He chose the enemy dragon he wanted, then urged his own beast into a dive. The Unkerlanter dragonflier had no notion he was there. Without the slightest twinge of conscience--the Unkerlanter would have exulted at doing it to him--he blazed the fellow in the back.
The Unkerlanter threw out his hands. His stick flew from one of them. He slumped down onto his dragons neck. The beast, no longer under his control, showed its true nature: it struck out wildly at friend and foe alike, then flew off to prey on the frozen countryside below. The war had left it plenty of carrion on which to feed.
Sabrino blazed at another Unkerlanter dragonflier. He missed again, and cursed again. But his dragon was flying faster than the enemy’s mount. Nearer and nearer he drew. This Unkerlanter was a little more wary than the other one had been, but not wary enough. He’d only started to swing his dragon around to face Sabrino when the count ordered his own dragon to flame.
Again, fire burst from the dragon’s jaws. It caught the Unkerlanter beast in the flank and, more important, in the membranous wing. Bellowing horribly, flaming back with fire falling short, the Unkerlanter dragon fell out of the sky toward the ground far below. Sabrino thought he heard the dragonflier’s fading scream.
More Unkerlanter dragons were plummeting to earth or flying off under no man’s control. So were some of his own. He howled his fury at the losses. Algarve couldn’t afford them--and the men were friends as well as comrades.
But, before long, the Unkerlanters had had enough and fled back toward the west, the direction from which they’d come. Sabrino didn’t order a pursuit. He didn’t care to face the fresh squadrons King Swemmel’s men might send up with his own beasts tired. Instead, he waved back toward the east, toward the Algarvians’ own chilly makeshift of a dragon farm.
When they flew over the front, he quietly thanked the powers above that he wasn’t down there fighting on the ground. One reason he’d started flying dragons--and the best one he’d ever found--was that it beat the stuffing out of the footsoldier’s life.
Bembo wished he were back in Tricarico. Walking a constable’s beat in a provincial town in northeastern Algarve hadn’t been the most exciting job in the world, but now he realized he hadn’t appreciated it enough while he had it. Compared to some of the things he had to do here in Gromheort and in the surrounding villages, that beat seemed like paradise.
The plump constable didn’t mind--well, he didn’t mind too much--being plucked out of his comfortable home and sent west to help keep order in one of the kingdoms Algarve had conquered. Somebody had to do it. And besides, serving as a constable in occupied Forthweg, while harder than doing it in his own home town, was in most ways infinitely preferable to being issued a stick and sent off to the front in Unkerlant.
In most ways, but not in all. Along with the rest of a squad of constables from Tricarico, Bembo led several dozen trousered Kaunians through the streets of Gromheort toward the towns ley-line caravan depot. Some of the blonds walked along as if they had not a care in the world. But most had trouble hiding the fear they surely felt. Husbands comforted wives; mothers comforted children. Even as they did so, though, those husbands and mothers were biting their lips and fighting back tears themselves.
A man turned toward Bembo and stretched out his hands. “Why?” he asked in Algarvian; a fair number of people in Gromheort spoke some of the constable s language. “What did we do to deserve this?”
“Keep moving,” was all Bembo said. “Keep moving, or you’ll be sorry.” He was always sorry to draw this duty, but the Kaunian didn’t have to know.
“Aye, you’d better keep moving, you buggers, or you’ll get what for,” Sergeant Pesaro said, also in Algarvian. Pesaro was a good deal plumper than Bembo. Evodio translated the sergeant’s warning into classical Kaunian for the blonds who couldn’t follow Algarvian.
The Kaunians and their guards tramped past a young Forthwegian man in a long tunic coming the other way. Like most Forthwegians, the fellow was blocky and dark, with a big tuber of a nose right in the middle of his face. He would have looked just like his Unkerlanter cousins farther west had he not let his beard grow out. He shouted something in his own language at the Kaunians. Bembo didn’t understand a word of it, but the way the Forthwegian drew a thumb across his throat could mean only one thing. So could his coarse laughter.
Oraste laughed, too. “The Forthwegians are happy as clams that we’re cleaning the Kaunians out of their kingdom for them,” he said, and spat on the cobblestones. “It’s good riddance, as far as I’m concerned.”
“Powers above know I don’t especially love Kaunians, but...” Bembo’s voice trailed away. He watched a pretty young mother--if he was going to watch Kaunians, he preferred to watch their women--keeping a boy of about six walking along. The child seemed happy enough. The mother’s face was set tight against a scream. Bembo ground his teeth. No, parts of this duty weren’t what he would have wanted.
