “Most of them would sooner be back home raising cabbages. They’ve got no stomach for a real fight. Some of their officers are good, but a lot of them have their places on account of whom they know, too.”
“That’s too true,” Sabrino said. “Noble blood is all very well, but you’d better know what you’re doing to boot. If you don’t, you’ll get yourself killed, and a lot of the men you’re supposed to lead, too.”
“Not if the men know you’re useless, and run away instead of fighting,” Orosio said. Sabrino grimaced; the Yaninans had done that more often than he cared to remember. His squadron commander went on, “Every Algarvian and every dragon we use to prop up King Tsavellas’ men is one we can’t use against King Swemmel.”
“I know. I’ve said as much. I’ve made myself unpopular saying as much.” Sabrino was old enough that he didn’t care too much about making himself unpopular. So long as his wife put up with him and his mistress remained compliant, he wouldn’t worry about the rest of the world.
He guided his dragon down a little lower, trying to assess how much harm this latest assault had done the Lagoans. With dust still rising from where eggs had burst, that was hard to do. And the enemy, he’d found, was cursed clever at making things on the ground seem worse than they were in the hope of luring Algarvian dragons to destruction.
Though tempted to loiter in the air till all the dust cleared, Sabrino decided that wouldn’t be a good idea. He spoke into the crystal again, this time to all his squadron leaders: “Let’s go back to the dragon farm so the groundcrew men can give us some more eggs. With the sun shining almost all the time, the more we can pound the Lagoans, the better.” A moment later, he passed that on to Colonel Broumidis, too.
“Aye, Colonel!” The enthusiastic cry came not from Broumidis but from Captain Domiziano, senior to Orosio in time spent commanding a squadron- he came from a family with better bloodlines and better connections-but far junior in overall experience. Domiziano never failed to remind Sabrino of a happy puppy, always ready to rush ahead. The wing commander knew that was an insult to a brave and talented officer, but couldn’t drive the thought from his mind.
As the Algarvian dragons began flying off toward the west, several Lagoan heavy sticks that had stayed quiet up till then blazed at them. Sabrino waggled a finger down at the ground. “I thought you might have some surprises waiting,” he said, as if the Lagoans far below could hear. “You won’t see us coming down to peek at you as trustingly as we did when this round of fighting started.”
Seeing that they were doing the Algarvians no harm, the Lagoan sticks soon fell silent again. Sabrino nodded in reluctant approval. Aye, King Vitor’s men knew what they were doing, all right. No point to wasting charges they might really need in some later fight.
He led the wing of Algarvian dragons and their Yaninan hangers-on toward the positions Tsavellas and Mezentio’s footsoldiers and behemoths were holding. As they neared them, Broumidis’ face with its black hairy caterpillar of a mustache appeared in Sabrino’s crystal. “If you look to the left of my dragons, my lord Count, you will see some of the Lagoan beasts coming east,” the Yaninan officer said. “Is it your pleasure that we assail them?”
Sabrino turned his head to the left. Sure enough, he did see Lagoan dragons over there, a long way off. “You have good eyes,” he told Broumidis; he made a point of complimenting Yaninans whenever he found even the vaguest occasion to do so. After a little pause for thought, he shook his head. “No, we’ll let them go. They’re likely trying to entice us into an ambush: look like easy meat and then lead us low over some sticks the Lagoans have hidden away somewhere. Best thing we can do is tend to our business and drop some more eggs on their army. If we hit it hard enough, sooner or later they’ll have to come up and fight us on our terms.”