Black Powder War (25 page)

"You did just as you ought, thank Heaven," Granby said, pale with relief. "There's no denying it's a wrench, but the risk isn't to be borne. You needn't see the fellow again; Ferris and I can go-between with him, if there's anything we must deal with him for."

"I thank you; but I should sooner let him shoot me than let him think I have the least reluctance to face him," Laurence said.

Granby had met him at the entrance to the covert; now together they reached the small, bare clearing which had been assigned them; Temeraire was curled up in what comfort he could find and listening intently to the conversation of the Prussian dragons near him, ears and ruff pricked up with attention, while the men busied themselves at cooking-fires, snatching a hasty meal.

"Are we leaving now?" he asked, when Laurence arrived.

"No, I am afraid not," Laurence said, calling over his other senior officers, Ferris and Riggs, to join them. "Well, gentlemen, we are in the thick of it," he told them grimly. "They have refused us the safe-conduct."

When Laurence had finished giving them the whole of the situation, Ferris burst out, "But sir, we will fight, won't-I mean, will we fight with them?" hastily correcting himself.

"We are not children or cowards, to sulk in a corner when there is a battle to hand, and of such vital importance," Laurence said. "Offensive they have been, but I will grant they have been sorely tried, and they might be as outrageous as they liked before I would let pride keep us from doing our duty, and there can scarcely be any question of that; only I wish to God I knew why the Corps has not sent the promised aid."

"There's only one thing it can be; they must be needed more somewhere else," Granby said, "and likely enough it's the same reason they sent us for the eggs in the first place; only if the Channel is not under bombardment, the trouble must be somewhere overseas-some great upset in India, or trouble in Halifax-"

"Oh! Maybe we are taking back the American colonies?" Ferris offered; Riggs opined that it was more likely the colonials had invaded Nova Scotia, ungrateful rebellious sods; and they wrangled it back and forth a moment before Granby interrupted their fruitless speculation.

"Well, it don't matter where, exactly; the Admiralty will never strip the Channel bare no matter how busy Bonaparte is elsewhere, and if all the spare dragons are coming home by transport, any sort of mess at sea could have held them up. But if they are already two months overdue, surely they must arrive any moment."

"For my part, Captain, I hope you'll forgive my saying, I'd as soon stay and fight if they get here tomorrow," Riggs said, in his bluff forthright way. "We could always pass the eggs to some middle-weight to take home; it would be a damned shame to miss a chance to help give Boney a drubbing."

"Of course we must stay and fight," Temeraire put in, dismissing the entire question with a flick of his tail; and indeed there would have been no restraining him, if the battle were anywhere in his vicinity: young male dragons were not notably reluctant to jump into an affray. "It is a great pity that Maximus and Lily are not here, and the rest of our friends; but I am very glad at last we will get to fight the French again. I am sure we can beat them this time, too, and then maybe," he added suddenly, sitting up; his eyes widened and his ruff mounted up with a visible rush of enthusiasm, "the war will be over, and we can go home and see to the liberty of dragons, after all."

Laurence was startled by the intensity of his own sensation of relief; though uneasy, he had not properly realized how very low Temeraire had sunk, that this burst of excitement should provide so sharply defined a contrast. It wholly overcame any inclination he might have had to voice discouraging cautions; though a victory here, he was well aware, was necessary but not sufficient to Bonaparte's final defeat. It was entirely possible, he privately argued with his conscience, that Bonaparte might be forced to make terms, if thoroughly checked in this campaign; and thus give Britain real peace for at least a little while.

So he merely said, "I am glad that you are all of like mind with me, gentlemen, so far as engaging to fight; but we must now consider our other charge: we have bought these eggs too dear in blood and gold to lose them now. We cannot assume the Corps will arrive in time to take them safely home, and if this campaign lasts us more than a month or two, as is entirely likely, we will have the Kazilik egg hatching in the midst of a battlefield."

They none of them spoke for a moment; Granby with his fair skin flushed up red to his roots, and then went pale; he dropped his eyes and said nothing.

