Victory of Eagles (10 page)

They fell into silence again, passing the clearings one by one, the millhouse rumble of sleeping dragons to

either side, their own dinners finished and their crews toiling on the harnesses with only a few lanterns, the

faint clanking of the smiths’ hammers tapping away and the acrid smoky stink of harness oil. They had a

long walk out in the dark, after the last clearing, climbing a steep slope upwards to the crown of a hill,

prominently placed overlooking all the camp, where Iskierka lay sleeping in a thick spiny coil, steam

issuing with every breath, and the feral dragons scattered around her.

She cracked an eye open as they came in and inquired drowsily, “Is it a battle yet?”

“No, love, back to sleep,” Granby said, and she sighed and shut her eye; but she had drawn the notice

of the men: they looked up, and then they looked from Laurence to Granby, and then they looked back

down again, saying nothing.

“Perhaps I had best not stay,” Laurence said. He knew some of the faces: men from his own crew,

some of his former officers; he was glad they had found places here.

“Stuff,” Granby said. “I am not so damned craven, and anyway,” he added, more despondently, when

he had led Laurence into his own tent, pitched in the comfortable current of heat which Iskierka gave

steadily off, “I cannot be much farther in the soup than I am already, after yesterday. She’s spoilt, there is

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no other word for it. Wouldn’t keep in formation, wouldn’t obey signals—took the ferals with her—” He

shrugged, and taking up his own private bottle from the floor poured them each a glass, which he drank

with an unaccustomed enthusiasm.

“It’s not so bad, on patrol,” Granby said, wiping his mouth after. “She doesn’t need any coaxing to look

out the enemy, and she’ll take directions to make it easier; I hardly notice anymore. But in a fleet

action—I don’t mean she was useless,” he added, with a defensive note. “Did for a first-rate and three

frigates, all herself and those fellows, and chased a dozen French beasts. But she hasn’t a shred of

discipline. Pretended not to hear me, left the right wing of the Corps wide open, and two beasts badly

hurt for it. I ought to be broken for it, if they could afford to give her up.”

He was pacing the small confines of the tent, still holding the empty glass, and talking swiftly, almost

nervously; more to be saying something, filling the air between them, than the particular words. “This is

the sort of thing that rots the Corps,” he said. “I never thought
I
would be—a bad officer, someone who

ruins his dragon, some other kind of fool, kept on because his beast won’t serve otherwise—the Army,

the Navy, they sneer at us for that, as much for anything else, and there at least they are right to sneer. So

our admirals have to dance to the Navy’s tune, and meanwhile the youngsters see it, too, and you can’t

ask them to be better, when they see a fellow let off anything, anything at all—”

He pulled himself up abruptly, realizing too late that his words were applicable to more of his audience

than himself, and looked at Laurence miserably.

“You are not wrong,” Laurence said. He had assumed as much himself, after all, in his Navy days: had

thought the Corps full of wild, devil-may-care libertines, disregarding law and authority as far as they

dared, barely kept in check—to be used for their control over the beasts, and not respected.

“But if we have more liberty than we ought,” Laurence said, after a moment, struggling through, “it is

because they have not enough: the dragons. They have no stake in victory but our happiness; their daily

bread any nation would give them just to have peace and quiet. We are given license so long as we do

what we ought not: so long as we use their affections to keep them obedient and quiet, to ends which

serve them not at all—or which harm.”

“How else do you make them care?” Granby said. “If we left off, the French would only run right over

us, and take our eggs themselves.”

“They care in China,” Laurence said, “and in Africa, and care all the more, that their rational sense is not

imposed on, and their hearts put into opposition with their minds. If they cannot be woken to a natural

affection for their country, such as we feel, it is our fault and not theirs.”

Laurence slept the night in Granby’s tent, atop a blanket; he would not take Granby’s cot. It was odd to

sleep hot and wake in a midsummer sweat, then step out and see the camp below dusted overnight with

snow, soiled grey tents for the moment clean white, and the ground already churning into muddy slush.

“You are back,” Iskierka said, looking at Laurence: she was wide awake, picking over the charred

remnants of her breakfast, and watching the sluggish camp with a disgruntled eye. “Where is Temeraire?

He has let you get into a wretched state,” she added, with rather a smug air. Laurence could not argue:

he was a pitiful sight indeed, in raggedy coat and his shoes beginning to open at the seams; and the less

said of his stockings, the better. “Granby,” she said, looking over his shoulder, “you may lend Laurence

your fourth-best coat, and then you may tell Temeraire,” she added to Laurence, “that I am very sorry he

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cannot give you nicer things.”

However, Granby was wearing his fourth-best coat, as the other three were so adorned with gold braid

and jewels, the fruits of Iskierka’s determined prize-hunting, as to be wholly unsuitable for actual fighting.

It would not in any case have been a very successful loan, as Laurence had some four inches in the

shoulders which Granby had instead in height; but Granby sent word out, and shortly a young runner

came back, carrying a folded coat, and a spare pair of boots.

“Why, Sipho,” Laurence said. “I am glad to find you well; and your brother, I hope?” He had worried

what might have become of the two boys, brought from Africa, who had so helped them there; he had

made them his own runners briefly by way of providing for them, but he had too shortly thereafter put

himself in no position to be of assistance to anyone.

