Empire of Ivory (26 page)

rich heartland, an outlier of the mountain ranges farther

inland.

Chenery and Dulcia took the lead, signal-flags exuberantly

waving, and carried them past the settlements and over a

swath of thickening wilderness, setting a brisk and

challenging pace that stretched Temeraire's wings and kept

her ahead and out of hailing-distance until very nearly the

dinner-hour; only reluctantly did she finally set down,

upon a riverbank some ten miles beyond the mountain where

they had meant to stop.

Laurence did not have the heart to say anything; he doubted

the wisdom of going so far afield, when the mushrooms were

perhaps native to the Cape, and they knew nothing of the

territory into which they were flying, but Dulcia was

stretching her wings out to the sun, drinking deep from the

running river, great gulps traveling down her throat

visibly. She cast her neck back in an ecstatic spray, and

Chenery laughed like a boy and pressed his cheek against

her foreleg.

"Are those lions?" Temeraire asked with interest as he

folded his wings, his head cocked to listen: there was a

deal of angry roaring off in the bush, not the drum-andbassoon thunder-roll of dragons, but a deep huffed breathy

noise, perhaps in protest at the invasion of their

territory. "I have never seen a lion," Temeraire added, nor

was likely to, so long as the lions had anything to do with

the matter: however annoyed they might be, they would

surely not venture anywhere in range.

"Are they very large?" Dulcia said anxiously; neither she

nor Temeraire were very enthusiastic about letting the crew

continue on foot into the ground cover, despite the party

of riflemen which had been brought for their protection.

"Perhaps you ought to stay with us."

"Pray, how are we to see any mushrooms from mid-air?"

Chenery said. "You shall have a nice rest, and maybe eat

something, and we will be back in a trice. We will manage

quite well if we meet any lions; we have six guns with us,

my dear."

"But what if there are seven lions," Dulcia said.

"Then we shall have to use our pistols," Chenery said to

her cheerfully, showing her his own as he reloaded them

fresh to give her comfort.

"I promise you, no lion will come to us to be shot,"

Laurence said to Temeraire. "They will run as soon as they

hear the first gun, and we will fire away a flare if we

need you."

"Well; so long as you are careful," Temeraire said, and

settled his head on his forelegs, disconsolate.

Chenery's old saber served well to hack their way into the

forest, where Dorset thought the mushroom most likely to be

found in the cool and damp soil, and all the game they saw,

slim antelope and birds, was at a distance and bounding

away quickly: frightened away by the noise of their

passage, which was incredible. The undergrowth was

ferociously impenetrable, full of immense silver

thornbushes, their teeth nearly three inches long and sharp

as needles at the tip, treacherously buried in a wealth of

green leaves. They were at all times beating down clinging

vines and tearing branches, except occasionally where they

broke across the trail where some large animals had

trampled a path, leaving behind them trees scraped free of

bark with red weeping sores like blood. But these offered

only brief respite; Dorset would not let them follow the

paths for long, from anxiety at meeting their creators,

most likely elephants; he was in any case doubtful that

they would find any of the mushroom in the open.

They were very hot and tired indeed by dinner-time, no man

of them having escaped bloody scratches, and would have

been wholly lost but for their compasses, when at last

Dyer, who had suffered less, being still a small boy and

thin, gave a cry of triumph. Throwing himself flat on his

belly, he wriggled beneath another thornbush and emerged

again backwards holding a specimen which had been growing

against the base of a dead tree.

It was small and clotted with dirt, with two caps only, but

this success at once renewed all their energy, and after

giving Dyer a huzzah and sharing a glass of grog, they

threw themselves again into the task and into the brush.

"How long," Chenery said, panting as he hacked away, "do

you suppose it would take, for every dragon in England; if

we must find them all like this-"

There was a low crackling of brush like water droplets

sizzling in a skillet of hot fat, and a low coughing sound,

dyspeptic, came from the other side of the choked-off

shrub. "Be cautious-cautious," Dorset said, repeating the

stammered word as Riggs went closer. Chenery's first

lieutenant Libbley held out his hand, and Chenery gave him

the sword. "There may be-"

He stopped. Libbley had worked the sword into the brush to

cut away the entangling moss, and Riggs had with his hands

pulled apart the branches; a massive head was regarding

them thoughtfully through the empty space. It was a pebbled

leathery grey, with two enormous horns in a line at the end

of its snout and piggishly small black eyes, hard and

shiny, its odd hatchet-shaped lip moving ruminatively as it

chewed. It was not large compared to a dragon; compared to

an ox or even the local buffalo it was very, and so

massively built and armored that it took on an inexorable

quality.

"Is it an elephant?" Riggs asked in a hushed voice, turning

his head, and abruptly the thing snorted and came at them:

smashing all the thicket into splinters, astonishing fast

for so heavy a creature, with its head bowed forward so the

horns thrust out before it as it came. There was a confused

ringing clamor of yells and shouts, and Laurence had barely

the presence of mind to take hold of Dyer's and Emily's

collars and pull them back against the trees; groping only

afterwards for his pistol, his sword. Too late: the thing

had already gone crashing away madly on its set course, and

not one of them had got off a shot.

"A rhinoceros," Dorset was saying calmly. "They are nearsighted, and prone to ill-temper, or so I understand from

my reading. Captain Laurence, will you give me your

neckcloth?"-and Laurence looked up to see Dorset working

busily on Chenery's leg, a copious flow of blood pumping

freely from the thigh where a thick jagged branch jutted

out.

