by Naomi Novik
“Well, hurry up then!” Demane said, as Arkady scrambled off Kulingile’s back and crept hastily away into a narrow crevasse, peering out and up at them with only the tip of his grey nose showing.
Still they were three against a dozen, and Temeraire struggling to gather his breath again. Chu said, “Quickly, behind me!” and leapt aloft. Temeraire and Kulingile dropped in behind him. Chu darted into a gap between two mountain ridges, angling himself sharply to pass his wings through the space, and led them onwards through a dizzying rush of mountains: thick green slopes and grey stone flying past at such a speed that Temeraire could only blindly follow, twisting himself to meet every new gap and losing his sense of direction all over again at every third turning.
Kulingile was gasping, but at last they burst out between two peaks into the air over a valley, and beneath them, chasing through the very channel they had fled along, were the traitorous dragons. “Now!” Chu said, and Temeraire gathered his breath and roared out, and the peak before him shattered; boulders toppling. Kulingile flung himself down after them, and bore two of the red dragons to the ground beneath his wickedly long talons, drowning them in the rockslide before he sprang aloft again.
The enemy had split up their ranks, however, and still more beasts were coming; six and six from either side approaching, and another six descending from above. The odds were too great. “We must try and fight a way through for you,” Chu said to Temeraire. “You must return to camp, with the Emperor’s son,” and while Temeraire could appreciate that sentiment, his heart recoiled at the idea that he should flee and leave others to fend off the enemy. He felt very sorry suddenly he had ever criticized Laurence for risking himself; he had never properly understood how dreadful it would be.
“We cannot on any account desert you, General,” Laurence said. “Your own survival must be of paramount importance: if you can win back to camp, you will be trusted and obeyed, where we may be considered too partial, and your death somehow laid at our door by further machinations.”
“Laurence,” Temeraire said, “perhaps you ought to go with General Chu, and—”
The knot of dragons was closing in upon them; but shrieks and cries erupted, as a torrent of flame enveloped their hindquarters and Iskierka burst through their ranks behind it, her talons raking along their sides in either direction. “What are you all hovering about here and talking for?” she demanded, whipping about them mid-air. “Don’t you see you are under attack? Hurry up and do some fighting! The others are coming as quick as they can.”
She whipped away again, and Temeraire dived after her, indignant at her reproaches; he roared as she flamed, and together they broke apart the other side of the closing net just as the arrow-head formation massed behind Lily came diving towards them all. “Hah,” Maximus called, as he swung by, “we thought you might have got yourselves into trouble, after those guard-dragons slunk off: we followed them here, and so you have.”
“We did not get ourselves into trouble, at all,” Temeraire said. “It came to us, without any effort on our parts.”
Chu was falling in on his left flank, calling to Temeraire, “Hurry! Tell them to send up a signal! Blue lights and red, together!”
Temeraire was inclined to think, himself, that they were quite enough to manage the enemy; together their formation had dealt with quite more than a dozen dragons, and the red dragons were not as large as himself, much less Maximus and Kulingile. But Laurence shouted the word on to Granby, through his cupped hands, and in a moment the flares went up: blue lights bursting against the mountain-side, and Iskierka followed them with a torrent of red flame.
Dodging another pass from the red dragons, Temeraire noticed that the fighting had doubled back over the cave, and too late realized they had been neatly herded. Soldiers were coming out of the cave-mouth and hoisting into the air bundles which, when the scarlet dragons dived to seize them, proved to be enormous weighted nets.
Four of the scarlet dragons threw themselves in a tumbling pass through the narrow gaps in the formation, their crews lashing out with long barbed whips in either direction that threatened the British dragons’ wings and managed to cut the formation apart, while others in groups of three pounced with the nets. Nitidus and Immortalis were falling off in one direction, a net catching at Nitidus’s wing and leg, so that he would have plummeted into the jagged mountains but for Immortalis giving him support.
