Through the Darkness

Tapping himself on the chest, waving toward his weary men, Sabrino demanded, “And how ill-used do you think we are?” The handlers stared at him. That a dragonflier could be as ill-used as a dragon had never crossed their minds.

One of them asked, “Colonel, uh, lord Count”-Sabrino, as usual, wore his badge of nobility on his tunic-”what went wrong, down there in the land of the Ice People?”

It was a good question. Sabrino pondered it for a moment, then answered, “We did.” The handler started to ask him something more. He pushed past the fellow and strode toward the commandant’s office.

He got no satisfaction there. A captain told him, “I’m very sorry, sir, but General Borso didn’t come in today, due to an unfortunate indisposition.”

In bed with his mistress, or with a hangover? Sabrino wondered. He was almost indiscreet enough to do his wondering out loud. In the end, all he asked was, “Have you any idea why we were summoned home from the austral continent?”

“Me, sir?” The captain shook his head. “No, sir. No one tells me anything like that, sir.”

Sabrino’s scornful glance withered him hardly less than dragonfire might have done. “Well, young fellow, did anyone tell you where to get hold of a carriage for me, so I can get to the nearest ley-line caravan and head for Trapani, where they are in the habit of telling people things?”

Flushing, gnawing at the inside of his lower lip in mortification, the captain spat out one word: “Aye.” But then, noting Sabrino’s towering temper, he hastily added two more: “Aye, sir.”

Neither Sabrino’s wife nor his mistress knew he was in Trapani; he was sure of that. He wondered what the news sheets had said of the Algarvian disaster in the land of the Ice People, and how worried Gismonda and Fronesia were. Then he wondered if Fronesia was worried at all, except about finding a new lover with enough money to keep her in her fancy flat.

But she and his wife could both wait. When the ley-line caravan reached the center of Trapani, Sabrino made for neither his home nor the one he maintained for Fronesia. Instead, he strode into the building near the royal palace that housed the Ministry of War: a building so severely classical in line, it wouldn’t have looked at all out of place in the Kaunian Empire. He wondered if the soldiers serving there ever pondered that irony. Probably not, and too bad, too.

He hadn’t bothered freshening up; his stubbled chin and cheeks and wrinkled, dirty uniform drew startled looks from the spruce young officers hurrying through the halls. But none of them had rank enough to call him on his appearance. Presently, he ducked into an office where a much neater colonel was peering from a map to a long column of figures and back again and swearing under his breath. Sabrino said, “Hello, you old fraud. They haven’t got wise to you and shipped you off to Unkerlant yet, eh? Don’t worry-they will.”

The other colonel sprang to his feet, enfolded him in a muscular embrace, and kissed him on both cheeks. “Why, you son of a whore!” he said affectionately. “I figured they’d left you down there to freeze, or else for dragon food.”

“Dragons’ll eat almost anything, Vasto, but even they draw the line somewhere,” Sabrino answered. He cocked his head to one side. “You look as ugly as ever, curse me if you don’t.”

Vasto bowed low. “I’ll curse you any which way, and you bloody well know it.” He and Sabrino were both grinning enormously. They’d fought side by side in the Six Years’ War, and been fast friends ever since. “Sit down, sit down,” Vasto said. “You see me ashamed-you’ve caught me without a bottle of brandy in my desk, so I can’t give you a nip the way I usually do.”

“I’d probably fall asleep right here if you did,” Sabrino told him. “But if you can give me a couple of straight answers, they’ll go down smoother than brandy anyhow.”

Vasto pointed a forefinger at him as if it were a stick. “Go ahead-blaze,” he said. They’d been giving each other straight answers for almost thirty years, too, and the usual rules of military secrecy had very little to do with what they said.

“All right.” Sabrino took a deep breath. “Why did they pull us off the austral continent instead of sending in more soldiers after our sorcery went awry? The Lagoans haven’t got that many men down there, may the powers below eat them. We could have held them off for a cursed long time.”

