Out of the Darkness

“Ah,” Sabrino said. Fire spread outward from his belly. He nodded, slowly and deliberately. I’m going to live. I may even decide I want to.

At that, he was better off than a lot of Algarvian footsoldiers. Psinthos was far enough behind the line to be out of range of Unkerlanter egg-tossers. How long that would last with the ground freezing, he couldn’t guess, but it remained true for the time being. And the furs and leather he wore to fly his dragon also helped keep him warm on the ground.

Someone knocked on the door. “Who’s there?” Sabrino called.

The answer came in Algarvian, with a chuckle attached: “Well, it’s not the king, not today.”

King Mezentio had visited Sabrino, more than once. He wished the king hadn’t. They didn’t see eye to eye, and never would. That was the reason Sabrino, who’d started the war as a colonel and wing commander, had never once been promoted. He opened the door and held out the flask. “Hello, Orosio. Here, have some of this. It’ll put hair on your chest.”

“Thanks, sir,” Captain Orosio said. “Don’t mind if I do.” The squadron commander drank while Sabrino shut the door. After drinking, Orosio made a horrible face. “Burn the hair off my chest, more likely. But still, better bad spirits than none at all.” He took another swig.

“What can I do for you?” Sabrino asked.

“Feels like a freeze is coming,” Orosio said as he walked over to stand in front of the fire. He was in his late thirties, almost as old for a captain as Sabrino was for a colonel. Part of that came from serving under Sabrino-a man under a cloud naturally put his subordinates under one, too. And part of it sprang from Orosio’s own background: he’d had barely enough noble blood to make officer’s rank, and not enough to get promoted.

But that didn’t mean he was stupid, and it didn’t mean he was wrong. “I thought the same thing myself, walking back here after we landed,” Sabrino said. “If the ground firms up-and especially if the rivers start freezing over-the Unkerlanters will move.”

“Aye,” Orosio said. The single word hung in the air, a shadow of menace. Orosio turned so that he faced east, back toward Algarve. “We haven’t got a lot of room left to play with, sir, not any more. Before long, Swemmel’s bastards are going to crash right on into our kingdom.”

“Unless we stop them and throw them back,” Sabrino said.

“Aye, sir. Unless.” Those words hung in the air, too. Orosio didn’t believe it.

Sabrino sighed. He didn’t blame his squadron commander. How could he, when he didn’t believe it, either? The Derlavaian War was far and away the greatest fight the world had ever known-big enough to dwarf the Six Years’ War, which the young Sabrino who’d served in the earlier struggle would never have imagined possible at the time-and Algarve, barring a miracle, or several miracles, looked to be on the losing end of it, just as she had before.

King Mezentio promised miracles: miracles of sorcery that would throw back not only the Unkerlanters but also the Kuusamans and Lagoans in the east. So far, Sabrino had seen only promises, not miracles. Mezentio couldn’t even make peace; things being as they were, no one was willing to make peace with him.

What did, what could, a soldier trapped in a losing war do? Sabrino strode over and set a hand on Orosio’s shoulder. “My dear fellow, we have to keep doing the best we can, for our own honor’s sake if nothing else,” he said. “What other choice have we? What else is there?”

Orosio nodded. “Nothing else, sir. I know that. It’s only. . There’s not a lot of honor left to save any more, either, is there?”

After we started massacring Kaunians to gain the sorcerous energy we needed to beat Unkerlant? After we mixed modern sophisticated sorcery and ancient barbarism and still didn ‘t get everything we wanted because Swemmel was willing to be every bit as savage as we were and an extra six inches besides? No wonder no one wants to make peace with us. I wouldn’t if I were our enemies.

But he couldn’t tell Orosio that. He said what he could: “You know my views, Captain. You also know that no one of rank higher than mine pays the least attention to them. Let me have that flask again. If I drink enough, maybe I won’t care.”

He hadn’t even raised it to his lips, though, when someone else knocked on the door. He opened it and discovered a crystallomancer shivering there. The mage said, “Sir, I just got word from the front. Unkerlanter artificers are trying to throw a bridge over the Skamandros River. If they do. .”

