Authors: Harry Turtledove
What Fernao saw was that, if he had to spend another moment with Penda just then, he would smash a chamber pot over the exiled king’s head. He said, “I am going down to the market square, to see what I might learn.”
“You will learn that it is cold and bleak and nearly empty,” Penda said, carping still. “Is that not something you already knew?” Perhaps fortunately, Fernao left instead of screaming at him or performing an earthenware coronation.
Unfortunately for Fernao, Penda had spoken the truth. Mizpah’s market square
was
cold and bleak and nearly empty. Ships still put in at Heshbon, because they could trade with Yanina or Algarve or Unkerlant. Algarvian ships were not welcome here—although, had they not been busy in places more urgent to King Mezentio, they could have snapped up the little town easily enough. Heshbon was far closer to Yanina and Unkerlant. And so Mizpah’s harbor remained as empty as a poor man’s cupboard.
Without overseas trade, the overland trade that went through the market square also suffered. Doeg had taken one look around before shaking his shaggy head and faring back toward the west, and no caravan even close to the size of his had come in since. Fernao saw neither cinnabar nor furs on display, and cinnabar and furs were the only reasons Lagoans and men from Derlavai came to the land of the Ice People.
A tinker repaired a pot. A buyer and seller dickered over a two-humped camel, as a buyer and seller might have dickered over a mule in a Lagoan back-country village. A woman remarkable only for her hairy cheeks was selling eggs from a bowl that looked a lot like the chamber pot Fernao hadn’t broken over King Penda’s head. The market square would have seemed far less lonely had it not been six times as large as it needed to be for such humble trading.
Another woman of the Ice People sauntered past Fernao. She had drenched herself in enough cheap Lagoan perfume to mask the smell of her long-unwashed body; what she was selling seemed obvious enough. When Fernao showed no interest in buying, she screeched insults at him in her language and then in his. He bowed, as if at compliments of similar magnitude. That only made her more irate, which was what he’d had in mind.
Looking around the forsaken square, he wished he hadn’t come. But when he thought about going back to the hostel and enduring more of King Penda’s endless complaints, he realized he couldn’t have done anything else—unless he wanted to head inland and climb the Barrier Mountains, that is.
And then, to his surprise, the square stopped being forsaken. The small force of garrison troops Lagoas maintained in Mizpah paraded across it in uniform tunics and kilts—with heavy wool leggings beneath the kilts as a concession to the climate. It did not look like an exercise; the men’s faces were grimly intent, as if they were marching to war.
“What’s toward?” Fernao called to the officer tramping along beside his men.
He watched the fellow working out what to say—and, indeed, whether to say anything at all. A shrug meant the Lagoan decided keeping the news to himself didn’t matter. “The cursed Yaninans have come over the border between their claim and ours,” he answered. “King Tsavellas has declared war on Lagoas, and may the powers below eat him for it. We’re off to see how many of his men we can gobble down, to teach him treachery has a price.”
“Can you hold the Yaninans back?” Fernao asked.
Now the officer didn’t answer. Maybe he was too full of his own thoughts to reply. Maybe he didn’t feel like telling the truth where his men could hear it but was too proud to lie. Whatever the reason, he just kept marching.
Yanina would have no trouble shipping troops by the hundreds—by the thousands—across the Narrow Sea. Fernao needed to be neither general nor admiral to see that at a glance. Lagoans would have endless trouble getting any troops into Mizpah. Even if the local garrison beat back the first Yaninan assault, what then?
What then?
had another significance for Fernao, too. What would he and Penda do if the Yaninans triumphantly marched into Mizpah? All of a sudden, climbing the Barrier Mountains didn’t seem like such a bad idea. King Tsavellas would not remember with joy and glad tidings the mage who had spirited Penda out of his palace and out of his kingdom. He probably would not be so glad to see Penda again, either.
Fernao did not give way to panic. Being a mage, he had more ways to disguise himself—
and King Penda, too,
he thought with a certain amount of reluctance—than the ordinary mortal. He’d already used some. He could use more. But disguises were of less use here in Mizpah than they would have been in crowded Patras or Setubal. Mizpah was woefully short on strangers. If he and Penda (or Fernastro and Olo, as they still called themselves) disappeared and a couple of other men with new appearances started strolling around the town, people would notice. They might be encouraged to talk.
