Lagoan dragons over the Strait of Valmiera; their fliers knew what they were doing. And the Lagoans, unlike the Unkerlanters, used crystals as freely as did his own kingdom. Those behemoths would let the rest of the Lagoan army know the dragons were coming.
And they did. The Lagoans might not have brought along many dragons, but they had lots of behemoths. Some of those beasts carried egg-tossers, but the ones with heavy sticks all started blazing at the wing of Algarvian dragons.
Captain Domiziano’s face appeared in Sabrino’s crystal. “Sir, shall we dive on them?” the squadron commander asked. By his tone, he would have liked nothing better.
But Sabrino shook his head. “No--it would hurt us too much. We can’t afford to throw ourselves away--no telling if any more dragons will be able to come here if we do, and dragons can’t stop a whole army on the march by themselves anyhow.”
“The Yaninans won’t be able to stop them, either,” Domiziano predicted. “Are we going to have to send soldiers here, too?”
“I don’t know. Do I look like King Mezentio? You’d better not say aye, by the powers above.” Sabrino added the warning before Domiziano could say anything at all. “What I do know is, we’re not going to give the Lagoans anything easy.”
Eggs rained down on King Vitor’s men at a height beyond that at which the foe’s heavy sticks could harm the dragons. The only trouble was, it was also a height beyond that at which the dragonfliers could aim accurately. Here and there, a bursting egg flung Lagoans in all directions. More often than not, though, the eggs only cratered the ground.
After a while, there were no more eggs left to drop. “Back to the dragon farm, boys,” Sabrino ordered. “We’ll load up again and then hit these miserable whoresons another good lick.”
The rest of the dragonfliers obeyed his command. As he spiraled down to a landing outside of Heshbon, the mosquitoes and flies and gnats he’d escaped in the upper air began to plague him once more. He cursed and slapped, neither of which did much good. Colonel Broumidis’ few dragons were landing alongside their Algarvian allies. They’d done well enough, or so Sabrino supposed. He cursed them anyhow for not stopping the Lagoans by themselves. If they’d managed that, he wouldn’t have had to come to the austral continent and get nibbled to death by gnats.
Now that the land of the Ice People was no longer frozen hard as stone, Fernao could dig a hole for himself when eggs began dropping all around him. He got filthy when he dove into the muddy hole, but he vastly preferred getting filthy to getting killed.
Overhead, the Algarvian dragons wheeled unchallenged. They stayed high above the Lagoan army, not daring to swoop down and flame soldiers or behemoths. Fernao supposed that represented a moral victory of sorts. Moral victories, though, went only so far when measured against the real article. The Algarvians could hurt his comrades--and him, though he tried not to think about that-- while the men on the ground could do little to the dragons as long as they stayed high.
As if to underscore that, a Lagoan soldier not far away started shrieking. With a curse--he wasn’t thrilled about exposing himself to danger--Fernao scrambled out of the hold where he sheltered and hurried to the wounded man’s side. The soldier writhed, clutching at his belly. Blood rivered out from between his fingers. Either a fragment of egg shell or a sharp stone propelled by a nearby blast of sorcerous energy had laid him open as neatly as a butcher might have done.
Even as Fernao readied the spell that would slow the man down and give the physicians a chance to work on him, the fellow groaned one last time. He shuddered and went limp; his eyes rolled up in his head. When Fernao felt for his pulse, he found none. That might have been a mercy. The soldier would have known nothing but torment after coming out from under the shadow of the magic; and fever, against which even mages had little power, might well have carried him off anyhow. Fernao jumped back into his hole again.
The Algarvian dragons seemed to stay in the air over the army forever. Part of that feeling came from being under attack; Fernao knew as much. And part sprang from the nature of daylight on the austral continent. When he’d first come, in winter, the sun had hardly peeked above the horizon. Not so very much farther south, it would never have risen at all. Now that spring had come, though, days grew longer with astonishing speed. Before long, the sun would spend almost all day in the sky. On the far side of the Barrier Mountains, it would never set.
At last, no doubt because they were out of eggs, the Algarvian dragons flew off toward Heshbon. Fernao shook his head to get rid of the echoing roar of bursting eggs. Mosquitoes buzzed malignantly; he could still hear those. When he inhaled, a tickling in his nose warned him he’d breathed in a couple of midges. He exhaled sharply, and got ride of them before he started to choke.
All over the field, Lagoans were emerging from the holes they’d dug for themselves. Like Fernao, his countrymen were worn and muddy. A lot of them had a look in their eyes that he didn’t like: the look of men who’d had to take a beating without being able to hit back. A few officers were calling for them to push on toward the west, but Fernao could see at a glance that the soldiers were in no shape to advance.
Someone waved to him: Affonso. “You’re
