Victory of Eagles (18 page)

cloth; cooking gear thrown in, too, and the great cauldrons all filled with round-shot. The middling

dragons seized the guns, the militia and the remaining hands clambering up onto the smaller beasts with

ropes to secure them—“It needs less rope, you see,” Temeraire explained, “for the little ones to carry,

and the men say they like it better if only they can sit astride, instead of being cross-legged.”

He kept a stern headmaster’s eye on the operation, and from time to time darted an anxious glance at

Laurence, as if to gauge his opinion; but there was nothing to complain of at all. As the dragons went

aloft, they dipped down over the rear of the moving herd, and snatched themselves each some dinner, a

cow or a fat pig, sluggish behind the rest, and flew away eating, with no evident difficulty in combining the

activities, if they spattered themselves somewhat with blood.

“There, now we are ready also,” Temeraire said, and put out his hand for Laurence, to set him up aloft,

and with a leap they were up: not an hour gone by, and beneath them nothing but the bare untidy field.

The flight was desperately quick from necessity, and the dragons flew in no particular order but one

great disorganized mass, shifting continuously; or so it first seemed to Laurence, and then he discovered

that the small dragons were dropping back, now and again, to rest upon the largest. The discovery was

realized rather abruptly, when a small muddy-colored feral dropped down onto Temeraire’s back out of

mid-air, and clutching on put her head out to peer at Laurence, with rather a critical expression, while she

caught her breath with great gulps.

“Will Laurence, at your service,” Laurence said cautiously, after a few moments of silent staring.

“Oh, I am Minnow,” the dragon said. “Beg pardon, only I was a bit curious, because himself was so

low, over losing you, I wondered if maybe you was different from other men.”

Her tone suggested she had found nothing out of the ordinary to admire. Temeraire put his head around

indignantly. “Laurence is the very best captain there is. We have just been saving everyone, and fighting

the admirals, so of course we do not have our nicest things with us presently.”

“Have you never wanted a companion?” Laurence asked the little dragon;
little
a relative term of

course, as her head alone likely outweighed him entirely.

“I have chums enough,” she said, “and as for harness, and being told always where to go; no thanks

very. I expect it is better for you big fellows,” she added to Temeraire, “in service, as no-one thinks they

can bull you into anything you really do not like, but I hear enough from the old couriers to know it isn’t

for me. Broke-down by the time their captains go, and nothing to show for it but harness-stripes. There,

that has set me right, off I go,” she said, and jumped off again, with no more ceremony than she had

arrived, and dashed off again out in front.

Laurence then saw the maneuver a common one, and responsible for the greater part of the confusion of

shifting beasts. The heavy-weights indeed did not much change their positions, but made steady bulwarks

in the force, timed to Requiescat’s pace, as he was the slowest of them all. The middle-weights, with

more energy to spare, would occasionally break off and dive, low to the fields: returning, now and again,

with cow or pig or sheep, which they either ate themselves or occasionally brought to the larger dragons.

“Yes, so we needn’t all stop,” Temeraire said, “and this way no-one is hungry when we arrive, not even

Requiescat, even if he complains a little anyway just for show.”

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“It ain’t for show,” Requiescat said, swinging his head around. “When I was in real fighting-trim I was

twenty-six tons. I am not back up to snuff just yet, after that nasty cold,” a rather mild way of describing

the effects of the virulent epidemic, which had struck the Regal Coppers particularly hard. All of them

had lost a great deal of weight, which now was slow to return; although it was difficult to imagine

Requiescat might be much larger than he was.

They met no opposition along the way, if a few French scouts: but these sighted them and turned and

fled at once, bearing the news away. It was too much to hope for, that so large a force as they were,

aloft, would go without notice; and if it made Napoleon delay his attack, indeed desirable he should have

the news. Their flight bore them over Hammersmith and Kew, the snaking brown ribbon of the Thames

with sparkling ice on its edges and a crust of snow, and then over the city itself.

Hollin took Elsie out ahead, quick, and threw out signal-flags; then the guns spoke from below,

acknowledging, and below people came running into the streets to cheer them on, a heartening noise if

made faint by distance. Temeraire called ahead, “Dirigion, Ventiosa, go ahead so they may see our

flags,” and two Yellow Reapers darted out ahead, red velvet curtains streaming from their grasp.

Another twenty minutes’ flight brought the Army visible: a sea of redcoats in the churned mud and snow

of camp. Temeraire took on height as they came in, so he had a clear lane before him, and then drawing

breath roared. The air before them was cold and full of fragile wisps of white cloud, and these gave an

ephemeral physical form to the terrible ringing force of the divine wind, breaking before its force into

wide striated ripples, very much like the haze of heat which might appear over packed ground or sand in

high summer. They melted away nearly at once again, but below, the dragons of the Corps were all

putting their heads up from their clearings to watch them coming on, and roaring out in answer, glad

greetings, and Temeraire banking took them down in a broad field, on the Army’s left flank near about

Plumstead.

“Laurence,” Temeraire said, as they were settling, “pray will you tell the generals that I am very happy to

come and speak to them, but they will need to clear some room at their tent, if it is that large one in the

middle of camp, and also they had better do something about the horses.”

“I must prepare you, they will certainly not be in the least happy to have you come,” Laurence said, “nor

take any act towards easing that end.”

“Then,” Temeraire said, “we will all go away again, and they may fight Napoleon without us. They have

asked us to come, and they need our help; they may not treat us like slaves. And we will manage to feed

ourselves, I dare say, somehow or other, even if they do not like to keep giving us cows.”