"We have them properly bundled up, sir, in a tent with a good brazier, and a couple of the ensigns watching it every minute," Ferris said, after a moment, glancing at Granby. "Keynes says they will do nicely, and if it comes to real fighting, we'd best set the ground crew down somewhere well behind the lines, and leave Keynes behind to look after the eggs; if we have to fall back, we can stop and catch them all up quick enough."

"If you are worried," Temeraire put in unexpectedly, "I will ask it to wait as long as it can, once the shell is a little harder, and it can understand me."

They all looked blankly at him. "Ask it to wait?" Laurence said, confused. "Do you mean-the hatchling? Surely it is not a matter of choice?"

"Well, one does begin to be very hungry, but it does not feel so pressing until one is out of the shell," Temeraire said, as if this were a matter of common knowledge, "and everything outside seems very interesting, once one understands what is being said. But I am sure the hatchling can wait a little while."

"Lord, the Admiralty will stare," Riggs said, after they had all chewed over this startling piece of intelligence. "Though perhaps it is only Celestials who are like that; I am sure I never heard a dragon talk of remembering anything from inside the shell at all."

"Well, there is nothing to talk about," Temeraire said prosaically. "It is quite uninteresting; that is why one comes out."

Laurence dismissed them to go and begin to make some sort of camp, with their limited supplies. Granby hurried away with only a nod; the other lieutenants exchanged a look and followed him. Laurence supposed it was less common with aviators, than with Navy men, that a man got his step only for being in the right place at the right moment, hatchings being under more regular control than captured ships. In the early days of their acquaintance, Granby had himself been one of those officers resentful of Laurence's acquiring Temeraire. Laurence understood his constraint, and his reluctance to speak; Granby could neither speak in favor of a course which would almost certainly result in his being the most senior candidate available when the egg should hatch; nor protest against one which would require him to make the attempt to harness a hatchling under the most dire circumstances, in the midst of a battlefield, the egg barely in their hands for a few weeks, of a rare breed almost unknown to them, and almost certainly no future chance of promotion if he failed.

Laurence spent the evening writing letters in his small tent: all he had in the way of quarters, and that having been put up by his own crew; there had been no offer made to quarter him or his men more formally, though there were barracks for the Prussian aviators erected all around the covert. In the morning he meant to go into Dresden, and see if he could arrange to draw funds on his bank; the last of his money would be gone in a day, provisioning his men and Temeraire at war-time prices, and he had no inclination to go begging to the Prussians under the present circumstances.

A little while after dark, Tharkay tapped one of the tent-poles and came in; the ugly wound at least had not mortified, but he was still limping a little and would bear the deep gouge upon his thigh the rest of his days, a furrow of flesh all seared away. Laurence got up and waved him to the cushion-heaped box which was all he had as a chair. "No, sit; I will do perfectly well here," he said, and himself lay down Turkish-style upon the other cushions on the ground.

"I have only come for a moment," Tharkay said. "Lieutenant Granby tells me we are not to leave; I understand Temeraire has been taken in lieu of twenty dragons."

"Flattering, I suppose, if considered that way," Laurence said wryly. "Yes; we are established here, if against our design, and whether we can fill that tally or no, we mean to do what we can."

Tharkay nodded. "Then I will keep my word to you," he said, "and tell you, this time, that I mean to depart. I doubt an untrained man would be anything other than a dangerous nuisance aboard Temeraire's back in an aerial battle, and you hardly need a guide when you cannot stir out of the camp: I cannot be of any further use to you."

"No," Laurence said slowly, reluctant but unable to argue the point, "and I will not press you to stay, in our present circumstances, though I am sorry to lose you against a future need; and I cannot at the moment reward you as your pains have deserved."

"Let us defer it," Tharkay said. "Who knows? We may meet again; the world is not after all so very large a place."

He spoke with that faint smile, and stood to give Laurence his hand. "I hope we shall," Laurence said, gripping it, "and that I may be of use to you in turn, someday."

