A handler trotted up and released the chain that held the dragon to its stake. The beast shrieked at him, too, even though he fed it. Looking around, Sabrino saw most of the flight free. He whacked his dragon with the goad, once to the left, once to the right. For a wonder, the dragon remembered what the signal meant. Its great batwings thundered as it beat them again and again until it hurtled itself into the sky.
Sabrino’s wing numbered thirty-one. Back in Trapani, the generals who’d never been to the fighting front no doubt assumed he led sixty-four men and beasts. He did on paper, after all. And, when the generals back in Trapani gave him orders, they assumed paper and reality matched, and told him to do things he would have had trouble doing even with a full complement of men and dragons. He wished wars were fought on paper. They would have been a lot easier.
This war was being fought on the pocked, battered, snow-streaked plains of southern Unkerlant. Swemmel’s men had a ring around Sulingen, and the Algarvians were trying to scrape together enough men to break through the ring and either get reinforcements to the army pinned down there or, that failing, to get the soldiers out before the noose tightened unbearably.
Looking down, Sabrino saw scattered units of footsoldiers and behemoths who flew banners of red and green and white to keep Algarvian dragonfliers from flaming them and dropping eggs on them by mistake. Where they were going to magic up enough soldiers for an attack, especially in this weather, was beyond him. They’d have to come from somewhere, though. He couldn’t imagine Sulingen left to wither on the vine.
On flew the dragons. The sun came out from behind a cloud, spreading a cold, clear light over the countryside. Clad all in white, the Unkerlanters and their behemoths were hard to see from any height. They couldn’t do anything about the long shadows they cast, though. Sabrino spotted a column of behemoths moving north and west from the Presseck River, as intent on widening the ring around Sulingen as the Algarvians were on breaking it.
He pulled out his crystal and spoke to his squadron commanders: “See ‘em down there, boys? Let’s cook up some of those ambling roasts in their own pans.”
“Aye, Colonel.” Captain Domiziano still sounded boyish. A bold swoop down on the foe was just his meat.
But the Unkerlanters had seen the Algarvian dragons, too. Sabrino bore a healthy respect for the heavy sticks Unkerlanter behemoths carried. One of them could blaze a dragon out of the sky-if the crew aboard the behemoth could bring it to bear. Down on the ground, the crews of those behemoths were going to try.
“Dive!” Sabrino shouted. He thwacked the dragon with the goad.
The dragon folded its wings and plummeted. The order to dive was one it obeyed with a better temper than most others, because even its feeble brain had learned that the order to flame would soon follow. If the dragon enjoyed doing anything, it enjoyed killing.
Wind whipped past Sabrino’s face. Without his goggles, it would have blinded him. He steered the dragon toward a behemoth with a heavy stick. The Unkerlanters riding that behemoth frantically slewed the stick toward him. If they got it pointed in the right direction before he came close enough to flame … In that case, his mistress would have to find someone else to keep her in her fancy flat, and his wife might be unhappy, too. On the other hand, she might not.
“Now!” he shouted as he thwacked the dragon again. It roared out a great gout of fire-not quite such a long gout as Sabrino would have liked, for cinnabar was in short supply. But the flame proved long enough. It washed over the behemoth, and its crew, and the stick. As Sabrino flew past overhead, he heard the drying groans and shrieks of the beast and the men who had ridden it.
He hit the dragon with the goad again, urging it to gain height for another pass against the Unkerlanters. His dragonfliers, veterans all, had had the same idea he had: they’d gone for the behemoths mounting heavy sticks, because those were the ones that were dangerous to them. And now, as best he could see, all those behemoths lay on the cold ground, either dead already or thrashing in mortal agony.
A dragon lay on the cold ground thrashing in mortal agony, too. Sabrino cursed: one behemoth crew had been a heartbeat faster than the first dragon that assailed them. He wondered who’d gone down. Whoever it was, the wing couldn’t afford the loss. One of the things Sabrino, like most Algarvians, hadn’t fully realized was how vast Unkerlant really was, how many men and dragons and behemoths and horses and unicorns King Swemmel could summon to war. Any losses against such numbers hurt.
“Second round,” he told his squadron commanders. “We’ve got rid of the ones who could really hurt us-now we deal with the rest.”
