by Naomi Novik
Perscitia had suggested the notion, as they had no bombs, “especially if you can get some tents pulled up, and drop them on the pepper guns,” she had said, and it answered remarkably well—most of the tents bundled up as they dropped, but one luckily unfurled and floated down in a heap atop a company of infantry trying to aim the long-barreled pepper guns, the bayonets poking out of it and making them only worse entangled.
“Oh!” Temeraire said exultantly. “Oh, it is working! Perscitia, look—” but she was nowhere near to be seen, and he could not spend time finding her. The Chevaliers had wheeled about to come back, but they were holding off—the sizzling crisp of Gentius’s acid was sharp in the air for anyone to smell if only they put out their tongue, and though it was dark, the fires leaping up from the camp glowed red against Temeraire’s belly, and Majestatis and Requiescat and Ballista, enough to make it plain that there were four heavy-weights lined up opposite. Quickly Temeraire turned and roared out, “Chalcedony! Go around and at them!”
“What?” Chalcedony called back, circling himself in mid-air, to try and keep his place; he and the other Yellow Reapers and middle-weights were in a great mass waiting for their turn to have a go at the camp.
“The Chevaliers! All of you circle about and come at them, from behind, make them come towards us,” Temeraire called back, impatiently.
“Oh!” Chalcedony said, and the Reapers jumped at it, streamed out in a flock, and whipped around the Chevaliers.
“Second line!” Temeraire cried, and the Anglewings and Grey Coppers all darted down in a pair of short rows, and made another pass through the camp, crosswise to the one the heavy-weights had made—they were all middle-and light-weights, but so especially quick and skillful they were hard to hit even under the best of circumstances, and the soldiers had all been aiming their guns up at the heavy-weights in wholly the wrong direction, so the circumstances were not at all the best, for the French anyway.
But a great many of the Anglewings were vain of their flying, and instead of going straight through, Velocitas and Palliatia and a few of the others were stopping abruptly mid-flight, cornering neat as a box and darting back the way they had come a little, then reversing again, or doing complicated interweaving tricks of flying. It was all just showing away, and Temeraire frowned at it, because they were taking a great deal longer than they ought, and would get shot. And anyway, it was meant to be the heavy-weights’ turn to go again.
But he supposed that was selfish, and they would have some splendid fighting with the Chevaliers instead; but when he looked the Chevaliers were not coming towards them: they were too busy trying to defend themselves. The Reapers were darting at them in pairs, one from either flank, and as soon as the Chevalier turned to meet that attack, another pair would go at them from another direction. The Reapers were coming at them from below, so the men aboard the Chevaliers could not shoot them very easily. “Oh,” Temeraire said, disgruntled; it was being very neatly done, but that was not what he had wanted, at all.
At least the Grey Coppers were behaving in a more practical way—while the Anglewings made their fuss, the light-weights were snatching up anything that came handy, tent-poles or young trees that came away from the ground, and whacking away at the camp with them, knocking down people and tents and spreading the fires even more.
“There goes a gun,” Majestatis said laconically, pointing with his long talons: the French had managed to pull round one of their cannon the right way, despite the confusion, and a dozen men aiming pepper guns were standing with it.
“Come away!” Temeraire called down hurriedly. “Velocitas! Palliatia—oh, they are not listening!” and they paid for it: the cannon fired, canister shot; the pepper guns spat, and a general shriek went up from the Anglewings as the balls scattered over them. “Quick, Majestatis, we are fastest—”
“Hey, I ain’t going to just sit here,” Requiescat said, but Temeraire was already diving, roaring. “The gun for me,” Majestatis called, as they plummeted, and he managed to bang over the hot cannon as he shot past, his wickedly long claws slashing ruin among the artillery-men.
Temeraire went for the Anglewings, bulling them along and up again, and nudging a shoulder under Velocitas, who had gotten worst-hit, a pepper ball right in the face. His golden-yellow head was speckled black and red everywhere, and his eyes and nostrils were already swollen up so dreadfully he could not see, streams of mucus dripping away from his face; he was moaning wretchedly.
