by Naomi Novik
“And this time, Bonaparte has let his thirst for speed outpace his sense,” another general said. “All the scouts agree, even the beasts,” he added coldly in Jane’s direction, before she had said a word, “that he has not brought up all his army yet. He has some thirty thousand men, not fifty; we are not far short of him even without our levies and reinforcements.”
“You will be a damn sight shorter by morning,” she answered, “if you mean to lie here and be bombarded. And my scouts have made thirty thousand, but that does not mean there are not more to come.”
“You have caterwauled without a stop how we must have these sixty more dragons,” another officer, a colonel, said belligerently, “and swallow treason and unhandled beasts to have them, and now you talk as though we have nothing to do but sit and bear it while the French drop round-shot on our heads. If they are of no use here, they are of no use at all.”
“We have seen a great many of the French along our way from Wales,” Temeraire said, putting in his own oar, “and of course we can stop the Fleur-de-Nuits, if we can only see them, but at night that is difficult.”
“Difficult? So is winning battles difficult,” General Dalrymple said, scowling, and not looking up. He beckoned to his aide and thrust out a map to Laurence. “You will take the beasts here, a mile out past camp,” he said, “and hold the Fleur-de-Nuits there, until morning—”
“That is very silly; the Fleur-de-Nuits will go right around us if we are a mile out,” Temeraire said.
“A couple of rounds against Lefèbvre’s rear-guard, and now you try to tell us our business,” Dalrymple said to Laurence. “By God, I have half-a-mind to—you will obey orders, damn you; you will do as you are told and be grateful for the chance—”
“If I had done as I was told,” Temeraire said, “you should have sixty less dragons, and Lefèbvre would have a good deal more food, and tomorrow Napoleon would likely beat all of you for good. So that is a very stupid thing to say. Whyever ought I do as I am told?”
“If you do not, we will hang—” the belligerent officer began, and Jane said, “Maclaine!” too late, and Temeraire growled, deep in his throat, and lowered his head with his ruff up sharp.
Briefly, he had perhaps become to them only another voice in their deliberations, if a queer, more resonant one, speaking from aloft. But what contempt the little familiarity had produced, vanished in the face of that growl, the great glossy lowered head with the eyes half-a-foot across and glittering yellow-slitted like lamps, over a jawful of serrated teeth with the smallest the size of a man’s hand. It was too palpable a reminder that they were in the presence of a creature who could have, with a stroke, killed them all, and with very little effort to himself. To Laurence, Temeraire could never seem viscerally a threat; but he had handled the dragon from hatchling to maturity, and remembered him a creature scarcely larger than a dog.
“Laurence has oaths and duty to you, and he would let you hang him, although I do not understand why,” Temeraire said after a moment, low and angrily. “And I cannot make him come away with me, against his will, because that would also be wrong. But I will not let him be parted from me again, and if you do hang him, then I will take my friends and go; but not back to China. I will go to Napoleon, and I will tell him he may have my territory, if only he destroys you all, and I will give him any help he wants of me to do it. Now threaten me again, if you like.”
Laurence stood wretchedly, helplessly. He ought to have expected it. Lien had done as much, for the death of her companion, Prince Yongxing; had gone and put herself freely into Bonaparte’s hands, with nothing at the time but contempt for him and all the West, and even though a Napoleon the master of Europe might turn his eyes against her own nation, someday. And what sense of loyalty Temeraire might have begun to acquire to Britain, whatever Laurence might have been able to instill in him, had been undone thoroughly first by the Admiralty’s plan, to infect and kill all the dragons of the West, reserving the cure for British use; and by their later imprisonment and the death-sentence on Laurence which had been used as a bludgeon against him: and now used once too often.
