Victory of Eagles (46 page)

falling limply with the choppy waves as they crashed upon her shoulders.

Temeraire felt a queer, confused shudder of sympathy, his wings wanting to come forward, as if to

protect his own breast. The trumpets were blowing again, and the British artillery on the flanks, whose

force had all this while been blunted, opened a deadly hail of canister-shot against the rear and flanks of

the French infantry, chasing them forward into the endless rain of cannon-fire from the ships.

“Temeraire!” Laurence called, and he started: Excidium was roaring out the signal, distantly, and he was

not yet in place! He flung himself hastily back—he no longer felt tired at all, the urgency of the moment

trembling along his wings. He gathered up the others who also had been distracted by the dreadful

spectacle, all of them flying to join the dragons of the Corps in a great single body, nearly a hundred of

them all together, and as one they roared and charged the French reserves.

The French soldiers were already reeling from so visible a disaster—the falling dragons could be seen

for a good mile, and the wind was blowing harder now, clearing at last the clouds and fog. Nelson’s

flagship was plainly visible off the shore, the admiral’s flag streaming out brilliant white and crossed with

red, and the ships in line-of-battle ranged alongside
Victory
—the
Minotaur
and the
Prince of Wales,

and all the rest of the fleet returned from Copenhagen, and some six prizes beside them, each one

pounding away now at the shore.

The French broke, at the attack from their rear, and fled; but there was nowhere to run but into the

waiting maw, a withering cross-fire of Navy and Army guns at the ready to receive them. The British

infantry marched at a steady trot into the emptied space, and Temeraire heard Lien at last—she was

calling frantically as the infantry divided her and the last French aerial reserves from Napoleon and his

Guard.

Napoleon had seen the trap, of course, and the retreat was sounding furiously from every French

trumpet; but too late. The order of the French ranks had dissolved into one mass of terrified men, and the

dragons carried by their momentum all came falling into the hail of cannon-fire. Wellesley had committed

all his reserves now, companies which had been held off to either flank, and emerging from the trees and

fog with their artillery set up a wall of hot iron, to prevent the French forces from retreating or regrouping.

The tightening noose closed upon Bonaparte. “Temeraire, the Corps will help the infantry hold the line,”

Laurence called. “We must keep off any who break through.”

Temeraire could see Lien now clearly—she was yet on the ground, calling to direct the French dragons

to try one thing after another, intent now only on breaking someone through, to rescue Napoleon and

what other survivors could be rescued from the wrack and ruin.

“Of course she would not come herself,” Temeraire said, contemptuously, as a great cloud of little

dragons—she had even sent in the couriers—came racing forward. “Velocitas, you and all the other

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Anglewings, fall back to meet them, and you too, Moncey. Cantarella, when they have got them

confused, you all harry them forward, into the range of the ships.”

The little dragons managed to dart through and past the heavy-weights, but came quickly up against the

pack of Anglewings, too agile to easily be passed. Velocitas and the others slashed and snapped at the

little dragons, chivvying them along, breaking up the knot and dividing the dragons from one another,

leaving them easy prey for the pouncing Yellow Reapers. Recoiling from so many larger dragons, they

were herded into the cross-fire. “Temeraire, you must call Chalcedony back,” Laurence said, sharply.

“Where?” Temeraire said, looking round too late. Chalcedony had pursued one little Pou-de-Ciel too

far, and with a dreadful hollow thump one of the indiscriminate cannonballs took him directly in the chest.

He seemed to fold up around the blow, and fell without a sound. The little Pou-de-Ciel fluttered

raggedly on, managed to thread the rain of iron, and broke out again into the open sky. It did not turn

back for another attempt, but flew on across the Channel, towards France.

A handful more had managed to get through—a few even had collected some handful of desperate

soldiers from the ground—and were straggling away over the water. But none had got near Napoleon

himself; and the British infantry were advancing on his position. The Guard had pulled into square around

him, a mortal shield.

Lien had seen the failure, and his peril; she gave suddenly a loud shrilling call, and took to the air herself.

“Oh!” Temeraire cried, eagerly, but she did not come: she turned instead away and fled, over the fields,

with the scattered handful of French dragons behind her: her honor-guard of Petit Chevaliers, and a few

half-blind Fleur-de-Nuits, with eyeshades. “Oh, oh!” Temeraire said, jouncing in the air with indignation,

“oh, how cowardly, she is leaving him behind—”

“She will be going after the ships,” Laurence said. “Temeraire, quickly, turn so they can see you. Allen,

the signal-flags,
warning to ships, wing to northeast
—spell out for them,
Celestial,
Nelson will

understand—”

“Shall we go and help them?” Temeraire said, hopefully, hovering while Allen waved the flags urgently. It

still looked to
him
as though Lien had run away, and he was sure if she did mean to try anything at the

ships, it would just be an excuse: what she really wanted was to be out of the fighting, and he was sure

she would flee for good as soon as she had made some small gesture. “If she does mean to run away, we

ought to stop her; I was worried all along she should escape.”

“If we should engage, the British ships will not be able to fire upon her,” Laurence said. “There, they

have been warned, do you see: he is directing some of their fire against her. Can you come about the

other side? If she tries to flee towards France, we may then intercept her course.”

It was a fine and elegant sight to watch the flank of the British line-of-battle weaving gracefully, one after

another, to present their broadsides to the dragons coming around. Lien went nowhere near the ships’

range, however; she had stopped far distant, a small white figure against the grey sky, and now was

hovering over the waves while the remnants of the French aerial forces wheeled and wheeled above her

in tight circles. She was roaring: the echoes of the divine wind came carrying over the water, even at such

a distance, with a fine mist of wave spray steaming away from her in clouds of white.

