Victory of Eagles (5 page)

endlessly—no prospect and little more than an overhang to shelter from the rain.

“So why do you not take a better?” Temeraire said, exasperated. “There are several very nice, directly

over there, in the cliff face; you would be much more comfortable there, I am sure.”

“One does not like to be quarrelsome,” Perscitia said, evasive and entirely false: she liked very well to

be quarrelsome, and Temeraire did not understand what that had to do with taking an empty cave, either;

but at least it diverted the subject.

The only event of note was that it rained for a week without stopping, with a steady driving wind behind

it which came in to all the cave-mouths and permeated the ground, and made everyone perfectly

miserable; Temeraire was very glad of his antechamber, where he could shake off the water and dry

before retreating to the comfort of his larger chamber. Several of the smallest dragons, courier-weights

living in the hollows by the river, were flooded out of their homes entirely; sorry for their muddy and

bedraggled state, Temeraire invited them to stop in his cavern, while the rain continued, so long as they

first washed off the mud. They were loud with appreciation for his arrangements, gratifyingly, and a few

days later, while he was brooding anxious and solitary once again over Laurence, a shadow crossed over

the mouth of his cave.

It was the big Regal Copper, Requiescat; he ducked in through the antechamber and came into

Temeraire’s main chamber, uninvited, and gazed around the room with a pleased air, nodding, and said,

“It is just as nice as they said.”

“Thank you,” Temeraire said, thawed a little by the compliment, although he did not much want

company, just then; and then he remembered he must be polite. “Will you sit down? I am sorry I cannot

offer you tea.”

“Tea?” Requiescat said, but absently, not expecting an answer; he was poking his nose into the corners

of the cave, even putting his tongue out to
smell
them, Temeraire saw indignantly, as if he were at home;

Temeraire’s ruff began to try to bristle.

“I beg your pardon,” he said, stiffly, “I am afraid you have found me unprepared for guests,” which he

thought was a clever way of hinting that Requiescat might go away again, any time he chose.

But the Regal Copper did not take the hint; or at any rate he did not choose to go, but instead settled

himself comfortably along the back of the cave and said, “Well, old fellow, I am afraid we will have to

swap.”

“Swap?” Temeraire said, puzzled, until he divined that Requiescat meant caves. “I do not want your

cave,” adding hastily, “not that it is not very nice, I am sure; but I have just got this one arranged to suit

me.”

“This one is much bigger now,” Requiescat explained, or by his tone thought he was explaining, “and it is

much nicer in the wet; mine,” he added regretfully, “has been full of puddles, all this week; wet clear

through to the back.”

Page 12

“Then I can hardly see why I would change,” Temeraire said, still more baffled, and then he sat up,

outraged and astonished, and let his ruff spread fully as it had so wanted to do. “Why, you are a damned

scrub,” he said. “How dare you come here, and behave like a visitor, and all the time it is a challenge? I

never saw anything so sly in my life; it is the sort of thing Lien would do, I suppose,” he added, cuttingly,

“and you may get out at once; if you want my cave you may try and
take
it; I will meet you anytime you

like: now, or at dawn tomorrow.”

“Now, now, let us not get excited,” Requiescat said pacifyingly. “I can see you are a young fellow, right

enough. A challenge, really! It is nothing of the sort; I am the most peaceable fellow in the world, and I

do not want to fight anyone. I am sorry if I was ham-handed about it. It is not that I
want
to take your

cave, you see—” Temeraire did not see, in the least. “—it is a question of appearances. Here you are a

month, with the nicest cave, and you nowhere the biggest, either.” Requiescat preened his own side, a

little; certainly he outweighed any dragon Temeraire had seen but Maximus and Laetificat. “We have our

own little ways here, of arranging things to keep everyone comfortable. No-one wants any fighting to cut

up our peace, not when there is no need; it would be a nasty-tempered sort of fellow who would get to

fighting over one cave versus another, both of them large and handsome enough for anyone; but

distinctions must be preserved.”

