“I understand that, and the answer does you honor,” Major Scoufas said. “But is it not true that something very like a catastrophe is taking shape for Algarve in the north?” He spoke with a certain avid interest. If Algarve went down to defeat against Unkerlant, Sabrino didn’t see how Yanina could avoid also going down to defeat. That didn’t stop some Yaninans from enjoying Algarve’s misfortune. Having tasted defeat so often themselves, they enjoyed seeing the once-invincible Algarvians learn what the dish tasted like.

“Disaster?” Sabrino shrugged. “I don’t think it’s so bad as that, Major. Sooner or later-probably sooner-Swemmel’s men will run out of soldiers, and we’ll mend the front, the way we’ve done here in the Duchy of Grelz.”

He realized, too late, he should have called it the Kingdom of Grelz. Scoufas raised a dark, elegantly arched eyebrow to show he realized the same thing. Using the Unkerlanter name for the region showed how much ground the Algarvians had lost in the past year.

And he realized he was liable to be talking through his hat when he claimed things would soon get better in the north. The Algarvian army defending that long and vital stretch of front seemed simply to have disappeared. Algarvian reports from the north grew more tight-lipped day by day. Swemmel’s men, by contrast, declared victory after victory and claimed the recapture of town after town. If those claims were lies, the Algarvians might have done a better job of denying them.

Scoufas said, “If you were truly a lucky man, Colonel, or a well-favored one, you might have been sent off to Jelgava and escaped from Unkerlant altogether.”

That held some truth, too, but rather less. Not many Algarvian formations were leaving Unkerlant to fight in the east. Mezentio didn’t have enough men in Unkerlant to hold back Swemmel’s soldiers as things were. The east would just have to take care of itself.

And if it doesn‘t? Sabrino wondered. If it can’t? He finished the spirits at a gulp. Then we‘re in even more trouble than we were before.

He eyed Major Scoufas. “You may not like Algarvians all that well, but I suggest you remember one thing: before the Unkerlanters get into Algarve- if we’re so unlucky as to have that happen-they have to go through Yanina.”

Like most Yaninans, Scoufas had an expressive face. The emotion he expressed wasn’t delight, nor anything close to it. Sabrino smiled. Maybe Scoufas thought he was allowed to snipe at Algarvians but they couldn’t say anything about his kingdom. That wasn’t how things worked, no matter what he thought.

Before either wing commander made the occasion more unpleasant, a Yaninan crystallomancer burst into the peasant hut where they were drinking and spoke rapidly in his own language. Yaninan always put Sabrino in mind of wine pouring out of a jug, glug glug glug. But he didn’t speak it, and had to ask, “What’s he saying?”

“The Unkerlanters seem to be stirring down here after all,” Scoufas replied. “They’re trying to cross the Trusetal River and set up a bridgehead on the east side.”

“Can’t have that.” Sabrino sprang to his feet. “If they get a company over today, it’ll be a brigade tomorrow, complete with behemoths.”

Scoufas dipped his head in the Yaninan equivalent of a nod. “Aye, that is so,” he said. “We may not love each other, but there is nothing like a common foe to point out where our interests lie.”

“True enough,” Sabrino said. “Shall we go pay a call on the common foe and try to make him extinct rather than common?”

“Extinct?” Scoufas frowned; he needed a moment to understand the wordplay, which robbed Sabrino of half his pleasure in it. But then the Yaninan smiled. “Oh, I see. Aye, indeed it would be well if the Unkerlanters were extinct.” They both hurried out of the hut, shouting for their men.

The Yaninan dragon handler with the big black mustache had taken it upon himself to minister to Sabrino’s dragon. He was as good as any Algarvian could have been. His name was Tsaldaris. He had no breeding to speak of; had he come from a notable family, he would have been flying dragons, not handling them. He spoke Algarvian after a fashion: enough to talk about dragons, at least. As Sabrino mounted the screeching, bad-tempered beast, Tsaldaris said, “Careful. Cinnabar-pfuif He made a disgusted noise and held thumb and forefinger close together to show he’d had little to give the dragon.

“Any hope of getting more any time soon?” Sabrino asked, fastening his harness so the dragon couldn’t pitch him off no matter how much it wanted to.

Tsaldaris tossed his head, as Yaninans did when they meant no. “Supply got unicorn’s prick up arse,” he said, which, Sabrino feared, summed things up altogether too well.

Sabrino waved to Major Scoufas. Scoufas waved back. Sabrino looked to his own men. They were ready. He’d known they would be. And so were the Yaninans. They made perfectly good dragonfliers. Their trouble was, they had not enough dragons and not enough men trained to fly them, especially when facing a foe who came in such great numbers as the Unker-lanters did.

At Sabrino’s nod, Tsaldaris loosed the chain that held his dragon to its stake. Screaming fury at the world, the dragon leaped into the air with a great thunder of wings. Algarvian dragons painted in varying patterns of green and white and red rose with it. So did their Yaninan counterparts, those beasts painted simply red and white. Some carried eggs slung beneath them; others would protect those dragons and do what damage they could with their flames. Sabrino cursed the dearth of cinnabar. “The land of the Ice People,” he muttered. “The Mamming Hills.” Plenty of cinnabar both places. The Algarvians would never get to use any of it, not any more.

Flying west, though, always made him feel better. When he was flying west, he was going on the attack. He’d had too much of the Unkerlanters’ coming to him. He was, he’d always been, a man who wanted to make things happen, not one who sat back and waited for them to happen to him.

He didn’t need long to spot the Unkerlanter bridgehead. Eggs were bursting all around the edges of it. Most of them looked to be Unkerlanter eggs-King Swemmel’s soldiers had far more tossers than did the Yaninans facing them, too. And… Sabrino started cursing again, this time in good earnest. The Unkerlanters had thrown a plank bridge across the Trusetal River-their artisans were clever at such things-and were sending behemoths across to the eastern bank.

Sabrino had two crystals with him-one to link him to his own squadron leaders; the other, with somewhat different emanations, to Major Scoufas. He spoke into both of them at the same time: “Those behemoths are our target. If we can slay them and wreck that bridge, the footsoldiers on the ground ought to be able to close out the rest of the Unkerlanters this side of the river.”

Had they been Algarvian soldiers, he would have been sure of it. With Yaninans, one could only hope. However good their dragonfliers were, their footsoldiers had singularly failed to cover themselves with glory. No, plurally, for the Yaninans had failed again and again. But Sabrino couldn’t say that, no matter how true it was, for fear of offending Major Scoufas, who was as touchy as any Yaninan.

The dragons carrying eggs dove on the bridge. The Unkerlanters had heavy sticks mounted nearby to protect it, of course. One dragon-an Algarvian beast-went straight into the Trusetal. Sabrino cursed yet again: one more comrade he would never see again. But eggs burst in large numbers, in the river and on both banks. Then one struck the bridge, square in the center. The burst of sorcerous energy pitched two behemoths into the water and set the bridge afire. Sabrino whooped.

Whooping still, he gave new orders: “Now we attack the behemoths on the east bank of the Trusetal.”