Blood of Tyrants (18 page)

He had not lost his clenched grip; he smashed Kaneko’s hand against the ground, and the short blade sprang loose. Still half-entrapped, Laurence caught it and flung it away into the trees, and barely managed to deflect Kaneko’s elbow when it came with crushing force towards his throat.

They broke apart and rolled back to their feet. Laurence had diverted the blow from his throat to his jaw, instead, which ached badly; broken, perhaps. Kaneko did not pause but came at him swiftly, both hands now on the hilt of his blade, with a series of rapid slashing cuts. Laurence parried and retreated, his pains fading into the queer, brief distance which so often accompanied battle. No opening was offered, no chance to shift the direction; Kaneko drove him around the leaping fire until Laurence, in grim desperation, forced the issue: he met Kaneko’s sword with his own and stayed with it as he pushed it back, risking the chance of overbalancing, and threw his full weight against the blade.

For a moment both swords groaned, held; and then Kaneko’s snapped with a loud crack like musket-fire, and he and Laurence fell to the ground heavily together. Kaneko rolled away swiftly and leapt back to his feet, still holding the jagged remnant of the blade, broken some six inches above the hilt. Laurence staggered up himself. A fine tremor ran up his arms, and he raised his sword only with difficulty; but now he had the advantage. Kaneko could not come into range of a blow without running himself into Laurence’s blade.

They looked at each other, and Laurence knew Kaneko would in a moment do just as much: he would throw himself across the distance, and attempt another attack, though it meant his certain death. Laurence looked at Junichiro’s despairing face, the boy standing with his own sword drawn and useless: whichever side he might have assisted, he condemned the master he loved.

And then a sudden roaring above, and Laurence flung himself to one side as Lady Arikawa came down upon the hill, her green drapes flaring and belling about her grey wings, talons coming
down to strike: he barely evaded the blow and fetched up against the trees. “Wretched barbarian!” she said, furiously. “Will you cause no end of sorrow and misery? Kaneko, you are not hurt?”

Kaneko had taken already the first steps in his rush, and himself been nearly knocked flat by the force of her descent; he regained his feet and bowed. “I am not, Lady Arikawa, and the Englishman has fought only honorably—”

“I do not care!” she said. “Oh! Why did you ever make that dreadful vow; I should tear him to pieces!” She shook out her wings and glared the brilliant green of her eyes at Laurence. “You could not even manage to escape properly,” she said bitterly, “and now what am I to do?”

“Lady Arikawa, we must deliver him to the governor,” Kaneko said quietly, “and accompany him to the court in Edo, for the judgment of the shogun. The safety of the nation demands it.” He hesitated and said, reluctantly, “It may be he will be exchanged back to his country-men, after all.”

He spoke as one who did not believe what he was himself saying, offering a mere sop to feeling; and Lady Arikawa only shook her head and looked away in despair. She was silent a moment, but then she straightened, neck arched proudly over them, and looking coldly down. “I will do my duty,” she said. “I will take you to Edo for judgment; and may the shogun sentence you to a traitor’s death for the evil you have brought on my house!”

Yelling voices were nearing, through the trees, many men coming into the courtyard; Laurence, rising to his feet, looked around himself bleakly. There was no chance of resistance against so many, and Lady Arikawa reached out a taloned claw towards him.

Then: a noise too large to call roaring, a great tumult of rage above their heads. The trees upon the hillside behind Laurence were shattering like matchsticks, earth flying up in clouds, and a dragon came down upon that horrifying wreckage: thrice Lady Arikawa’s size, pitch-black and with blue eyes. The noise stopped, and its absence left a dazed and muffling silence; in that hush the
dragon bent over them with a savagery of bared teeth and said, in the clearest King’s English, “How dare you! How dare any of you! Oh! I will kill all of you if you have done anything to Laurence!”