Behemoths carrying egg-tossers were deadly dangerous to footsoldiers, but not to dragonfliers. Hitting a dragon with an egg was possible, but anything but likely. And the behemoth crews’ personal sticks weren’t strong enough to blaze down dragons unless they caught one in the eye. Of course, if they blazed a dragonflier instead, his dragon turned back into a wild animal on the instant.
The Unkerlanters knew all that as well as he did. The column broke up, behemoths lumbering off in every direction. The more scattered the target they presented, the harder time the dragon would have hunting them down.
As Sabrino’s mount flew over the road where his wing had first assailed the column, a stink of burnt flesh filled his nostrils for a breath. Sure as sure, they’d roasted the behemoths in their own pans. They’d roasted some Unkerlanters in their own armor, too; charred man’s-flesh was part of the stench.
During the winter before, Algarvian footsoldiers had eaten slain behemoths, eaten them and been glad to have them. Sabrino’s dragon, and others in the wing, had fed on such flesh, too. As a dragonflier, he hadn’t had to eat of it himself. Rank and prestigious service had their privileges.
Choosing an Unkerlanter behemoth, he urged his dragon along after it. The behemoth was running as hard as it could, snow and dirt flying up from its feet at every bound. Compared to the speed a dragon made, it might as well have been standing still. Sabrino drew close enough to see that the Unkerlanters even covered the beast’s tail in a sleeve of rusty chainmail. That might have warded it against a footsoldier’s stick, but not against dragonfire.
Again, the tongue of fire his mount loosed wasn’t long enough to suit Sabrino. But he’d deliberately waited till he was almost on top of the behemoth before freeing the dragon to flame. That meant he had to lie low along the beast’s neck to present as small a target as he could to the Unkerlanters. He’d done that before; he did it again now.
After a couple of stumbling steps, the behemoth went down. Sabrino looked around for another one to pursue, and hoped his dragon had enough flame left to do what needed doing. He’d just spotted a beast he thought he could reach when Captain Domiziano’s visage appeared in his crystal. “Unkerlanters dragons,” the squadron commander said. “They’re coming up out of the south, and closing fast.”
Sabrino’s head whipped around. Domiziano was right. King Swemmel’s dragonfliers were getting closer in a hurry. Sabrino cursed again-they were already closer than they should have been. The rock-gray paint the Unkerlanters slapped on them made them demonically hard to spot.
Still cursing, Sabrino said, “We’ll have to pull up and deal with them. Then, if we can, we’ll get back to the behemoths.”
Once he’d given the order, his men knew what to do. They were better trained than the Unkerlanters opposing them, and they flew better-trained dragons, too. But Swemmel kept throwing fresh dragonfliers and fresh men into the fight, and Algarve didn’t have so many of either.
For a couple of minutes, the skies above the plains of southern Unkerlant were a mad melee. The Unkerlanter dragons might not have been well-trained, but they were well-rested. And the flames that spurted from their jaws proved their meat had been dusted with plenty of brimstone and quicksilver. Two Algarvian dragons plummeted to the ground in quick succession.
Then Sabrino’s wing, though outnumbered, rallied. Two of their dragons would attack one Unkerlanter. Wh
en the Algarvians were attacked, they came to one another’s aid quickly and without any fuss. Sabrino blazed an Unkerlanter flier, whose dragon promptly attacked the rock-gray beast closest to it.
By the time the Unkerlanters had lost half a dozen dragonfliers, they decided they’d had enough. Off they flew, back the way they’d come. “A good day’s work,” Domiziano said in the crystal. “We made ‘em pay.”
“Aye.” But Sabrino’s agreement felt hollow. His wing had smashed up the column of Unkerlanter behemoths, and they’d given better than they got in the air. At the level Domiziano was talking about, that did make a good day’s work. But did it bring the Algarvians much closer to being able to break through to Sulingen? Not that Sabrino could see. To him, that was the level that mattered. At that level, the wing had hardly done anything at all.
Rain pattered down on Hajjaj’s roof. And, as it had a way of doing almost every winter, rain pattered down through Hajjaj’s roof. The Zuwayzi foreign minister stood with hands on hips, watching the leaks plop into pots and pans servants had set out. Turning to his majordomo, he said, “Refresh my memory. Did we or did we not have the roofers out here last year?”
