Not far away, a bell began ringing. Istvan's stomach rumbled. "Follow your ears, boys," he told the troopers in his squad. "Try not to break your necks before you get there."
His boots scrunched on gravel and squelched through mud as he made his own way toward the bell. The fog muffled his footsteps. It muffled the bell, too, and the endless slap of the sea on the beach perhaps a quarter of a mile away. Becsehely was low and flat. Had it not lain along a ley line, it wouldn't have been worth visiting at all- but then, as far as Istvan was concerned, the same held true for every island in the Bothnian Ocean.
There was the cookfire- and there was a queue of men with mess kits. Istvan took his place in it. The man in front of him turned and said, "Good morning, Sergeant."
"Oh!" Istvan said. "Good morning, Captain Frigyes. I'm sorry, sir- a man wouldn't know his own mother in this fog."
"Can't argue with you there," his company commander replied. "You'd almost think the Kuusamans magicked it up on purpose."
"Sir?" Istvan said in some alarm. "You don't suppose-?"
Frigyes shook his head. "No, I don't suppose that. Our mages would be screaming their heads off were it so. They aren't. That means it isn't."
Istvan considered. "Aye. That makes sense." He peered out into the fog with new suspicion just the same.
A bored-looking cook filled his mess tin with a stew of millet and lentils and bits of fish. He ate methodically, then went down to the beach and washed the tin in the ocean. Becsehely boasted only a handful of springs; fresh water was too precious to waste on washing.
Toward mid-morning, the fog lifted. The sky remained gray. So did the sea. Becsehely seemed gray, too. Most of the gravel was that color, and the grass and bushes, fading in the fall, were more yellowish gray than green.
An observation tower stood on the high ground- such as it was- at the center of the island. Sentries with spyglasses swept the horizon, not that they would have done much good in the swaddling fog. But dowsers and other mages stood by to warn against trouble then. Istvan hoped whatever warning they might give would be enough.
A dragon flapped into the air from the farm beyond the tower. Istvan expected it to vanish into the clouds, but it didn't. It flew in a wide spiral below them: one more sentry, to spy out the Kuusamans before they drew too close to Becsehely. Sentries were all very well, but…
Istvan turned to Captain Frigyes and said, "I wish we had more dragons on this stars-forsaken island, sir."
"Well, Sergeant, so do I, when you get right down to it," Frigyes answered. "But Becsehely doesn't have enough growing on it to support much in the way of cattle or pigs or even" -he made a revolted face- "goats. That means we have to ship in meat for the dragons, same as we have to bring in food for us. We can only afford so many of the miserable beasts."
"Miserable is right." Istvan remembered unpleasant days on Obuda, mucking out dragon farms. With a frown, he went on, "The stinking Kuusamans bring whole shiploads of dragons with 'em wherever they go."
"I know that. We all know that- much too well, in fact," Frigyes said. "It's one of the reasons they've given us so much trouble in the islands. We'll be able to do it ourselves before too long."
"That'd be about time, sir," Istvan said. We'll be able to do it before too long was a phrase that had got a lot of Gyongyosian soldiers killed before their time.
"We are a warrior race," Frigyes said, disapproval strong in his voice. "We shall prevail."
"Aye, sir," Istvan answered. He couldn't very well say anything else, not without denying Gyongyos' heritage. But he'd seen over and over again, on Obuda and in the woods of western Unkerlant, that warrior virtues, however admirable, could be overcome by sound strategy or strong sorcery.
Despite the tower, despite the dragons, despite the dowsers, no one on Becsehely spied the approaching Kuusaman flotilla till it launched its dragons at the island. Mist and rain clung to Becsehely, thwarting the men with the spyglass, thwarting the dragonfliers, and even thwarting the dowsers, who had to try to detect the motion of ships through the motions of millions of falling raindrops. Dowsers had techniques for noting one kind of motion while screening out others; maybe the Kuusamans had techniques for making ships seem more like rain.
Whatever the explanation, the first thing the garrison knew of the flotilla was eggs falling out of the sky and bursting all over the island. The observation tower went down in ruin when a lucky hit smashed its supports. More eggs burst near the dragon farm, but the dragonfliers got at least some of their beasts into the air to challenge the Kuusamans.
Frigyes' whistle wailed through the din. "To the beach!" he yelled. "Stand by to repel invaders!"
"Come on, you lugs!" Istvan shouted to his squad. "If they don't make it ashore, they can't hurt us, right?"
More eggs burst close by, making all the Gyongyosians dive for holes in the ground. As dirt pattered down on them, Szonyi said, "Who says they can't?"
"Come on!" Istvan repeated, and they were up and running again. He and Kun- and Szonyi, too- had spent a lot of time harping on how important it was to keep the Kuusamans from landing. He knew a certain amount of pride that the rest of the squad took them seriously. Everybody loved the stars, but no one wanted them to take and cherish his spirit right then.
The Kuusaman dragons had already given the trenches by the beach a pretty good pounding. Istvan wasn't fussy- any hole in the ground, whether a proper trench or the crater left by a bursting egg, would do fine. He jumped down into one, then peered out again, wondering how close the invasion fleet was, and what sort of defending vessels Gyongyos had in these waters. He remembered only too well how the Kuusamans had fought their way onto the beaches of Obuda.
He spied no enemy ships gliding along the ley line toward Becsehely, no landing boats leaving larger ships and approaching the island on a broad front propelled by sails or oars. Corporal Kun saw- or rather, didn't see- the same thing, and spoke with some relief: "Just a raid from their dragon haulers."
"Aye." Istvan sounded relieved, too. The dragons might kill him, but without landing boats in the water there wasn't the certainty of a life-and-death struggle for the island. Sooner or later, the accursed beasts would fly back to the ships that had brought them, and the raid would end.
"Demon of a lot of dragons overhead for just a raid," Kun said.
That was also true. Istvan shrugged. "They must have brought more of those ships along than usual. Aren't we lucky?"
And then they were lucky, for one of the heavy sticks mounted on Becsehely blazed a Kuusaman dragon out of the sky. It fell into the sea just offshore and thrashed out its death agony there. Painted pale blue and light green, it might almost have been a sea creature itself. If its dragonflier hadn't been dead when it smashed down, its writhings would surely have crushed him.
Eventually, a soldier managed to blaze the dragon through one of its great, glaring eyes. It shuddered and lay still. A moment later, another dragon plunged into the sea, and then one onto the stony soil of the island behind Istvan. He shook his fist in triumph. "By the stars, nothing's going to come cheap for the stinking Kuusamans here."
The foe must have decided the same thing, for the dragons flew off toward the west. Only later did Istvan pause to wonder whether Becsehely was worth having for anybody at all.
Talsu walked through the streets of Skrunda thinking about spells of undoing. There had to be a way to get more out of them than he'd yet seen. He was convinced of that. But he wasn't yet sure what it might be.
A news-sheet vendor waved a leaf of paper at him. "Gyongyos crushes Kuusaman air pirates!" the fellow called. "Read the whole exciting story!"