Another three of the dragons managed to entangle Lily and Messoria and flung nets over them both, carrying them to the ground, wings and limbs thrashing as they roared, men of their crews broken and bloody beneath them as they fell. Three of the scarlet dragons were feinting at Maximus, drawing him in one direction and another, their crews carving up his flanks with the long whips while the British riflemen fired volleys that the twisting and darting of the dragons sent astray.
The scarlet dragons were fighting too well together, Temeraire realized in dismay: being so nearly alike they all might take any position in the fighting, and exchange places, and alter their formations to suit any particular moment of the fighting. Meanwhile Maximus and Dulcia were the only ones left, and Dulcia could not do very much to help Maximus, outweighed by the scarlet beasts as she was.
He could not go and help; he and Iskierka were struggling to keep together as the enemy beasts came towards them, and even with her fire, it was proving dreadfully difficult: he could not build up enough force behind the divine wind to use it to proper effect over and over. Iskierka only just turned her head over his back and burnt up a net as it flew for his wings; he managed to dive beneath her belly and roar away three dragons coming from beneath with their crews aiming for her with stakes topped by pointed steel caps.
Below, he heard terrible screams, and smelled the acrid bite of Lily’s poison: she had righted herself. The spray of her acid had gone through the net and spattered the defenders before the cave-mouth, and with a great heave, she and Messoria burst free, themselves bellowing as they brushed against a few lingering drops.
But Temeraire could see Kulingile being driven down: one of the scarlet dragons had flung herself at him in a sacrificial roll, hurtling into his chest heedless of his clawing talons. As he reeled back, three others seized on him with jaws and talons closing over his wings and his legs, tearing at the membranes. Temeraire wanted to fly to his rescue, but he could not gather the divine wind, or drag himself free: he was being dragged down as well. “Laurence!” he cried in alarm, thrashing, trying to see if Laurence was still on his back, still hooked on and safe, as three dragons pinned him to the mountain-slope.
Chu roared, coming down upon the back of one of the red dragons, and seized the younger beast by the neck and wrenched it expertly sidelong; the dragon shrieked and fell off Temeraire’s shoulder. “Hah!” Chu said, and seizing one of the fallen trees from the slope flung it at the dragon on Temeraire’s other legs, and Temeraire managed to heave up; the last of the three dragons fled aloft. “Come along!” Chu said. “It is time for us to get out of the fighting.”
“What?” Temeraire said, gasping for breath, and then looked up as a thrumming noise came sharply from overhead: more of the red dragons were wheeling into view, but these were not Fela’s beasts; these were Chu’s soldiers, their armor polished and fresh, gathered in two formations of six and nine.
“This way,” Chu said, and led Temeraire to a flattened peak, broken earlier by the divine wind, high enough to let them see the wheeling, fighting dragons clearly.
“Come upon their left flank,” Chu roared to the smaller formation, and “Zhao Lien, bar their escape,” he shouted to the leading dragon of the other, then sat back on his haunches with satisfaction as the dragons moved skillfully and methodically to begin bringing down the traitor-beasts. “Where are you going?” he demanded, when Temeraire would have gone back aloft. “No, no: there is no excuse for that anymore. We have won the battle: it is only a matter of time, now.”
Temeraire flattened his ruff to his neck in irrita
tion, especially when he saw Iskierka dart by, flaming another two beasts. But he could not quarrel with it; they were winning, that was plain enough.
“Temeraire,” Laurence said, and to his alarm Temeraire saw him unclasping his carabiners, and Forthing and Ferris with him. “We must get down and look into those caves: we must find Tharkay. When the traitors see the fighting going against them, they might well kill him rather than leave him to be witness against them and perhaps General Fela himself. General Chu,” he added, “you would oblige me if you might send down some soldiers with us, from your beasts.”
“Oh,” Temeraire said unhappily as Chu roared the command to his dragons: the cave-mouth was indeed not at all large enough to let him or another dragon go inside. He had only just resolved not to condemn Laurence for wishing to go into fighting, but he had not thought that resolve would be put to the test quite so soon. “Pray be careful,” he said, steeling himself to it, and watched in anxiety as Laurence plunged within the caves, Ferris and Forthing on his heels, and a number of Chu’s soldiers with them.