“Aye, young fellow, we did,” Tewfik answered in his usual gravelly tones.
“And what sort of lying excuse will they give when we ask them why we have to call them out again?” Hajjaj waved his hands above his head, a perfect transport of temper for him. “They’ll say the roof never leaks as long as it doesn’t rain, that’s what they’ll tell us!”
“More likely, they’ll just say they didn’t fix this particular stretch.” Tewfik raised one white, shaggy eyebrow. “That’s what they always say.”
“Powers below eat them and their lying excuses both,” Hajjaj snapped.
“We need the rain,” the majordomo said. “Getting so much of it at once is a bloody nuisance, though.”
By the standards of more southerly lands, what the hills outside Bishah got wasn’t much in the way of rain. Hajjaj knew that. In his university days in Trapani, he’d found a land so moist, he’d thought he would grow mold. Buildings in other kingdoms were made really watertight, because they had to be. In Zuwayza, heat was the main foe, with rain treated as an inconvenient afterthought-when builders bothered to think of it at all, which they didn’t always.
“When the roofers do get here-if they ever choose to come-I aim to give them a piece of my mind,” Hajjaj said, his tone suggesting he wasn’t so far removed from his desert-warrior ancestors after all.
Before he could go into bloodthirsty detail, one of his servants came up, bowed low before him, and said, “Your Excellency, the image of your secretary has appeared in the crystal. He would speak with you.”
Qutuz lived down in Bishah, and could not use the rain as an excuse for staying away from the foreign ministry. He also knew better than to disturb Hajjaj at home unless something important had come up. With a sigh, Hajjaj went from bloodthirsty nomad to suave diplomat. “Thank you, Mehdawi. Of course I will speak with him.”
“Good day, your Excellency,” Qutuz said when Hajjaj sat down in front of the crystal. “How is your roof? The one over my head here at the palace leaks.”
“So does mine,” the foreign minister replied. “I trust that is not the reason for this conversation?”
“Oh, no.” Qutuz shook his head. “But Iskakis’ secretary has just paid a call on me, asking if you could possibly meet the Yaninan minister here this afternoon, a little before the hour for tea. He is waiting in the outer office-which also leaks-to take your reply back to his principal.”
“Well, well. Isn’t that interesting? I wonder what he might want to say to me.” Hajjaj rubbed his chin. “Aye, I’ll see him. I’d better find out what’s in his mind.” I’d better find out if anything is in his mind. His opinion of the Yaninan was not high.
Tewfik made the predictable complaints when Hajjaj proposed going out in the rain. Having got them out of his system, the majordomo made sure the carriage was ready. In truth, the journey down to the city on a road muddy rather than its usual dusty self was slow and unpleasant, but Hajjaj endured it.
Roofers were banging overhead when he reached the foreign ministry. As always, the palace could call on their services with some hope of actually getting them. No one else could. “Miserable day, isn’t it?” Qutuz said.
“It is, and seeing Iskakis does nothing to improve it,” Hajjaj answered. “Still and all, if I have to wear clothes, I’d sooner do it in winter than in summer.”
“Have you got a Yaninan outfit in the closet, your Excellency?” Qutuz asked.
“No, I’ll dress in Algarvian clothes,” Hajjaj said. “That will show Iskakis I do remember we have the same allies.” And, right this minute, I expect we both find the Algarvians equally unpalatable.
He put on the tunic and kilt-their cut was years out of fashion, which worried him not at all-and waited. He had a considerable wait; despite having set the hour for the meeting, Iskakis was late. When the Yaninan minister finally did arrive, Hajjaj exacted a measure of revenge by stretching out the Zuwayzi ritual of wine and tea and cakes as long as he could.
As he sipped and nibbled, he watched the Yaninan fume. Iskakis was in his fifties, short and bald and swarthy for a light-skinned man, with a big gray mustache and big gray tufts of hair sticking out of his ears. In Algarvian, the only tongue they shared, Hajjaj said, “I trust the lovely lady your wife is well?”