“Yes, sir,” Sipho said in English as perfect as Laurence had ever heard in his life, though less than a year

before the child had never heard a word of it. “He is with Arkady, and Captain Berkley says, you are

welcome to these, and to come and say hello to Maximus would you, if you are not too damned

stiff-necked; he said to say just that,” he added earnestly.

“You aren’t the only one who owes them,” Berkley said, in his blunt way, when Laurence had come and

thanked him for assuming the responsibility. “You needn’t worry about them being cast off anyway: we

need them. They can jaw with those damned ferals, better than any man jack of us; that older boy talks

their jabber quicker than he does English. You can worry about their getting knocked on the head

instead. I had a fight on my hands to make the Admiralty let me keep this one grounded for now: they

would have put him up as an ensign, if you like; not nine years of age. Demane they would have no matter

what I said, but that is just as well. Fights,” he added succinctly, “so he may as well do it against the

Frogs, where it don’t get him in hot water.”

Maximus was much recovered, from the last Laurence had seen him: three months of steady feeding on

shore had brought him nearly up to his former fighting weight, and he put his head down and said in a

conspiratorial whisper, “Tell Temeraire that Lily and I have not forgotten our promise, and we are ready

to fight with him whenever he should ask; we will not let them hang you, at all.”

Laurence stared up at the immense Regal Copper. All his crew looked deeply distressed, as well they

might, the outlaw remark being perfectly audible several clearings over. Berkley only snorted. “There has

been plenty of talk like that, and louder,” he said. “I expect that is why you have been kept stuffed

between decks in a ship instead of a decent prison on land. No, don’t beg my pardon. It was sure as

sixpence you and that mad beast of yours would make a spectacle of yourselves soon or late. Bring him

back, do for a dozen Frogs, and save us all the bother of the execution.”

With this sanguine if unlikely recommendation, Laurence reported to the courier-clearing with his orders,

looking a little less shabby: Berkley was a thickset man, but if the borrowed coat was too large at least it

could be got on, and with a little padding of straw at the toes, the boots were entirely serviceable. His

repaired appearance got him no better treatment, however. There were a dozen beasts waiting for

messages and orders, but when Laurence had presented himself, the courier-master said, “If you will be

so good as to wait,” and left him outside the clearing. Laurence was near enough to see the master talking

with his officers; none of the courier-captains looked very inclined to take him up. He was left standing an

hour, while four messages came in and were sent out, before another Winchester landed bringing fresh

orders from the Admiralty, and at last the courier-master came and said, “Very well; we have a man to

take you.”

“Morning, sir,” the captain said, touching his hat, as Laurence came over: Hollin, his former ground-crew

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master. “Elsie, will you give the captain a leg up? There is a strap there, sir, handy for you.”

“Thank you, Hollin,” Laurence said, grateful for the steady matter-of-factness, and climbed up to her

back. “We are for Pen Y Fan.”

“Right you are, sir, we know the way,” Hollin said. “Do you need a bite to sup, Elsie, before we go?”

“No,” she said, raising her head dripping from the water-trough. “They always have lovely cows there, I

will wait.”

They did not speak very much during the flight. Winchesters were so small and quick one felt always on

the point of flying off on one’s own, the force of the wind steadily testing the limits of the carabiner straps,

and Laurence’s hands, already blistered, grew bruised where he held on to the leather harness. They

raced past blurring fields of brown stalks and snow, the thin cold air chapping at their faces and leaking

down into the neck of Laurence’s coat, through the threadbare shirt and piercing to the skin. He did not

mind in the least, except to wish they might go quicker still; he resented now every mile remaining.

Goodrich Castle swelled up before them, on its hill, and Hollin put out the signal-flags as they flashed

by:
courier, with orders,
and the fort’s signal-gun fired in acknowledgment, already falling behind them.

The mountains were growing nearer, and nearer, and as the sun began to set Elsie came over the final

sharp ridge and over the broad packed-earth feeding grounds, stained dark with much blood, and the

cliffs full of dragon-holes. She landed. The cattle pen was empty, its wide door standing open. There

were no lights and no sound. There was not a dragon anywhere to be seen.

Chapter 4

O
VERNIGHT, ICICLES HADgrown upon the overhang of the cave, a row of glittering teeth, and now

as the sun struck they steadily dripped themselves away upon the stone, an uneven pattering without

rhythm or sense. Temeraire opened his eyes, once in a while, dully to watch them shrink back away

towards the edge; then he closed his eyes and put his head down. No one had further proposed his

removal, or disturbed him.

A scrabbling of claws made him look up; a small dragon had landed on the ledge, and Lloyd was sliding

down from its back—“Come now then,” Lloyd said, tramping in, his boots ringing and smearing

field-muck on the clean stone. “Come now, old boy, why such a fuss, today? We have a lovely visitor

waiting—a nice fat bullock will set you up—”

Temeraire had never very much wanted to kill anyone, except of course anyone who tried to hurt

Laurence; he liked to fight well enough, as it was exciting, but he had never thought that he would like to

kill anyone just for himself. Only, in this moment it seemed to him he would much rather anything than

have Lloyd before him, speaking so, when Laurence was dead.

“Be silent,” he said, and when Lloyd continued, without a pause, “—the very best put aside for you

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special, tonight—” Temeraire stretched out his neck and put his head directly before Lloyd and said, low,

“My captain is dead.”

That at least meant something to Lloyd: he went white and stopped talking; he held himself very still.