Darkness Descending

And Algarvian dragons dove out of the sky, dropping eggs ahead of the behemoths and spreading more chaos among the Unkerlanters. Wimar turned to Rathar. “Sir, if we don’t fall back, they’re going to trample us.”

One of the things of which coming into the field reminded Rathar was how fast everything could turn upside down. “You have my leave, Sergeant,” he said. “And if you think I’m ashamed to retreat with you, you’re daft.”

He scrambled back from one hole in the snow to another. Several times, spurts of steam rose from the snow not far away: the Algarvians were blazing at him. He blazed back whenever he got the chance. He thought he knocked down a redhead or two, but he wasn’t the only Unkerlanter with a stick.

Just when he was wondering whether the powers below were going to eat this whole stretch of line, Unkerlanter dragons came flying up in force. They drove away the Algarvian dragons and began to drop eggs on the enemy’s behemoths. Where nothing else had, that made the big beasts slow down and let the Unkerlanters bring up enough men to stop Mezentio’s soldiers.

“Well, we only lost a couple of miles here,” Wimar said as twilight deepened. “Could have been worse, but it could have been better, too, if our dragons had got here sooner.”

“Aye,” Rathar agreed mournfully. Over and over, he’d seen how much more flexible and responsive than his own forces the Algarvians were. “We need more crystals. We need more of everything. And we need it all yesterday, too.” He’d been saying that since the beginning of the war against Algarve. He wondered how long he’d have to keep saying it, and how much finding out would cost.

“Come on,” Ealstan urged Vanai. “If you wear a hooded tunic instead of your Kaunian clothes, no one at the performance will pay you any mind.”

“I don’t want to wear Forthwegian clothes,” she said, and he could tell she was getting angry. “They’re fine for you, but I’m not a Forthwegian.” She stuck out her chin and looked stubborn.

I’m not a barbarian, lingered under the surface of the words. Ealstan felt irritated, too. There were, he was discovering, all sorts of reasons why matches between Forthwegians and Kaunians had trouble. But he was stubborn, too, and he had some notion why her thoughts traveled the ley line they did. Switching from his own language to Kaunian, he said, “I am certain your grandfather would agree with you.”

“That’s not fair,” Vanai snapped, also speaking Kaunian. But then she paused, as if trying to figure out how to put into words why it wasn’t fair.

Sensing his advantage, Ealstan pressed ahead: “Besides, you will enjoy yourself. My brother would hold his breath till he turned blue to get into one of Ethelhelm’s performances, and this one will not even cost us anything.”

Vanai’s shrug told him he not only hadn’t gained any ground, he’d lost some. “Forthwegian music isn’t really to my taste,” she answered. He thought she was trying to sound polite, but condescending came closer.

“He’s very good, and he’s sharp, too,” Ealstan said, returning to Forthwegian. “He’d been casting his own accounts for a while till he hired me, and he could have kept on doing it, too--he has the skill. He just couldn’t find enough hours in the day.”

“I’d be about as interested in watching him do that as I would in listening to his band play music,” Vanai said.

Ealstan really did want her to come along. He had one card left to play. He’d hoped he wouldn’t have to play it, but he did: “Did you know Ethelhelm is supposed to have a Kaunian grandmother?”

He’d done some fishing in the Mereflod, the river that ran past Gromheort, and he could tell when he got a nibble. He had one now. “No,” Vanai answered. “Does he really?”

“Aye, I think he does,” Ealstan said with a solemn nod. “You can’t tell it by his coloring, but he’s put together more the way a Kaunian would be: he’s a little taller, a little skinnier, than most Forthwegians.”

He watched Vanai. She was intrigued, all right. “Do you think I could get out every once in a while if I wore Forthwegian clothes?”

‘“Every once in a while’ is probably about right,” Ealstan answered, “but people will be paying more attention to the music at Ethelhelm’s performance than to anything else. I can get you a tunic, if you like.” He didn’t have to worry about precise size; Forthwegian women’s tunics were always cut on the baggy side. That was one reason Forthwegian men leered at Kaunian women in their close-fitting trousers.

“All right, then,” Vanai said abruptly. “I’ll go. I’m so sick of staring at these walls. And”--her eyes twinkled--”my grandfather would fall over dead if he ever heard I’d got out of my