And then he could do nothing but sit and watch the battle, and wait, while Iskierka and Lily and Maximus and Kulingile helped knock about the traitors, as they well deserved; Temeraire clawed the slope in frustration.
“Hm! I must have a better look at that fire-breather of yours,” Chu said to Temeraire, adding insult to injury. “It is the accepted understanding that they cannot be bred without a grievous lack of balance, but I see she is a most skillful flier. Her temperament, I have observed, is not ideal, but one may make some allowances. Where was she hatched?”
“She is Turkish,” Temeraire said, rather coldly, as Iskierka went showing away again with a great corkscrewing spiral turn, flame sweeping the air like a banner. “She is a Kazilik dragon. I suppose you are quite an expert, on these matters.”
“I am indeed,” Chu said, equably. “I am a minister of the breeding office, and I have served three terms as overseer of the Imperial breeding programme.”
The ground before the cave-mouth still smoked with the Longwing acid, several crates burnt through: Laurence caught a glimpse, in one, of balls of opium charred through and wafting a thick rope of pale grey smoke into the air. He plunged between them and over the deserted fortifications, dead soldiers sprawled over the ground, one with a face half-eaten-away and stiffened hands still clutching at his own head stared as he went past and into the darkness of the cave-mouth.
Laurence’s eyes took a moment to adjust: a few lanterns hung from a thin rope strung overhead, and a honeycomb of tunnels dividing away in front of him. “Sir,” Forthing said, “we had better mark the way we’ve gone.” He took down a lantern, and tearing it open fetched out the candle.
Laurence nodded, taking a piece of the candle. “Each of you take a side,” he said, “and do not go down more than five branchings, for the moment.” He spoke grimly; if the tunnels did go so deep into the mountains, they might search months without finding a concealed prisoner.
He shouted Tharkay’s name, and called in English as he led the way down the first tunnel; distantly for a little while he heard Forthing and Ferris doing the same, until the rock swallowed their voices. He dragged the softened wax across the rough rock wall, at each division of the passage, choosing always the rightmost way; it left a smudge of pale yellow that showed clearly in the light of the torch one of the soldiers carried by his side. The wind currents brought other noises: he heard shouts and footsteps, echoing queerly along the hallways, and his mouth held the unpleasant taste of bitter smoke.
They looked into storerooms, mostly empty and disused. By any fourth or fifth branching, the tunnel would begin to take on more the character of what the place had once been, Laurence supposed: a mine, the tunnels rough-hewn and pickaxed; when they reached a dead end in one, the torch gleamed on a thin line of silver, the remnant of a vein pursued to its end.
In one chamber, somewhere near the third branching, they found a writing-table, with a handful of scattered letters and pen and ink: but old; the ink dried to a black crumbled clot. Laurence glanced at the topmost sheet, a work broken off mid-stream, and then held it to the soldier nearest him, an officer he thought; the man wore a mark of senior rank. “Can you make anything of it?”
The soldier studied it and said, “This is a letter written to Ran Tian Yuan: I believe he was a chief of the rebels,” in a woman’s clear voice. “He was executed ten years ago.” Laurence with a start looked at her: deep lines about her eyes, her face not very old but leathered from sun and wind, and a peppered scar of burnt-in powder upon her cheek.
The woman took up the papers and held them out to one of the other soldiers, to be bundled up together; she fell in again with Laurence as they went through the tunnels. Laurence glanced back at the other soldiers behind them. Their hair was bound up beneath snug caps, with wrappings bound down beneath their chins, likely for warmth when aloft; in the dim light he could not tell whether they were men or women.
The tunnel died shortly after, and they retreated towards the entry, to take another branch; before they could go down this, footsteps came towards them running. Laurence was appalled to find the soldier thrust him behind her arm as they drew their swords, and another of the soldiers push through the hallway to take her side instead.
