League of Dragons (39 page)

Laurence knew nothing of the larger battle, for the next five minutes. The world narrowed to the span of Temeraire's neck. Carabiners clacked against the harness-rings as they were all flung off their feet—Temeraire fighting furiously, earth and sky whirling around them and blurred together with smoke. Laurence half-blinded by wind and speed tried to reload, to block sword-swings he could not see. Forthing went down before him, stopping one blade; Laurence shot the man behind him—

The world righted itself, and stopped—or did so at least by comparison; Temeraire had slackened to a resting pace. He was falling back, behind the guns, and behind a wall of allied dragons: Fidelitas had taken the risk and come straight through, after all. Calloway clubbed the last boarder across the back of the head with a rifle, knocking the man down, and shouted, “Mr. Ashgrove, pass the word for bandages, and four hands to spare. Sir, you aren't hurt?”

“No, nothing to signify,” Laurence said, though breath was a struggle; he had taken a blow to the ribs. He managed to haul himself around on his straps. Forthing sagged in his carabiner straps, bleeding and dazed. Fidelitas and Cavernus and Levantia had rounded up the light-weights of their formations and were raking the French, Ricarlee and his fellows making a gleeful rampage among their leavings with the Russian greys interspersed among them. Below, the allied troops were streaming away, bayonets bristling at their backs and cavalry guarding their flanks, guns rolling over the road.

T
EMERAIRE WAS CONSCIOUS MOSTLY
of weariness, leavened occasionally by the deep ache in his wing-joints, which throbbed unpleasantly whenever he stirred them. The half-healed musket-wounds in his chest made small knots of pain as though someone were steadily pressing a blunted knife, not sharp enough to pierce scales, against the flesh. Beside him, Iskierka, too, ate through her porridge with dull silent effort, her own head hanging. He paused and sighed heavily after a swallow: he had never quite noticed, before, how tiring it was to gnaw away at a large piece of meat in one's jaws, even if it had been stewed some time.

But he persevered, the food went down little by little, and he gradually became aware of a strangely general silence around the feeding pits. All of them from the first flight were very tired, of course, but no-one from the second flight was speaking, either—none of the usual chatter or squabbling. Even the Russian greys were eating quietly, with many sidelong glances over at Fidelitas, who had a hunched, strange expression as he ate—half-ashamed, and he avoided Temeraire's look, even though he had done so well during the battle and come to their rescue.

With a sudden sharp anxiety, Temeraire said, “Where is Roland?” No-one answered him. “Challoner!” he called urgently—but she had gone to eat something; Forthing was still with the surgeons—“What has happened to her?” he demanded of Fidelitas directly.

“What?” Fidelitas said, with a startled—a guilty, Temeraire thought—flinching. “I do not know. Who is Roland?”

“She is
my
officer,” Temeraire said, infuriated by this cavalier response, “who was lent you only for this one engagement—
lent.
”

He was about to add several remarks about the care he might have expected, in exchange for such a gesture, when Baggy put down his own bowl of porridge—he had been gulping it with no benefit of a spoon—and belched and said, “Here, now, what's the fuss? Roland is with the admiral.”

“Oh,” Temeraire said. “She is not hurt?”

“No?” Baggy said. “Why would she be?”

“Well, I am very glad to hear it, although someone might have said so, sooner,” Temeraire said, but he was not entirely placated; he still did not know what made Fidelitas look so strange—nor Cavernus, who also wore a stiff, disapproving expression.

Perhaps they were distressed over having retreated. But no-one could truly have complained of the day's outcome—no-one, at least, who had seen Dresden in flames—the scale of the opposition—the situation which had confronted them; no-one could fail to be impressed. They had escaped, and nearly all the Prussian and Russian soldiers, too,
with
their guns; or at least half of them. No-one would have called it likely that morning, knowing what they had faced. Of course it was not
exactly
like a victory—but only look how the Russians had beaten Napoleon last winter, all by running away in a particularly clever manner, and anyway Temeraire called it churlish to be dissatisfied, all things considered.

