Victory of Eagles (6 page)

they have many more such odd notions. But that is not the same as taking away a cave perfectly suitable

to your weight and standing.” He paused and said delicately, “I do not suppose you had a formation of

your own?”

“No,” Temeraire said, “at least, not officially; although Arkady and the others fought under my orders,

and I was wing-mates with Maximus: he is Laetificat’s hatchling.”

“Laetificat, yes; fine dragon,” Gentius said. “I served with her, you know, in ’seventy-six; we had a

dust-up with the colonials at Boston. They got artillery above our positions—”

Temeraire came away eventually with Gentius’s firm promise to attend the council-meeting, and returned

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to his cave well-pleased with the success of his first efforts. “Who else is on the council?” he asked.

While Perscitia began listing off names, Reedly, a mongrel half-Winchester with yellow streaks, piped up

from the corner, “You ought to speak to Majestatis.”

Perscitia bristled at once. “I see no reason why he ought do any such thing. Majestatis is a very common

sort of dragon; and he is not on the council, anyway.”

“He made sure I got a share of the food, when we were all sick, and things were short,” Minnow said,

on the other side; she was a muddy-colored feral with touches of Grey Copper and Sharpspitter and

even a little Garde-de-Lyon, which had given her vivid orange eyes and blue spots to set off her

otherwise drab coloring.

A low murmur of general agreement went around. A crowd had gradually accumulated in Temeraire’s

cave to offer their advice and remarks, a good many of the smaller dragons having interested themselves

in Temeraire’s case: those he had sheltered and their acquaintance, and besides them the not-insignificant

number who had some injury, real or imagined, to lay at Requiescat’s door. “And he is not on the council

only because he does not care to be; he is a Parnassian,” Minnow added, to Temeraire.

“If he were a Flamme-de-Gloire, it would hardly signify,” Perscitia said coldly, “as he does nothing but

sleep all the time.”

Moncey nudged Temeraire with his head and murmured, “Corrected her once, six years ago.”

“It was only an error of arithmetic!” Perscitia said heatedly. “I should have found it out myself in a

moment, I was only occupied with the much more important question—”

“Where does he live?” Temeraire asked, interrupting; he felt that anyone who did not have time for

politics must be rather sensible.

Majestatis was indeed sleeping when Temeraire came to see him; his cave was out of the way, and not

very large; but Temeraire noticed that there was a carefully placed heap of stones, along the back, which

blocked one’s view into the interior; if he widened his pupils as far as they would go, he thought he could

make out a darker space behind them, as if there were a passageway going back deeper into the

mountainside.

He coiled himself neatly and waited without fidgeting, as was polite; but at length, when Majestatis

showed no signs of waking—after ten minutes, or perhaps five—very nearly five—Temeraire coughed;

then he coughed again, a little more emphatically, and Majestatis sighed and said, without opening his

eyes, “So you are not leaving, I suppose?”

“Oh,” Temeraire said, his ruff prickling, “I thought you were only sleeping, not ignoring me deliberately; I

will go at once.”

“Well, you might as well stay,
now,
” Majestatis said, lifting his head and yawning himself awake. “I

don’t bother to wake up if it isn’t important enough to wait for, that’s all.”

“That is sensible, I suppose; if you like to sleep better than to have a conversation,” Temeraire said,

dubiously.

“You’ll like it better in a few years yourself,” Majestatis said.

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“No, I do not suppose I will,” Temeraire said. “At least, the Analects say the superior dragon does not

sleep more than fourteen hours of the day, so I shan’t; unless,” he added, desolately, “I am still shut up in

here, where there is nothing worth doing.”

“If you think so, what are you doing here, instead of in the coverts?” Majestatis said. He listened to the

explanation with the same casual sympathy of one hearing a story-teller, which Temeraire was beginning

to expect, and passed no judgment, other than to nod equably and say, “A bad lot for you, poor worm.”

“Why have
you
come here?” Temeraire ventured. “You are not very old, yourself; do you really like to

sleep so much? You might have a captain, and be in battles.”

