by Naomi Novik
Page 13
Chapter 13
LAURENCE COULD SEE GRANBY speaking softly with Harcourt and Berkley; they had trailed him to the edge of the escarpment and stood now at a distance together, all of them looking at him warily as though they imagined he might fling himself over, and as though they would have been sorry for it if he had. Even though he was a traitor—a convicted traitor. Even though he had carried aid and comfort to the French, deliberately, of his own free will, and undermined thereby a stroke which might have averted the invasion of Britain.
An appalling stroke, one which would have meant the slow and dreadful death of a thousand dragons or more, a deliberate plague-bearing—but notwithstanding this, a stroke which had been commanded by his officers, by his Government, and through them by his King. He had betrayed them all, and the invasion of his country might be laid at his door.
“Laurence,” Granby said, low, coming to his side, “—pray will you come back to my tent? Temeraire is frayed like a torn rag already, and he’ll be worse the longer you stand out here. He is watching you. ”
Laurence did not answer; he could scarcely yet form thoughts in his own head. The worst of the matter was to be unable to recall what should have shaped his choice: he had committed no mere act of passion. He had acted with deliberation. He had also been pardoned, Temeraire had urgently told him, pardoned and even restored to the list of officers; but Laurence felt that he would have given up that pardon, given anything, only to feel again the sentiments that had driven him to such an extremity.
But he did not; he did not remember, and only now understood that he did not know himself any longer. He did not know how he ought to feel. Temeraire had evidently driven him to the act; a court-martial had condemned him; the Government had pardoned him. But none of these facts could tell Laurence whether he had condemned himself, or ought to, and whether he should long since have separated himself from Temeraire as ought a sailor shut his ears to the Sirens.
Granby gently took his arm, and Laurence after a moment let himself be drawn away. They walked slowly back across the encampment, past the watchful, suspicious looks of the red dragons. Laurence did not look towards Temeraire’s pavilion, but ducked into Granby’s tent; there he took the glass of strong rice liquor Granby offered him and swallowed it straightaway.
“I’m damned sorry,” Granby said, sitting on a chest. “We ought have found some other way to break the news to you, whatever Pettiforth and Hammond said; we must have known you could not go forever, not learning of it. I suppose we have all been telling ourselves you would remember, surely, any day now. ” He leaned over with the bottle, and filled Laurence’s glass again.
Laurence took another hot, too-bitter swallow. “I think I can scarcely blame myself,” he said, low, “if having forgotten, I did not wish to remember this. ” He downed the rest of the glass and asked abruptly, “I beg your pardon: may I ask your opinion of the act; of the—” He stopped; he did not put a word to it. He did not know what name to give it; he did not know why Granby should consider his feelings, in the least, nor tolerate his company, in the face of it. But he desperately wished to know.
Granby hesitated a moment and then said, “I haven’t anything to say, Laurence. I was damned glad the French had the cure, and so was any aviator worth his salt, in my opinion. They asked me, you know, if I’d had a part in it; they asked all of us, and all I could tell them was you wouldn’t have taken any help, and I wouldn’t have thought of it. And that’s too paltry for words. Anyway,” he added, “you wouldn’t have, either; Temeraire came up with the notion. ”
“Yes,” Laurence said.
“I don’t deny it was ugly,” Granby said, “and I dare say it has given you a sad turn now, but—but do recall, we have all come about. Boney would have got his hands on the cure sooner or later anyway, and he would have come over anyway. And he’d be in England still if Temeraire hadn’t brought half the dragons out of the breeding grounds and to the war with him. You’ve your pardon, now, and you’re restored to the list. ”
“A pardon cannot restore a man’s reputation,” Laurence said, “and still less his honor, if lost. ” He was silent, and then said, “I suppose I was pardoned for Temeraire—that the Corps should continue to have the use of him. ”
“Well,” Granby said.
