Sabrino spoke to the newest squadron leader, Captain Olindro: “Your men and dragons will fly top cover for us. If the Unkerlanters come against us, you’ll hold them off till we can get some height and join you.” You’ll do that, or you’ll die trying, Sabrino thought. Olindro’s predecessor had.
As Domiziano and Orosio had before him, Olindro said, “Aye, Colonel.” If he thought about his predecessor’s fate, he didn’t let on. A good soldier couldn’t let his fears and worries show, though Sabrino had never known a fighting man without them.
“Let’s go!” he shouted, and whacked his dragon again, this time in the command to dive. For once, the dragon obeyed with alacrity. Even its tiny brain had come to associate diving with fighting, and it liked fighting better than feeding, perhaps even better than mating. Domiziano and Orosio’s squadrons followed Sabrino down. The icy wind thrummed in his face. Had he not worn goggles, it would have blinded him.
Behemoths and egg-tossers swelled from specks to toys to real things in what seemed no time at all. Sabrino led the dragons against the column from the rear, hoping to put off for as long as he could the moment when the Unkerlanters realized they were under attack.
He always used that tactic. Sometimes, as today, it worked very well indeed. Secure in their possession of Lehesten, secure also in their possession of the initiative, the enemy soldiers paid the air no attention till Sabrino ordered his dragon to flame.
A sheet of fire, fueled by brimstone and quicksilver, burst from the dragon’s mouth. It engulfed a behemoth, the men riding on the beast, and the egg-tosser perhaps ten feet in front of it. The behemoth never made a sound. It might have been inhaling when the fire rolled over it. It simply toppled, dead before its flank hit the snow.
A couple of men in white smocks trudging along beside the egg-tosser did shriek as flames devoured them. The egg-tosser’s carriage, being made of more wood than metal, caught and began to burn. So did the casings of some of the eggs on the carriage. Mages made them to stand up to a good many things, but not to dragonfire. Bursts of sorcerous energy from the unleashed eggs finished the work of wrecking the tosser the flame had begun.
The rest of the dragons in the two squadrons Sabrino had ordered into action flamed the column with him. Only a handful of men and a couple of behemoths escaped their first onslaught.
No one had ever said the Unkerlanters lacked courage--or, if anyone had said it, he’d been a fool. The survivors of the Algarvian attack promptly started blazing at the men and dragons who’d tormented them so. Only luck would let a footsoldier bring down a dragon: the beasts’ bellies were painted silver to reflect beams, and even a blaze through the eye might not pierce their small, bone-armored brains.
Dragonfliers were more vulnerable. A beam hissed past Sabrino. He used the goad to hit the dragon in the throat, urging it to climb. It didn’t like that; it wanted to go back and use more flame. In the end, bad-tempered as usual, it obeyed him.
He was willing to go round and make another pass at the Unkerlanters. But before he could give the order, Olindro’s tiny image appeared in his crystal. “Dragons!” the squadron leader said, face twisting in alarm. “Unkerlanter dragons--lots of them!”
Sabrino looked up. Sure enough, Olindro’s squadron was under assault from perhaps twice its number of dragons, all painted the rock-gray of Unkerlanter military tunics.
His dragon saw the enemies, too. It didn’t much care for the beasts on its own side, but had--slowly--learned not to quarrel with them. Screaming with fury, it flew hard toward the dragons the Unkerlanters rode. The great muscles that powered its wings pumped hard.
As Sabrino drew near, he unslung his stick and aimed it at an Unkerlanter flier. His forefinger went into the activating hole at the base of the stick. A beam blazed forth from the other end. It missed the Unkerlanter. Good blazing was hard from dragonback, with both target and blazer moving so swiftly.
Cursing even so, Sabrino forced his dragon up through and past the enemies attacking his men and beasts. Most of the two squadrons he led followed his example. They were, almost to a man, veteran dragonfliers; they knew what needed doing. Dragonfights were war in three dimensions. Height mattered.
By the way the Unkerlanters flew, a lot of them were new aboard their bad-tempered mounts. They didn’t try to keep Sabrino’s men from gaining altitude; they were intent on destroying Olindro’s squadron. Under that waxed mustache--which was icing up again--Sabrino’s lips skinned back from his teeth in a savage grin. Inexperience could and, he vowed, would be an expensive business.
He chose the enemy dragon he wanted, then urged his own beast into a dive. The Unkerlanter dragonflier had no notion he was there. Without the slightest twinge of conscience--the Unkerlanter would have exulted at doing it to him--he blazed the fellow in the back.
The Unkerlanter threw out his hands. His stick flew from one of them. He slumped down onto his dragons neck. The beast, no longer under his control, showed its true nature: it struck out wildly at friend and foe alike, then flew off to prey on the frozen countryside below. The war had left it plenty of carrion on which to feed.
Sabrino blazed at another Unkerlanter dragonflier. He missed again, and cursed again. But his dragon was flying faster than the enemy’s mount. Nearer and nearer he drew. This Unkerlanter was a little more wary than the other one had been, but not wary enough. He’d only started to swing his dragon around to face Sabrino when the count ordered his own dragon to flame.
Again, fire burst from the dragon’s jaws. It caught the Unkerlanter beast in the flank and, more important, in the membranous wing. Bellowing horribly, flaming back with fire falling short, the Unkerlanter dragon fell out of the sky toward the ground far below. Sabrino thought he heard the dragonflier’s fading scream.
More Unkerlanter dragons were plummeting to earth or flying off under no man’s control. So were some of his own. He howled his fury at the losses. Algarve couldn’t afford them--and the men were friends as well as comrades.
But, before long, the Unkerlanters had had enough and fled back toward the west, the direction from which they’d come. Sabrino didn’t order a pursuit. He didn’t care to face the fresh squadrons King Swemmel’s men might send up with his own beasts tired. Instead, he waved back toward the east, toward the Algarvians’ own chilly makeshift of a dragon farm.
When they flew over the front, he quietly thanked the powers above that he wasn’t down there fighting on the ground. One reason he’d started flying dragons--and the best one he’d ever found--was that it beat the stuffing out of the footsoldier’s life.
Bembo wished he were back in Tricarico. Walking a constable’s beat in a provincial town in northeastern Algarve hadn’t been the most exciting job in the world, but now he realized he hadn’t appreciated it enough while he had it. Compared to some of the things he had to do here in Gromheort and in the surrounding villages, that beat seemed like paradise.
The plump constable didn’t mind--well, he didn’t mind too much--being plucked out of his comfortable home and sent west to help keep order in one of the kingdoms Algarve had conquered. Somebody had to do it. And besides, serving as a constable in occupied Forthweg, while harder than doing it in his own home town, was in most ways infinitely preferable to being issued a stick and sent off to the front in Unkerlant.
In most ways, but not in all. Along with the rest of a squad of constables from Tricarico, Bembo led several dozen trousered Kaunians through the streets of Gromheort toward the towns ley-line caravan depot. Some of the blonds walked along as if they had not a care in the world. But most had trouble hiding the fear they surely felt. Husbands comforted wives; mothers comforted children. Even as they did so, though, those husbands and mothers were biting their lips and fighting back tears themselves.