To think his execution would leave Temeraire not free to make his own way back to China, but a devoted enemy of Britain, was a fresh agony; Laurence had no doubt that such a threat would only make the generals despise him and the dragon all the more, and see in it his own scheme for preserving his neck by blackmail. They might choose not to provoke Temeraire again, while Napoleon had men on British soil, but that, he hoped profoundly, was only a temporary state, and then—
Laurence did not discount, as Dalrymple did, Temeraire’s achievement: without experience or training for the task, or anything but will, he had persuaded sixty lazy, well-fed dragons to go with him to war; and had won two victories already, against the French army. That Lefèbvre was not the best of the Marshals, that he had no great number of dragons with him, that Temeraire had only engaged with small companies, meant very little next to the greater success that he had managed to keep his force together and fed. But these men might shortsightedly think themselves happy to be rid of Temeraire and any dragons recalcitrant enough to follow him; and if they did not, they would only take this as still more cause to try some low scheme of murder against him.
“Temeraire,” he said, low, trying, into the silence which lingered, “Temeraire, you cannot say such things; you are a serving-officer now—these are your superiors; you may not make threats, or growl at their orders—you must withdraw the remarks.”
“I did not growl at the orders,” Temeraire said after a moment, still low and angrily, but drawing away his head a little, and all around the circle one might see chests rising with postponed breath. “I did not growl at the orders, and will not, no matter how stupid they are; but as for hanging, if anyone should try to take you from me again, I shall growl at them, and worse, and it is no use telling me I ought not.”
“As one might expect—” Maclaine began, a little faintly, only to be interrupted by Wellesley.
“Damn you, Maclaine, stop baiting the damned bear to see it dance.” Wellesley seized the moment, and addressed the others, still silent and shaken. “This is all nonsense. I do not believe for a minute that Bonaparte has come up with a man less than all his army, whatever phantasy the scouts have brought you. We can get forty thousand men at Weedon, with their guns and supply, and if we give Bonaparte one of his precious pitched battles without every last one of them, we are a pack of fools.”
“Then what do you propose we do?” Dalrymple snapped. “Stand aside and wave him on to London?”
“London was lost three days ago,” Wellesley said, “if not two weeks ago, when Nelson was sent to Copenhagen with twenty ships, and Bonaparte saw his main chance. The sooner we swallow it, the better. Get the men on the road tonight, at once. They have been lying about with nothing to do but get drunk and gamble and whore for a week, they can give up a little sleep—”
Cries of protest began rising, through the stifled moment, accusations of defeatism and surrender. Wellesley raised his voice and kept going, “Waste munitions and men and beasts to hold a lost position—we all ought to be hanged for traitors if we do it. To Scotland—to Scotland and the mountains, damn you all! He can’t hold the country and keep the Channel open both. Let him have England for a month, let him spend men and dragons trying to hold it, and march for Loch Laggan. We will have a hundred thousand men by Christmas, and come down on him when we choose, not Bonaparte—”
“And let him milk London dry, and wreck the country in the meantime—” one man shouted.
“Send men on to London to warn the tradesmen and the bankers out of the city with whatever they can manage,” Wellesley said. “Half of them have gone running to Edinburgh already, after the King; let the rest of them go, too.”
“If they choose to,” someone said, “instead of stay, and shake Bonaparte’s hand as he comes in.”
“If they mean to stay, they’ll stay,” Jane said. “You won’t ma
ke ’em less eager by letting Bonaparte beat you beforehand. Scotland is the first damned thing of sense anyone has said. We needed these sixty beasts, Maclaine, but you cannot throw sixty dragons like round-shot and hope they land somewhere useful. In a week I will have worked out a way to use them, and by Christmas I will know how to do it properly; for tomorrow we can’t do more than cut them loose on his flank and let them do as they like everywhich-way.”
“But that sounds perfectly agreeable to me,” Temeraire interrupted. “I do not see at all why we ought not be able to beat Napoleon tomorrow, even if he outnumbers us; it seems quite cowardly to run away from him.”
Laurence sinkingly heard this speech, which he was sure could have no salutary effect. If he did not much like the idea of retreat, he had yet heard no plan of battle offered, which gave him any confidence that the British were prepared to meet Bonaparte; and he was not heartened, to see that those officers advocating loudest for battle, were by and large those in finer clothes, and fatter than field rations could keep a man.