When Fernao looked south, he saw black clouds spilling over the Barrier Mountains. Without the news he’d just got, the idea of a storm blowing up out of the interior of the austral continent so early in the year would have appalled him. As things were, he smiled benevolently. King Tsavellas’s troopers wouldn’t be able to move cast very fast through driving rain, or more likely sleet and snow.
“Maybe I have time,” he murmured. He’d have to speak by crystal with Setubal. Maybe, now that Yanina and Lagoas were at war, King Vitor would find King Penda—and, not quite incidentally, Fernao -more worth rescuing. Fernao did wish he hadn’t explained to Penda in such exacting detail why rescue seemed so unlikely.
After a triumphal procession through the streets of Trapani and a reception hosted by King Mezentio, after another triumphal procession through Priekule, capital of downfallen Valmiera—after those high points to his soldierly career, Count Sabrino found Tricarico, a provincial city with a long history of unimportance behind it, distinctly uninteresting.
The women were plain, the food was dull, the wine … the wine, actually, was not bad at all. The dragonflier wished he had the chance to drink more of it.
But he and the wing he commanded were in the air as often as their mounts could stand it. When they weren’t flying, other wings were. Before long, no Jelgavan dragons could drop eggs on Tricarico or, for that matter, on the Algarvian soldiers defending the kingdom east of Tricarico.
“Easy work, this,” Captain Domiziano said after another tour of flying where not a single Jelgavan dragon had risen to challenge them. “More Kaunian cowardice, that’s what it is.”
Sabrino shook his head and waggled a forefinger at the squadron commander. “It’s not so simple. I wish it were. The Valmierans were brave enough, but they didn’t figure out what we were doing till it was too late for them. I don’t see any reason to think the Jelgavans are different.”
“Why aren’t they fighting us, then, Colonel?” Domiziano asked. “They’re like a turtle with its head and its legs pulled into its shell.” He shrugged his own head down as far as it would go and hunched up his shoulders, too.
Laughing, Sabrino said, “You should mount the stage, not a dragon. But consider, my dear fellow: together, Valmiera and Jelgava are almost as big as we are. During the Six Years’ War, they stuck together and made us pay. This time, we knocked one of them out of the fight in a hurry. Do you wonder that the other kingdom is none too bold by its lonesome?”
Domiziano considered, then gave Sabrino a seated bow. “Put that way, sir, no, I don’t suppose I do.”
“They’ll make us come to them,” Sabrino said. “They’ll make us pay the butcher’s bill, the way the fellow who attacked did in the last war.” He looked east toward the Bradano Mountains from the dragon farm, one of many that had sprouted around Tricarico over the past few weeks. He chuckled softly. “One day before too long, they may just find out they’re not so clever as they think they are.”
“Aye, sir.” Domiziano’s eyes glowed. “If this goes as it should, a thousand years from now they’ll be writing romances about us, the same way everybody who can scribble nowadays is churning out stories about the Algarvian chieftains who overran the Kaunian Empire.”
“Bad stories—or the ones I’ve seen are, anyhow.” Sabrino’s lip curled: he fancied himself a literary critic. He slapped his subordinate on the shoulder. “A thousand years from now, you’ll be dead, and you won’t know and you won’t care what they’re writing about you. The trick of it is, you don’t want to be dead two weeks from now, not knowing or caring what they write about you.”
“Aye—you’re right again.” Domiziano laughed the robust laugh of a healthy young man who was at the same time a healthy young animal. “I aim to die at the age of a hundred and five, blazed down by an outraged husband.”
“And here’s hoping you make it, my lad,” Sabrino said. “Such ambition should not go unrewarded.”
A sentry came trotting up. “Begging your pardon, Colonel, but Colonel Cilandro is here to see you.”
“Well, good,” Sabrino said. “Cilandro and I have a lot of things to talk about. We’re going to be in each other’s pouches for the next little while.”
Colonel Cilandro walked with a limp. “The Valmierans gave me a present,” he said when Sabrino remarked on it. “It’s not blazed down to the bone, so it’ll heal before too long. All it means is, I can’t very well run away if we get into trouble. Since I wasn’t going to run away anyhow, it doesn’t matter.”
Sabrino bowed. “A man after my own heart!”
The infantry colonel returned the bow. “And I have heard good things of you, my lord count. Let us hope we work well together. We haven’t much time.”
“We can’t hope to hold anything like this secret for very long,” Sabrino agreed, “and what point to going on with it if it’s not secret?” He pointed back toward his tent, one of many that had sprouted on the meadow—a flock of sheep were probably annoyed at King Mezentio’s forces. “I have some wine in there, and, as long as we’re drinking, we can look at the maps.”