Tharkay refused an offer to try and get him a more personal safe-conduct; and indeed Laurence did not have much fear he would need one, despite his game leg. With no further ado, Tharkay put up the hood of his cloak and picking up his small bundle was gone into the bustle and noise of the covert; there were few guards posted around the dragons, and he vanished quickly among the scattered campfires and bivouacs.

Laurence had sent Colonel Thorndyke a stiff, short word that they meant to offer their services to the Prussians; in the morning the colonel came again to the covert, bringing with him a Prussian officer: rather younger than other of the senior commanders, with a truly impressive mustache whose tips hung below his chin, and a fierce, hawk-like expression.

"Your Highness, may I present Captain William Laurence, of His Majesty's Aerial Corps," Thorndyke said. "Captain, this is Prince Louis Ferdinand, commander of the advance guard; you have been assigned to his command."

They were forced for direct communication to resort to French. Laurence ruefully thought that at least his mastery of that language was improving, with as much use as he was being forced to make of it; indeed he was for once not the worse speaker, as Prince Louis spoke with a thick and almost impenetrable accent. "Let us see his range, his skill," Prince Louis said, gesturing to Temeraire.

He called over a Prussian officer, Captain Dyhern, from one of the neighboring coverts, and gave him instructions to lead his own heavy-weight, Eroica, and their formation in a drill to give them the example. Laurence stood by Temeraire's head watching, with private dismay. He had wholly neglected formation-drill practice over the long months since their departure from England, and even at the height of their form they could not have matched the skill on display. Eroica was nearly the size of Maximus, Temeraire's year-mate and a Regal Copper, the very largest breed of dragon known; and he was not a fast flier, but when he moved in square his corners nearly had points, and the distance separating him from the other dragons scarcely varied, to the naked eye.

"I do not at all understand, why are they flying that way?" Temeraire said, head cocked to one side. "Those turns look very awkward, and when they reversed there was enough room for anyone to go between them."

"It is only a drill, not a battle-formation," Laurence said. "But you can be sure they will do all the better in combat for the discipline and the precision required to perform such maneuvers."

Temeraire snorted. "It seems to me that they would do better to practice things that would actually be of use. But I see the pattern; I can do it now," he added.

"Are you sure you would not like to observe a little longer?" Laurence asked, anxiously; the Prussian dragons had only gone through one full repetition, and he for his own part would not at all have minded a little time to practice the maneuver in privacy.

"No; it is very silly, but it is not at all difficult," Temeraire said.

This was perhaps not the best spirit in which to enter into the practice, and Temeraire had never much liked formation-flying at all, even the less-rigorous British style. For all Laurence could do to restrain him, he dashed through the maneuver at high speed, a good deal quicker than the Prussian formation had managed it, not to mention than any other dragon over a light-weight in size could have kept up with, spiraling himself about in a flourishy way to boot.

"I put in the turning over, so that I would always be looking out of the formation body," Temeraire added, coiling himself down to the ground rather pleased with himself. "That way I could not be surprised by an attack."

This cleverness plainly did not much impress Prince Louis, nor Eroica, who gave a short coughing snort, as dismissive as a sniff. Temeraire pricked up his ruff at it and sat up on his haunches narrow-eyed. "Sir," Laurence said hurriedly, to forestall any quarreling, "perhaps you are not aware that Temeraire is a Celestial; they have a particular skill-" Here he stopped, abruptly aware that divine wind might sound poetical and exaggerated if directly translated.

"Demonstrate, if you please," Prince Louis said, gesturing. There was no appropriate target nearby, however, but a small stand of trees. Temeraire obligingly smashed them down with one deep-chested violent roar, by no means the full range of his strength, in the process rousing the whole covert of dragons into loud calls and inquiries and sparking a terrified distant whinnying from the cavalry on the opposite side of the encampment.

Prince Louis inspected the shattered trunks with some interest. "Well, when we have pushed them back onto their own fortifications, that will be useful," he said. "At what distance is it effective?"

"Against seasoned wood, sir, not very great," Laurence said. "He would have to come too near exposed to their guns; however, against troops or cavalry, the range is greater, and I am sure would have excellent effect-"