Even Lady Arikawa had drawn back, protective talons curled about Kaneko; and though she might not understand what the dragon had said, his wrath was by no means subtle, nor the threat implicit in his mantling. But she was not lacking in spirit, and drawing herself up said in Chinese, “Those who come as thieves and invaders to our country, and make threats, deserve no considerations of honor.”

“Laurence is only here because he was lost overboard, saving our ship,” the dragon said, answering her in that tongue, “and if you knew he was here, all along, it is a perfect outrage for you to call
us
thieves. We have taken but a few trees, and if you want us to pay you for them, we
shall:
that is nothing in the least to Laurence, whom you have tried to keep from me. I dare say we ought to have gone to war with you. If I had known of it, I should have, and I dare say the Emperor of China would have, too: it is too much to be borne!”

Lady Arikawa looked at Laurence with some doubt in her expression, which Laurence was inclined to share, at this particular piece of hyperbole. “And you need not look like that,” the black dragon added, very coldly, “only because Laurence has been shipwrecked, and does not look his best at present. The Emperor adopted him, five years ago, and we are on our way to make a filial visit. He is a prince of China, and my captain.”

“The devil I am,” said Laurence.

“I
BEG YOUR PARDON
,” L
AURENCE
said, interrupting, “but if you please, Captain, I would be grateful if you would begin earlier: the last—” He paused, not liking to give it voice, and then forced his way onwards. “The last I recall very clearly is in the year four.”

“Oh, Lord,” Captain Granby said. He was the captain of the fire-breather, an officer of twenty-and-nine years; tall and somewhat battered, short one arm, and a pleasant, likable fellow, if almost shockingly informal in his manners and his dress of peculiar ostentation: Laurence had not seen so much gold on an admiral of the fleet. “Well, I know you took the
Amitié
, and Temeraire’s egg was on it—that news was all over the Corps; but as for the rest of that year, or how you came to be there, I haven’t the faintest notion. I suppose Riley could have told us—”

“Riley?” Laurence said, with relief for a name he recognized: his second lieutenant. “Tom Riley? Do you know his direction? I might write him—” and then Granby’s look of startled regret halted him, even before Granby spoke.

So Riley was dead—his ship the
Allegiance
lost. Laurence rose and went to stand by the stern windows, to breathe in the sea-air in great gulps. Granby was silent where he sat at the table, but Laurence felt his eyes upon his back.

There was a dreadful strangeness to sit across from a man who called him
Will
, a man who had been his first lieutenant, and yet
have his face mean nothing; it was worse, somehow, than having been all alone and adrift. Granby had been all that was kind—they had all been so, and visibly gladdened by his return. Deposited on the deck, Laurence had been embraced with enthusiasm by a dozen strangers before he had been able to make his confusion known; since then, there had been nothing but the most generous anxiety for his health—an anxiety, however, which reminded him at every turn that he
was
ill, wounded, and in such a manner that he might never recover from it.

Outside the window, near the harbor mouth, he could see the curves of the sea-dragon’s body where it dozed nearly hidden beneath the waves, its presence a warning. Their own dragons were on the deck, and on a few pontoon-rafts floating about the ship; he did not, at the moment, see the black dragon—his dragon. Temeraire. Granby was speaking in low voices with the ship’s surgeon, a Mr. Pettiforth, behind his back. “I must insist we halt this interview, Captain Granby,” Pettiforth said. “You can see for yourself the inimical effects of only this one shock. There can be no question that any further strain on an already-weakened mind must be dangerous. You must withdraw. I must insist; I do insist.”