“Well put,” Cilandro said. “Oh,
well
put!” He bowed again. “To the wine, then, Colonel—and, while we’re at it, the maps.”
He took a glass of red. As Sabrino had expected—as Sabrino had certainly hoped—he contented himself with the one glass, nursing it to make it last. Sabrino pointed to the map he’d tacked down on a light folding table. “As I understand things, you’ll be moving here.” He pointed.
Cilandro bent over the map. “Aye, that’s about right. If we can go in right there”—now he pointed—“everything will be perfect.” He chuckled. “Last time I thought anything like that was when I was about to lose my cherry. But back to business, eh? This is the narrowest stretch, which means it’ll be the easiest to hold, and it’s also got a power point right there, so we’ll be able to recharge our sticks and egg-tossers without cutting throats to do it.”
“Aye.” Sabrino put his finger down on the star that symbolized the power point. “You won’t find a lot of Jelgavan throats to cut there. You’d better not find a lot of Jelgavan throats to cut there, or else you’ll be cutting your own throats.”
“And isn’t that the sad and sorry truth, my dear Colonel?” Cilandro said. “No denying it’s better to give a surprise than to get one, eh?” He tapped a fingernail against his wine glass. “The question that keeps eating at me is, can you get enough of my men into the right place fast enough to let us do what we’re ordered to do?”
“We’ll do our best,” Sabrino said. “And we’ll keep on doing our best as long as you have men on the ground there. We don’t talk away from what we start—we aren’t Unkerlanters, after all. But that’s just if thing go wrong. I think they’ll go right. King Mezentio has had all the answers so far.”
Colonel Cilandro nodded. “That he has.” He raised his glass. “Here’s to a king who knows what he’s doing. If we’d had one like that during the Six Years’ War, we wouldn’t be fighting this one now.” He drained the last of the wine.
Sabrino emptied his goblet, too. “And that’s also the truth. Well, day after tomorrow, if the weather holds, you’ll bring your regiment on over here—and then we’ll find out exactly how smart King Mezentio is.”
“Aye and aye and aye again.” Cilandro clasped Sabrino’s hand, then swept him into an embrace. “Day after tomorrow, Colonel.” He shook a fist at the sky—or Sabrino supposed it was at the sky, anyhow, rather than at the canvas roof of the tent. “And the weather had better hold.”
It did. Cilandro’s regiment tramped up to the dragon farm a little before dawn. At a good many places along the border between Algarve and Jelgava, regiments were marching up to wings of dragons. Along with its flier, a dragon could carry about half a ton of eggs to drop on the foe’s head. If, instead of carrying eggs, each dragon carried five troopers …
“First three companies forward!” Colonel Cilandro commanded. The men of the dragons’ ground crews had been frantically mounting harnesses on their charges’ long scaly torsos. The dragons had liked that no better than they liked anything else. Cilandro gave Sabrino a cheery wave as he took his place just behind the dragonflier. “If we live through this, it will be jolly,” the infantry colonel said. “And if we don’t, we won’t care. So let’s be off.”
“My crystal man is waiting for the signal,” Sabrino answered, hoping he sounded calmer than he felt. “Everyone will move at the same time. We don’t want the Jelgavans getting too many ideas beforehand.”
Maybe Cilandro would have had something suitably impolite to say about the likelihood of Kaunians getting ideas. He never got the chance. A man came running up to Sabrino’s dragon. He paused just out of range of the creature’s long, scaly neck, raised to his lips the trumpet he was carrying, and blew a long, untuneful blast.
Sabrino whacked his dragon with the goad. The dragon let out a screech and began to flap its wings. It screeched again when it didn’t take off quite so soon as it had expected; it was used to carrying only Sabrino’s weight. But the great wings beat faster and faster, harder and harder. Dust flew up in choking clouds. And then, at last, the dragon flew up, too, still letting the world know it was indignant at having to work so hard. Behind Sabrino, Cilandro whooped.
As the dragon gained height, Sabrino also whooped, half with joy, half with awe. The whole wing was rising. All the other wings were rising. Almost all the dragons in Algarve, save for those flying against Lagoas and some patrolling the sky on the border with Unkerlant in the west, were rising. Sabrino knew he could not see them all. The ones he could see were by themselves more dragons than he’d ever seen gathered together before.