The enemy soldiers coming had a look of desperation, drawn blades wet with blood, and pulled up short to see them; then it was a sudden, close struggle in the passageway. Their numbers were even, Laurence thought, but he could not easily tell; the tunnel was too narrow to see clearly, and the soldiers at the front, of both parties, had dropped their torches to free their hands for fighting. He took a blow from a fist to his temple and shook his head to clear it; then thrust back high, his long blade coming over the other’s guard. Then he caught another arm descending, and the woman soldier drove her own blade, a shorter one, into the man’s arm-pit beneath his thick jerkin. She grunted abruptly with pain and fell: one of the enemy had thrust a sword into her thigh. Laurence stepped into the gap. He killed three more, and then a sword took him hot in the meat of his arm; he dropped back and let another step into his place.
Abruptly the enemy soldiers gave over the fight: they made one heaving push, and then withdrew hurrying down the hall. Laurence said, “Let them go.” Twelve lay dead in the corridor, and five of their own party. The waste of it made him sorry, with the battle above already decided. They bound up their hurts as best they could. The woman officer was limping; another soldier, Laurence thought a man, looked dazed: his cap and its bindings were wet through with blood, and a trickle coming down his cheek. Two soldiers stood with him; he swayed between them and did not speak.
Laurence looked down the branching they had been on the point of taking: he wished to get the wounded to safety, but the enemy soldiers had been coming this way. “Come with me, if you please,” Laurence said, to two of the unwounded soldiers, one of them a torch-bearer, “and the rest stay here. We will have a quick look, then return to the entry.”
The passageway smelled of smoke: burning wood, a torch, acrid. His head ached. Blood was wet and sticky upon his arm and on his fingers, and the orange glow of torchlight played from behind his back and over the corridor walls, leaping like a bonfire. There was a strange familiarity to it: the narrow walls in around him. And when he came to a wooden door set in the wall, he put his hand upon it and pushed it open.
There was a room, and a pallet inside it; a small torch burned low in a socket upon the wall. A man lay upon the cot, his face bruised and battered, his hands curled against his chest bloody: and Laurence knew him; knew him and knew himself. He remembered another door opening, in Bristol, three years before, and a voice asking him to come outside his prison, in a Britain under siege.
“Tenzing,” Laurence said, and, as Tharkay opened feverish eyes, went to help him stand.
“LA GRANDE ARMÉE, HE is calling it,” Tharkay had said, lying exhausted and thin against the cushions which propped him, in Laurence�
��s own camp-bed: they had carried him gently and carefully dragon-back, in a hammock of netting, back from the caves. “They have been mustering all winter; he will march into Russia in three months—in two—” He stopped, breathing hard, and asked, “What is the day?”
“It is the third of May,” Laurence said, quietly. The abuse had not marked Tharkay excessively: fortunately they had wished to preserve the appearance of a more honest confession, perhaps, when they had wrung one from him. But he had been lashed more than once, judging by the half-healed marks; there were burns upon his limbs as from a hot poker, and his hands were badly mangled.
“In a month,” Tharkay said. “He will march in June; that was our latest intelligence.”
“With near a million men?” Laurence said, low.
Tharkay nodded, minimally. “And some hundred dragons.”
It was indeed a message terrible enough to bring a man racing flat-out halfway around the world. The largest army ever heard of, and with it Napoleon meant to crush the last embers of resistance out of Europe: first Russia, and then he would turn all his attention to the Peninsula. Hammond was already rising, pale. “I must go speak with General Chu at once, and with Qin Mei: we must—these events must require our immediate return to the capital. Oh! We must return at once.” He left unceremoniously, and Tharkay closed his eyes.
Laurence sat silently with him in the growing dark of the tent, groping back through patchwork scenes of memory. He remembered the Goliath sinking more clearly now; he remembered the faces of the officers at his court-martial; he remembered the cold bleak desperation of the flight across the Channel, to take the plague-medicine to France.
“I hope you will forgive my mentioning it, Will,” Tharkay said, eventually, rousing Laurence from his reverie. “—I recognize there is a certain pot-calling quality to my doing so under the circumstances, but have you noticed that the top of your head appears likely to come off?”