That was a commonplace of the small talk which had to accompany wine and tea and cakes. It was also a barb. Iskakis’ wife was lovely, and couldn’t have been more than half his age. Maybe she didn’t know the minister preferred pretty boys, but everyone else in Bishah did. “She is very well,” Iskakis said grudgingly. He shifted on the mound of pillows he’d built for himself. The pompoms that decorated his shoes wobbled back and forth. Hajjaj watched them in fascination. He never had been able to figure out why the Yaninans found them decorative.
At last, any further delay would have been openly rude. Qutuz carried off the silver tray on which he’d brought in the refreshments. Suppressing a sigh, Hajjaj got down to business: “And how may I serve you, your Excellency?”
Iskakis leaned forward. His dark eyes bored into Hajjaj’s. “I want to know your view of the course of the war,” he said, his tone suggesting he would tear that view from Hajjaj if the foreign minister didn’t give it to him. Kaunians and Algarvians who shared his tastes would more likely than not have seemed effeminate. Instead, he affected an exaggerated masculinity. That was familiar to Hajjaj, for most Zuwayzi men who preferred their own sex did the same.
“My view?” Hajjaj said. “My view is as it has always been: that the war is a great tragedy, and I wish it had never begun. As for how it will turn out, I can only hope for the best.”
“The best being an Algarvian triumph,” Iskakis said, again sounding as if he might spring on Hajjaj if the Zuwayzi presumed to disagree.
“Algarve is a better neighbor for us than is Unkerlant, not least because Algarve is a more distant neighbor,” Hajjaj said.
“Not for us,” Iskakis said bitterly, and Hajjaj had to nod. Yanina lay sandwiched between Algarve and Unkerlant, an unenviable position if ever there was one. With a scowl, Iskakis went on, “Things are not so good down in the southwest.”
“I have heard this, aye.” Hajjaj had heard it from his own generals, from boasts by the Unkerlanters in the broadsheets they sometimes rained down on Zuwayzi soldiers, and from the Algarvian minister. Marquis Balastro had been profanely inventive in explaining that things had gone wrong north of Sulingen not least on account of Yaninan cowardice. Hajjaj wondered if Balastro had been as inventive-and as profane-to Iskakis’ face. He wouldn’t have been surprised.
“What are we to do if the Algarvians piss away all the victories they have won?” Iskakis demanded.
He said nothing about the Yaninan army’s part in the Algarvians’ misfortunes, but then he wouldn’t. No matter what he didn’t say, the ques
tion was good. Hajjaj answered, “What other choice would we have but to make the best terms we could with Unkerlant?”
Iskakis tapped the back of his neck. “This is what Swemmel would give us.” The gesture made Hajjaj sure the Yaninans used an axe or headsman’s sword to dispose of miscreants. The minister tapped again. “This if we were lucky. Otherwise, we would go into the stewpot.”
Hajjaj would have been happier had Iskakis been wrong. He would also have been happier had the Algarvians made more pleasant allies. He doubted Iskakis cared about Kaunians one way or the other. On the other hand, King Mezentio’s men undoubtedly had a much tighter grip on Yanina than they did on Zuwayza. Hajjaj said, “I have no easy answers for you. What else is there to do but ride the camel we mounted till it will go no farther?”
“Together, have we not enough power to stop this war?” Iskakis said.
“No,” Hajjaj said bluntly. “We can hurt Algarve, aye, but how likely is Swemmel to show proper gratitude?”
That got through. Iskakis grimaced. He said, “I shall pass your words on to my sovereign.” Before Hajjaj could have even raise a finger, the Yaninan minister added, “You may rest assured, I shall pass them carefully.”
“You had better,” Hajjaj said. Yaninans were good at intrigue, better than they were at war. But the Algarvians had to know their allies felt restive.
Iskakis got to his feet, bowed, and left as grandly as if his kingdom’s soldiers had won triumphs by the dozen instead of embarrassing themselves far and wide. Hajjaj was still pondering the report he would give to King Shazli when Qutuz came in and said, “Your Excellency, Marquis Balastro is fain to speak to you by crystal.”
“Is he?” Hajjaj was anything but fain to speak to the Algarvian minister, but no one had asked his opinion. Having no real choice, he said, “I’m coming.”
Formal manners and polite delays went over the side in conversations by crystal. Without preamble, Balastro demanded, “Well, what did the little bald bugger want from you?”
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