Victory of Eagles (40 page)

Temeraire looked at it, and said uncertainly, “Shall I roar?”

“However you choose,” Laurence said.

“Ought I bring it all down at once?” Temeraire asked, turning his head to inspect the cottage; he darted a

look back at Laurence, as if trying to gauge his real intent. “Perhaps, if I just took off this chimney—”

“Oh, you are taking too long,” Iskierka said, and promptly blasted it with fire, the dry thatched roof

going alight in a merrily crackling instant.

It burned fiercely, putting out sharp smoke; the flames licking out eagerly towards its neighbors;

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Laurence sat waiting, and after a moment a cellar door creaked open and a few men came forth, “Put it

out, for God’s sake put it out,” one of them begged gasping. “All the village will catch—”

“Berkley, if you will be so good,” Laurence said; Maximus took off the burning roof, and laying it on the

ground scraped some dirt over it with a clumsy swipe, leaving it half-buried. Laurence looked back at the

villagers, who stared up at him pale and sweating. “Which way did the French go?”

“Towards Scarrow Hill,” the older man said after a moment, his voice still trembling. “With all our cattle,

every last one—” The faint lowing of a cow from the woods made him a liar on that point, but Laurence

did not care. “They left not an hour—”

“Very good; to quarters, gentlemen, and let the riflemen make ready,” Laurence said over his shoulder,

to the other captains. “Aloft, Temeraire, along the road.”

They caught the French fifteen minutes later, and heard them first: singing a bawdy snatch of
“Auprès de

ma blonde, qu’il fait bon, fait bon, fait bon”
as they marched through a forested section: then they

emerged out onto the road again, cattle in a string bellowing and throwing their heads, uneasy as they

scented the dragons aloft. The men pulled irritably on the cows’ heads and tried to drag them along. They

did not look up.

Temeraire craned his head back and looked at Laurence. Ten dragons came on behind them. “Mr.

Allen,” Laurence said, “signal the attack.”

Chapter 14

I
DO NOT SEEwhat is wrong with it,” Iskierka said, still nibbling upon the charred beef bones of her

dinner. “They are stealing the cows for their dragons, it is not our fault if their dragons are too lazy to

come and get the cows themselves.”

“It is not
wrong,
” Temeraire said, dissatisfied, “precisely.”

“Not very sporting, though,” Gentius said. “They did not even have a gun.”

“The village did not have a gun, either, or even muskets,” Lily said, “so it was not very sporting of those

soldiers, in the first place.”

“Anyway,” Iskierka added, with an air of smug virtue, “we must obey our orders.”

Temeraire did not argue further. It was not that he minded for himself, anyway, very much, although it

had not been a very interesting battle: they had dived, the soldiers had fired a few shots, and then they

had all run away into the woods, if they were not dead; it had lasted scarcely five minutes, and nothing to

show for it. Except of course the cows, but those they mostly had to give back.

He was not going to say so, of course, but he rather felt Iskierka was right. If the soldiers had not

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wanted to be attacked, they ought not have been going about in other people’s territory, taking their food

and much more than they could eat themselves. Only, he was a little worried, because it seemed the sort

of thing that Laurence might have minded, and he felt instinctively there was something strange, that

Laurence did not seem to care.

The villagers certainly had been very grateful. “Two months to spring. We would have starved, or near

enow; thank ye, sir,” the village headman said, the half-burned cottage quite forgiven, as the others came

nervously out to look over their cattle and their goods, and make their own anxious courtesies.

A few young men from Maximus’s ground crew had driven back those cows which had not been killed

or panicked to death in the fighting; Gladius and Chalcedony had carried back the two large carts of

grain, also, and the villagers had sent word back along the road, to those others pillaged, to come and

share what there was left to have.

But Laurence did not seem pleased by their many thanks, either; he only nodded, and said, “Send word

also that if you should see or hear of any French movements, you are to light a beacon: smoke, or a

bonfire at night, and we will come for it if we see.”

Gong Su had taken those cows which had been killed; enough for all the dragons to have a little fresh

roast beef, and then a share of soup and bones and meat mixed with vegetables and grain, for all the

crew and everyone in the village besides. The atmosphere was celebratory, and all the more when the

villagers brought out a concealed store of honey wine. Temeraire had even enjoyed a cupful poured into

his mouth, so he might close his jaws on it and keep the crisp fragrant smell on his tongue.

Laurence had not eaten very much, and now he came away from the village and the celebration, back to

Temeraire’s side; but only to get out his maps again and study the roads.

Temeraire drew a deep breath, watching him, and said valiantly, “Laurence—Laurence, I have been

thinking. Perhaps you might sell my talon-sheaths. I do not mean just now,” he added, hurriedly, “but,

when the war is over—”

“Why?” Laurence said, a good deal more absently than Temeraire felt such an offer merited. “Are you

tired of them?”

“No, of course not, who could become tired of them?” Temeraire said, and then paused; he was not

sure how he might explain, without betraying his knowledge of the loss which Laurence had concealed,

surely because it wounded him greatly. “I only thought,” he tried, “that perhaps you might like to have

some more capital, as you have given me so much of it yourself.”

