Empire of Ivory (31 page)

the covert gestures, the attempts at signaling, of nearly

every senior officer, examined her and declared that she

was perfectly fit to fly, "had better fly, I should say;

this agitation is unnatural, and must be worked off."

"But perhaps," Laurence said, voicing the reluctance which

the captains all privately shared, and they as a body began

to suggest flights out over the ocean, along the scenic and

settled coastline and back; gentle exercise.

"I hope," Catherine said, going pink clear up to her

forehead in a wave of color, "I hope that no-one is going

to fuss; I would dislike fuss extremely," and insisted on

joining the hunting party, with Dulcia and Chenery, who

likewise declared himself perfectly well, although Dulcia

would only agree if he was bundled aboard in a heavy cloak,

with a warming brick at his feet.

"After all, it cannot hurt to have more of us: we can make

several parties and cover more ground; we do not need the

dog so badly if the notion is we are looking for larger

patches of the stuff," Chenery said. "Just as well to have

more of the dragons in hailing-distance, if any of us

should run into a larger band of ferals, and your natives

can keep us out of trouble with the animals."

Laurence applied to Erasmus and his wife for their

persuasive assistance, and pressed the cowrie necklace on

Demane to open the conversation, as a preliminary bit of

bribery. He objected vehemently nonetheless, his voice

rising in high complaint, and Mrs. Erasmus said, "He does

not like to go so far, Captain: he says that country

belongs to the dragons, who will come and eat us."

"Pray tell him there is no reason why the feral dragons

should be angry with us; we will only stay a very little

while, to get more of the mushrooms, and our own will

protect us if there is any difficulty," Laurence said,

waving at the fine display the dragons made now. Since

their recovery, even the older beasts who had not acquired

the habit of bathing had been stripped of their harnesses

and scrubbed in the warm ocean until their scales shone,

and all the leather worked and polished until it, too,

gleamed, warm and supple, the buckles glittering bright in

the sun.

The parade grounds themselves had been plowed clean, and

the refuse-pits filled in, now there was only occasional

coughing to manage; the whole fit to welcome an admiral for

inspection, aside from the wreckage of a couple of goats,

whose bones Dulcia and Nitidus were presently meditatively

gnawing. Maximus alone still had a fragile air, but he was

bobbing in the ocean a little way off, his hollow sides

buoyed up by the water and the somewhat faded orange and

red of his hide refreshed by the lingering sunset pouring

in over the wide ripples of the water. The rest of the

dragons were rather bright-eyed and tigerish, having been

worn lean over the course of the sickness; their reawakened

appetites were savage.

"And that is another reason it will be just as well for us

all to go," Chenery said, when Demane had at last been

brought around to reluctant agreement, or at least worn out

from trying to convey his objections through translation.

"Grey is a good fellow, and he has not said as much

outright, yet; but the townsfolk are kicking up a real

dust. It is not just having the dragons about; we are

eating them out of hearth and home. The game is getting

shy; as for cattle, no one can afford to eat beef anymore

at all, and the prices are only getting higher. We had much

better get out into wild country and shift for ourselves,

where we needn't annoy anyone."

It was settled: Maximus would stay to continue his

recovery, and Messoria and Immortalis, to sleep and hunt

for him; Temeraire and Lily would go abroad as far as a

strong day's flight could take them, with little Nitidus

and Dulcia to ferry back their acquisitions, perhaps every

other day, and bring back messages.

They were packed and gone with the sun, in the morning, in

the usual pell-mell way of aviators; the Fiona in the

harbor rising up and falling with the swell, a great deal

of activity on her deck in preparation for the morrow. The

Allegiance was riding farther out to sea; the watch would

be changing in a moment, but for now all was quiet aboard

her. Riley had not come ashore; Laurence had not written.

He turned his face away from the ship and towards the

mountains, dismissing the matter for the present with a

vague sense of leaving the question up to fate: by the time

they returned with mushrooms in any quantity, perhaps there

would be no need to speak; they would have to go home by

way of the Allegiance, and it could not be hidden forever;

he wondered if Catherine did not already look a little

plumper.

Lily set a fine, fast pace; the wind poured over

Temeraire's back as Table Bay rolled away behind them.

Barring a few banks of clouds, penned up against the

slopes, the weather held clear and not windy, good flying,

and there was an extraordinary relief in being once again

in company: Lily on point, with Temeraire bringing up the

rear and Nitidus and Dulcia flying in wing positions, so

their shadows falling on the ground below made the points

of a diamond, skimming over the vineyard rows below in neat

perforated lines of red and brown, past their first

autumnal splendor.

Thirty miles on the wing north-west from the bay took them

past the swelling outcroppings of grey granite at Paarl,

the last settlement in this direction; they did not stop,

but continued on into the rising mountains. A few isolated

and intrepid farmsteads could be glimpsed as they wound

through the passes, clinging to sheltered folds of the

mountain-slopes: the fields browning, the houses nearly

impossible to see without a glass, buried as they were in

stands of trees and their roofs disguised with brown and

green paint.

They stopped to water after mid-day, having come to another

valley between the mountain lines, and to discuss their

course; they had not seen a cultivated field for some halfan-hour now.

"Let us go on another hour or two, and then we shall stop

at the first likely place to make a search," Harcourt said.

"I do not suppose that there is any chance of the dog

scenting them from aloft? The smell of the things is so

very strong."

