tear up that column,” Sabrino told them.
“Aye, Colonel!” Captain Domiziano exclaimed.
“Aye, Colonel,” Captain Orosio agreed. “Let’s hurt the whoresons.” He was perhaps five years older than Domiziano in the flesh, thirty years older in the spirit.
Sabrino spoke to the newest squadron leader, Captain Olindro: “Your men and dragons will fly top cover for us. If the Unkerlanters come against us, you’ll hold them off till we can get some height and join you.”
As Domiziano and Orosio had before him, Olindro said, “Aye, Colonel.” If he thought about his predecessor’s fate, he didn’t let on. A good soldier couldn’t let his fears and worries show, though Sabrino had never known a fighting man without them.
“Let’s go!” he shouted, and whacked his dragon again, this time in the command to dive. For once, the dragon obeyed with alacrity. Even its tiny brain had come to associate diving with fighting, and it liked fighting better than feeding, perhaps even better than mating. Domiziano and Orosio’s squadrons followed Sabrino down. The icy wind thrummed in his face. Had he not worn goggles, it would have blinded him.
Behemoths and egg-tossers swelled from specks to toys to real things in what seemed no time at all. Sabrino led the dragons against the column from the rear, hoping to put off for as long as he could the moment when the Unkerlanters realized they were under attack.
He always used that tactic. Sometimes, as today, it worked very well indeed. Secure in their possession of Lehesten, secure also in their possession of the initiative, the enemy soldiers paid the air no attention till Sabrino ordered his dragon to flame.
A sheet of fire, fueled by brimstone and quicksilver, burst from the dragon’s mouth. It engulfed a behemoth, the men riding on the beast, and the egg-tosser perhaps ten feet in front of it. The behemoth never made a sound. It might have been inhaling when the fire rolled over it. It simply toppled, dead before its flank hit the snow.
A couple of men in white smocks trudging along beside the egg-tosser did shriek as flames devoured them. The egg-tosser’s carriage, being made of more wood than metal, caught and began to burn. So did the casings of some of the eggs on the carriage. Mages made them to stand up to a good many things, but not to dragonfire. Bursts of sorcerous energy from the unleashed eggs finished the work of wrecking the tosser the flame had begun.
The rest of the dragons in the two squadrons Sabrino had ordered into action flamed the column with him. Only a handful of men and a couple of behemoths escaped their first onslaught.
No one had ever said the Unkerlanters lacked courage--or, if anyone had said it, he’d been a fool. The survivors of the Algarvian attack promptly started blazing at the men and dragons who’d tormented them so. Only luck would let a footsoldier bring down a dragon: the beasts’ bellies were painted silver to reflect beams, and even a blaze through the eye might not pierce their small, bone-armored brains.
Dragonfliers were more vulnerable. A beam hissed past Sabrino. He used the goad to hit the dragon in the throat, urging it to climb. It didn’t like that; it wanted to go back and use more flame. In the end, bad-tempered as usual, it obeyed him.
He was willing to go round and make another pass at the Unkerlanters. But before he could give the order, Olindro’s tiny image appeared in his crystal. “Dragons!” the squadron leader said, face twisting in alarm. “Unkerlanter dragons--lots of them!”
Sabrino looked up. Sure enough, Olindro’s squadron was under assault from perhaps twice its number of dragons, all painted the rock-gray of Unkerlanter military tunics.
His dragon saw the enemies, too. It didn’t much care for the beasts on its own side, but had--slowly--learned not to quarrel with them. Screaming with fury, it flew hard toward the dragons the Unkerlanters rode. The great muscles that powered its wings pumped hard.
As Sabrino drew near, he unslung his stick and aimed it at an Unkerlanter flier. His forefinger went into the activating hole at the base of the stick. A beam blazed forth from the other end. It missed the Unkerlanter. Good blazing was hard from dragonback, with both target and blazer moving so swiftly.
Cursing even so, Sabrino forced his dragon up through and past the enemies attacking his men and beasts. Most of the two squadrons he led followed his example. They were, almost to a man, veteran dragonfliers; they knew what needed doing. Dragonfights were war in three dimensions. Height mattered.
By the way the Unkerlanters flew, a lot of them were new aboard their bad-tempered mounts. They didn’t try to keep Sabrino’s men from gaining altitude; they were intent on destroying Olindro’s squadron. Under that waxed mustache--which was icing up again--Sabrino’s lips skinned back from his teeth in a savage grin. Inexperience could and, he vowed, would be an expensive business.