“I have no need of capital,” Laurence said, “and you had better keep them, against future need. I thank

you for the offer; it was handsomely made,” he added, which ought to have been a tremendous relief, but

Temeraire found that instead he was only unhappier, for having tried his most desperate notion and found

it of no use. Laurence had not seemed even a little moved by the prospect of having so splendid a

treasure for his own; the gratitude had been only formal.

He put his head down upon his forelegs and watched Laurence a little longer; Laurence had a lamp, and

in the light, he looked a little odd—he was not quite clean-shaven, Temeraire realized, and there was

some dried blood upon his jaw, which he had not taken off. His hair was tied roughly back, and grown

long. But he did not seem to care for any of it; all his attention was for the map, and the figures he was

studying.

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“May I not help you, Laurence?” Temeraire asked at last, rather hopelessly, for lack of any other idea.

Laurence paused over the papers, then put one sheet out with the lamp upon it. “Is it large enough for

you to see?—it is the tax roll for the last year. I expect the French will first plunder the wealthier estates

and villages, so we will look for them there.”

“Yes, I can read it,” Temeraire said; it was only a little difficult, if he squinted. “Shall I tell you all the

richest ones, in order?”

AS THEY PUSHED GRADUALLY SOUTHWARD,the raiding parties grew steadily larger and more

desperate: no longer small bands, out to forage for themselves as much as for the beasts, but urgent

support for dragons headquartered now at small outposts and encampments throughout the heart of

England, to distribute the burden of their feeding. If the cattle did not arrive daily, the dragons would soon

go hungry; and some number of them would have to be transferred elsewhere, southwards, even perhaps

back to France.

Already the disruption of the foraging was having an effect. Without the smaller parties bringing in regular

provender, the soldiers had more effort to keep themselves fed, as well as the dragons, and this made

them all the more ruthless. Villages and farms and estates were now stripped to the bone and often torn

apart in the search for hidden stores; or even to no end but wanton destruction: some vicious urge in the

soldiers, brought on by too much license to ruin what they found. If any villagers sought to protect their

homes and livelihoods, they were as often murdered or abused, or at best left to starve with a house

burning behind them.

These brutalities soon roused the countryside from a sullen, small resistance, which would gladly have

thrashed French soldiers making boastful remarks in a pub or passed news of them to British parties,

while concealing food from them all alike, to open hatred. No-one fled from the dragons now when they

landed, but marched out their cattle to feed them, and daily the plumes of beacon-fires rose. The little

feral dragons of the Pennines, who lived wild and ordinarily raided farms for their meals, had been

recruited by hunger and Temeraire’s persuasion to collect the far-flung intelligence: they darted from one

beacon to another, where the townspeople provided them with a sheep or goat, and in return they

carried the information back to Laurence’s encampment, daily edging farther south. Laurence thought it

likely he knew more of the movements of the French than their own generals did, and he daily sent long

letters back to Jane and to Wellesley.

A little blue feral came darting into camp, an evening in Cumbria, while they sat mostly dull and quiet,

sharpening bayonets or drinking watered whiskey at their small fires, and in an incongruously deep voice

announced, “The French are coming this way, with guns, and twelve dragons.”

“Leave the camp,” Laurence said, standing, and put back on his sword. “No, everything; we need the

time more than the supply. Leave the fires burning. All aloft, gentlemen, at once,” he said sharply, while

everyone yet hesitated a moment, and spurred them into action.

“But, Laurence,” Temeraire murmured, as he climbed aboard, “why do we not stay and fight them? It is

our first chance of a real battle, and perhaps they will even have eagles—”

“There is no honor to be won in a battle between thieves,” Laurence said flatly, taking the maps which

Demane held out to him, and skimmed them over. “Divide into parties of no more than three, and take

separate routes, all of you; we rendezvous at Cross Fell,” he called, and they lifted one and all away.

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They were too agile a band to be easily tracked or caught, with a thousand eyes in every direction

looking out danger for them, and three more such attempts failed as thoroughly to find anything more than

their abandoned fires and cooking pits. Rewards, offered in vast sums, were scornfully ignored, and in

frustration the French grew savage and turned instead to reprisals against any they suspected of providing

intelligence or comfort, which made nearly all the citizenry. At Howick Hall, perhaps two weeks into their

raiding, they caught a large company, busy pillaging not only the cattle and the food, but carrying out also

paintings, and china plate, and great silver candelabra, while the house burned slowly down around them,

and their officers laughed and drank wine from the cellars in the courtyard.

The dragon-shadows falling over them silenced their merriment, and hurriedly two dozen muskets were

raised up. Temeraire hovering over them roared out at the house, and nearly the whole front wall,

flickering with flame, slid down in a heap and buried half the soldiers with it, leaving the building for a

moment like a child’s doll-house, opened for viewing, with more of the looters staring out at them.

Then the roof, groaning in complaint, gave way, and the great house folded in upon itself, walls crumbling

into brick, slates clattering and spilling down upon the lawn still smoking. The horses and cows

stampeded madly away, and the remaining soldiers fled in the other direction, leaving a great pirate-heap

of goods in an oxcart, pitiful next to the smoldering ruins.

The village, in the shelter of the house, had also been struck; the men having tried to resist had been

slaughtered nearly one and all. The women and children had taken shelter in the church, which had not

given them much protection: the soldiers had come in and outraged some of the young women, and

murdered the vicar, a man of eighty, when he had feebly tried to intercede.