Out of the Darkness

He felt about ninety.

He waved to the east-not so very far to the east. “If we fall back any more, we’ll be flying out of the dragon farm near Trapani, the one we left when we went to war against Forthweg.”

“Oh.” Orosio thought that over, then nodded. “By the powers above, you’re right.” He looked around. “Not fornicating many left who set out with us that day. You, me, two or three others-that’s it. Sixty-four dragonfliers, and all the rest dead or maimed.” He spat. “And how much longer d’you think we’ll last?”

“As long as we do, that’s all,” Sabrino answered with a shrug that tried for typical Algarvian brio but didn’t come up with much. “I have no fear any more, and I have no hope, either. We do what we do as long as we can keep doing it, and then …” He shrugged again. “After that, what difference would it make, anyhow?”

“Not much.” Orosio pointed to the road that led east out of Pontremoli. “They don’t think what we’re doing now makes much difference, either.”

Algarvians poured east in a steady stream, carrying whatever they could. In earlier days, in happier days, Sabrino had watched from the air as Unkerlanters fled west before King Mezentio’s men, clogging the roads for King Swemmel’s soldiers. Now the shoe-when the refugees had shoes-was on the other foot. His dragonfliers had flamed refugee columns in Unkerlant and dropped eggs on them. Now the men who flew dragons painted rock-gray had their turn with Sabrino’s countrymen.

“Maybe some of them will get away,” Sabrino said, fighting to keep despair from overwhelming him altogether. “Maybe they’ll get to parts of the kingdom the Lagoans and Kuusamans are overrunning. That should keep them alive. The islanders don’t kill for the sport of it, anyhow.”

How many dead Kaunians? he wondered. How long would other kingdoms throw that in Algarve’s face? Generations, probably. And who could blame them? I tried to talk Mezentio out of it, Sabrino thought. As far as people in Algarve go, that gives me clean hands. Powers above help us all.

Orosio said, “You think it’s lost, then? You think we have no chance, no matter what King Mezentio says?”

“Aye, I think that,” Sabrino answered. “Don’t you?” Reluctantly, the squadron commander nodded. “All right, then,” Sabrino said. “What do we do next?”

“Fight as hard as we can as long as we can,” Orosio said. “What else is there?”

“Nothing I can see,” Sabrino told him. “Not a single fornicating thing.” As Orosio had, he spat into the muck. “And I’m not doing it for King Mezentio. This for King Mezentio.” He spat again. “If it weren’t for what Mezentio did back in the first autumn of the war with Unkerlant, we’d have a better chance now-and nobody would hate us quite so much.”

Had Orosio taken that back to the ears of men who cared about such things-to King Mezentio’s equivalent of inspectors, Sabrino thought scornfully- the wing commander would have found himself in trouble … as if trying to keep up the fight against the Unkerlanters weren’t trouble enough. But Sabrino knew his squadron commander well enough to be sure Orosio would sooner be flamed out of the sky than betray him. What Orosio did say was, “Well, if it’s not for the king and it’s not for the kingdom, why not just pack it in?”

“Who says it’s not for the kingdom?” Sabrino looked back toward that unending stream of Algarvians fleeing eastward. “The longer we keep going, the longer we hold back Swemmel’s whoresons, the more people will have the chance to get away. That’s worth doing, curse it.”

“Ah.” Orosio didn’t need long to think it over this time. “You’re right, sir. We’ve got to do what we can.”

“However much that is-or however little.” Sabrino raised his voice to call to the chief dragon-handler: “Sergeant! A word with you, if you please.”

“Aye, sir?” The fellow hurried up to him. “What can I do for you, sir? We were just going to feed the beasts.”

“That’s what I wanted to ask you about,” Sabrino said. “Did that shipment of cinnabar you were talking about ever get down here from the north? Without it, our dragons are only flaming half as far as the ones the Unkerlanters fly.”

