Victory of Eagles (37 page)

patrol, and on the flight to deliver their supplies to Loch Laggan: the farmers were grown adept at hiding

their diminishing herds.

“Damn the lot of them and Boney, too,” Jane snapped, when Laurence gave her the news, and rubbed

the back of her hand across her forehead. “Tell him we have one week less of supply than I said,” she

told the aide hovering at her desk, the young man, an Army officer, at once nervous and impatient,

shifting his weight side-to-side. “And no, he mayn’t have twenty, he may have ten, and not all of those

heavy-weights, either. Wellesley wants you,” she added to Laurence, and tossed him a wax-sealed

packet from among those upon her desk, “and as many as I can spare, in Edinburgh.”

Laurence broke the seal and unfolded the orders, a single sheet, a few lines only, hastily and informally

written, with no signature:
Bring that fire-breathing monster, and however many more Roland will

give you; the best fighters you have, and the more vicious the better.

He read it over slowly, and then folded it back up again;
vicious
was a cold indigestible presentiment in

his belly. Jane, he thought, had not seen the contents; she would object as strongly as he would, and he

looked up.

She had scarcely interrupted her work. “Frette, have Rightley take himself and five middle-weights to

Inverness, and send a note to that damned colonel that if he don’t get his men on board tomorrow night

when the beasts land, I will have him up for a court-martial the next morning. We haven’t time to waste

on this nonsense,” she said, handing off three orders at once. “Laurence, you may choose your beasts,

anyone you like; formations make no nevermind.”

He could not burden her. “We may have ten?” Laurence said. “Wellesley wants Iskierka,” he added.

“Yes,” Jane said, distracted, “you may as well take her; Lord knows it is a waste to have her patrolling,

if there is skirmishing to be had. Oh, and here,” she added, giving him a letter dug out of many others on

her over-burdened desk, “you may read that here, although I cannot let you take it.”

A hand had written, broadly and with many misspellings and stray capitals:

The Lady In Question is watchd, but, not yet Molestd; I have Contrivved, to Whisper in a few

ears, that her Husb’d was a Nown Enthusiast and she Married Late in Desp’ration. May she one

day Forgive This Slur aganst her, and upon the name of a Hero of His Country! I hope the

Danger, of Arrest, is Passd. This is All I can convay Reliably, as she refuses to Receve Me as a

Caller, but Gossip says she is Much Grieved and the Child continues Sick.

To-Morrow I am invitd to Dinner with Marshl Davout, but do not Expect Much as he is

Close-Mouthd unlike M. Murat…

The letter had no signature. He read the section over twice, and gave it back again. “Thank you,” he said

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only, and bowing left; he did not trust himself to say anything more.

TEMERAIRE WAS VERY PLEASEDto be so singled out for a particular assignment, and even more

to be let off the job of patrolling, and ferrying men about, however important it might be. The only

difficulty was in deciding who should be chosen to come along. “Wellesley wants the best fighters you

have, and the most enthusiastic,” Laurence said, which was only fair, anyway, as those had the most right

to be doing something more exciting than carrying the infantry back and forth. But there were more than

ten deserving, and anyway it was only eight, because of course he should go himself, and another would

be Iskierka, even though she did not merit the privilege at all.

It was this showy fire-breathing, which was not anything particularly extraordinary: anyone could set

things on fire, if only you had a little bit to start with. Temeraire sighed, but anyway she was not of much

use: she had already been let off carrying people, because it was difficult for many people to sit upon her

with all her spikes jetting off steam as they did. So he had to put up with her; and then of course

Maximus and Lily had to be asked, although to Temeraire’s startled dismay, Laurence tried to speak

against the choice.

“But it would be very unhandsome of me not to invite them for some real fighting, when I may,”

Temeraire protested, looking over his shoulder, lest Maximus and Lily should overhear, and be offended.

Fortunately, Maximus was solidly asleep and snoring, under a blanket of nine Winchesters and little

ferals, and Lily was presently encamped outside the far wall of the citadel just below Captain Harcourt’s

window, jealously: Catherine was gone inside to see to the baby.

“Harcourt is not well, I find,” Laurence said.

“Yes,” Temeraire said, “Lily thinks so, too, and that is as much a reason to ask her as any: she is quite

sure Catherine must do better to go south, and have some real fighting, than all this flying back and forth

in the wet. She takes cold so easily now, and ought not be so long aloft.”

“Berkley don’t take cold easily, because he is so fat,” Maximus said sleepily, cracking open an eye, “but

I would also like to go and fight.”

So that was settled, but for the rest, Temeraire scratched his head a little. “Gentius may as well come

with us, without counting against our tally,” he said at last, “because it is not as though he can carry

anyone or patrol: he is only staying here in Loch Laggan and sleeping. And we shall have Armatius to

carry him. That would do very well for heavy-weights. I do not think I ought to take Majestatis or

Ballista, for they are so very handy at managing the others, and I am not quite sure that everyone would

mind so well, carrying the soldiers back and forth, if they were to leave also; and Requiescat, because

no-one who is not a heavy-weight will argue with him, even if he must be told what orders to give.”

He was a little puzzled how to leave them behind without giving offense, however, until he hit on the

notion of giving them rank instead. “You do not suppose Wellesley can mind?” he asked Laurence.

“It is a capital scheme,” Admiral Roland said in amusement, when Laurence had inquired of her. “Your

militia had better be shifted under command of the Corps in any case, so we will make you a commodore

instead of a colonel, and your officers shall be captains; although it will be damned difficult to manage

epaulettes for them.”

