Afterwards, he wondered if she would bolt from his chamber as she had the first time. They’d surprised themselves by becoming lovers then. This time, they’d known what they were doing. And Pekka understood as much, for she asked, “What are we going to do now?” It was a serious question, not the dismay-filled one she’d asked after they joined before.

“Whatever you like,” he answered. “I know you’re the one with the hard choices to make. You need to know I’d be glad to marry you and live with you in Kajaani or Setubal or wherever you please, if that’s what you want to do. I hope it is.”

“I don’t know,” Pekka said. “Right now, I have no idea what I’m going to do. I have to th-”

Fernao knew what he was going to do right then, and he did it: he kissed her. That not only kept her from talking, it kept her-and him-from thinking for some time longer. He hadn’t known he could make love twice in such quick succession, not in his mid-thirties and not after the battering his body had taken.

But, no matter how pleasantly worn he and Pekka were after gasping their way to delight for a second time, Pekka asked her question over again: “What are we going to do now?”

“We’ll just have to see,” Fernao said. Pekka frowned thoughtfully, then nodded.

Colonel Sabrino had never been in Yanina before. When the war against Unkerlant began, he’d been stationed in the north, flying out of Forthweg. He wished with all his heart he weren’t in Yanina now. Had the Algarvians and Yaninans and Grelzers and the soldiers from Plegmund’s Brigade and the Phalanx of Valmiera been able to halt King Swemmel ’s latest bludgeon of an assault, he wouldn’t have been in Yanina. As things were…

As things were, the tattered remnants of his wing of dragonfliers and the equally ragged remains of Major Scoufas ’ were flying out of a makeshift dragon farm on the outskirts of the town of Kastritsi, north and west of Patras, King Tsavellas ’ capital. The Unkerlanters had paused only a couple of miles outside of Kastritsi; the people there fled east as fast as they could go, on foot or in wagons or on unicorns and horses and donkeys. They clogged the roads, making it harder for the soldiers trying to hold back Swemmel’s men to get where they needed to go.

Some of the men fleeing Kastritsi should have been in Tsavellas’ army. Some of them, almost without a doubt, were in Tsavellas’ army, but had somehow got their hands on civilian clothes.

When Sabrino remarked on that, Captain Orosio nodded. “Next thing’ll be, they’ll start running without bothering to take their uniforms off first.” He spat. “It won’t be long, I bet.”

“I wish I thought you were wrong,” Sabrino said.

“So what in blazes are we going to do about it?” the squadron commander asked.

Before answering, Sabrino looked toward the center of Kastritsi. The taller buildings-those still standing, anyway-sported strangely painted onion domes that reminded him he was in a foreign kingdom. He sighed. “I don’t think we can do anything about it except to go on fighting the Unkerlanters as hard as we can for as long as we can. Have you got any better ideas?”

Orosio sighed, too, and spat again. “I was hoping you did, sir. You’ve been right a lot of times before.”

“What if I have?” Sabrino said. “How much good has it done me? How much good has it done Algarve?”

Orosio had no reply for that. Since Sabrino didn’t, either, he didn’t see how he could blame the younger man. From over by the tents where the dragonfliers slept-when they slept-a Yaninan waved to him. He waved back, polite as usual. Then the Yaninan waved again, more urgently this time. Captain Orosio said, “Sir, I think he wants you.”

“I think he does, too,” Sabrino said with another sigh of his own. “I was hoping he didn’t.”

“ Major Scoufas, he want to see you,” the fellow said when Sabrino went over to him.

“Does he?” Sabrino said, and the Yaninan dipped his head in his kingdom’s gesture of agreement. Sabrino headed for Scoufas’ tent. He had nothing against the Yaninan officer. Scoufas made a good dragonflier and a good wing commander. It wasn’t his fault that most of his kingdom’s fighting men were unenthusiastic and that the kingdom lacked many of the tools it needed to do a proper job of fighting.

As often happened with commanders, Scoufas was busy with paperwork when Count Sabrino ducked into his tent. Scoufas shoved the leaves of paper aside with every sign of relief. “I propose that we fly forth and attack the Unkerlanters threatening Kastritsi,” he said.

“You do?” Sabrino said in some surprise. In all the time he’d been associated with the Yaninans over in the Duchy of Grelz, he’d never heard such words from any of them. Scoufas flew more than bravely enough, but he hadn’t been aggressive in seeking out missions.

But now the Yaninan dipped his head. “Aye. We must drive the barbarous invaders from the soil of my kingdom.”

If your countrymen had fought harder in Unkerlant, those barbarous invaders might not be on the soil of your kingdom now. But what point to saying that to Scoufas? He couldn’t change what had already happened, any more than Sabrino himself could.

And, as far as Sabrino was concerned, helping Scoufas defend a Yaninan town now made it less likely that he’d have to try to keep the Unkerlanters from overrunning an Algarvian town sometime in the not too indefinite future. The mere thought was enough to make him nervously glance eastward.

Scoufas not only noticed him doing it but understood why. The Yaninan’s chuckle held more sorrow than mirth. “It makes a difference when it is one’s own kingdom, does it not?” he said.

“Aye,” Sabrino said harshly. “Have we got enough eggs and cinnabar to give the Unkerlanters a proper pounding?”

“Not so much as we would like,” Scoufas answered. “Never so much as we would like, is it not so?” He waited for Sabrino to nod, then went on, “But we must do what we can with what we have-is that not so as well?”

“Aye,” Sabrino repeated, even more harshly than before. “When do you want to fly?”

“Let the dragon handlers load eggs aboard our dragons. Let them give the beasts what meat they have laced with brimstone and with what cinnabar they can find,” the Yaninan wing commander said. “An hour’s time should be plenty, would you not agree?”

Sabrino rose and bowed. “I shall be honored to have your company in an hour’s time, Major.” He bowed again, then strode out of Scoufas’ tent and shouted for his own men to ready themselves for a raid.

They came from their tents with an eagerness that still delighted him after five years of fighting. How can anyone beat us? he thought proudly. But if that question didn’t have an answer, what was he doing fighting here in Yanina and not going after the Unkerlanters in their own kingdom or relaxing back in Trapani following a victorious war?

“Yaninans are a lot happier about fighting now that they’re doing it at home, aren’t they, Colonel?” one of the dragonfliers said.

“As long as they are happy,” Sabrino said-again, what point to worrying about how things had been before?

He climbed aboard his dragon while the bushy-mustached Yaninan handler was still feeding it chunks of meat yellow with brimstone or scarlet with cinnabar-too few of the latter, though. Brimstone was easy to come by. Quicksilver… He thought about Algarve’s failure in the land of the Ice People and his kingdom’s failure to reach the Mamming Hills, then realized he was worrying about what had gone before whether he wanted to or not.

With a wave, the handler unchained the dragon from its stake. “Luck to you good,” the fellow said in rudimentary Algarvian. Sabrino waved back, then booted the dragon into the air. It rose with a scream of fury and a thunder of wings. Other beasts painted in Algarvian and in Yaninan colors joined it. Between them, they had about forty dragons.