Laurence hesitated; he wished to voice some protest, and speak of duty, but justice silenced him. It was

surely in no wise Temeraire’s duty, nor the duty of any of those dragons, who had never been asked for

an oath, nor received any recompense for service. His own duty, he saw less clear. If he were ordered to

remain, to serve whether in the field or a sentence of death, there could be no alternative. But he feared

the duty demanded of him would be rather to persuade Temeraire to stay—against the dragon’s own

interests, if necessary.

He was brought to the same tent again, now much altered: the map-tables occupied the lion’s share of

the floor, unfolded wide, and littered with markers and figures. A steady low arguing was going on in a

back chamber which had been added on, through a fresh-cut flap, querulous voices and frightened, and

only a few with any note of decision; Laurence could hear Jane’s voice rising clear and ringing above

them all. He was kept standing silently, trying not to overhear.

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A group of young lean unsmiling officers were working over the tables; they looked at Laurence with

cold disdain, and then paid him no attention. At length a colonel came out and said to Laurence, icily, “I

am to tell you that you will be pardoned, if you can make the dragons fight.”

That the remark gave him no pleasure was evident. “Damned disgrace,” one of the young men in the

corner muttered, without looking up.

“Bring me sixty dragons the hour before a battle and I will pardon your treason, and murder, too,”

Wellesley said, coming out of the back room. “I don’t know what sort of genius of disaster you are,

Laurence, but if you can be aimed at Bonaparte instead of us, you are worth not hanging. Can you make

the beasts obey?”

“Sir,” Laurence said, “I have brought you no dragons; you would better say, the dragons brought me.

They do not obey me but Temeraire—”

“And the creature obeys you, that is good enough for me,” Wellesley said. “I am not in a mood to have

my time wasted with legalities. Do your damned duty, or I
will
have you hanged, before I go and get

myself shot on the field.” He snatched a paper from the table and scribbled upon it a few hurried lines,

which could have been interpreted in nearly any fashion one chose, and thrust them out.

Laurence looked at the paper, life, liberty, duty all in one; and was nearly grateful to Wellesley for the

bribery and threats, distasteful in themselves, which could only make the command easier to refuse.

“You will forgive me, sir,” he said, “I cannot make you the promise you wish; I have not the power to

make it good. If you wish to speak with the leader of the dragon-militia, that is Temeraire himself. And he

will not obey, nor the beasts with him, if they are not consulted.”

“For the love of God, and Bonaparte on our doorstep,” Wellesley said. “Do you imagine we have time

to go jumping a mile across camp, to coddle dragons now and not just men?”

“He needs no coddling, sir,” Laurence said, “beyond what information you would consider appropriate,

for any commander of a substantial militia arrived late, and without any prior knowledge of your plan of

attack. He is more than willing to come to you, if there were space cleared for him, and the horses

secured against their natural instinct of flight.”

Wellesley snorted. “Plan of attack? He can’t know any less about it than any man alive does. Rowley,”

he said, turning abruptly to one of the young men at the side of the tent, who jerked to attention, “go tie

up the horses and clear enough room for him to land. How much does he need?”

He waited for no answer, but went back into the general staff meeting. “Temeraire will require some

hundred and fifty feet, square, to come down,” Laurence said to Rowley, going outside with him.

“What is he, clumsy as a cow?” the young man said sourly, and shouting gave orders for several tents to

be moved, and an entire picket-line of horses. “I won’t answer for your neck if he eats the general’s

favorite horse,” he added.

Laurence did not bother to answer these remarks, but went as quickly as he could back to the clearings,

and halted: word had traveled at speed, and a handful of his crew had come to the camp, evidently

having slipped away from their other assignments. “Sir,” Fellowes said, glancing up from his work, and

Blythe beside him with a small forge. Gangly young Allen stood up flushing, two inches taller at a glance

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than he had been, and touched his hat, and with them Emily Roland.

“Gentlemen,” Laurence said, torn between gratitude and dismay, for they were working not on harness

and armor but on Temeraire’s platinum breastplate, and Emily had brought Temeraire’s jeweled

talon-sheaths.

These, having been given him in China, were remarkably beautiful, and remarkably gaudy, gold and

silver engraved with elaborate Oriental designs and studded with small chips of gemstones. His

breastplate, with its great pearl and sapphires, further advanced the service of vanity, with his old smaller

string of gold and pearls suspended from its chain, not at all complementary. Besides this Temeraire had

arranged to have himself scrubbed until he gleamed, and even, Laurence was sorry to see, his handful of

scars painted over, with a pot of the sort of glossy black used upon doors and iron railings. It was most

notable upon his chest, where a barbed French ball had taken him in the flesh, during an engagement at

sea; the wound had been ugly, and though healed clean had left a puckered knot of scales.

When Laurence came in Temeraire was engaged in examining himself critically as best he could, in a

large dressing-room mirror good enough only to show perhaps five feet of him at a time, and considering

whether to add a spangled net of chains to be draped over his ruff.

“Iskierka offered me it,” he said, “and while of course ordinarily I would not borrow anyone else’s

things, and pretend that they were mine, I am only thinking that, as we have not had time to make medals

yet, it might stand in for them.”

“Pray let me advise you against it,” Laurence said, sadly, imagining the generals’ reaction. “Borrowed

finery cannot be to anyone’s taste, and if it should be lost, or damaged, you would be indebted—”

“Oh,” Temeraire said, “that is very true; I suppose I had better not,” and he sighed wistfully. “Very well,

Roland, take it off,” and he lowered his head reluctantly.

It did not much matter, however, in the end. Temeraire descended to a great spreading silence, even the

horses’ frightened cries dying away to overwhelmed stillness. Rowley, still waiting outside, was pale

beneath his dark narrow moustache, as Temeraire neatly fitted himself into what was indeed a very

cramped space for him, having to coil up his tail as he landed.

“Well, is it here?” Wellesley said, coming out, and pausing looked up and up and up, and said nothing