Majestatis shrugged with one wing-tip, flared and folded down again. “Had one, mislaid him.”

“Mislaid?” Temeraire said.

“Well,” Majestatis said, “I left him in a water-trough, and I don’t suppose he is still sitting there, so I

have no notion where he has got to.”

He was not inclined to be very enthusiastic; when Temeraire had explained, he sighed and said, “You

are
young, to be making such a fuss out of it.”

“If I am,” Temeraire retorted, “at least I am not complacent, and ready to let this sort of bullying go on,

when I can do something about it; and I do not mean to be satisfied,” he added, with a pointed look at

the back of Majestatis’s cave, “to arrange matters better only for myself.”

Majestatis’s eyes slitted narrow, but he did not stir otherwise. “It seems to me you are as likely to make

it worse for everyone. There’s no wrangling now, at least, and no one is getting hurt.”

“No one is very comfortable, either,” Temeraire said. “We all might have nicer places, but no one will

work to improve theirs, if they know it may be taken away from them, at any time,
because
they have

made it nice. Once a cave is yours, it ought to
be
yours, like property.”

The council looked a little dubious at this argument, when Temeraire repeated it to them, the next

afternoon: a strong westerly wind had swept the last scattering traces of rain-clouds before it and scraped

the sky to a wintry brilliance, and they had gathered in a great clearing among the mountains, full of

pleasant broad smooth-topped rocks, warmed by the sun. Majestatis had come after all, and Gentius,

although the old dragon was mostly asleep after the effort of making the flight, curled upon the blackest

rock and murmuring occasionally to himself. Requiescat sprawled inelegantly across half the length of the

clearing, making himself look very large; Temeraire disdained the attempt and kept himself neatly coiled,

with his ruff spread proudly; although he privately wished he might have had his talon-sheaths, and even a

headdress such as he had seen in some of the markets along the old silk caravan roads; he was sure that

could not fail to impress.

Ballista, a big Chequered Nettle, thumped her barbed tail on the ground several times to silence the

muttering which had arisen amongst the council, in the middle of Temeraire’s remarks. “And if we agree,”

Temeraire went on, valiantly, in the face of so much skepticism, “that everyone may keep their own cave,

when they have got it, I would be very happy to show anyone the trick of arranging them better; so you

all may have nicer caves, if you only take a little trouble to make them so.”

“Very nice I am sure,” one peevish older Parnassian said, “if you are a yearling, to be fussing with rocks

Page 17

and twigs.”

There were several snorts of agreement; and Temeraire bristled. “If you do
not
care to, and you are

happy with your cave as it is, then you needn’t; but neither ought you go and take someone else’s cave,

when they have done all the work. Certainly I am not going to be robbed, as if I were a lump; I will

smash the cave up myself and make it not at all nice for anyone, before I hand it over meekly.”

“Now, now, then,” Ballista said. “There is no call to go yelling about smashing things or making threats;

that is enough of that. Now we’ll hear Requiescat.”

“Hum, quarrelsome, ain’t he,” Requiescat said. “Well, you all know me, chums, and I don’t mean to

make a brag of myself, but I expect no one would say I couldn’t take any cave I liked, if I wanted to. I

am not a squabbler, and don’t like to hurt anybody; a young fellow like this is excitable enough to bite off

a bigger fight than he can swallow—”

“Oh!” Temeraire said indignantly. “You mayn’t claim any such thing, unless you like to prove it; I have

beat dragons nearly as big as you.”

Requiescat swung his big head around. “Ain’t it true you’re bred not to fight? Persy was going about

saying some such.”

Perscitia gave an angry yelp of “I never,” stifled quickly by the other small dragons sitting around her at

Ballista’s censorious glare.

“Celestials,” Temeraire said, very coolly, “are bred to be the very best sort of dragon. In China, we are

not supposed to fight unless the nation is in danger, because China has a good deal many more dragons

than here, and we are too valuable to lose; so we only fight in
emergencies,
when ordinary

fighting-dragons are not up to the task.”

