"Pity Solino's head had to roll," Domiziano said. "Doesn't seem fair."
Orosio shrugged. "The price you pay for being right."
"Aye, that's how things work," Sabrino agreed. "If you advance against orders to hold and something good comes of it, you're a hero. If you retreat against orders to hold, they'll reckon you a coward no matter what happens. Even if you were right, they'll figure you're liable to run away the next time, too." He pointed to the big plate of pork ribs in the middle of the table. "Pass me a couple more of those, somebody, if you please."
Once he had the ribs, he smeared them with horseradish sauce and gnawed all the meat off the bones. Like his own glass of spirits, the sauce gave the illusion of warmth. In an Unkerlanter winter, even the illusion was not to be despised.
Domiziano also spread the sauce over another rib. In between bites, he sighed and said, "This cursed war is jading my palate so I'll never properly appreciate a delicate sauce again."
Sabrino chuckled at that. "There are worse problems to have. I was in the trenches in the Six Years' War, and I know." Domiziano had been making messes in his drawers during the Six Years' War, if he'd been born at all. He looked at Sabrino as if he'd started speaking Gyongyosian. Orosio was only a little older, but he understood such things. His nod and, even more, his knowing expression said as much.
A dragon handler stuck his head into Sabrino's tent and said, "Sir, that new wing is starting to land at the farm."
"The one that had been flying against Lagoas?" Sabrino asked, and the handler nodded. Mischief glinting in his eyes, Sabrino turned back to his squadron commanders. "Well, gentlemen, shall we help them settle in? I'm sure they'll be delighted at the accommodations they find waiting for them here."
Even Domiziano recognized the irony there well enough to chuckle. Orosio laughed out loud. Sabrino got to his feet. His subordinates followed him out.
Cold bit at his nose and cheeks. He ignored it; he'd known worse. Sure enough, dragons spiraled down out of the cloudy sky along with the occasional snowflake. Many, many dragons… "Powers above," Sabrino said softly. "If that's not a full-strength wing, then I'm a naked black Zuwayzi." Wings with their full complement of sixty-four dragons and dragonfliers simply didn't exist in the war against Unkerlant. Whenever he got his up over half strength, he counted himself lucky.
Accompanied by a dragon handler, an officer he'd never seen before came up. "You are Colonel Sabrino?" the newcomer asked, and Sabrino admitted he was. After bows and an embrace and kisses on both cheeks, the other officer continued, "I am Colonel Ambaldo, and I was told you would arrange for the well-being of my dragons and my men."
"My handlers will do what they can, and we'll see what we can scrounge up in the way of extra tents and extra rations," Sabrino answered. "Anything you brought and anything you can steal will help a lot, though."
Ambaldo stared at him. "Is that a joke, my dear sir?"
"Not even close to one," Sabrino answered. "Let me guess. You've spent the whole war up till now in Valmiera? At some pretty little peasant village? With pretty blond women to darn your socks and warm your beds? It's not like that here."
"My dear sir, I have been fighting, too," Ambaldo said stiffly, "fighting against the vile air pirates of Lagoas and Kuusamo. You will please remember this fact."
Sabrino bowed again. "I didn't say you haven't been fighting. But I meant what I did say. It's not like that here. It's nothing like that here. The Unkerlanters really and truly hate us, or most of them do, anyway. We haven't got enough of anything to go around: not enough men, not enough dragons, not enough supplies, nothing. The current strength of my wing is thirty-one- I've just been reinforced."
"Thirty-one?" Ambaldo's eyes looked as if they'd pop out of his head. "Where are the rest, by the powers above?"
"Where do you think?" Sabrino said. "Dead or wounded. And a lot of the replacements that could have got sent to me went to some other wing instead."
"Do your superiors hate you so?" Ambaldo asked.
"No, no, no." Sabrino wondered if he could ever get through to this poor, naive soul. "They went to other wings because those were even further under strength than mine."
Orosio spoke up: "Colonel Ambaldo, sir, if you want to look good in your uniform, you can do that anywhere. If you want to fight a war and hurt the kingdom's enemies, this is the place."
"Who is this insolent man?" Ambaldo demanded of Sabrino. "I ask, you understand, so that my friends may speak to him."
"We don't duel on this front," Sabrino said. "Oh, there's no law or king's command against it, but we don't. The Unkerlanters kill too many of us; we don't make things easier for them by killing each other."
Ambaldo's eyebrows shot upwards. "Truly I have come to a barbarous country." Some of his officers walked up behind him. They were staring around in amazement at the landscape in which they found themselves.
Sabrino had a hard time blaming them. Had he been jerked out of a pleasant billet in Valmiera and plopped down in the wilds of Unkerlant, he would have been amazed, too, and not with delight. "Come on, gentlemen," he said. "We'll do what we can for you. We have to work together, after all."
The newcomers had brought some tents. Sabrino shoehorned the rest of their dragonfliers in with his men; he shoehorned Colonel Ambaldo in with himself. Getting enough meat for the new dragons would have been impossible if his dragon handlers hadn't come across the bodies of a couple of behemoths. Brimstone was not a problem. Brimstone had never been a problem. Quicksilver… He didn't have and couldn't get enough quicksilver to give his own dragons all they needed. He shared what he had with the new arrived wing.
Horseradish and raw Unkerlanter spirits did nothing to improve Ambaldo's mood. He kept muttering things like, "What did we do to deserve this?" Since Sabrino didn't know whom Ambaldo might have offended, he couldn't very well answer that. At last, to his relief, the other wing commander pulled himself together and asked, "What is to be done?"
