Victory of Eagles (13 page)

enough to overhear. “You fellows don’t know what it is like, having a really fine captain and losing her: it

is worse than having all your treasure stolen. That is why he goes so queer, now and again. A proper

battle, that is what he needs, a bit of blood,” and Temeraire wanted it very much. He did not like the

sensation of being a passenger, it seemed to him, in his own life, unable not to feel as he chose, and if a

battle would repair it, he was almost tempted to go seek one out at once.

But he had brought everyone else along; he could not abandon them to their own devices now or drag

them into a mindless squabble, even if he would have liked one. Instead he brooded on strategy, and

when the urge grew more difficult to bear, he went away and curled himself tightly with his head against

Page 41

his flank, beneath the dark huddle of his wing, and murmured to himself from the
Principia

Mathematica,
which Laurence had read to him so often he had it all by heart, and if he spoke low, and

flattened his voice, he might almost imagine he heard Laurence instead, reading to him in the rain, safe

and sheltered beside him.

But he need not have struggled so hard to keep it in: the very next morning, Minnow and Reedly came

into camp flying so quick they had to skip-hop a few paces along the ground to stop, full of news: “Pigs,”

Reedly said, panting, “so many of them, a whole pen back of their army, and some of ’em are big as

ponies.”

“Pigs,” Gentius said thoughtfully, cracking an eye. “Pigs are good eating, all the way through.”

“Pigs are easy to keep,” Lloyd put in. “We drive ’em into the forest and they will feed themselves, and

you go in and take one when you want, or round ’em up to drive them along.”

“And there are only a couple of old Chevaliers to guard them,” Minnow said. “They are big, but lazy,

and they were fast asleep when we saw.”

“Very good,” Temeraire said, attempting to sound cool and serene, although his tail wanted to thump the

ground in an undignified way. “Lloyd, you and your men will go with Moncey and the Winchesters. You

will wait until we have attacked, and drawn everyone off, and then you will go and take the pigs and

bring them along here.

“Now,” he said, turning, and swept a patch of dirt smooth with the tip of his tail. “Minnow, show me

what the camp looks like—”

They set off a couple of hours before evening: Minnow and Reedly were very sure there was not a

Fleur-de-Nuit with the company, and so they would attack at night, when everyone would be asleep and

most surprised, and have the most difficulty in chasing after them when the pigs had been seized. The little

dragons would come behind, that much was decided; and Temeraire after some thinking put one of their

Chequered Nettles, Armatius, in front, carrying Gentius upon his back. Ballista and Majestatis went on

either side of him, and Requiescat came behind them, and to either side of him a couple of Yellow

Reapers carrying their flags.

These were not very elegant, only some velvet curtains tied up to saplings, but every real army had flags,

and red was an auspicious color. Streaming out they made a fine show, especially carried by the Yellow

Reapers to either side of Requiescat’s orange and red. Everyone brightened as they billowed out, and the

Reapers were especially pleased, and held themselves proudly. Even Requiescat turned his head as they

flew and said, “Well, those are something like, anyway,” to Temeraire, who only inclined his head, stiffly;

he did not by then trust himself to speak.

They came near the camp with the sun already down behind them, and small cooking-fires lit, all over,

among the tents. “Gentius,” Temeraire said, “when I roar, you will go in first—only show them your

wings, and spit somewhere near the guns, and then fly back to Armatius and go back to camp. You

cannot see well enough to be spitting once we have flown in, but they will not know that, and I dare say it

will make them very alarmed.”

“Ha ha!” Gentius said. “Fighting again, at my age; I feel like a hatchling,” and he fluttered out his wings a

little, making ready.

Page 42

Temeraire broke away and flew ahead towards the camp, climbing as he did, and hovered directly

above it; the moon had not yet risen, and he did not think they would notice him. It was very peculiar to

be so close to the enemy but not fighting yet, to start a battle when
he
chose; and not wholly comfortable.

It had always seemed so very plain to him, and quite natural, when one should dart in and begin; but that

was when he only needed to think of himself. Now there were so many others to consider, and the

enemy, too. Perhaps, it occurred to him suddenly, there were a great many other French dragons nearby,

which they had not seen or heard of, who would appear out of nowhere and turn the tide. Then they

should lose, and it would be his fault; he should have lost the day.

The prospect was alarming as no ordinary fighting would have been, and Temeraire almost thought

perhaps he would go back, and ask the others what they thought. He looked back northwest: he could

just make them out, a great mass of shadows darker than the trees and the fields below. They were

coming on as slowly as they could, wingbeats lazy so they drifted low and then swooped back up,

describing great arcs instead of flying straight, all of them waiting for his signal. If only he might have a

little advice—

But he was quite alone. He trembled, but there was no use being cowardly; there was no-one to help

him, and he must decide. Below, the two Chevaliers slept just one hill beyond the low rough earthwork

barricade, where the sentries strolled along the line, casually. In the camp, fires were scattered about, and

some horses—the wind drifted a little, bringing some eddy with it, and one of the horses raised its head

and whickered, uneasily; another pawed at the ground and tossed its head.

“Ce n’est rien, ce n’est rien,”
a man said, eating his supper near them.

Temeraire drew his lungs full, thought of Laurence, and roared out his challenge.

He kept roaring a long time. The Chevaliers jerked up in their clearing at once, their wings opening even

before their eyes had, and began roaring furious answer, their heads twisting this way and that as they

searched the sky for him. Men came racing from the tents about them; Temeraire saw a captain with

flashes of gold on his shoulder, being put up. They sprang into the air half-crewed, men leaping for the

harness from the ground as they rose.

