Harry Turtledove - Jaws of Darkness

“This time I would have, aye.” Now Istvan nodded. “But anybody who takes a lot of side bets against you ends up without any money in his belt pouch, so go find yourself a new fish. You’ve hooked me too often already.”

Szonyi won the next duel of dice, too. He said, “I don’t make side bets against you, either, Kun. The sergeant’s right-you win ‘em often enough to make some people wonder whether you magic the dice.”

“Oh, rubbish,”Kun said, or perhaps something rather more pungent. Unlike most of the men in the squad, including Istvan, he wasn’t a peasant or herder from a little mountain valley. Such sturdy soldiers gave the Gyongyosians reason to reckon themselves a warrior race. ButKun had been a mage’s apprentice in Gyorvar, the capital, before taking service inEkrekekArpad ’s army. He knew little bits and pieces of sorcery himself. Enough to ensorcel dice? Istvan had sometimes wondered himself.

But he said, “Kun’s luck’s no better than anybody else’s when he’s got the dice in his own hand. I’ve noticed that. It’s only when he’s making side bets that he cleans up. I can’t see how he’d put a spell on somebody else’s dice but not on his own.”

“Rubbish,”Kun repeated-or, again, words to that effect. “I’ll tell you what makes the difference: I know what I’m doing, and you back-country boys don’t. There’s no more magecraft in it than there is to cooking a goose.”

“If there’s no magecraft, we ought to be able to do it, too, once you tell us how-isn’t that right?” Szonyi said. He andKun often banged heads like mountain sheep.

Kunnodded now. “Aye, if you can remember a few simple things.” He raised an eyebrow. By Gyongyosian standards, he was on the scrawny side; Szonyi came close to making two of him. But he had no fear, for he added, “For simple people, even simple things come hard.”

Szonyi bristled. Istvan said, “Never mind the insults. If you can teach us, teach us. I wouldn’t mind learning something to help me put a little extra silver in my belt pouch.”

“All right, by the stars, I will, even if it’ll cost me money,”Kun said, and spent the next little while talking about how to figure odds while rolling dice.

By the time he got through, Istvan was frowning and scratching his head. “Are you sure that’s not magecraft?” he asked.

“Anything somebody doesn’t know how to do looks like magecraft to him,”Kun said impatiently. “This isn’t. It’s nothing but a… fancy kind of arithmetic, I guess you’d call it.”

“How can it be arithmetic?” Szonyi demanded-he was never content with anythingKun said. “Two and two is always four. With this, you’re right some of the time and you’re wrong some of the time. If you run out of silver and bet your tunic, you’re liable to walk home naked.”

“Over the long run, though, you won’t.”Kun ’s smile grew rather nasty. “And if you don’t believe me, why won’t you make side bets with me?”

Before Szonyi could answer, horns blared out an alarm from the high ground, such as it was, at the center of Becsehely. “Scoop up that money, boys. Grab the dice,” Istvan said. “Dowsers must’ve spotted another wave of Kuusaman dragons coming to pay us a call.”

“Dowsing, now, dowsing is real magecraft,”Kun said. “Sensing motion at a distance farther than you can see-how could you possibly do that without sorcery?”

Istvan nodded. “Well, that’s true enough. I was a dowser’s helper for a while, over on Obuda. They gave me the job for a punishment, because he had a heavy sack of rods to carry, but I ended up enjoying it-Borsos was an interesting fellow to talk to. Remember?-he showed up in the Unkerlanter woods, too.”

“That’s right.” Szonyi also nodded. “He was trying to spy out something Swemmel’s stinking goat-eaters were up to.”

The horns cried out again. Booted feet thudded on wet ground as Gyongyosian soldiers who weren’t already in trenches ran for shelter. “Take cover!” shoutedCaptainFrigyes, the company commander. “Take cover, and be ready to come up blazing if the Kuusamans bring boats up onto the beach.”

“May the stars hold that idea out of their heads,” Istvan said, and made a sign to avert the evil omen.

Becsehely was big enough to support a dragon farm. Wings thundering, Gyongyosian dragons painted in bold stripes of red and blue and black and yellow flew out to meet the enemies the dowsers had spotted. Kuusaman colors were sky blue and sea green, which made their dragons hard to see but easy to tell apart from the Gyongyosian beasts once noted.

“I wonder if this really will be the invasion,”Kun remarked, making sure dirt didn’t foul the business end, the blazing end, of his stick.

“They’ve pounded us before when we thought they would land, and they didn’t,” Istvan said. “Here’s hoping they stay away again.”

“Oh, aye, here’s hoping.” ButKun seemed unable to look on the bright side of things. “The trouble is, they’ve taken a lot of islands away from us, too. If they hadn’t, our regiment would still be fighting the Unkerlanters in those woods that went on forever and ever.”

“I’m not sorry to be out of the forest,” Istvan admitted. “Of course, I’d’ve been happier if they’d sent us somewhere besides this miserable flat place. I miss having a horizon with mountain teeth in it.”

“If the Kuusamans do come ashore…”Kun hesitated, plainly wondering how to go on. “If they do come ashore, I wonder if our officers will have to hold us to the oath we swore. The oath about.. . the strong sorcery, I mean.”

“I know what you mean,” Istvan said. Algarve and Unkerlant used the life energy from sacrificed people to power their sorcery. The Algarvians killed Kaunians they’d conquered; KingSwemmel ’s sorcerers sacrificed those of their own folk they reckoned useless. Both those answers revolted the Gyongyosians. But they’d seen they might need such wizardry. With a shrug, Istvan continued: “We’re a warrior race.” Most of the company had volunteered to be sacrificed if the need ever arose. Istvan had, without thinking twice. Kun had, too, much more hesitantly.

“The stars already know,” Szonyi said.

“They always know,”Kun said. “But /don’t.”

That thin hiss in the air wasn’t the stars tellingCorporalKun what would be. It was an egg falling, to burst in the sea just off the muddy, west-facing beach of Becsehely. Some dragonflier overhead had been too eager. But other bursts of sorcerous energy walked up the beach toward the trenches where Istvan and his comrades huddled. He hated taking a pounding from dragons more than any other part of war. He knew exactly why, too: he couldn’t hit back. An egg falling out of the sky didn’t care whether he belonged to a warrior race or not.

He looked up. Sure enough, the Kuusaman dragons were harder to see than those his countrymen flew. But, by the way eggs carpeted Becsehely, by the way Gyongyosian dragons tumbled out of the sky one after another, he had no trouble figuring out the Kuusamans outnumbered them. The Kuusamans had been the first to figure out how to transport dragons on board ship, and they’d got better and better at it since.

But they didn’t have things all their own way here. The Gyongyosians had brought heavy sticks to Becsehely, sticks that could blaze through a behemoth’s chainmail and through the behemoth, too-and sticks strong enough to blaze down a dragon no matter how high it flew.

Istvan whooped when a Kuusaman dragon faltered in midair. He whooped again when it started down toward the island. Nor was he the only one. “We nailed that son of a strumpet!” Szonyi shouted.

“He looks like he’s coming straight toward us,”Kun said, and people stopped whooping. Finishing a wounded, furious dragon with hand-held sticks was anything but a morning’s pleasant sport.