"The best-trained foxhound in the world cannot pick up a

vixen's trail from horseback, much less from mid-air,"

Laurence said, but they had been aloft again only a turn of

the glass when the dog began barking in furious excitement,

and trying to wriggle free of its harness in the most

heedless way. Fellowes had gradually taken the handling of

the dog into his own hands, disapproving of Demane's

haphazard discipline; his father had been a master of

hounds, in Scotland. He had been giving the thin creature a

gobbet of fresh meat every time it discovered them a

mushroom; by now it would tear away after the least trail

of scent with the greatest enthusiasm.

Temeraire had scarcely landed when it escaped its straps

and went skidding down his side and abruptly vanished into

the high grasses at a place where the slope rose up

sharply. They had come into a wide valley, very warm,

cupped in a bowl of mountains and still richly green

despite the advancing season: fruit-trees everywhere in

curiously even rows.

"Oh; I can smell it, too," Temeraire said, unexpectedly,

and when Laurence had slid down from his shoulder, he was

no longer surprised at the dog's frenzy: the smell was

pronounced, hanging like a miasma in the air.

"Sir," Ferris said, calling: the dog was still invisible,

but its barking was coming to them with a hollow echoing

ring, and Ferris was bending down to the slope; Laurence

came up to him and saw half-hidden by a thicket there was

an opening, a fissure in the dirt and limestone rock. The

dog went silent; in another moment it came scrambling out

of the hole and back up to them, an enormous, an absurdly

enormous mushroom in its mouth, so large its third cap was

dragging upon the ground between the dog's legs and making

it stumble.

It flung the mushroom down, wagging. The opening was near

five feet high, and a gentle slope led downwards. The

stench was astonishing. Laurence pushed up the clot of

vines and moss which hung over the fissure like a curtain,

and stepped inside and down, eyes watering from the smoky

torch which Ferris had improvised out of rags and a treebranch. There was surely a draught somewhere at the far end

of the cavern; it drew like a chimney. Ferris was looking

at him with a half-disbelieving, half-joyful expression,

and as his eyes adjusted to the dimness, Laurence made out

the strange hillocky appearance of the cavern floor, and

knelt to touch: the floor was covered, covered in

mushrooms.

"There is not a moment to lose," Laurence said. "If you

hurry, the Fiona may not yet have gone; if she has, you

must go and recall her-she will not have gone far; she will

not have rounded Paternoster Bay."

All the crews were busy, breathless; the grass of the field

had been trampled flat, and Temeraire's belly-netting and

Lily's was spread out on the ground, every bag and chest

emptied out to be filled with mushrooms, heaps and heaps. A

small pale cream-colored breed shared the cavern with the

great double-and triple-capped monsters, and also a large

black fungus which grew in slabs, but the harvesters were

making no attempt to discriminate: sorting could wait.

Nitidus and Dulcia were already vanishing into the

distance, sacks and sacks slung across their backs giving

them a curiously lumpy appearance in silhouette against the

sky.

Laurence had the map of the coastline dug out of

Temeraire's bags, and was showing him the likely course the

Fiona would have followed. "Go as quickly as you can, and

bring back more men. Messoria and Immortalis, too, if they

can manage the flight; and tell Sutton to ask the governor

for everyone who can be spared from the castle, all the

soldiers, and no damned noise about flying, either."

"He can always get them drunk if need be," Chenery said,

without lifting his head; he was sitting by the netting and

keeping a tally as the mushrooms were thrown in, his lips

moving in the count along with his fingers. "So long as

they can stumble back and forth by the time you have got

them here, they may be soused to their skulls."

"Oh, and barrels, also," Harcourt added, looking up from

the stump where she was sitting, with a cool cloth soaked

in water upon her forehead: she had attempted to help with

the harvest, but the stink had overwhelmed her, and after a

second round of vomiting, painful to all of them to hear,

Laurence had at last persuaded her to go and sit outside

instead. "That is, if Keynes thinks the mushrooms had

better be preserved here; and oil and spirits."

"But I do not like our all leaving you here," Temeraire

said a little mulishly. "What if that big feral should come

back again, or another one? Or lions: I am sure I hear

lions, not very far away." There was not the least sound of

anything but monkeys, howling in the tree-tops at a fair

distance, and birds clamoring.

"We will be perfectly safe: from dragons, or lions, too,"

Laurence said. "We have a dozen guns and more, and we need

only step into the cave to hold them off forever: that

mouth would not let in an elephant, much less a dragon, and

they will not be able to fetch us out."

"But Laurence," Temeraire said quietly, putting his head

down to speak confidentially; at least, as he fancied.

"Lily tells me that Harcourt is carrying an egg; surely at

least she ought to come, and I am sure she will not, if you

refuse."

"Why, damn you for a back-alley lawyer; I suppose you have

cooked this up between the two of you," Laurence said,

outraged at the deliberate calculation of this appeal, and

Temeraire had the grace to look ashamed of himself, but

only a little. Lily did not even do as much, but abandoning

subterfuge only said to Harcourt, wheedling, "Pray, pray,

do come."

"For Heaven's sake, enough cosseting," Catherine said. "In

any case, I will do much better sitting here in the cool

shade than tearing back and forth, weighing you down to no

purpose when you might be carrying another pair of hands

instead. No, not a man will you take; only make all the

speed in the world, and the sooner you have gone, the

sooner you will come back again," she added.

The belly-netting was as full as it could be without

cramming, and Temeraire and Lily were got off at last,

still making wistful complaints. "Near enough five hundred,

already," Chenery said triumphantly, looking up from his