“Je suis là!”
Temeraire called out, propelling himself with great thrusts backwards away from the camp,

and roared again.
“Me voilà!”
They wheeled mid-air and came barreling straight towards him, teeth

bared, and he hovered and waited and then dropped himself straight out of the way, his wings folded

closed and tight while they shot by, white flashes of rifle-fire sparking along their backs—and behind

them, Gentius came soaring gracefully down over the camp on his wide-spread enormous wings, and

spat acid over ten cannon in a row.

Bells of alarm were clanging madly now, torches lit, men rushing out to form into rows as the handful of

horses screamed and struggled against their handlers. Temeraire could not help a wild surging sensation

of excitement almost overpowering, as Requiescat and Ballista and Majestatis came thundering down

through the camp, claws and tails dragging through tents and pickets and fires all alike, scattering them,

and the red banners glowing in the fires that bloomed at once all over.

He dived down and joined their long straight row, stretching his ruff wide. They tore across the full length

of the camp without a pause, and whipped back up aloft trailing canvas and rope and anything else they

had snagged upon their claws. Once they had gone high enough again they could not be shot, they pulled

it all off and let it drop down upon the camp.

Page 43

Perscitia had suggested the notion, as they had no bombs, “especially if you can get some tents pulled

up, and drop them on the pepper guns,” she had said, and it answered remarkably well—most of the

tents bundled up as they dropped, but one luckily unfurled and floated down in a heap atop a company

of infantry trying to aim the long-barreled pepper guns, the bayonets poking out of it and making them

only worse entangled.

“Oh!” Temeraire said exultantly. “Oh, it is working! Perscitia, look—” but she was nowhere near to be

seen, and he could not spend time finding her. The Chevaliers had wheeled about to come back, but they

were holding off—the sizzling crisp of Gentius’s acid was sharp in the air for anyone to smell if only they

put out their tongue, and though it was dark, the fires leaping up from the camp glowed red against

Temeraire’s belly, and Majestatis and Requiescat and Ballista, enough to make it plain that there were

four heavy-weights lined up opposite. Quickly Temeraire turned and roared out, “Chalcedony! Go

around and at them!”

“What?” Chalcedony called back, circling himself in mid-air, to try and keep his place; he and the other

Yellow Reapers and middle-weights were in a great mass waiting for their turn to have a go at the camp.

“The Chevaliers! All of you circle about and come at them, from behind, make them come towards us,”

Temeraire called back, impatiently.

“Oh!” Chalcedony said, and the Reapers jumped at it, streamed out in a flock, and whipped around the

Chevaliers.

“Second line!” Temeraire cried, and the Anglewings and Grey Coppers all darted down in a pair of

short rows, and made another pass through the camp, crosswise to the one the heavy-weights had

made—they were all middle-and light-weights, but so especially quick and skillful they were hard to hit

even under the best of circumstances, and the soldiers had all been aiming their guns up at the

heavy-weights in wholly the wrong direction, so the circumstances were not at all the best, for the French

anyway.

But a great many of the Anglewings were vain of their flying, and instead of going straight through,

Velocitas and Palliatia and a few of the others were stopping abruptly mid-flight, cornering neat as a box

and darting back the way they had come a little, then reversing again, or doing complicated interweaving

tricks of flying. It was all just showing away, and Temeraire frowned at it, because they were taking a

great deal longer than they ought, and would get shot. And anyway, it was meant to be the

heavy-weights’ turn to go again.

But he supposed that was selfish, and they would have some splendid fighting with the Chevaliers

instead; but when he looked the Chevaliers were not coming towards them: they were too busy trying to

defend themselves. The Reapers were darting at them in pairs, one from either flank, and as soon as the

Chevalier turned to meet that attack, another pair would go at them from another direction. The Reapers

were coming at them from below, so the men aboard the Chevaliers could not shoot them very easily.

“Oh,” Temeraire said, disgruntled; it was being very neatly done, but that was not what he had wanted, at

all.

At least the Grey Coppers were behaving in a more practical way—while the Anglewings made their

fuss, the light-weights were snatching up anything that came handy, tent-poles or young trees that came

away from the ground, and whacking away at the camp with them, knocking down people and tents and

spreading the fires even more.

“There goes a gun,” Majestatis said laconically, pointing with his long talons: the French had managed to

Page 44

pull round one of their cannon the right way, despite the confusion, and a dozen men aiming pepper guns

were standing with it.

“Come away!” Temeraire called down hurriedly. “Velocitas! Palliatia—oh, they are not listening!” and

they paid for it: the cannon fired, canister shot; the pepper guns spat, and a general shriek went up from

the Anglewings as the balls scattered over them. “Quick, Majestatis, we are fastest—”

“Hey, I ain’t going to just sit here,” Requiescat said, but Temeraire was already diving, roaring. “The gun

for me,” Majestatis called, as they plummeted, and he managed to bang over the hot cannon as he shot

past, his wickedly long claws slashing ruin among the artillery-men.

Temeraire went for the Anglewings, bulling them along and up again, and nudging a shoulder under

Velocitas, who had gotten worst-hit, a pepper ball right in the face. His golden-yellow head was

speckled black and red everywhere, and his eyes and nostrils were already swollen up so dreadfully he

could not see, streams of mucus dripping away from his face; he was moaning wretchedly.

And then Requiescat came down behind them going too fast for his weight and bowled through

everyone, crashing through the camp with his wings spread trying to slow himself, and knocking soldiers

and dragons both every which way as he drove a massive furrow down the middle of the campground

with his talons and his tail.

“Aloft!” Temeraire called furiously, squirming himself free of several tents and shaking off a couple of

soldiers who had been thrown on his leg. “Everyone aloft, at once!” He punctuated the order with a roar,

a proper one, which he aimed towards the caissons of ammunition stacked neatly by the guns. The