answered before she thought. That would kill the unicorn riders’ interest in her, and she didn’t want it killed.
But it was. Both redheads grimaced. The one who’d spoken gave her a formal salute, as if she rather than Lurcanio were his superior officer. “Meaning no offense,” he said, and spurred his unicorn toward the mansion. The other cavalryman followed close behind.
Krasta stooped and scooped up a snowball and threw it after them. It fell short. They had no idea she’d flung it. The snow stung her hands. She rubbed them on the fur of her jacket, opening and closing them to get the blood flowing and make them less icy.
The two Algarvians tied their unicorns in front of the mansion and went inside.
“And I’ve come out of the war better than most,” Krasta murmured. “Powers above!” She looked over toward the Kaunian Column of Victory once more. The triumphs it celebrated were vanished now. The emperor who’d won them was only a name in history books, history books she hadn’t read. Pretty soon, the Algarvians would write the history books, and then no one would ever hear his name again.
She headed back toward the mansion. Even after she went inside, she was a long time feeling warm.
Ice was forming in Count Sabrino’s waxed mustachios. Snow lay on the plains of Unkerlant far below. The Algarvian colonel’s dragon had carried him into air colder still.
He reached up with his right hand to knock the ice away. He used the goad in his left to whack the side of the dragon’s long neck, swinging its course more nearly southwest. The dragon let out an immense, furious hiss. Stupid like all its kind, it wanted to do what it wanted to do, not to follow its dragonflier’s commands.
Sabrino whacked it again, harder this time. “Obey, curse you!” he shouted, though the freezing wind blew his words away. The dragon didn’t hiss this time; it screamed. He wondered if it would twist its head back and try to flame him off it. That was a dragon’s ultimate sin. He waited, ready to whack it on the sensitive end of its nose if it so forgot its training.
But, screaming again, it took the course he wanted. He looked back over his shoulder to make sure the wing he commanded was following. Sure enough, thirty-seven dragons painted in stripes of green, white, and red--the Algarvian colors--matched his change of course. His mouth twisted; like any man of his kingdom, he showed what he thought. His wing should have numbered sixty-four. But fighting had been desperately heavy these past few weeks--men and dragons were dying faster than replacements could reach the front.
A burning peasant village sent smoke high into the air, almost as high as Sabrino flew. He eyed the column of smoke in mild surprise; he’d thought most of the Unkerlanter villages hereabouts had gone up in flames during the Algarvian advance on Cottbus. Now, down there on the ground, the Unkerlanters, at home in winter, were the ones moving forward.
No sooner had that thought crossed Sabrino’s mind than he spied a group of Unkerlanter behemoths tramping east. They skirted the village, which might still have Algarvian defenders holed up in it. Over the drifts came the great beasts--literally. Some bright Unkerlanter had had the idea of fitting them with outsized snowshoes. Those let them cope with deep snow far better than Algarvian behemoths could. Sabrino grimaced--what an embarrassment, to be outthought by Unkerlanters!
When it came to cold-weather fighting, King Swemmel’s men had out-thought the Algarvians several different ways. Sabrino was nearly sure Unkerlanter footsoldiers accompanied those behemoths. He couldn’t see them, though, not from this height. The Unkerlanters wore white smocks over the rest of their clothes, and were nearly invisible in the snow. That sort of need hadn’t occurred to Sabrino’s countrymen. With thick wool tunics and stockings, with heavy felt boots, with fur hats and fur-lined capes, the Unkerlanters had an easier time staying warm than the Algarvians, too.
The dragons flew over another village, this one wrecked in the earlier fighting. Lumps in the snow around it might have been dead behemoths. Sabrino flew too high to spot snow-covered human corpses. In any case, they were too common to attract much notice.
There ahead lay the shattered town of Lehesten, north and slightly east of Cottbus. Algarvian troops had briefly held it, just as they’d fought their way into Thalfang south of the Unkerlanter capital. Sabrino had heard they’d spied the spires of King Swemmel’s palace from Thalfang. He didn’t know whether that was true. If it was, they hadn’t seen them for long. Fierce Unkerlanter counterattacks had shoved the Algarvians out of Thalfang, and out of Lehesten, too.
Now the Unkerlanters were pouring footsoldiers and behemoths and even horse and unicorn cavalry through Lehesten, using the town as a marshaling point for their counterattack. Sabrino whooped to spot a column of behemoths hauling heavy egg-tossers toward the fighting front. Even with snowshoes on the behemoths’ feet, even with skids under the egg-tossers, that column wasn’t going anywhere fast.
Activating the crystal attached to his harness took only a muttered word of command. The faces of his three surviving squadron leaders, tiny but perfect, appeared in the crystal. “We are going to