“O, you wretched bloodthirsty creature,” Jane said, “as if it were not bad enough dealing with all the thrusting-out of chests already, now you must needs do it too; we need more sense, not less.”
“I am not thrusting out my chest at all,” Temeraire protested, pulling himself in rather concave instead, “and I am being very sensible, because if you did run away, it would not do any good, at least if you go by foot as you have been. He will just go after you. He can catch you up in a trice: they go fifty miles in a day.”
“Nonsense,” someone said.
“It is not nonsense,” Temeraire said. “Lefèbvre’s company, eight thousand men, were all near Newbury by Thursday morning, and they had only landed at Deal on Monday; so he can do it.”
There was a moment of perfect silence, on all sides: it was one thing to argue over retreat; another entirely to hear the enemy could not be escaped. After a moment, Jane said, “Well, he can beat us by the numbers, but we have around two dozen heavy-weights now, and he hasn’t more than ten, aside from his Fleurs. I will take it on to beat his speed, if you will only let me—”
“—put redcoats on dragons, yes, yes, as you keep saying,” she was interrupted, by another colonel. “I should like to see it.”
“You can come to our camp if you would,” Temeraire offered. “We have been carrying along a lot of them, although,” he added severely, “if you wanted us all to carry, you ought to have spent a little time making carrying-harnesses, which I know Laurence told you of; because it would be a good deal more convenient than rope, and we could manage more, but perhaps if they do not mind being bundled up into sacks made out of tents, or belly-netting—”
“I should damned well say they will mind,” one general said.
“Are they soldiers or aren’t they?” Wellesley snapped. “Shoot the first insubordinate bastard to refuse and the rest of them will go quiet enough.”
But it was too far; he and Jane were both shouted down. “Enough of this craven counsel,” General Dalrymple said. “We stand, and we fight. General Wellesley, you will take the right flank tomorrow, and hold the line at the barracks. General Burrard, you will take the left, and plan on pinching him, when he has worn himself out enough, trying to fight uphill against the main body of our force.”
Wellesley stiffened, at the assignment; something of a slap, to be set in the position where less maneuvering should be required, and less initiative. He made no outward protest, however, but his fingers on the hilt of his sword drummed.
“And as for you, Roland,” Dalrymple added, “if the damned beasts will not fight the Fleur-de-Nuits—”
“I did not say that at all!” Temeraire said, bristling. “We will fight anyone, I only said, we cannot stop them, if you send us out of camp to do it. The Fleur-de-Nuits can see at night, and we cannot; it stands to reason they can go right around us, above or below. We cannot stop them just by lining up somewhere in their road and hoping.”
“You can hear them, can’t you?” Dalrymple demanded, exasperated enough by repeated interruption to address Temeraire directly, for once.
“A Fleur-de-Nuit sounds just like a Yellow Reaper to us, flying,” Temeraire said. “They beat at the same pace.”
Laurence blinked. He had never noticed such a thing, nor considered it as a difficulty, and by the expressions of the other officers, neither had any of them; even Jane looked surprised by the intelligence, and she was an aviator of thirty years’ experience and more.
“And anyway,” Temeraire added, “one cannot tell where a sound is coming from closely, not when one is aloft and moving, and there are a great many other dragons about all beating in circles. If the Fleur-de-Nuits should go past us one at a time, we would likely never notice them at all, and then we would come back and you would complain we had not done anything. If you want us to stop them, you may say so, and then let us work out, how it is to be done.”
Chapter 8
TEMERAIRE COULD NOT call it a very satisfactory conversation, although he congratulated himself on putting an end to the threats against Laurence. But the generals were not very clever, at all, and whatever Laurence might say about superior officers, it seemed to Temeraire that if they were his superiors, then they ought to give him better orders than he could work out for himself, not worse; and some of them had wanted to run away, only because they did not have as many people.