“Well, well,” Churki said, coming down next to him, with a flurry of her feathers. “So here you are, after all, and here is the army still in one piece! I would not have looked for it this morning,” she added, as though to affirm Temeraire's own thinking, and with strong approval. “That was some fine soldiering. Would there be anything to spare?” And then she even waited very politely until Temeraire made room for her to join him and eat. He did so with a dignified bow, although it made his wing-joints ache again: he felt it only due her own courtesy, and also the very good sense of her kind remarks; he hoped everyone else should have overheard, and that it might make them cease behaving so wooden.

Churki at least felt no constraint herself. “Naturally when I understood the circumstances, I knew Hammond had to be removed from the city at once,” she said, as she ate: she had been with him in Dresden early that morning when the first desperate scouts had reported the oncoming force. “There were not more than ten other dragons in the whole place, except the couriers: there was no use trying to fight. So I brought him away, along with that young Tsar fellow—I do not think much of those Russians, let me assure you! Not one of them properly looking after their own emperor; and would you believe that
he
is not married, either? There is something very wrong in the management of men in this part of the world, I must say. I did not feel I owed them any assistance, but Hammond was distressed, so I agreed to take him along and that poor old Marshal as well.
He
did not sound very well. I told them he had better be wrapped up better, but they would be off, without blankets or hot bricks.” She shook her head censoriously over the whole enterprise.

She had flown further east, to a town named Bautzen which was their destination, and there had waited until Yu Li had reached them with the news of the army's escape. “Which I did not expect in the least,” she said. “Of course, then Hammond would have nothing but coming back to rejoin you. But if you ask
me,
he has no business being here, and neither does the Tsar. No-one could call this Emperor Napoleon a sensible man, after that war he ran in Russia, but there is no denying he is worth ten times over any general we have.—And he has fathered
four
children.”

“Only one,” Temeraire protested, “although Empress Anahuarque means to have another, Laurence says.”

“Four,”
Churki said firmly. “He has two more by two other women, in France, and one in Vienna, all of them old enough to walk; I inquired of Hammond on the subject. So the Sapa Inca is already expecting another child?” She emitted a sigh thoroughly laced with envy. “Maila cannot complain of
her
choices—if only Hammond would find a woman who had proven her fertility half so well as this French Emperor of hers! And that Lithuanian girl means to have a baby for Dyhern, I understand,” she finished, in disgruntled tones.

Temeraire had almost forgotten completely about Miss Merkelyte—Mrs. Dyhern. It did not seem entirely fair to him, either, that Eroica should have simply appeared and snatched her out from under them—but there, he did not mean to be annoyed with Eroica, who had not done it on purpose, and who had been so remarkably helpful with the treasure: a true friend.

“But I see your Laurence, too, has done nothing in that line,” Churki said. “Even though he is an admiral now? Surely that must make it easier for him to command the interest of a worthy woman. Not,” she added, “that I see why you insist on being so choosy. But if you do
not
mean for him to marry Mrs. Pemberton, you had better settle her with someone else, so at least
she
may begin having children.”

By then nearly everyone was finished with their meals, and moving away to make room for the cooks to scorch the pit clean and begin stewing tomorrow's porridge. Fidelitas had taken himself off as quickly as he could, so Temeraire took the opportunity of nudging over to Cavernus to ask quietly, “Why is everyone so awkward? What has Fidelitas done?”

“
He
has done nothing,” she said, but refused to say anything more. “You had better talk to the admiral about it.”

“I trust, Midwingman, that nothing more will be said on the subject,” Laurence said.

“I am not a goose, to go about honking everywhere,” Roland said. “But there shan't be any keeping it quiet, sir. Every man topside heard him, and every man aboard heard Fidelitas, and I dare say a dozen beasts heard Cavernus putting in her mite on the subject; it shan't stay a secret.”

“No,” Laurence said, “but it may be known, without being formally brought to my notice.”

