Harry Turtledove - Through the Darkness

How was the rest of the fight, the bigger fight, going? Cornelu needed a while to find out. Victory had made his leviathan nearly as hard to control as defeat had the Algarvian’s. Eforiel would have behaved better; the Sibian naval officer was as sure of that as he was of his own name. But Eforiel was dead, gone. He had to do the best he could with this less responsive beast.

At last, he got the leviathan to rear up in the water, lifting him so he could see farther. Few Lagoan dragons were still in the air; most had indeed flown back toward the dragon farms from which they’d set out. But the Algarvian dragons, flying close to the conquered islands, kept on attacking the Lagoan warships that had come to raid Sibiu. A couple of more Lagoan ships had already lost ley-line power, and drifted helplessly in the water. Before long, either dragons or leviathans would sink them.

The Algarvians were getting more and more ships out of Lehliu harbor, too. They had fewer in the fight than the Lagoans, but plenty to be dangerous, especially with so many dragons overhead. Cornelu had heard the Lagoans were building ships that could carry dragons and from which the big scaly beasts could fight. That struck him as a good idea, though he didn’t know whether it was true. If it was, none of those ships had come to Sibiu.

He scowled. More and more, this was looking like a losing fight. The thought had hardly crossed his mind before a couple of Lagoan ships hoisted the red pennant that meant retreat. Every Lagoan vessel in the flotilla turned away from Sigisoara. “Curse you for cowards!” Cornelu cried. Sibiu wasn’t the Lagoans’ kingdom. Why should they fight hard for it?

And he had no choice but to turn away from his own native islands, either. His salt tears mingled with the salt sea. He wondered why. The life he’d had back in Tirgoviste had taken more wounds than the Algarvian leviathan. Even if the war ended on the instant, he had nothing to come home to.

But still he grieved. “It is my kingdom, curse them,” he said, as much to hear the sounds of his own language-different from both Algarvian and Lagoan-as for any other reason.

When he brought his leviathan back into Setubal, he found the Lagoan sailors who’d returned before him celebrating as if they’d won a great victory. He wanted to kill them all. Instead, he found a bottle of plum brandy that wasn’t doing anyone any good, took it back to the barracks set aside for Sibian exiles, and drank himself into a stupor.

“Ham,” Fernao said reverently. “Beefsteak. Mutton. Endive. Onions.” Longing filled his sigh.

“Don’t!” Affonso’s voice was piteous. “You’re breaking my heart.” The other Lagoan mage did look as if he were about to weep.

“I’m breaking my belly.” Fernao sat on a flat rock. The first-rank mage stared in distaste- aye, that’s the right word, he thought-at the charred chunk of camel meat and the half a roasted partridge on his tin plate. The camel would be fatty and gamy; the ptarmigan would taste as if Fernao were eating pine needles, which were the bird’s favorite food and imparted their flavor to its flesh.

Other Lagoans scattered over the bleak landscape of the austral continent looked bleak themselves. Affonso had on his plate a supper every bit as unappetizing as Fernao’s. He said, “The worst part of it is, it could be worse. We might not have anything to eat at all.”

“I know.” Fernao used his belt knife to cut a chunk off the camel meat. He impaled it and brought it to his mouth. “Those few days when we had no supplies coming in were very bad. Lucky this new clan of Ice People likes us better than the last one did.” He chewed, grimaced, swallowed. “Or maybe it’s just that this clan hates the Yaninans more than the other one did.”

“Probably,” Affonso said. The second-rank mage glanced warily up toward the sky. “What I hate are Algarvian dragons overhead at every hour of the day and night.”

“Aye, even if they haven’t been quite so much trouble since we smashed up their farm,” Fernao said. “Until we have more of our own, though, they’re going to keep on pounding us from the air.”

“Where are we going to get them?” Affonso asked.

“If I could conjure them up, I would,” Fernao answered. “But I can’t. In this miserable country, who knows what any of my fancy magic would be worth?”

“You could talk to a shaman of the Ice People.” Affonso laughed to show he was joking.

Even if he was, he left Fernao unamused. “I could do all sorts of things that would waste my time, but I won’t,” he snapped. Then he scratched at his coppery beard, which was at least as scraggly as Affonso’s.

“All right.” The other mage placatingly spread his hands. “All right.”

Fernao took a resinous-tasting bite of ptarmigan. He thought of Doeg the caravanmaster, whose fetish bird was the ptarmigan. Fernao had eaten one as soon as he’d escaped Doeg’s clutches, to show what he thought of traveling with the man of the Ice People. Every time he ate another one, he took more revenge.

He threw the bones down by the rock. Ants swarmed over them. Like everything else in the austral continent, they tried to cram a year’s worth of life into the scant time spring and summer gave them.

Leaning back on the rock, Fernao looked up into the heavens again. The sun was below the northern horizon, but not very far below; the sky there glowed white and bright. Only a few of the brightest stars shone through the deeper twilight near the zenith. Fernao narrowed his eyes (they were already narrow, for he had a little Kuusaman blood in him) to try to see more. He was sure he could have read a news sheet, if only he’d had a news sheet to read.

And then the dreaded shout went up: “Dragons!”

Cursing, Fernao ran for the nearest hole dug between rocks. He and Affonso jumped into it at essentially the same instant. He peered west. He hadn’t expected the Algarvians to come back to torment his countrymen so soon.

He saw no dragons, not to the west. Turning his head, he spied them coming out of the northeast. He frowned. What point to attacking from a different direction? It wasn’t as if they needed to surprise the Lagoans; Lieutenant General Junqueiro couldn’t do much about them except hunker down.

Only when the cheering began among men who paid more attention to dragons than he was in the habit of doing did he realize they weren’t Algarvian dragons. Some were painted in Lagoas’ bright red and gold, others in the sky blue and sea green of Kuusamo, which made them hard to see. Fernao started cheering, too.

Down came the dragons, one after another. Lagoan soldiers rushed toward them, cheering still. They weren’t experienced groundcrew men, but, at the dragonfliers’ shouted orders, they started putting together a makeshift dragon farm.

Along with Affonso, Fernao also ran toward the dragons. “Keep some beasts in the air!” he shouted. “Powers above, the Algarvians might come back any time.”

A Lagoan dragonflier pointed up to the deep blue sky. Craning his neck, Fernao saw several of the great creatures wheeling overhead. He bowed to the dragonflier, who grinned as if to say he forgave him.

Affonso asked, “How did you get here? Or should I say, how did you get here without the Algarvians’ attacking you?”

The Lagoan dragonflier’s grin got wider yet. “We kept ‘em too busy to notice us,” he answered. “We laid on a big attack against Sibiu. While Mezentio’s men there were busy fighting it, our dragon transports sneaked down south past the Sibs’ islands and made it here.”

“Nicely done,” Fernao said, bowing again. “What else have you brought along? Any real food?” After camel meat and ptarmigan, that was a matter of sudden, urgent concern.