Sabrino’s stomach lurched again. “Has it truly come to that?”
“It has.” King Mezentio’s voice brooked no argument. “If we delay, we risk not taking Cottbus. And if we fail to take Cottbus, the war grows longer and harder than we ever thought it would be when we embarked on it. Is that true, or is it not?”
“Aye, your Majesty, it is,” Sabrino answered, grimacing, “but--”
Mezentio made a sharp chopping gesture with his right hand. “But me no buts, my lord Count. I did not come to this miserable, cursed place to argue with you, and nothing you can say will change my mind. The mages are here, the soldiers are here, the stinking Kaunians are here, and I am here. I came here to see it done. We shall go forward, and we shall go forward to victory. Is that plain, sirrah?”
Sabrino’s squadron commanders were staring with wide eyes, as if wondering how he presumed to argue with his sovereign. With King Mezentio glaring at him, he also wondered how he presumed. “Aye, your Majesty,” he said. But then, being the descendant of a long line of freeborn Algarvian warriors, he added, “It had better do all we--you--hope it will, or we’d be better off never having tried it.”
“You leave such worries to the mages and me,” Mezentio growled. “Your duty to the kingdom is to fly your dragons, and I know you do it well. My duty to the kingdom is to win the war, and I aim to do exactly that. Need I make myself any plainer?”
“No, your Majesty,” Sabrino said. He took another swig from his glass of spirits--he needed fortifying. As the spirits mounted to his head, he reflected that he’d done everything he could; more, probably, than he should have. King Mezentio had overruled him. He inclined his head, “I shall obey.”
“Of course you shall.” For a moment, Mezentio sounded very much the way King Swemmel was supposed to sound. But then he softened his words: “After we parade through Cottbus in triumph, I am going to say, ‘I told you so.’ “ He grinned engagingly at Sabrino.
“I’ll be glad to hear it then,” Sabrino said, and grinned back.
Mezentio did his best to set his battered umbrella to rights. “And now I have to go find the tent they’ve got waiting for me--somewhere. Always a pleasure to see you, my lord Count, even if not always to argue with you.” He nodded to Sabrino’s squadron commanders. “Gentlemen.” Without waiting for a reply, he went out into the wet, wet night.
“You don’t live dangerously, sir,” Captain Domiziano said to Sabrino. “Not half you don’t.”
“It’s war, sir,” Orosio added. “Anything we can do to kick the lousy Unkerlanters’ teeth down their throats, we’d better do it.”
“I suppose you’re right,” Sabrino said. “I have no choice but to suppose you’re right. His Majesty made that clear enough, didn’t he?” Discovering he could still laugh at himself came as something of a relief. All the same, he drank himself to sleep.
King Mezentio did not visit the dragon farm again. Sabrino told himself that was because his sovereign had come to Unkerlant for other reasons, which was no doubt true. But he knew he hadn’t endeared himself to Mezentio. Men seldom found favor by questioning kings.
Whether or not Mezentio was there to watch it, Sabrino’s wing kept on fighting the Unkerlanters. In that miserable weather, they did less than they might have earlier in the year, but the Unkerlanter dragons were similarly hampered. Sabrino began using the victory camp full of Kaunians as a landmark. It was far larger and easier to spy from the air than his own dragon farm.
And then, about the time he began wondering if decent weather were gone for good, the sun returned to the sky. Days remained chilly, but the ground began to dry. Behemoths were once more able to move at something more than a squashy, heavy-footed walk. The Algarvians wasted no time in going over to the attack.
But the Unkerlanters wasted no time counterattacking. They had been gathering men and beasts and dragons against the day of need, and threw them into the fight without seeming to worry about how many came out again, if only they stopped their foes. They didn’t quite stop the Algarvians, but slowed their advance from gallop to crawl.
Sabrino and his wing spent as much time over the front as their dragons could stand to stay in the air. They attacked Unkerlanter soldiers and behemoths on the ground and fought hard to keep the Unkerlanter dragons from savaging their own countrymen.
One fine, bright, almost springlike morning, the dragonfliers were over the Unkerlanter lines when the world changed below them. The earth shook, a roar Sabrino could hear even high in the air. Trenches and holes closed on the Unkerlanter soldiers in them. Flames burst from the ground, consuming men and behemoths, unicorns and horses. Not all perished, but the greater part did, up and down the front as far as Sabrino could see. He shouted into his crystal: “Now we slaughter the ones who are