“Oh, epaulettes,” Temeraire said, eagerly. A party of seamstresses had been recruited from the local

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villages around Loch Laggan to help sew carrying-harnesses, for the transport of the soldiers, and they

were now induced to make up rosettes out of some of the leftover silk and leather. The results were not

very like real epaulettes, nearer instead to enormous mop-heads of the brightest colors, with a little cloth

of gold at the knotted center for some flash, and a great many ties to attach them to a bit of harness. But

no-one minded that, in the least.

“I call that handsome,” Requiescat said, admiring the bright green knot upon his shoulder from every

direction, craning his head nearly upside down, and even Majestatis did not quite manage to affect his

usual degree of amused disdain and kept glancing back sidelong at his own: it was in red, to go against

his cream-and-black, and looked almost as fine, Temeraire thought, as his own pale blue matched set: he

of course had needed two.

“Yes, and if anyone should be particularly clever at helping you to manage, you may make them

lieutenants, and
they
may have a smaller one,” Temeraire said. “So that is all settled,” he added to

Laurence, “and for the rest, let us take some Yellow Reapers. Messoria and Immortalis, of course,

because they are our wing-mates, and also the two best of our unharnessed, and that will do very well,

because I also want Perscitia: she is very clever, and,” he confided, “if I leave her here she
will
offend

someone, I am afraid. Anyway, we may need to manage some artillery.”

The Reapers quarrelled it out amongst themselves, and finally settled that Chalcedony and Gladius

should come, and Cantarella should take charge of the rest staying behind, and have an epaulette.

Moncey got one for command of the couriers—it was nearly as large as his head but pleased him very

well—and Minnow also.

So there was no quarrelling or ill-feeling at all in the end, which Temeraire felt a credit to his

arrangements. “We are a very handsome company, are we not?” Temeraire asked Laurence, hoping to

find him satisfied. “It is a pity about Iskierka, but no-one could quarrel with our choices, otherwise, I am

sure.”

“Yes,” Laurence said.

“I have only been thinking,” Temeraire said, with a sidelong look; he hoped it would not seem selfish,

“that it would be just as well, if we got back the rest of our crew: not that we are not perfectly

comfortable as we are,” he added, “but a few more bellmen to manage some bombs, and it might be

convenient to have Winston back, to help Fellowes—”

“Those who wished to return have done so,” Laurence said. “I cannot require any man to serve with a

traitor.”

“Oh,” Temeraire said. “But—” and stopped. It had not occurred to him that the crew had
chosen
not to

come back: that they had rather be elsewhere, on another dragon, and with another captain. It seemed

very strange to him, when he was now a commodore, and must surely have been more impressive, if

anything. He wondered if perhaps Laurence was mistaken, or only shy of asking for them: perhaps they

did not even know that he and Laurence were free. “But surely Martin, at least, or Ferris, would come,”

he said.

Laurence was very still a moment, and then he said, “Ferris has been dismissed the service,” only

because, it seemed, the admirals imagined that Ferris had been of some help, even though he had done

nothing at all.

“But then where is he?” Temeraire asked. If Ferris were not with some other dragon, it stood to reason

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he would rather be with them; but Laurence said with finality, “Any communication from me must be

wholly unwelcome.”

Temeraire did not press him further, but privately he thought that perhaps
he
would write to Ferris: if he

could get Emily or Sipho, perhaps, to take down a letter for him, and find out Ferris’s direction; and then

a dragon he knew a little from Dover, Orchestia, landed in the courtyard. She was back from a patrol,

and his own midwingman Martin was with her crew, his bright yellow hair standing out against his green

coat.

“Mr. Martin,” Temeraire called out, seeing him go by, thinking perhaps to ask him over; and see if he

knew, that Temeraire had been made commodore; and whether he was quite sure he would not prefer to

go with them, on their own particular mission—

Martin started a little, at being named, and looked over; but then he turned his back and walked on into

the citadel with the rest of Orchestia’s crew—not even a word, or a gesture, and he had always been so

very friendly.

“Temeraire,” Laurence said, “you will oblige me very greatly if you will make no such gesture again.”

“No, I will not,” Temeraire said, much subdued; it was not only that Martin had ignored them: he had

done it so very openly, as though he wanted everyone else to know he meant to do it. There was

something particularly unpleasant to it: anyone might not feel like conversation, of course, but this was

showing away how little he wanted it with them, in particular. “But,” Temeraire said to Laurence, slowly,

“does that mean he does not approve, that we took over the cure? Surely he would not have wished to

see all those dragons dead—”

“Between two evils, he might have found that the lesser than treason,” Laurence said, without lifting his

head from the book which he was reading.

“Oh! Then I am not sorry,” Temeraire said defiantly. “He may stay with Orchestia, for all I care; if she

wants him.”

He felt rather wounded, though, for all his bravado: and he had not yet understood the worst; he did not

realize the implication of what they had done to poor Ferris, until that very afternoon: all of them

assembled and ready to fly, his harness rigged out and his epaulettes bright in the thin wintry sunshine,

and a runner had come to let them know they might go to Edinburgh, and he said, “Mr. Laurence, your

orders, sir, from the admiral,” handing him the packet.

“Yes,” Laurence said, and did not correct the boy; he only took the papers and put them in his coat

pocket; and for the first time Temeraire realized, looking closely, that Laurence was not wearing the gold

bars upon his shoulders, which the other captains wore.

Temeraire did not want to ask; he did not want to hear the answer, but he could not help it. “Yes,”

Laurence said, “I have been struck the service, too. It does not matter now,” he added, after a moment,

when of course it mattered, as much as anything. “We must away.”

LAURENCE STOOD BY THE PARAPET,looking out to sea, in the upper court of Edinburgh Castle.

Temeraire lay somewhere in the dark covert below the castle, a great yawning darkness in the side of the

illuminated city, which stretched out around the castle and down to the River Forth. Ships rose and fell

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uneasily on the water, and the wind blew sharp needles of frozen rain into his face. In the far distance he