Laurence nodded. He wondered bleakly if such a motive had kept him by Temeraire’s side; if he had clung to his post to save himself from hanging. But even as he had the thought, some instinct rejected it. He finished the glass and put it aside. “I beg your pardon,” he said quietly, “I cannot suppose I concealed my feelings from Temeraire at all well, and he was distressed already. I must go and speak with him. ”
Temeraire huddled in his pavilion, as wretched as ever he had been; it seemed to him disaster followed directly on disaster. First their shipwreck; Laurence’s peculiar brain-fever; the assassination attempts which so nearly had succeeded; then the discovery of the opium, which might ruin everything—might prevent an alliance and leave them at a standstill. Mei had been very stiff and withdrawn, since then. She said she had accepted Temeraire’s assurances that he had known nothing of the smuggling, and neither had Laurence, but she had not wanted to try again for the egg since then; and all the other dragons in the encampment kept a cold distance.
But all that paled before this. Temeraire could not conceive how Laurence had forgotten the treason—the treason, which had so deeply wounded him. It seemed wretchedly unfair. If only Temeraire had known, he would never, never have said a word; how gladly he would have joined Laurence in forgetting, and Laurence need never have known anything about it ever again.
And if Laurence had forgotten the treason, surely he had forgotten everything else, as well. He had forgotten about the loss of his fortune. Temeraire would have to confess that to him, all over again; he would have to explain to Laurence that he had lost him ten thousand pounds, and that loss Temeraire had not repaired. Laurence would have all the pain of it afresh, and Temeraire should have to face all his justified blame. Temeraire huddled his head beneath his wing and tried not to think of it.
Forthing had tried to speak with him, half-an-hour ago; Temeraire had paid him no attention. He returned now with Ferris, who came by Temeraire’s head and said quietly, “Come, Temeraire; it will come out all right, you will see. The captain will come round. Will you eat something, or would you like Sipho to read to you?” He turned his head and called out the pavilion’s side, “Sipho! Will you bring that book over here, of poesy?” and added, “What you need is some distraction—”
“How can you speak of distraction to me?” Temeraire said, lifting his head up. “If I had paid better attention—if I had properly understood—oh! I am distracted, far worse than I ought to be. Where is Laurence?” He reared up his head, and tried to see him. Laurence had walked away across the camp, and his eyes—his eyes had looked half-blind—
“He is with Captain Granby,” Forthing said. “He will be all right, Temeraire; it’s all that knock on the head he took—”
“It is not!” Temeraire said. “I dare say he wished to forget, and whyever would he not wish to? I have lost him his fortune, and his rank, and his ship, and his wife—”
“What?” Ferris said. “Whenever was the captain married?”
“Never!” Temeraire said. “That is what I mean; and everyone will have it that nothing could be more splendid than marriage, and he has put it aside for my sake—that, and everything else, and he regrets it so that he has forgotten all of it, so he needn’t think of it. ”
“Lord, Temeraire!” Forthing said. “You can’t suppose he has chosen to drop a hand of years out of his head. ”
Temeraire turned his narrowed gaze sharp on Ferris. “Would you not, if you could?” he demanded. “Ferris! Would you not rather be shot of me? If you had anywhere else to go? It was my fault you were dismissed the service—”
Ferris flushed and said shortly, “I shouldn’t reproach
you or the captain for any of it, if only you had asked me to take a part. I should have been happier hanged for such a cause than dismissed for a cowardly liar. ”
“Oh,” Temeraire said. “But—but I am very glad you are not hanged,” he added awkwardly, “and I dare say if you had helped, you should have been, so I cannot be sorry for that. ” His ruff drooped against his neck.
They were all silent a moment; Forthing stared at the ground, and Ferris, his cheeks still hot, looked away from the pavilion. Sipho came trotting in with the large scroll of poetry, and paused to eye them all doubtfully.