And then Requiescat came down behind them going too fast for his weight and bowled through everyone, crashing through the camp with his wings spread trying to slow himself, and knocking soldiers and dragons both every which way as he drove a massive furrow down the middle of the campground with his talons and his tail.
“Aloft!” Temeraire called furiously, squirming himself free of several tents and shaking off a couple of soldiers who had been thrown on his leg. “Everyone aloft, at once!” He punctuated the order with a roar, a proper one, which he aimed towards the caissons of ammunition stacked neatly by the guns. The pyramids of round-shot trembled and collapsed, balls rolling everywhere across the ground, crushing men’s legs, and the dragons all leapt aloft in the fresh confusion.
“Look, look,” cried Fricatio, one of the Grey Coppers, as he climbed up, “look, I caught a horse,” waving it in his talons.
“This is no time to be eating!” Temeraire said, but it reminded him of their real purpose, and he went up a little more to see: sure enough there were a great many shadows moving about near the pigs, and the gate of the pen was swinging wide open. “We have the pigs!” he cried, and everyone cheered noisily, and Temeraire added, “Now we can go!”
“Why?” Majestatis said.
“What?” Temeraire said.
“Why ought we go?” Majestatis said, and pointed down: all the soldiers were fleeing in a body eastward, routed, only stopping long enough to heave the wounded upon waggons, and drag them away. Aloft, the Chevaliers were turning tail and going, too, and the camp in all its flames was left deserted, to its conquerors.
“Well,” Temeraire said the next morning, peering down the slightly charred barrel, “it is very nice, but I am not sure what we can do with it.”
“Drop it on their heads, next battle,” Moncey suggested.
“Listen to you talk; we shan’t waste a real cannon like that,” Gentius said. “What we need is some men to fire it for us. A proper artillery company. And we need some proper surgeons, too,” he added, “for us and for ’em,” meaning the prisoners, most of them wounded who had been left behind on the field. There were not very many of these; by the time the dragons had managed to put out the fires, nearly all the casualties were dead.
Lloyd and the men had helped the survivors away, and put up a tent for them, but that left all the dead men lying about. The battle had been very satisfying, if not quite as long or as ordered as one might have wished, and Temeraire was not sorry to have killed the soldiers: it was just as well, since otherwise they would have had to fight them again, and after all they had invaded. But he was sorry they were dead, and it made one rather sad to look at them.
Most of the ferals did not see what the difficulty was, and a couple were for eating them. Temeraire flattened his ruff in horror, and everyone else hissed disapprovingly, so this suggestion was withdrawn. “Yes, that is enough of that kind of talk,” Gentius said. “But we can’t leave them lying about, either. That ain’t fitting; they were good enemies.”
So a couple of the Reapers had dug a grave, perhaps a little deep, some twenty foot, and the couriers had collected up the dead and put them inside, and after they had filled the hole in, Chalcedony had respectfully stuck one of the least-charred French flags upright into the mound, and they had all bowed their heads solemnly for a moment, and then they had eaten some pigs.
Now they were beginning the work of picking through the remains of the camp. Most things had been burnt up, but for metal pots, buckles, cannon-shot, and most exc
itingly a great solid lump of gold, a heap of sovereigns melted all together, which had been found in the charred remains of a chest. Reedly had nosed it out onto the ground in front of all of them, and many heads had craned forward to look at it in admiration; it shone brilliantly in the morning sun.
“Well, how is it to be shared out?” Requiescat said, eyeing it covetously.
“We must put it aside somewhere safe,” Temeraire said, “and when the war is over, we will take all the treasure we have gotten, like this, and have some splendid pavilions built all over, which we can all use whenever we like, which will be better than for us all to have only enough to buy a piece of a pavilion in only one place. And what is left over, we will use to get medals, for everyone, and everyone will have a medal to suit their size.”