"Here." Sabrino pointed to a map. "The Unkerlanters have failed to concentrate their forces as they should have. Instead of one large attack advancing from Durrwangen to some other point that could anchor their whole line, they've sent columns out in several directions, none of them with its far end secured by a river or mountains or anything we can't maneuver around. And so, we're going to cut those columns off and then cut them up." He showed what he meant with several quick gestures.
Ambaldo studied the map. "Do we have the force here to bring this off?"
Good. Sabrino thought with more relief. He's not a fool. "On paper, the Unkerlanters always have more than we do," he answered. "But, for one thing, we're better than they are, no matter how much Swemmel babbles about efficiency. And, for another" -he grimaced- "our mages work stronger magic killing Kaunians than theirs do, slaughtering their own peasants."
Ambaldo didn't just grimace. He reached for the jar of spirits, poured his mug full, and gulped it down. "They really do those things here, then?" he said. "Nobody in Valmiera much wanted to talk about them- we were living among blonds, after all."
"They do them," Sabrino answered grimly. "So do we. By the end of this fight, only one side will be left standing. It's as simple as that." He hated that truth with all his soul, but hating it made it no less a truth. Colonel Ambaldo drank more spirits.
But Ambaldo was ready to fly again the next day, and so were his dragons. In spite of their long journey from Valmiera, Sabrino envied them their condition. They'd eaten better and fought less than any wing here in the west.
And they proved professionally competent; they plastered an Unkerlanter strongpoint northeast of Durrwangen with eggs and swooped low to attack a ley-line caravan surely loaded with enemy soldiers. They left the caravan a flaming wreck. Sabrino, whose smaller, more depleted wing accompanied and guided them on their attacks, found nothing about which he could complain.
Ambaldo's image appeared in his crystal. "Why didn't we win the war here long ago, if this is the best the Unkerlanters can do?" demanded the wing commander from out of the west.
Before Sabrino could reply, the Unkerlanters gave Ambaldo an answer of their own. Dragons painted rock-gray hurled themselves at the Algarvians in the air. As usual, Swemmel's men flew with less skill than the Algarvians they attacked- and Ambaldo's dragonfliers showed they had as much skill aboard their mounts as any other Algarvians. But there were, also as usual, a demon of a lot of Unkerlanters. Ambaldo's wing had holes torn in it, even though it gave better than it got.
So did Sabrino's. He was, by now, long since used to scraping by and making do with whatever replacements he happened to get- if he happened to get any. He wondered how Ambaldo's men would fare in a place where, without scrounging and improvising, they couldn't hope to keep going. They hadn't had to do such things in Valmiera- that was plain from the abundance they'd brought west.
Down on the ground, Algarvian troopers and behemoths were moving toward the places the dragons had pounded. Sabrino wondered if they included regiments and brigades plucked from occupation duty in Valmiera or Jelgava and carried across a good stretch of Derlavai by ley-line caravan so they could get into this fight. He rather hoped so. He'd gone on peacetime holiday to the beaches of northern Jelgava. Occupation duty there had to be a true hardship- he rolled his eyes, thinking of how dreadful patrolling beaches full of nearly naked bathers had to be. A little frostbite would go a long way toward fixing the sunburn from which those troopers might be suffering.
And then the ground shook down below: literally, for he could see the ripples as it writhed like an animal in pain. Here and there, purple flames shot up through the snow and stabbed toward the heavens. What had been Unkerlanter strongpoints were wrecked, ruined, ravaged.
Sabrino's sardonic smile slipped. How many Kaunians had died to power that magecraft? However many it was, even troops plucked from pleasant occupation duty should have been able to exploit the holes it tore in the Unkerlanter line.
Garivald was on sentry-go when the Grelzer company strode into the forest Munderic's band of irregulars reckoned all their own. He didn't see the Grelzers till they were quite close; snow was falling fairly heavily, cloaking things in the middle and far distance from his eyes.
When he did spy them, he pulled the hood of his white snow smock down low on his forehead, making sure it covered his dark hair. Then he slipped back through the bare-branched woods toward the clearing where the irregulars had their headquarters. He moved far faster than the soldiers who'd chosen Raniero the Algarvian puppet rather than Swemmel of Unkerlant. He knew where he was going, while the Grelzers couldn't be sure- he hoped they couldn't be sure- just where in the woods the irregulars lurked.
He'd got about halfway to the clearing when a soft, clear voice called a challenge: "Who goes?"
"It's me, Obilot- Garivald," he answered.
She slid out from behind a birch, her snow smock hardly lighter than its pale bark. Her stick didn't quite point at him, but wouldn't have to move far to do so. After she recognized that it was indeed he, she demanded, "Why aren't you at your post?"
"Because there's a great mob of Grelzers not very far behind me," he answered. "We'd better get ready to beat them back if we can, or to make sure they don't find us if we can't."
Her mouth twisted. "Fair enough," she said, and then, "Can we make sure they don't find us? It's not like they're Algarvians or those mercenaries from up in Forthweg."
"I know," Garivald said unhappily. Except in their choice of a king, the Grelzers who favored Raniero weren't much different from the ones who still carried on the fight against him and against Algarve. Some of them would have hunted in this forest in peacetime, hunted or come here to gather mushrooms or honey. They might not know where the irregulars denned, but they would have some idea.
"Go on, then," Obilot said. "You haven't got time to waste." Garivald nodded and plunged on through the woods.