“But, at least I have spoken to a fellow from the Ministry, and told him that we require voting, and pay, and he did not refuse; which I think is encouraging,” he told the others, “and they have been sensible enough to let us manage the Fleur-de-Nuits how we like: only, now we must work out how.”
“If we fight them here right at the camp,” Perscitia said thoughtfully, the tip of her tail flicking urgently back and forth, “then they must come right to us, to do any good, and there will be enough light from the fires to see them at least a little, and we can fight them off straightaway.”
“They need not fight you at all, if you are above the camp,” Laurence said. “They need only dart in and drop their bombs and fly away again: they are sure to hit something of value, without needing to be particular about their targets.”
“Perhaps if we should make a ring about the camp,” Temeraire said, “and then if we heavy-weights fly patterns, back and forth across, then they cannot come in without our noticing them, and we can catch them and teach them a good lesson; they will not long keep at it.”
“Yes,” Admiral Roland said, “and tomorrow we will have not a one of you fit to fly, which Napoleon will have bought cheap at the price of sending out ten dragons, who are no good in the day any road. No; we can’t spend near so much of your strength. Tonight every last heavy-weight of you must eat, and get at once to sleep; you have already been flying more than you ought, the day before a battle.”
Unfortunately the good sense of this rather dull objection, which Temeraire would have liked to dismiss, was making itself felt in a palpable way; Requiescat was snoring noisily in his corner, even though he was supposed to be attending to their conference, and Temeraire could not deny that he himself felt his mind drifting to his dinner more than seemed fitting, with a battle ahead. He sighed, and acknowledged the justice of it.
“But the little dragons cannot fight so many big, without any of us,” he said. “And we will need them, too, tomorrow; otherwise Napoleon will send all of his little ones against us, and even though most of us have not any crew to be captured, they will still tangle us up.”
Admiral Roland rubbed her cheek with her knuckles and then she said, “Well, we can’t spare the strength to keep them from the camp, so we had better keep the camp from them.”
It was a little while before they could begin to put the plan in motion: Admiral Roland had evidently some arguing to do first, but at last the fires began to be put out, all across the camp, and the men to take down their tents, grumbling against the cold.
“This is boring,” Is
kierka said to him, dissatisfied, as they sat waiting: a large square of forest just beside the camp was being marked out for them by middle-weights. “It is not at all as good as fighting, and I do not want to sleep.”
“Well, you must sleep, or else you cannot fight tomorrow,” Temeraire said, although privately he felt rather much the same. “Now hurry, we do not have a good deal of time; the sun is already going down, and they will be sure to realize something is wrong, if it gets dark and they can see everything is ablaze.”
“Yesterday you did not want me setting trees on fire at all,” she said still grumbling, but leaping aloft she strafed across the marked square with her flame, until the trees began to catch; the middle-weights had pulled up a good broad line of trees all around, and clawed up the dirt, to make a fire-break. It made a fine blaze, pleasantly warm—“Temeraire,” Laurence said, gently touching his neck, and Temeraire jerked his head up; it had been very comfortable to doze.
“I am awake. Is it our turn yet?” He leapt aloft, and studied critically the still-blazing trees. He could not just cry away at them, for if they fell athwart the fire-break, they would catch all the rest of the trees, so he went in a careful perimeter about them, and roared inward into the square. The fire-weakened trees crashed and fell in the most satisfying way, sparks flying up in great glowing orange clouds like small fireworks.
“Well, I suppose it is a little easier to knock them down,” he admitted to Laurence, “after they have been burnt some; not that I could not have managed it alone.”
“You must also reserve your strength,” Laurence said. “Another pass, and that will have done it, I think; some trees left standing will do no harm. The signal, Mr. Allen,” Laurence added, and when Temeraire had given the field another circle, the middle-weights came in dropping their loads of wet dirt, scooped up easily from the riverbed of the Thames with waggon-carts as shovels, and heaped it onto the remaining flames.