Into the Darkness Read Online Free PDF Page B

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 determination: “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 ley 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 a jaundiced 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, “Ah, 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 with every power you command.”
    “Gozzo? If I remember the place rightly, it is a miserable excuse for a town,” Sabrino said with a sigh. “Will they be able to keep us supplied there?”
    “If they cannot, the count’s head will roll, and so will the duke’s, and so will the quartermaster’s,” Borso answered. “We are as ready for this war as we can be, I assure you of that.”
    “Our foes 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, for we have always known they would try again.”
    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 knew, but in a dragonish mix of anger and alarm and hunger.
    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 people 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