Sabrino yelled yet again. He too pumped his fist in the air. A woman beside him stood up on tiptoe to kiss him on the cheek. He gathered her into his arms and made a proper job of the kiss.

King Mezentio held both hands high, palms out toward the crowd.

After a little while, quiet returned. Into it, he spoke with simple deter mination: "We shall defend Algarve."

"Algarve! Algarve! Algarve!" The chant echoed through the square, through all of Trapani, and, Sabrino hoped, throughout the kingdom.

Mezentio bowed stiffly from the waist, acknowledging in his own person the cheers for his kingdom. Then, with a final wave, he withdrew from the balcony. Sabrino saw one of his ministers come forward to clasp his wrist in congratulation.

"You'll help save us, Colonel," said the woman who'd kissed him.

"Milady, I shall do what I can," Sabrino answered. "And now, much as I would sooner linger with you" - she dropped him a curtsy for that - "I must go and do it."

The dragon farm lay well outside Trapani, so far outside that Sabrino had to take a horse-drawn carriage for the last leg of the journey, as no leg caravan reached such a distance from the power point at the heart of the capital. "Good of you to join us," said General Borso, the farm commandant, giving Sabrino ajaundiced stare.

"My lord, I am not tardy, not by my orders, and I had the honor of hearing with my own ears King Mezentio casting defiance in the face of all those who wrong Algarve," Sabrino said, respectfully defiant of higher authority.

Higher authority yielded, Borso saying, "Ali, my friend, in that case I envy you. Being confined here on duty, I heard him through the crystal. He spoke very well, I thought. The Kaunians and their friends would be wrong to take us lightly."

"That they would," Sabrino agreed. "The crystal is all very well when required, but everything in it is tiny and tinny. In person, the king was magnificent."

"Good, good." Borso bunched his fingertips and kissed them.

"Splendid. If he was magnificent, we too must be magnificent, to live up to his example. In aid of which, my dear fellow, is your wing fully prepared for action?"

"My lord, you need have no doubts on that score," Sabrino said. "The fliers are in fine fettle, every one of them eager for duty. And we are well supplied with meat and brimstone and quicksilver for the dragons. My report of three days past goes into full detail on all these matters."

"Reports are all very well," Borso said, "but the impressions of the men who write them are better. And I have orders for you, since all is in such excellent readiness. You and your entire wing are ordered northwest to Gozzo, from which point you are to resist the invading Forthwegians; "Gozzo? If I remember the place nightly, it is a Miserable excuse for town," Sabrino said with a sigh. "Will they be able to keep us supplied?"

"If they cannot, the count's head will roll and so win the duke's and so will the nuartermaster's " Borso answered, "We are as ready for this"

"They surround us," Sabrino said. "They tried to destroy us in the Six Years' War and came too close to succeeding. We need to be ready."

He saluted the farm commandant, then went out to his wing. The dragons were tethered in long rows behind Borso's office. When they saw him, they hissed and raised their scaly crests - not in greeting, he [...] mix of on er and alarm and hun er

Some people romanticized unicorns, which were beautiful and quite bright as animals went. Some people romanticized horses, which were pretty stupid. And, sure as sure, some time romanticized dragons, which were not only stupid but vicious to boot Sabrino chuckled Nobody as far as he knew, romanticized behemoths - and a good thing, too.

He shouted for an orderly. When the young subaltern came running up, Sabrino said, "Summon the men of my wing. We are ordered to Gozzo, to defend against the cursed Forthwegians, as soon as may be."

The subaltern bowed and hurried away.

A moment later, a trumpeter blared out half a dozen harsh, imperative notes: the opening notes to the Algarvian national hymn. As he played them over and over again, men spilled from tan tents and ran, kilts flap ping, to form an eight-by-eight square in front of Sabrino, four captains standing out ahead of it. The dragons hissed and moaned and spread their enormous wings. Stupid though they were, they'd learned an assembly meant they were likely to fly soon.

"It's war," Sabrino told the fliers in his wing. "We are ordered to Gozzo, to fight the Forthwegians. Is every man, is every beast, ready to depart within the hour?" A chorus of Aye! rang out, but one flier, nuisery on his face, raised a hand. Sabrino pointed to him. "Speak, Corbeo!"

"My lord," Corbeo said, "I regret to report that my dragon's tom wing membrane has not yet healed enough to let her fly." He hung his head in shame. "Had the war but waited another week-'

"It was not your fault, and it can't be helped," Sabrino said, adding,

"Cheer up, man! A week's not such a long time. You'll see our share of action, never fear. They may even throw you aboard a fresh mount before then, if they decide they need trained fliers in a hurry."

Corbeo bowed. "May it be so, lord!"

Sabrino shook his head. "No, for that would show our beloved kingdom was in great danger. I hope you relax and drink wine and pinch the pretty girls till your dragon heals." Corbeo bowed again, grinning now.

Pleased with himself, Sabrino addressed the whole wing: "Men, prepare to fly. My captains, to me."

One of the captains, Domiziano, asked the question Sabrino was about to address: "My lord, will we have force enough to turn back the invaders?"

"We must," Sabrino said simply. "Algarve depends on us. We yield as little ground as we can. Whatever we do" - he remembered Mezentiols words from the balcony - "we don't let Forthweg and Jelgava join hands."

"To block that, our lives mean nothing. Do you understand?" Domiziano and the other three squadron commanders nodded. Sabrino slapped each of them on the back. "Good. Splendid. And now we needs must ready ourselves as well."

When he was mounted at the join of his dragon's neck and shoulders, when he spurred the soft skin there and the beast sprang into the air, when the ground fell away beneath him and the dragon's wings thundered, he could understand for a moment why some people sighed over the great beasts. When the dragon twisted and tried to bite till he whacked it in the snout with a long-handled goad, he cursed those people, who knew nothing about real dragons, as a pack of fools.

The Elsung Mountains formed the land border between Unkerlant and Gyongyos. Precisely where they formed the border was a matter on which King Swerrimel of Unkerlant and Ekrekek Arpad of Gyongyos had trouble agreeing. Because they had trouble agreeing, some thousands of young men from each of the two kingdoms were settling the question for them.

Leudast wished he were back on his farm, not far from the Forthwegian border, rather than sitting around a campfire here in the rock-strewn middle of nowhere. As far as he was concerned, Arpad was welcome to every one of these boulders if he was crazy enough to want them.

He didn't mention his opinion. Sergeants took a dim view of such sentiments. Officers took an even dimmer one. From what people said (whispered, actually), King Swemmel took the dimmest view of all.

Having finally won the long civil war with his twin brother, King Swemmel thought anyone who disagreed with him a traitor. A lot of people had disappeared because Swemmel held that opinion. Leudast did not want to add his name to the list.

He leaned for-ward to toast a piece of sausage skewered on a stick over the fire. He twirled the stick between the palms of his hands to get the hard, peppery sausage done on all sides. His sergeant, a veteran named Magnulf, nodded approval, saying, "Very efficient, Leudast."