Blood of Tyrants (51 page)

“We are out of New Jersey, ourselves,” the fat waistcoated merchant said, mopping his forehead, when he had at last sat down, somewhat more assured of their peaceable intentions, “but I have heard his name, of course; I don’t suppose there’s many Yankees who haven’t. Well, if you are a friend of John Wampanoag, I guess
you are all right; and it’s true you don’t have a look of those other big fellows, always snapping and yelping in that queer gabble of theirs that a man can’t fit his tongue around. But what are you doing mixed up in this business, then?”

Explanations made, Temeraire wished to be introduced to Josiah and Lindy, but they only spoke a language called Unami and not English; their employer was a Mr. Calvin Jefferson, and when Temeraire tentatively asked that man, he stridently denied their having any interest in taking part in the battle. “Get themselves shot, all for someone else’s quarrel; I should think not,” he said, bristling.

“Well, I will not pretend to understand it,” Temeraire said, somewhat doubtfully; he wondered if maybe the dragons would have expressed different sentiments, if only they could have spoken for themselves in the matter, “but naturally they should not fight if they do not like; I suppose the Shen Lung will not be fighting, either. Only it seems a shame for them to be here, just when we are sure to win a splendid victory, and not have a share in it.”

Jefferson snorted. “It’s soon enough to brag of your victory after you’ve won it,” he said. “I don’t set myself up as an expert on the matter, but it seems to me that Bonaparte’s done pretty well for himself on these occasions in the past.”

He gave them a very nice cup of tea, however, and he had some very fine woolen cloth, of which he made Temeraire a present large enough to make Laurence a new coat; as a sample, he said. “I have three thousand bales of it,” he said very mournfully, “sitting just out of cannon-shot of St. Petersburg harbor; and if these Russian fellows would only make me a reasonable offer, I guess I could land it north of the city, and they could ship it down to Tver: if the French don’t take
that
, pretty soon.”

“I do call that handsome,” Temeraire said to Grig, as they flew back to his own camp, very pleased with the use of his afternoon, “and I am sure I do not know why your people have not bought his wool.”

“Well, he has no-one else to sell it to,” Grig said, “except Napoleon, who is offering less,” which was a point that Temeraire had not quite considered. “Of course, I do not know much about these things,” Grig added.

Laurence received the gift with pleasure, although he professed himself surprised by the presence of the traders. “I suppose I ought not be,” he said. “They seem to be everywhere in the world, these days; and in the article of speed their ships are scarcely to be outmatched. Blaise told me he crossed paths with one of their schooners, in his Atlantic crossing to Brazil, and he would have sworn she was doing fourteen knots, in a light wind.

“But this merchant may have gambled badly,” Laurence added, “if he was hoping to see his price driven up: God willing, we may end the war tomorrow. Come, my dear, you must try and get some rest.”

T
EMERAIRE JOLTED OUT OF
sleep the next morning with a start: the thunder-roll and the low terrible whistling of the field guns. It was just dawn. “Twelve-pounders,” Laurence said, listening: not as great a noise as the enormous sixty-eights which could be carried by a dragon transport like the
Potentate
, or even the thirty-six-pounders which had made up most of the guns of the
Reliant
, on which Temeraire had hatched, but they were certainly loud enough for all that. When Temeraire put his head out of the pavilion, he saw many of the other dragons sitting up on their haunches, looking a little uneasily to the west where the noise of the guns came steadily.

“How they go on!” Chu said. The guns were firing in nearly a continuous stream; as soon as the reverberation of one shot had died away, here came another. “At least when dragons roar, we have it over with, and then you can hear yourself think again. But I am ready to bear the noise, if that means we can get started. Come, we had better go and have a look.”

They had encamped at the Russian rear, as they could reach the fighting more easily than might the infantry or the cavalry, and this way refresh themselves during the battle and tend to injured dragons without being exposed to the artillery. As Chu issued his orders, the
niru
began at once to go aloft; Temeraire flew alongside him swiftly the five minutes to the front, and there halted to hover: the battlefield looked quite different than the previous afternoon. The
French had thrown up three rows of fences nearly all about the highest ground, constructed as they had seen of heavy logs and piled stones and dirt. And as a final insult, they had even seized and improved upon the very fortifications which the Russians had built and abandoned, not a week before.

The ranks of infantry stood arrayed now behind the heavy fences, deployed into broad lines, and great batteries of artillery stood upon raised ground behind them, with several redoubts piled up; their felling of trees had removed the few obstacles which remained to their clear prospect in every direction, while the Russians had been obliged to take up positions crowded up against a heavy stand of timber to the north and with marshy ground not distant from their rear. But the French dragons were massed towards the center, in a peculiar concentration, which it seemed to Temeraire should make it possible to encircle them entirely.

He ventured to point this out to Chu, who said, “Yes, so why has he done it?”

“You have forgotten the guns,” Laurence said, pointing: many of the great massed batteries of smaller guns stood behind the infantry ranks, aiming skyward. “Those will surely be firing on us: they are elevated too high to fire on the Russian infantry.”

As the Russian dragons made their own first pass, carrying heavy loads of bombs meant for the French infantry positions, the raised artillery began to roar: canister-shot, filling the air with smoke and the flying balls and scraps of metal, and even though these nearly all fell harmlessly into the field between the armies, the hail barred an approach to the French forces from more than half the sky: only the center, where the French dragons were massed, was open air.

“Hah,” Chu said, “so he is making a mountain pass, out of gunfire. Yes, I see; we will have a hard time coming at him.” The Russian heavy-weights were already being stymied, their approach towards the French falling back before the blistering fire, which would have torn their wings apart if they had continued.