The surgeon had vociferously argued from the beginning against any attempt to repair the omissions in Laurence’s memory by recounting the events of the intervening years, as more likely to do harm than good. “I consider it a most unique species of brain-fever,” Pettiforth had said. “I have heard of only a few similar instances described; indeed, I am sure the Royal Society will be deeply interested, should I have an opportunity to set down the facts of the case—”

But Laurence had dismissed his advice: he longed for every scrap of intelligence, of knowledge. His feet had been bathed and bandaged; a night’s rest had seen him back on them; he could scarcely imagine delaying any further. He turned back. “Sir, I cannot deny this news is an unpleasant shock, but I am by no means prepared to halt. Captain Granby, if you please—”

“I beg your pardon,” Mr. Hammond broke in, anxiously. “I beg your pardon most extremely, Captain, but I think we must abide by Mr. Pettiforth’s advice for the moment, and ask you to consider—I hope you will forgive my saying so—consider it the course most consistent with your duty.”

“I can scarcely perform the least duty,” Laurence said, “when I do not know what that duty is, sir: so far as I knew before yesterday evening, I was a sea-captain, not an aviator.”

“At present,” Hammond said, “our most pressing need is for your continued health. You can do nothing if you have been prostrated by an aggravation of your—your injury, and your presence is vital—utterly vital—to all the hopes of our mission.”

Laurence hesitated. Hammond was the King’s envoy, and evidently in charge of their mission to China; his urgency could not help but carry great weight. “Thank Heavens that you have not lost your facility with the Chinese language—I must credit,” Hammond added, “the extent of our practice, the several months of our voyage—your dedication there, Captain, has been very commendable, and I consider this the reward; everything else can be managed. I assure you, we will manage. We will begin at once to review the likely ceremonies of welcome: our arrival at Tien-sing, the forms of your greeting to the crown prince, and to the Emperor—”

If anything had been likely to give him a relapse of brain-fever, Laurence thought it would be the programme of etiquette study which Hammond laid out, which would have been a punishment even if spread over the course of three years. How he intended to touch upon all its parts in the space of time required to sail from Nagasaki to Tien-sing harbor, Laurence had not the least notion.

“All the more need, sir,” Mr. Pettiforth interjected, “not to add any additional strain upon your nerves. Avoiding any particular, any notable shock,” he looked at Granby with a hard, meaningful look, which Laurence could not interpret, “must be of the utmost importance.”

Granby looked at Laurence helplessly; Laurence drew and released
a deep breath. “Very well,” he said, grimly. “I will be guided by you, gentlemen.”

He would rather have forgone the study, and closeted himself with Granby until he knew every detail that could be obtained of the last eight years from one who had been his close companion in nearly all of that time, from what he understood. But he could not refuse Hammond’s request. His weakness of brain had already endangered their cause—it was incumbent upon him to do whatever he might to assist a mission whose urgency was evident.

Britain’s situation, and that of all Europe, was more desperate than he had feared at the worst. Granby had, to his great comfort, been able to assure him of the health of his family, but little else of good could be said. The story of the invasion of Britain, of which he until now had received only the faintest outlines, had filled Laurence with horror: Nelson dead—Nelson, and fourteen ships-of-the-line sunk. Even so complete a victory over Napoleon as had been achieved could scarcely compensate for such a loss.

Indeed, Laurence was forced to give some credence to Pettiforth’s concerns: if there had been more such disasters, in the years he had lost, he did wonder how well he might support the news. “But I must learn something of my duties,” he said, “enough at least to carry them out: there is no telling but we may see battle, and at least the dragons must be exercised, surely? Captain Granby, who is the senior officer of our company?”

Granby rubbed his face with his good hand. “It has been all in the air, anyway—Harcourt has command of the formation, but you and I aren’t formally assigned to her, or she to either of us, and—oh, damn it all,” he muttered, at Laurence’s bafflement—
her?
—and turning said, “look, Hammond, I must tell him
something
.”

But even when Granby had explained, appallingly, that Longwings insisted on female captains, and that the slim young gentleman captaining that beast was indeed a woman, he had not much clarified their chain of command. “It goes by the beasts, you know,” he said. “It’s not much use our standing on ceremony, if they settle
it otherwise amongst themselves; it don’t matter if a Winchester’s captain has twenty years on me when Iskierka gives a snort, you can be sure.”