All approving this arrangement, a few dragons were detailed off—after complicated negotiations, resulting in Reedly, Chalcedony and another Yellow Reaper, and an Anglewing, all going together, when Reedly could easily have carried it alone—to escort the gold chunk to a place of safety back in the breeding grounds. The rest of them had fallen back to searching the camp with even more enthusiasm than before: then they had uncovered the cannon.
Most of the guns had been ruined; those whose housings were not burnt or acid-eaten had been spiked by their crews before being abandoned. One, however, under the protective weight of a smothering tent, had escaped destruction. It was a little pitted, and its wheels were perhaps a bit singed along the edge, but it was a real great gun, a good twelve-pounder, and they had plenty of balls around for it. There was even a store of gunpowder left, as the waggon full of powder had been kept some distance away from the rest of the camp.
“But how are the men to know what is to be done, if they are not already soldiers?” Temeraire said. He had seen the guns fired many times, aboard ship, but he did not recall perfectly just how it was managed. “Perhaps Perscitia can work out—” he looked, and realized she was not poking through the camp with the others, but was sitting near the water-hole curled up in a lump.
“Are you hurt?” he inquired, having gone over to her.
“Of course I am not hurt,” she said, snappishly.
“Why are you sitting over here then, instead of coming to see; we have found some gold already, and maybe there is more.”
“Well, it is not as though I will have a share,” she said. “I did not do any fighting.”
“Everyone had a chance,” Temeraire said, injured; he did not feel he had been unfair. Naturally the heavy-weights ought to go first, if they could do the worst—
Perscitia looked away, and hunched her wings more snugly. “You may go away, if all you mean is to sneer, and be unpleasant. I am sure it is no business of anyone’s, if I did not care to fight.”
“I am not sneering, at all, and you may stop being so quarrelsome!” Temeraire said. “I did not notice that you did not fight.”
She fidgeted a little, and muttered by way of apology, “Others did,” glancing towards the other dragons.
“But why did you not, if you mind so much now?” Temeraire asked. “You might have, any time you liked.”
“I did not like,” she said, defiantly, “—so there, and you may call me a coward if you want; I am sure I do not care.”
“Oh,” Temeraire said, and sat back on his haunches. He was not quite sure what to say. “I am very sorry?” he offered, uncertainly. He supposed it must be very unpleasant to be a coward. But he had always thought cowards were wretched creatures, who would do something unpleasant such as steal your things, even if they knew they could not win fighting for them, and that was not what Perscitia was like, at all. “And you are never shy of quarreling with anyone.”
“That is not the same,” she said. “One does not get shot for quarreling, or have a wing torn up, or a cannonball in the chest—I saw a dragon take a cannonball once, it was dreadful.”
“Of course,” Temeraire said, “but one must just be quick enough, and then you can dodge them.”
“That is nonsense,” she said. “A musket-ball can go much quicker than any dragon, so it is all decided by chance, before you ever think of evading, or even notice that someone is shooting at you. If you are very quick, of course, then you are gone before they can have fired very often,” she added, “so your chances are better, but they are best if you do not go anywhere in front of a gun at all.—And I am not very quick.”
Temeraire rubbed the side of a talon against his forehead, pondering. “In China,” he said, “only some kinds of dragons fight at all; a great many of them are scholars, and would not know what to do in a battle at all. No-one thinks any less of them, or calls them cowards; I suppose that is what you are.”
She lifted her head, and Temeraire added, “Anyway, we are all perfectly happy to fight, so there is no sense in your doing it, when you dislike it.”
“Well, I think just the same,” she said, brightening, “only I do not like anyone to say I did not do my part; but there is no part other than fighting.”
“We must work out how to use the gun,” Temeraire said. “That would be very useful, and perhaps you can think of something we might do with it, to help us fighting, and that is a fair share, as no-one else knows how to do it.”