“Have you any notion what she is doing?” Laurence asked; he was looking out at her through his glass.

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“Perhaps she has gone mad, over losing
another
companion,” Temeraire offered. He did not really think

so, but he did not see what good it could possibly do her, to be roaring at the water. “It is not as though

water holds shape; even if she breaks it, it will just come back together, so—” He flicked his tail,

uncertainly. “She is going nearer the ships, though,” he added, “so they will be able to shoot her, soon, in

any case.”

Lien was indeed gradually approaching the ships, still roaring madly at the waves. She was so low now

the waves were nearly lapping at her belly, rearing up to reach for her after every roar.

“Those waves are ten foot above the rest of the swell,” Laurence said. “Mr. Allen, a signal for the ships:

storm anchors,
not in our code, in the Navy’s—yes, the red and white, and then the green, and then the

red circle. Temeraire, I do not know what she is about, but I think we cannot hazard letting her try it—go

after her, and quickly.”

Temeraire scarcely waited for the word and threw himself joyously forward. The waves did not seem
so

very high; they would not have reached over the sides of the tall ships, and he had been to sea enough to

know they might manage much higher. But if they should be struck by so many waves, one after another,

perhaps they could not fire their guns, and then Lien might come near enough to use the divine wind upon

them.

In any case, he privately cared only that he should at last have a chance at Lien; who had done nothing,

only sat about watching while everyone else was hurt and killed. But even as he came, Lien abruptly

stopped chasing the waves she had raised. Instead she wheeled back from them, some dozen wingbeats.

Temeraire was close enough he could see the trembling of her breast, and the way her wings wavered.

She was very tired; and Temeraire pressed on with new urgency. He would have her now, she could not

fly away quickly enough—

Lien hovered a moment, drawing breaths, and then she charged after the waves once more. She swept

low and level across the water, roaring so loud that the cannon, still speaking behind Temeraire, were

drowned out. A fresh swell rose ahead of her in response, not so high as the others, but low and smooth,

and moving very fast away. Spent by the effort, she fell silent and hung there in the air trembling. Her

head was almost limp, but the swell ran on without her, to outpace and catch the elevated waves. As it

met them, the waves seemed almost to stutter and collapse into it, one after another melting into the

whole—

Temeraire heeled back, startled: with scarcely any warning the wave had reared high enough to block

Lien out, thrusting itself directly in his way, and his wing-tip cut a line of spray in its face as he wheeled

away just in time to keep from being caught by its rising crest. He thought, at first, he would just climb

higher aloft and go over the wave; but he had no time. Behind him the swell was rising, rising, a dark

green-glossy wall of water so vast that now small curlers of foam were breaking upon its face as well as

its crest, and he was racing it towards the ships.

“Temeraire!” Laurence was crying out, “Temeraire, can you break it—”

Temeraire darted a look over his shoulder: the wave was still growing. He had never seen anything so

vast, and a shudder trembled along the tip of his tail. They had weathered a typhoon once, in the Indian

Ocean; a swirling wrath of clouds overhead, so he could not fly, and the
Allegiance
climbing and

climbing each terrible rising wave, only to go rushing down the far side at shattering speed. But this was

another thing entirely; almost not of the world in its monstrous size. But Lien had made it; she had raised

it, with the divine wind, and so surely he might break it.

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The wave came on after them, swift and dreadfully silent for all its great size, the choppy surf smoothing

out before it as minor courtiers yielding way to a passing monarch. With frantic wingbeats he pulled

away, trying to get a little more room to turn around. The ships were so very near now that he could read

their names off their prows, and see men in the rigging, and darting about on the deck, little specks

scurrying. Temeraire was dripping with the spray, his wings streaming as he flew and flew. He could not

gain elevation, he had not time to draw much breath; but he had gained all the ground there was to be

gained, and he turned himself around, and roared out, with all his very might.

“DEAR GOD HAVE MERCY,”Laurence said, or thought he said, when he had wiped the salt from his

eyes and looked back.

Temeraire had broken them a hole in the wave: a great ragged patch standing open like a window, for an

instant, wherethrough they could still see a glimpse of the line:
Victory
with her pennants, all the

line-of-battle and their white sails gleaming like pearl against the thunderstorm color of the ocean. And

then doom was upon them.

The great
Neptune,
broadside to the wave, fired her guns in a flaming golden roar before she was

struck, a last shout of defiance; then she was gone. The ships facing into the wave rose up the shining

face, their prows driving seafoam-pale gouges into the monster, mere pinpricks, climbing bravely until

one after another they were overturned in cataracts of white foam and swallowed into the green mass.

The wave slouched onward down the Channel, subsiding gradually as it ran: the shoulders of a giant

irritated, shrugging away. One solitary ship-of-the-line, the
Superb,
bobbed at anchor, all her masts

snapped away and water pouring from her sides; two frigates, which had dropped their anchors in time,

were on their beam-ends and struggling to right themselves before they, too, sank. A few human specks

in the water were clinging to wreckage. Of fourteen ships-of-the-line, nothing else remained, like castles

built in sand, swept away by the tide.

No cannon spoke, nor guns; even the personal knots of fighting stilled. In the silence now the last of the

French dragons came flying, massed in a desperate arrow-head lunge into the sudden gap in the

cross-fire, and the Guard ran forward, packed around Napoleon, to meet them.

“Temeraire!” Laurence called—a frantic trumpet-signal was blowing the alarm. Temeraire struggled

wearily to turn, calling out to the other dragons. Already a small, lithe Chasseur-Vocifère was leaping

away from the ground, and Napoleon was on her back.

Temeraire made for the party, but four of the French dragons wheeled to meet them, smaller