But Chu signaled nevertheless, and Temeraire watched with rising joy as six
niru
flew forward to make the first sortie, and two other wings of four
niru
apiece broke away to either side of the battlefield, to probe at the French defenses. They were fighting, at last they were fighting, and then Chu said, “Well, let’s go back and sit down and have a morning drink; is there any tea, Shen Lao?”

“What?” Temeraire said, outraged. “But the battle is joined! Everything has begun!”

“And it will be a long while going, too,” Chu said, unperturbed, “as long as we can’t come at them more than twenty at a time.” He waved towards the engagement: the
niru
had closed with the front ranks of the French dragons, and were skirmishing with them skillfully though as yet cautiously, all the dragons on both sides working out a sense of their unfamiliar enemies. There was indeed no room for any other Chinese dragons to attack. One of the
niru
was already falling back a little from the fighting to give the rest more room for maneuvering.

“But then surely we ought do something to open a wider front, on which we might attack,” Temeraire said. “We might—” He paused, and looked upon the field: perhaps they might go around to the west—but there were guns on the heights there covering the French rear, with a forest of sharpened stakes rising up around them. “Well, we ought to do
something
, anyway,” he finished a little lamely, even if he could not immediately see what that something might be.

“Certainly,” Chu said. “Go find that Russian general, and tell him we had better arrange supply for another two days.” And then he turned around and flew back towards the campsite, as though there were no fighting going on at all.

The rest of the morning was equally deflating. Even Laurence only said, “We could scarcely give Bonaparte a better gift than to accept the extraordinary losses which it would require on the part of the Chinese legions to seize and overwhelm those artillery positions as they stand: pray notice, if you will, that the French have
secondary guns waiting against just such an attempt, and crews of pikemen in support.

“Time is our ally: they cannot hold against us indefinitely. They have sixty dragons here, you five times that number. Even if we allow the French dragons to be the equal of the Chinese, which we ought not, as the day progresses we can send fresh beasts against tired, and by slow tide wear them down; and all the while, the Russians will be executing their own assault upon the French ground positions.”

This was a very sensible and practical explanation and by no means satisfying. Temeraire without much enthusiasm agreed to Laurence’s suggestion that they should indeed go and assure additional supply, for the Chinese legions, largely in hopes that the Russians should protest and insist on some more useful course of action. But Kutuzov was sitting in his own low chair with no more hurry in his manner than Chu; he only nodded to Laurence’s request and said, “I think Colonel Ogevin has already put it in train. Vasya,” he added to one of his aides, “see that it is done.”

So Temeraire, with enthusiasm still more diminished, returned to the campsite, where Chu was now eating a large helping of porridge as placidly as—as a
cow
, Temeraire thought, meanly; he scornfully refused the bowl which Shen Lao offered him. He had not in the least regretted Iskierka’s absence, all this while, but in the moment he missed her quite acutely. He was certain
she
would not have tolerated merely sitting about, but would have insisted on their going to join in somehow or other.

He ventured quietly to Laurence that perhaps they might try a pass against the French artillery. “For I am quite sure,” he said, “that I would be able to break some of those earthworks, with the divine wind, and bowl over a great many of the gunners, so the Russians might be able to come at them.”

“Yes,” Chu said, having overheard and demanded to know what Temeraire was saying, “and you could also go and dig some ditches, for latrines; and I dare say if you wanted, you could try and
cook our dinner, though it might not taste very well; and also you could go and dance for the troops, which at least would entertain them. None of that is your business: it is your business to stay here, and learn how a battle is managed properly, and then
if
a moment should arise where you may, through a decisive action, alter the course of the battle, you will be ready to act, and not worn out and too distracted to observe it.”

Temeraire flattened his ruff, but even Laurence did not disagree, saying gently, “My dear, you must see that in the present situation, where the enemy’s positions mean we cannot bring to bear even the better part of the forces which we have, it would be folly to risk you to no purpose. Recall that we are here not merely as soldiers, but as envoys; it would be as wrong for us to go foolhardy into battle now, when our destruction could cast into serious disarray all the cooperation between the Russian army and the legions we have asked to follow us here, as it would be in another situation for us to evade battle out of cowardice.”

So Temeraire had nothing to do but sigh, and put down his head, and wait, while the Jade Dragons darted back and forth, bringing Chu reports of endless tedium, and the sun crawled by overhead.

“What a hideous noise,” Tharkay said. The artillery had not ceased to fire, all this time.

Temeraire went aloft again after noon had passed, only to have a look; although privately he thought perhaps he
might
see an opportunity, of making a particularly significant attack. The battlefield was so thickly obscured by smoke, by now, that it was nearly impossible to see what any of the soldiers were doing on the ground. One could only guess at it, by listening to the roar of the guns, which went on and on and on. His own ears rang with it, the unpleasant brassy noise: he had never heard anything like, save at the battle of Shoeburyness, during the final great bombardment, which
had lasted half-an-hour; here so far it had gone on more than half the day.

“Oh, there,” Temeraire said, when a breath of wind stirred and blew a great rolling cloud of powder away from before the French earthworks on their left flank, “now we will be able to see something, at any rate.” And then he paused, and was silent. The ground was littered thickly with the shattered bodies of horses and of men in both uniforms.

“Dear God, what a slaughter,” Laurence said, low. And the soldiers were yet fighting, bitterly, around the fence: the Russians had seized one end now and were striving forward with bayonets and swords and even in some instances bare fists to push back the French further along it.