“Stuff,” Temeraire said. “It sounds to me like you have got so lazy, having all your meals given you, and

nothing to do, that you do not even want to put yourself to the trouble of properly bullying other people;

or maybe,” he added, having made up his mind to be really insulting, “you are just a coward, and thought

I was the same: well, I am not, and I am not going to give you my cave, either, no matter what you do.”

Requiescat did not rise to the remarks, but only shook his head dolefully. “There, I am not a clever chap,

so I have made a mull of explaining, and now your back is put up. I suppose we will have to get the

council together, or you will never believe me. It is a bother, but it is your right, after all.” He heaved

himself back up to his feet and added, infuriatingly, “You may keep the place until then; it will take me a

day or so to get word to everyone,” before he padded out again, leaving Temeraire quivering with rage.

“His cave is the nicest,” Perscitia said anxiously, later, “at least, certainly we have always thought so; I

am sure you would like it, and maybe you could make it even more pleasant than this. Why don’t you go

and see, first, before fighting him?”

“I do not care if it is Ali Baba’s cave, and full of gold and lamps,” Temeraire said, not trying to master

his temper; it was better to be angry than miserable, and he was glad of anything to think about instead of

what he could do nothing to repair. “It is a question of principle: I am not going to be bullied, as though I

were not up to his weight. If I made the other cave nice, he should only try and take
that
back, I am

sure; or some other dragon would try and push me out: no, thank you. Who are this council?”

“It is all the biggest dragons,” Perscitia said, “and a Longwing, although Gentius does not bother to come

out much anymore.”

“All of them his friends, I suppose,” Temeraire said.

“No one much
likes
Requiescat,” Moncey said, perched on the lip of Temeraire’s cave. “He eats so

much, and will never take less, even if it is short commons all around. But he is the biggest, and so there

shouldn’t be fighting, the general rule is that caves go by who is strongest, if there is any quarrel; and

no-one is allowed to take a place out of his class, or others will get jealous and squabble.”

“You see it is just as I told you, all unfairness,” Perscitia said bitterly, “as if the only quality of any

Page 13

importance were one’s weight, or how good one is at scratching and biting and kicking up a fuss; never

any consideration for really remarkable qualities.”

“I will allow it to have some practical sense,” Temeraire said, “as a way to
choose
caves; but it is

nonsense that after I have taken one, which he might have had at any moment before I came, and did not

want, that he should be able to snatch it from me after I have gone to so much trouble to make it nice.

And he is
not
stronger than me, either, if he does weigh more. I should like to know if he has sunk a

frigate, alone, with a Fleur-de-Nuit on his back; and as for distinction, my ancestors were scholars in

China while his were starving in pits.”

“That’s as may be, but he knows all the council, and you don’t,” Moncey said, practically. “You ain’t

going to fight a dozen heavy-weights at once, and beg pardon, but no-one looking at you would say,

right-o, there is a match for old Requiescat: not that you are little, but you are a bit skinny looking.”

“I am not; am I?” Temeraire said, craning his head anxiously to look back at himself. He did not have

spines along his back, the way Maximus or Requiescat did, but was sleek; he was perhaps a bit long for

his weight, by British standards. “But anyway, he is not a fire-breather, or an acid-spitter.”

“Are you?” Moncey inquired.

“No,” Temeraire said, “but I have the divine wind; Laurence says it is even better.” However, it

belatedly occurred to him that perhaps Laurence might have been speaking partially; certainly Moncey

and Perscitia looked blank, and it was difficult to explain just how it operated. “I roar, in a particular sort

of way—I have to breathe quite deeply, and there is a clenching feeling, along the throat, and then—and

then it makes things break; trees, and so on,” Temeraire finished in an ashamed mutter, conscious that it

sounded very dull and useless, when so described. “It is very unpleasant to be caught in it,” he added

defensively, “at least, so I understand, from how others have acted, if they are before me when I use it.”