“Oh, China,” Requiescat said dismissively. “Anyway, fellows, there you have it plain as day. I say I am

tops, and ought to have the best cave; he says it ain’t so, and he won’t hand it over. Ordinary, there’d be

no ways to work that out but a tussle, and then someone gets hurt and everyone is upset. This is just the

sort of thing the council was made up for, and I expect it ought to be pretty clear to all of you which of us

is right, without it coming to claws.”

“I do
not
say I am ‘tops,’” Temeraire said, “although I think it is just as likely that I am; I say that the

cave is mine, and it is unjust for you take it.
That
is what the council ought to be for: justice, not

squashing everyone down, just to keep things comfortable for the biggest dragons.”

The council, being composed of the biggest dragons, did not look very enthusiastic. Ballista said, “All

right; we have heard everyone out. Now look, Temeraire—” She pronounced it quite wrongly,

Teymuhreer.
“—we don’t want a lot of fuss and bother—”

“I do not see why not,” Temeraire said. “What else have we to do?”

Several of the smaller dragons tittered, rustling their wings together; she cleared her throat warningly at

them and continued, “We don’t want a lot of fighting, anyhow. Why don’t you just go on and show us a

bit of flying, so we know what you can do; then we can settle this clear.”

“But that is not at all the point!” Temeraire said. “If I were as small as Moncey—” He looked, but

Moncey was not among the little dragons observing, so he amended, “If I were as small as Minnow

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there, it oughtn’t make any difference. No one was using it, no one wanted it; not before I had it.”

Requiescat gave a flip of his wings. “It was not the nicest, before,” he said, in reasonable tones.

Temeraire snorted angrily; but Ballista said impatiently, “Yes, yes; go on, then; unless you don’t like us

to see,” and that was too much to bear; he threw himself aloft, spiraling high and fast as he could,

tightening into a spring, and then dived directly into formation-maneuvers: that was what would please

them, he thought bitterly. He finished the training pass and backwinged directly into the reverse, flying the

pattern backwards, and then hovered mid-air before descending straight downwards: showing away, of

course, but they had demanded he do so; and landing he announced, “I will show you the divine wind,

now; but you had all better clear away from that rock wall, as I expect a lot of it will come down.”

There was a good deal of grumbling as the big dragons shifted themselves, with dragging tails and

annoyed looks; Temeraire ignored them and breathed in very deeply, several times, stretching his chest

wide: he meant to do as much damage as he could. He noticed in belated dismay, though, that the face of

the rock wall was not loose, or even the nice soft white limestone in the caves, which crumbled so

conveniently. He nosed out to it and scraped a claw down the face: he barely left white scratches on the

hard grey rock.

“Well?” Ballista said. “We are all waiting.”

There was no help for it; Temeraire backed away from the cliff, and drew breath, preparatory; and then

there was a hurried rush of wings above: Moncey dropped into the clearing beside him, panting, and said,

“Call it off; it’s all off,” urgently, to Ballista.

“Hey, what’s this, then?” Requiescat said, frowning.

“Quiet, you fat lump,” Moncey said, slitting a good many eyes; he was not much bigger than the Regal

Copper’s head. “I’m fresh from Brecon: the Frogs have come over the Channel.”

A great confused babble arose, all around; even Gentius roused, with a low hiss, and while everyone

spoke at once, Moncey turned to Temeraire and said, “Listen, your Laurence, word is in they locked him

up on a ship called the
Goliath—
”

“The
Goliath
!” Temeraire said. “I know that ship; Laurence has spoken of it to me before. That is very

good—that is splendid; it is on blockade, I know just where it is, nearly, and I am sure anyone at Dover

can tell me exactly where—”

“Old fellow, I wish I needn’t pop it out so; but there’s no good way to say it,” Moncey said. “The Frogs

sank her this morning, coming across. She is at the bottom of the ocean, and not a man got off her before

she went down.”