For the first time in many years, he saw Vasto reluctant to answer. “I wish you hadn’t asked me that,” the other colonel said slowly. “I’ll tell you, but you swear first on your mother’s name you’ll never let anyone know where you heard it. Anyone, you hear me? Even Mezentio.”

“Powers above!” Sabrino said. Seeing his friend was serious, though, he twisted the fingers of his left hand into a sign Algarvians had used since they skulked through the southern forests, living in fear of imperial Kaunian soldiers and sorcerers. “On my mother’s name I swear it, Vasto.”

“Good enough.” Vasto said, although he still didn’t sound happy. Leaning toward Sabrino across his desk, he spoke in a rasping whisper: “It’s simple, when you get down to it. We’ve got the men to go on fighting the Unkerlanters, or we’ve got the men to send a proper new army down to the land of the Ice People. What we haven’t got are the men to do both those things at once.”

Sabrino had thought he’d escaped the austral continent for good. The chill that ran up his spine at Vasto’s words made him wonder if he was wrong. “Are things as bad as that?” He discovered he was whispering, too.

“They are right now.” But Colonel Vasto held out a hand and waggled it, palm down, to show they might not stay that way. “Once we get past this Sulingen place, once we get down into the Mamming Hills and seize those cinnabar mines, then we’ll have old Swemmel where we want him. Then we can start thinking about the austral continent again. You know as well as I do, it’s not as if the Lagoans can give us much trouble from there.”

“Well, that’s true enough,” Sabrino said. “Nobody can do much with that country; it’s too bloody poor. If it weren’t for furs and cinnabar, the hairy savages could keep it and welcome. But still. . We can’t afford to send any men at all?”

“Not a one,” Vasto answered. “That’s what they’re saying, anyhow. Swemmel’s pulling out all the stops down in Sulingen. He’s no fool-he’s crazy, but he’s no fool. He knows as well as we do that if we get across the Wolter and into the hills, he’s ruined. So we have to give it everything we’ve got down there, too.”

Sabrino spat on the carpeted floor of Vasto’s comfortable office, as he might have out in the field. His disgust was too great for any smaller gesture. Bitterly, he said, “They told us slaughtering the Kaunians would crack the Unkerlanters like an almond shell. They told us we had plenty of men, plenty of dragons, to lick the Lagoans off the land of the Ice People and still whip Swemmel, too. And they believed it, too, every time they said it. And now it comes down to this?”

“Now it comes down to this,” Vasto agreed. “But if we break the Unkerlanters this time, they’re broken for good. You can take that to the bank, Sabrino.”

“Well, you know more about the big picture than I do,” Sabrino said. “I never worried much about anything but my piece of it, whatever that happened to be. So here’s hoping you’re right.”

“Oh, I am.” Vasto spoke in his normal tone of voice for the first time. “Once we take Sulingen and the Mamming Hills, the Unkerlanters won’t be able to lick us. We’ll roll ‘em up the way you do a ball of yarn.”

“All right.” Sabrino held up a forefinger. “Now let me guess. I bet I can see the future without being any kind of mage at all. I predict”-he tried to sound mystical, and had no doubt he ended up sounding absurd-”I predict my wing will be flying west before long.”

Vasto said, “I haven’t seen your orders-I didn’t even know you were back on the mainland of Derlavai. But I wouldn’t bet an olive pit against you. They say southern Unkerlant is lovely this time of year. But they say it gets pretty cold in another couple of months, too.”

“I’ve seen all the cold I want, thanks,” Sabrino said. “We’ll just have to beat the Unkerlanters before then, that’s all.”

Sergeant Pesaro looked over with something less than delight the squad of Algarvian constables he led in Gromheort. “Come on, you lugs-let’s do it,” he said. “The sooner we take care of it, the sooner we can get back to our everyday business.”

Standing there listening to Pesaro, Bembo leaned toward Oraste and murmured, “He doesn’t much like this, either.”

Oraste’s answering shrug showed none of the usual Algarvian playfulness. It was as indifferent as it was massive: a mountain might have shrugged that way. “What difference does it make? He’s going to do it, and so are we.”