Harry Turtledove - Through the Darkness

Garivald had nothing with which to dig. He stood there feeling useless and helpless till another Unkerlanter let him borrow a short-handled spade: a soldier’s tool, not a farmer’s, one with which a man could dig while on his knees or even on his belly. “Heap up some of the dirt in front of your hole,” advised the fellow whose spade he was using. “It’ll help block a beam.”

“Aye,” Garivald said. “Thanks.” By the time he finished, the eastern sky had gone from gray to pink. Starlings started their metallic twittering. In the gray morning twilight, Munderic strode along the road to see what an Algarvian footsoldier would spy. He had a couple of men pull up grass and weeds to hide their holes better. He didn’t criticize Garivald, which made the peasant proud.

At last, Munderic pronounced himself satisfied. “Now we wait,” he said.

The sun rose. Garivald peered through the plants ahead out toward the road. It was empty. It stayed empty a long time. Bugs and spiders crawled on him. As the day turned warm, flies started biting. He slapped and cursed and wished he were home. Sweat poured off him. As Munderic had ordered, he waited.

A couple of Unkerlanters came by on foot, and one riding a sad little donkey. The irregulars let them go. The sun was well past its high point in the north when the Algarvians marched up the road from the direction of Lohr. They were singing as they marched, a rollicking tune in their own language. As usual, they seemed convinced they owned the world. Garivald knew his job was to teach them otherwise.

Munderic had threatened death and destruction for any man who started blazing too soon and so warned the redheads of the trap before they were all the way into it. Garivald let three or four of them past him before he started blazing. Everyone else seemed to have the same idea, so half the Algarvians went down in the space of a few heartbeats.

But the rest proved tougher. Shouting and cursing, they dove for cover behind the bodies of their fallen friends and into the tall grass of the meadow. With the irregulars on both sides of the road, though, finding a safe spot wasn’t easy. They kept blazing till they were blazed down-a beam from one of their sticks passed close above Garivald’s head, singeing the weeds and leaving the scent of lightning in the air.

One Algarvian started running back toward Lohr: not out of cowardice, Garivald judged, but to try to get help. The fellow hadn’t gone far when a beam caught him in the middle of the back and stretched him facedown in the dirt of the roadway.

“Gather up their sticks,” Munderic called. “Cut the throats of any of ’em still breathing. Then we’d better get out of here. All safe?” The irregular who’d asked Garivald for a song didn’t come out of his hole. Somebody went to check, and found he’d taken a beam just above the ear. He was as dead as the Algarvians. Munderic stamped his foot. “Curse it, I wanted a clean job. Almost, but not quite.”

“We did what we set out to,” Garivald said, “and the redheads aren’t about to.” He started off toward the forest with two sticks on his back and two lines for a new song going through his mind.

Sabrino’s dragon raced east through the crisp, cold air of the austral continent. The Algarvian commander could look left and see the waves of the Narrow Sea crashing against the rocky shore of the land of the Ice People. He could look to the right and see the dazzling glitter of the Barrier Mountains, still sheathed in snow and ice even though spring was rounding toward summer.

He wondered what lay beyond the Barrier Mountains. The Ice People traveled beyond them at this season of the year. So had a few intrepid explorers from civilized kingdoms. He’d read some of their accounts. They differed so wildly, he wondered if the explorers had all gone to the same country. Tempting to think about turning his dragon to the south and flying and flying and flying…

“But there’s a war to be fought,” he muttered, and looked ahead once more. The Lagoan army was still retreating, though not much pursued it: a few battalions of Yaninans stiffened by even fewer Algarvian footsoldiers and a couple of companies of behemoths. But the Lagoans did not have the dragons to be able to stand against the force he led.

That the Lagoans had any dragons at all had come as a nasty surprise the first time his fliers ran up against them. But the enemy, outnumbered four to one by his wing and Colonel Broumidis’ beasts, could scout and warn their ground forces when danger was on the way, but could not block that danger.

A beam from a heavy stick down on the ground blazed up at the Algarvian dragons. Even had it struck one, it would have done no more than infuriate the beast. But it was a warning: come no lower. Sabrino nodded to himself. The Lagoans were playing their half of the game as well as it could be played. He leaned to one side and peered down past his dragon’s scaly neck. As he’d expected, King Vitor’s men were digging in like so many moles. He nodded again. Aye, the Lagoans had plenty of professional competence. Without enough dragons, though, how much good would it do them?

“Drop your eggs, lads.” He spoke into the crystal he carried with him. For good measure, he waved the hand signal that meant the same thing.

His own dragon carried eggs, too. He slashed the cords that held them to the huge, bad-tempered beast. Down they fell, along with the eggs from the dragonfliers he led. He watched them tumble toward the ground. The moment they were gone, his dragon flew more strongly, more swiftly. He would have walked faster after shedding a heavy pack, too.

Balls of fire sprang up as the eggs, releasing the sorcerous energy stored in them, burst on the Lagoans. “That ought to hit them a good, solid lick,” Captain Orosio said.

“Aye.” Sabrino nodded. “But we won’t destroy them. The most we can do is make their lives miserable. We’ve done pretty well at that, I’d say.”

“So we have.” Orosio rolled his eyes. “But if we have to rely on the Yaninans to hunt them down and kill them, we’re going to be in for a long wait. If the Yaninans could have done it, we wouldn’t need to be here.”

“Don’t I know it,” Sabrino answered. A little nervously, he glanced down at the crystal. He used a slightly different spell to talk with Broumidis, who wouldn’t be able to hear this. He wanted to be very sure Broumidis couldn’t hear this. “We’re going to have to bring in more of our own footsoldiers and behemoths-more dragons, too-if we’re going to drive the Lagoans off the austral continent once for all. The Yaninans just aren’t up to the job.”

“Oh, I know that, sir.” Orosio was a longtime veteran, too-not one with so much service as Sabrino, who’d fought as a footsoldier in the Six Years’ War a long generation before, but with plenty to give him a healthy cynicism about the way the world worked. “Most of them would sooner be back home raising cabbages. They’ve got no stomach for a real fight. Some of their officers are good, but a lot of them have their places on account of whom they know, too.”

“That’s too true,” Sabrino said. “Noble blood is all very well, but you’d better know what you’re doing to boot. If you don’t, you’ll get yourself killed, and a lot of the men you’re supposed to lead, too.”

“Not if the men know you’re useless, and run away instead of fighting,” Orosio said. Sabrino grimaced; the Yaninans had done that more often than he cared to remember. His squadron commander went on, “Every Algarvian and every dragon we use to prop up King Tsavellas’ men is one we can’t use against King Swemmel.”

“I know. I’ve said as much. I’ve made myself unpopular saying as much.” Sabrino was old enough that he didn’t care too much about making himself unpopular. So long as his wife put up with him and his mistress remained compliant, he wouldn’t worry about the rest of the world.