This solution so suited her that by the end of the day, she had a dozen men working busily as a gun-crew. These had come to them along with another thirty, from the local militia, who had rather nervously come to the battlefield in the morning with their muskets, to see what had happened during the night. Reassured by the gaily flapping flags, they had come near enough to be pressed into service with cheerful ruthlessness by Lloyd and his fellows, tired of being hands for near sixty dragons as well as herdsmen.
The militiamen were abjured not to be such lumps when they cringed from Perscitia in fear, and lectured with great pomp by Lloyd on the need to stop Bonaparte, and then surrendered to her tender mercies. They spent the day working through the mechanics of the gun-firing, the swabbing, the wadding—steps Perscitia had pieced together by interrogating the men, on how their muskets were fired, and then every dragon who had ever been in service on board a ship or in a fleet action, and seen the great guns go.
It had been a little difficult: everyone remembered the sequence a little differently, and for a moment they were at a standstill, until she hit upon the notion of making a tally, of which order everyone recalled, and taking the most popular. By evening they successfully launched their first round-shot across the camp with a bang, to the great startlement of all the other dragons, napping full of pork and satisfaction.
“If we could only work out a way for it to slide properly, there is no reason you might not take it aloft,” she said wistfully that evening, coming to join the discussion with all her old sense of assurance restored. She would happily have kept working, but her men having grown sufficiently used to her, their remnants of fear had at last been outweighed by their fatigue, and they had rebelled and demanded a chance to sleep and eat. “At least, maybe Requiescat might, and it could be set off upon his back; but the recoil, that is the difficulty.”
“What to do next, that is the difficulty,” Temeraire said, and bent his head over the information which Moncey had brought and sketched out into maps, wondering how they might learn what the French would do next, and how soon he might bring them to another battle.
Chapter 6
SIR,” HOLLIN SAID, “I don’t like to make you think of it, but with him loose this long, gone this far off from the grounds, it stands to reason he isn’t flying wild—he has gone to look for you.”
“I know,” Laurence said.
If Temeraire had gone to Dover, he had flown straight into the arms of Napoleon’s invading army. And Laurence could not follow—Jane’s very justification for retrieving him from prison at all had been to keep him out of French hands. Already he was four days overdue in camp, or generously three, and their absence would reflect on her just when she most needed all forces of persuasion aligned
in her favor to prepare for Napoleon’s inevitable march on London.
He knew what duty demanded: return, and report his failure, and wait until some word at last came in of Temeraire’s fate. To sit in gaol endlessly, with no notion of what had happened to Temeraire—Laurence did not know how he would bear it. But there was no other alternative. Already he had likely injured Hollin’s career, if so much prior association with him had not been tarnish enough; as he had injured Jane, and Ferris, and so many others—as if he had not already done enough harm.
“We might go another day,” Hollin suggested. “Work our way back towards the Army, sir, asking along the way, and maybe see what anyone has heard about the French. It stands to reason the generals will want to know that anyway, sir.”
Laurence knew he ought to refuse it. It was generosity offered from friendship, not Hollin’s real and considered judgment. “Thank you, Hollin; if you think it justified,” he said at last, the internal struggle lost, or at least some ground yielded. “But we shall go straight towards the camp,” he added, to win back a little of it, and tried to persuade himself perhaps Temeraire had heard, somehow, of the main body of the Army, and gone there. They might find him in Woolwich waiting—but no, that passed the limits of optimism. Temeraire was not waiting, anywhere, if he knew where Laurence was, and likely even if he had not the slightest idea. He had crossed half of Africa without the least notion and found Laurence in the middle of an unfamiliar continent; he would certainly not be discouraged by the need to search all of Britain if need be, even in the middle of a war; and as like as not get himself hurt thereby.
They flew much-interrupted, stopping at any farm with a herd of moderate size, and at any towns with a clearing large enough for a courier; but they got no news, or at least none they wanted. “Lost twenty of my sheep, but not to any dragons; to the French, damn they eyes,” one angry herdsman informed them.