“It might be better if it
were,
now,” she said pointedly.

Laurence knew what she meant. He had certainly just saved the allied army, through extraordinary efforts, and Whitehall could not dismiss him at this particular moment; if he meant to call Poole to any official account, now was the time. “That will be all,” he said. She frowned, then touched her hat and left the room. Laurence sat back heavily in his chair—a more comfortable one than many he had used on campaign; he had been assigned a house for his quarters, large enough to boast a sitting-room inhabited by a writing-table. He understood Roland's resentment—shared it. But any court-martial convened against Poole would face the remarkable difficulty of convicting him of dereliction of duty when his duty had in fact been performed to the utmost: when his dragon had led a dangerous charge and had won through to relieve Temeraire and Iskierka, just in time, and secure the retreat.

The case could only be won by a public argument that Poole had tried to persuade Fidelitas to do otherwise—and that his efforts had failed; that his dragon had willfully disobeyed him. That knowledge was even now traveling through the Corps at the speed of rumor, surely to the anger and anxiety of every officer who had taken it as truth that dragons were devoted blindly to their captains. Laurence was not even sure that a court of aviators would be willing to admit that it had happened. Poole would be invited to say that he had changed his mind and had told Fidelitas so, too quietly to be overheard. Many would refuse to believe that a dragon had committed the act from any sense of duty; he would either have done it at the behest of another dragon, or, by a still more uncharitable interpretation, for the sake of prize-money.

“And I cannot say Poole was unquestionably guilty, in any case,” Laurence said tiredly. “He might well have argued that the risk of a charge outweighed the value of saving us—that he desired to take a safer course.”

“But if he had gone round, he should never have come in time to save the guns, which were in much more danger than I was,” Temeraire said, with an optimistic gloss upon his own peril. “And without the guns, everything should have been lost, anyone could see that. Poor Fidelitas! I am very sorry I was so abrupt with him to-day: he was behaving so oddly that I was sure he had done something to be ashamed of, but I see it is only that he was ashamed of Poole, and everyone else was pitying him. We must do something for him, Laurence. I do not suppose there is any hope of a prize?”

“No,” Laurence said. They would be on short commons, if anything, by the end of the week. A great deal of supply had been abandoned behind the enemy lines.

“Then a medal,” Temeraire said decisively. “He certainly ought to have a medal.”

“We will consider the matter tomorrow,” Laurence said. “For now, you should be asleep: I made sure you would be so when I came, and I am sorry to have found otherwise. You have eaten enough?”

“Yes,” Temeraire said. “All the third flight handsomely said they would go without, because they had eaten in the afternoon before they fetched the supply here, so we ate well. And really I am not
very
tired,” but here he yawned, enormously, and moments after putting his head down murmuring, “but now that Emily is back, and you have assured me all is well…” he was snoring in a remarkably stentorious way, which made the shrubs near his nostrils tremble violently with every exhalation.

Laurence rested a hand on the soft muzzle and left it there a few moments, feeling the steady thrumming of breath moving beneath, before he continued on to the courier-clearing, where Yu Li awaited him, herself drooping with fatigue. Laurence hesitated; he had heard enough of her report that he knew he must urgently hear the rest, and take the news on to the headquarters, but she had been going back and forth all day in their service and now was shivering badly; the night had turned cool, and Jade Dragons did not have the flesh to keep them warm when they were not flying. He looked towards the large manor, overlooking the encampment, where the senior staff were assembling, and slowly asked, “Do you think you might be able to come inside the house?”

She followed his courier to the manor, and came up the stairs behind him, to the great consternation of the guards. She was only some eight feet long from head to tip of tail, but her talons and teeth were remarkable enough for all that. But Hammond flung open the door from within and rushing out onto the top of the stairs seized Laurence by the hand, nearly wringing it in greeting. “Admiral!” he cried. “He has halted on the road outside Dresden. He has certainly halted. We have it confirmed beyond a doubt.”