“Oh. That. Sorry, sir. No.” The sergeant shook his head. “I don’t think we can expect any more, either. I heard today Swemmel’s men have overrun the mines south of Bonorva. That was about the last cinnabar we had left, sir, and we had to try and parcel it out amongst all the dragons we’ve still got in the air.”

“The last of the cinnabar.” Sabrino didn’t know why it surprised him. He’d seen this day coming when the Algarvians were driven out of the cinnabar-rich austral continent-after their murderous magic went wrong there, as foreign magic had a way of doing, and wrecked their own army-and especially after they didn’t swarm past Sulingen and into the cinnabar mines of the Mamming Hills in southern Unkerlant. He’d seen it coming, and seen it coming. . and it was finally here.

Orosio put the best face on things he could: “Well, sir, our job just got a little harder, that’s all.”

Their job, for most of the past two years, had been impossible. Orosio surely knew that as well as Sabrino did. Sabrino let out another weary sigh. “Fishing without a net or a line, that’s what we’ll be doing. How many minnows can we grab out of the water with our bare hands?”

“Fish, sir?” The sergeant of dragon-handlers looked confused. A solid, capable man when doing what he knew how to do, he wouldn’t have known a metaphor had one strolled up wagging its tail. Sabrino almost envied him. He wished he were more ignorant himself these days.

He ducked into his tent. A meal of sorts waited there: rye bread and a little crock of butter and a jug of spirits. Sabrino shook his head. Change the spirits to ale and his barbarous ancestors would have eaten like this in the days before they ever dreamt of challenging the might of the Kaunian Empire.

New barbarians at the gates now, Sabrino thought. He wondered whether he meant the Unkerlanters or his own people. He shrugged a fine, flamboyant Algarvian shrug. What difference did it make, really? He drank more of his supper than he ate, and went to bed with wits whirling.

When he woke up the next morning, his throbbing head seemed altogether in keeping with the general state of the world, or the Algarvian portion thereof. His head would eventually improve. He had his doubts about the Algarvian portion of the world.

Bread liberally smeared with butter did nothing to beat back his hangover. They did grease his stomach so the slug of spirits he poured down after them didn’t hurt so much. When the spirits mounted to his head, he felt human again, in a melancholy way. How any Algarvian could feel anything but melancholy these days was beyond him.

The day was cool and cloudy, with a threat of rain in the air. Sabrino wouldn’t have wanted to face bright sunshine just then. He started over to the crystallomancers’ tent to find out where along the tattered front his dozen or so dragons could do the most good. Before he got there, someone called his name. He turned.

He knew he stared. He couldn’t help it. The smiling young fellow striding toward him might have come out of the early days, the triumphant days, of the war. It wasn’t so much that his uniform tunic and kilt were clean and new and well pressed, though at this stage of things that seemed a minor prodigy to Sabrino of itself. But the stranger’s expression and bearing seemed to say the past two years and more had been nothing but a bad dream. Sabrino wished it were so. Unfortunately, he knew better.

“Pleased to make your acquaintance, Colonel,” the younger man said, holding out his arm. As he and Sabrino clasped wrists, he went on, “I have the honor to be called Almonte, sir.”

He wore a major’s rank badges and, prominent on his left breast, a mage’s insigne. “Pleased to make your acquaintance,” Sabrino echoed, though anything but sure he was pleased. “What can I do for you?”

“No, Colonel, it’s what I can do for you.” Almonte was excessively glib; he put Sabrino in mind of a commercial traveler peddling silver spoons that would show the brass beneath inside a month. He had plenty of brass himself; he continued, “How would you like to lick the Unkerlanters all the way back to their own kingdom?”

“If I could lick them back half a mile, I’d be tolerably pleased,” Sabrino answered. In Algarve’s hour of desperation, all sorts of maniacs were getting their chances, for how could they make things worse? “What have you got in mind?”

“Riding with you to smite the enemy from the air with a new, particularly potent sorcery I’ve devised,” Almonte answered.

“Have you tried it before?” Sabrino asked. “If you have, how did it go?”