“There’ll be big trouble,” Sabrino finished for him. The crystallomancer nodded. Sabrino asked, “Aren’t there any dragons closer and less worn than this poor, miserable wing? We just came in from another mission, you know.”

“Of course, sir,” the crystallomancer said. “But no, sir, there aren’t. You know how thin we’re stretched these days.”

“Don’t I just?” Sabrino turned back to Orosio. “Do you think we can get them into the air again, Captain?”

“I suppose so, sir,” the squadron commander answered. “Powers above help us if the Unkerlanters hit us with fresh beasts while we’re in the air, though-or even the Yaninans.”

“Or even the Yaninans,” Sabrino echoed with a sour smile. Tsavellas’ small kingdom lay between Algarve and Unkerlant. He’d taken Yanina into the Derlavaian War as Algarve’s ally-not that Yaninan soldiers had covered themselves with glory on the austral continent or in Unkerlant. And, when Unkerlanter soldiers poured into Yanina, Tsavellas had switched sides with revoltingly good timing. With another sour smile, Sabrino went on, “As we said, we have to do what we can. Let’s go do it.”

His dragon-handler squawked in dismay when he reappeared. His dragon screamed in brainless fury-the only kind it had-when he took his place once more at the base of its long, scaly neck. More handlers brought a couple of eggs to fasten under its belly. It didn’t claw at them, though Sabrino couldn’t figure out why.

“Keep feeding it,” he told the handler, who tossed the dragon chunks of meat covered with crushed brimstone and cinnabar to make it flame hotter and farther. Algarve was desperately short of cinnabar these days. Sabrino wondered what his kingdom would do when it ran out altogether. What will we do? We’ll do without, that’s what.

Before long, all twenty-one dragonfliers were aboard their mounts. The wing had a paper strength of sixty- four, and hadn’t been anywhere close to it since the opening days of the war against Unkerlant. Stretched too thin, Sabrino thought again. He nodded to the handler, who undid the chain that held the dragon to an iron stake. Sabrino whacked the beast with an iron-tipped goad. With another scream of fury, the dragon sprang into the air, batwings thundering. The rest of the men he led followed, each dragon painted in a different pattern of Algarve’s green, red, and white.

With low clouds overhead, the wing had to stay close to the ground if it wanted to find its target. You can’t let Unkerlanters gain a bridgehead. Sabrino knew that as well as every other Algarvian officer. King Swemmel’s men were too cursed good at bursting out of such abscesses in the front when they judged the time ripe.

Orosio’s image appeared, tiny and perfect, in the crystal Sabrino carried. “There’s the bridge, sir,” he said. “On the bend of the river, a little north of us.”

Sabrino turned his head to the right. “Aye, I see it,” he said, and guided his dragon toward it. “The wing will follow me in the attack. With a little luck, the rain will weaken the beams from the Unkerlanters’ heavy sticks.” They would know the Algarvians had to wreck a bridge if they could, and they would want to stop Mezentio’s men from doing it. That meant blazing dragons from the sky, if they could manage it.

As Sabrino guided his dragon into a dive toward the bridge snaking across the Skamandros, the Unkerlanters on the ground did start blazing at him. He was the lead man: he drew the beams. He could hear raindrops and sleet sizzling into steam as beams burned through them. When one passed close, he smelled a breath’s worth of lightning in the air. Had it struck. . But it missed.

Below him, the bridge swelled with startling speed. He released the eggs under his dragon’s belly, then urged the beast higher into the air once more. He saw the flashes of sorcerous energy and heard the roars as the eggs burst behind him. More flashes and roars said his dragonfliers were striking the bridge, too.

He twisted in his harness, trying to see what had happened. He let out a whoop on spotting what was left of the bridge: three or four eggs had burst right on it. “You bastards will be a while fixing that!” he shouted, and turned his dragon back toward the farm in what passed for triumph these days. Only eighteen dragons landed with his. The bridge had cost the other two, and the men who flew them. It was, unquestionably, a victory. But how