Dorset sliced open the breeches with a large catling,

intended for use on the delicate layered membranes of

dragon wings, maneuvering the tip deftly, and performed a

skillful ligature of the pumping vein; afterwards he

wrapped the neckcloth several times around the thigh.

Meanwhile Laurence had directed the others in making a

litter of tree-branches and their coats. "It is only the

merest scratch," Chenery said vaguely, "pray do not disturb

the dragons," but at the quick negative shake of Dorset's

head, Laurence paid Chenery's protests no attention and

fired away the blue gun, sending up the flare.

"Only lie easy," he said to Chenery, "they will come in a

moment, I am sure," and almost instantly the great shadow

of dragon wings came spilling over them, Temeraire's

backlit form solidly black against the sun, the outline too

bright to look at him directly. The trees and branches

crackled and shattered under his weight, and then he thrust

his head in close among them, sniffing, a great reddish

head with ten curving ivory tusks set in its upper lip: it

was not Temeraire at all.

"Christ preserve us," Laurence said involuntarily, reaching

for his pistol. The beast was not very much smaller than

Temeraire, larger than he had imagined ever seeing a feral

dragon, built heavy in the shoulders with a double ridge of

spikes, the color of red-brown mud, patterned liberally

with yellow and grey. "Another gun, Riggs, another gun-"

Riggs fired away, and the feral dragon hissed in

irritation, batting, too late, at the streaking flare that

burst blue light overhead. His head snaked back towards

them, the pupils of his virulent yellow-green eyes

narrowing, and he bared his jaws; then Dulcia came darting

through the canopy of the trees, crying, "Chenery,

Chenery," and flung herself clawing madly at the much

larger feral's head.

Taken aback by the ferocity of her reckless attack, the

red-brown dragon recoiled at first, but snapped back at her

with astonishing speed, caught the leading edge of her wing

in his mouth, and shook her up and down by it. She shrilled

in pain, but when he let her go, apparently satisfied that

she had learnt her lesson, she dived back at him again, her

teeth bared, despite blood spider-webbing blackly over the

membrane of her wing.

He backed away a few paces as best as he could in the close

press of the forest, crushing over a few more trees with

his rump, with rather a bewildered air, and hissed at her

again. She had put herself between them and the feral, and,

spreading her wings wide and sheltering, reared up as large

as she could make herself, foreclaws raised. Still she

looked rather toy-like next to his massive bulk, and

instead of attacking, he sat back on his haunches and

scratched his nose against his foreleg, in an attitude

almost of embarrassed confusion. Laurence had seen

Temeraire often express a certain reluctance at fighting a

smaller beast, conscious of the difference in their weightclass; but in turn, smaller dragons would not offer battle

to one so much larger, ordinarily, without supporting

allies to make the contest a more equal one; only the

incentive of her captain's safety was inducing Dulcia to do

so now.

Temeraire's shadow fell over them, and the feral jerked his

head up, shoulders bristling, and launched himself aloft to

meet the new threat, more his match. Laurence could not see

very well what was going forward, though he craned

desperately: they had Dulcia to contend with, who in her

anxiety to see Chenery and gauge his injuries was bending

close and interfering. "Enough, let us get him aboard,"

Dorset said, rapping her smartly upon the breast until she

backed away. "In the belly-rigging; he must be strapped

down properly," and they hurriedly secured the makeshift

litter to the harness.

Meanwhile above the feral darted back and forth about

Temeraire in short half-arcs, hissing and clicking at him

like a kettle on the boil. Temeraire paused in mid-air, his

wings beating the hovering stroke which only Chinese

dragons could manage, and his ruff came up and spread wide

as his chest expanded deeply. The feral promptly beat away

a few more wing-spans, widening the distance between them,

and kept his position until Temeraire gave his terrible

thundering roar: the trees shaking with the force of it so

that a hail of old leaves and twigs, trapped in the canopy,

came shedding down upon them, and also some of the ugly

lumpen sausage-shaped fruits, whose impact thumped deep

aggressive dents in the ground around them; Chenery's

midwingman Hyatt uttered a startled oath as one glanced off

his shoulder. Laurence rubbed dust and pollen from his

face, squinting up: the feral looked rather impressed, as

well he might be, and after a moment's more hesitation

peeled away and flew out of their sight.

Chenery was got aboard with no less haste, and they flew at

once back to Capetown, Dulcia constantly craning her head

down towards her own belly to see how he did. They unloaded

him sadly in the courtyard, and he was carried into the

castle, already become feverish and excited, to be examined

by the governor's physician, while Laurence took in the one

poor sample that was all the day's work had won them.

Keynes regarded it somberly, and finally said, "Nitidus. If

we must worry about ferals in the forests, even so near,

you must have a small dragon to carry you into the woods;

and Dulcia will not go away when Chenery is so ill."

"The thing grows hidden, under bushes," Laurence said. "We

cannot be hunting from dragon-back."

"You cannot be getting yourselves knocked about by

rhinoceri and eaten by ferals, either," Keynes snapped. "We

are not served, Captain, by a cure which consists in losing

more dragons than are made healthy, in the process of

acquiring it," and turning, stamped away with the sample to

Gong Su, to have it prepared.

Warren swallowed when he heard Keynes's decision, and said

in a voice which did not rise very high, "Lily ought to

have it," but Catherine said strongly, "We will not quarrel

with the surgeons, Micah; Mr. Keynes must make all such

determinations."

"When we have enough," Keynes said quietly, "we may

experiment to see how far the dose may be stretched: at

present we must have some strength in dragons to get more,

and I am by no means confident that this quantity would do