“How interesting,” Perscitia said, politely. “I have often wondered what sound is, exactly; we ought to

do some experiments.”

“Experiments ain’t going to help you with the council,” Moncey said.

Temeraire switched his tail against his side, thinking, and then he said with distaste, “No, I see that: it is

all politics. It is plain to me: I must work out what Lien would do.”

He cornered Lloyd, the next morning, and said, “Lloyd, I am very hungry to-day; may I have an extra

cow, to take up to my cave?”

“There, that is a little more like,” Lloyd said approvingly; not deaf at all to a request so satisfactory to his

own ideas of dragon-husbandry, he ordered it directly; and while waiting, Temeraire asked, attempting

an air casual, as though he were only making conversation, “I do not suppose you might recall, who

Gentius has sired?”

The old Longwing cracked a bleary eye, when Temeraire landed, and peered at him rather incuriously.

“Yes?” he said. His cave was not so large, but a comfortable dry hollow tucked well under the

mountainside, on higher ground overlooking a curve of the creek, so he might merely creep downhill for a

drink without flying, and then back up, to a large flat rock full in the sun, where he presently lay napping.

Page 14

“I beg your pardon for not coming by before, sir,” Temeraire said, inclining his head, “to visit you; I have

served with Excidium these last three years at Dover—your third hatchling,” he added, when Gentius

looked vague.

“Yes, Excidium, of course,” Gentius said, his tongue licking the air, experimentally, and Temeraire laid

down before him the cow, butchered with the help of Moncey’s small claws to take out the large bones.

“A small gift to show my respect,” Temeraire said, and Gentius brightened. “Why, that is
très gentil
of

you,” he said, with atrocious pronunciation, which Temeraire just in time remembered not to correct, and

took the cow into his mouth to gum at it slowly with the wobbly remainder of his teeth. “Very kind, as my

first captain liked to say,” Gentius mumbled reminiscently around it. “You might go in there and bring out

her picture,” he added, “if you are very careful with it.”

The portrait was rather odd and flat-looking, and the woman in it very plain, even before time and the

elements had faded her; but it was in a really splendid golden frame, so large and thick that Temeraire

could take it delicately between two talon-tips to lift it, and carry it out into the sun. “How beautiful,” he

said sincerely, holding it where Gentius could at least point his head in its direction, although his eyes

were so milky with cataracts he could not have seen it as more than a blur in the golden square.

“Charming woman,” Gentius said, sadly. “She fed me my first bite, fresh liver, when my head was no

bigger than her hand. One never quite gets over the first, you know.”

“Yes,” Temeraire said, low, and looked away unhappily; at least Gentius had not had her taken from

him, and put who knew where.

When he had put the portrait back with equal care, and listened to a long story about one of the wars in

which Gentius had fought—something with the Prussians, where pepper guns had been invented: very

unpleasant things, especially when one had not been expecting them at all—then Gentius was quite ready

to be sympathetic, and to shake his head censoriously over Requiescat’s behavior. “No proper manners,

these days, that is what it is.”

“I am very glad to hear you say so: that is just what I thought, but as I am quite young, I did not feel sure

of myself, without advice from someone wiser, like yourself,” Temeraire said, and then with sudden

inspiration added, “I suppose next, he will propose that if any of us have some treasure, which he likes,

gold or jewels, we must give it to him: it follows quite plainly.”

That was indeed enough to rouse Gentius up, with so handsome a treasure of his own to consider. “I do

not see that you are wrong at all,” he said, darkly. “Of course we cannot have Winchesters taking caves

fit for Regal Coppers, there would be no end of trouble and quarreling, and then sooner or later the men

will involve themselves, and make it all even worse; they think somehow Reapers are less use than

Anglewings, because there are more of them and they are clannish, instead of the other way round; and