“I do not want it,” Temeraire said. “Pray take it away. I must do something,” he added, and heaved himself to his feet. “I will go flying, over that burnt town—I will see if I cannot find some trace of the rebels—”
“Wait!” Forthing said. “There’s no call for you to go venture yourself like that, and not in this mood, if you please. Let me go and fetch the captain—”
“No,” Temeraire said, fiercely; he could not bear to speak with Laurence at the moment, not when so many dreadful things might possibly be said. Whatever Ferris might feel, whatever Laurence himself had felt, before he had lost his memory, too plainly he did not feel those same things any longer. Laurence did not remember anything, and would be happier not remembering. What if Laurence were to come back and indeed tell him they should part? “No. I am going straightaway. ”
He walked out of the pavilion; Ferris caught with a desperate leap at his foreleg, and scrambling went up the side to get hold of the breastplate chain, which Laurence ordinarily used to latch himself upon Temeraire’s back. “I am coming with you,” Ferris said. “Sipho, will you go and—”
“Oh!” Temeraire said, and caught Sipho and Forthing and put them up onto his back as well. “You will all come with me, and not run tattling; I do not see any reason that anyone ought go and tell Laurence. If we do not find anything, there is no reason at all. ”
“A flight won’t hurt him,” Ferris said to Forthing in an undertone.
“I can’t like it in the least,” Forthing said, hissing back. “Half this camp is ready to leap on us and tear us to pieces for the least excuse, and if we did find some rebels, they’d like to do the same. We oughtn’t let him go anywhere away, and without a word to anyone. ”
“These fellows are hunting the rebels, aren’t they?” Ferris said. “If there were anything to be found at that town, they would have found it by now. We’ll go for a flight there and back, and then likely enough he’ll come down and let Sipho read to him awhile. ”
“I don’t think they have been looking very hard,” Sipho said unexpectedly, in his still-high voice, “when they think we are guilty, and want us to be,” which gave Forthing and Ferris both pause; Sipho added, “I don’t mind going to have a look, either, and seeing some more of this country. But I don’t think Demane will like it if I go off without him for a long while,” in rather cheerful tones: he did not have a very great distaste for upsetting his brother, who was somewhat given to a smothering and anxious degree of affection.
“Well, I am going, and so are you,” Temeraire said, “so latch on your carabiners,” and he delayed only a moment longer before he threw himself aloft. Privately, his thoughts were urgently turning, even as he beat up and turning flew away from the encampment. Surely it was not himself, but Laurence who required distraction; Laurence ought above all things be distracted from thinking of his losses. Perhaps General Fela’s men had missed something, some sign—perhaps he would find some trace of the rebels. If only Temeraire returned in some victorious accomplishment, perhaps having smashed a rebel army or at least discovered one, Laurence could hardly reply to it with chiding, with a desire to part from him.
The destroyed village, when he reached it, no longer smoldered; the last of the fires had gone out. The opium had been taken away, and the streets cleared; now it was merely abandoned to time. There was no trace, so far as Temeraire could see, of rebels. There were no weapons scattered, and when he flew in widening circles around, the old worn road bore few signs of any traffic at all: the stones were overgrown with grass.
But Temeraire paid no mind to Ferris and Forthing already importuning him to go back to camp; he did not mean to swallow defeat so easily. “After all,” he said, “the rebels would not keep their opium in a village they did not come to, now and again; and if they have not come by road, I suppose they must have dragons as well. ”
“If they have, all the more reason we ought go back to camp and not encounter them on our own,” Ferris said.
“Well, we do not know for certain that they do,” Temeraire said hastily. He was already aloft again and hovering, looking around at the nearby mountains, trying to decide where he might have liked to perch, if he had been coming to and from the village, or wished to observe it unseen. “What do you think of that mountain, over there—the one with the double ridge. I suppose anyone might have hidden between the two. ”
Ferris had a glass in his belt, and he took it out and looked as Temeraire flew towards the ridge. “He isn’t wrong,” he said to Forthing, and passed him the glass; but Sipho was the only one who was of any real use, for as Temeraire flew along the ridge he said, “Is that a trail, over there?” pointing downwards.
It was a trail: with at one end a clearing full of gnawed bones, and fresh claw-marks on the rock. “We must get back to camp,” Forthing said. “Temeraire, you must see—”
“Why, those could be anyone’s markings,” Temeraire said, outwardly dismissive; inside his heart leapt with excitement. By the signs there had not been very many dragons, perhaps even only one, and not very large; he was sure he could win out over one, or even a few. “We cannot merely waste everyone’s time. If you like, you may wait here, and I will go and have a look. ”
“Give over,” Ferris said to Forthing, grimly. “He’s looking for a fight. Have you anything to make a light with, or some noise? Blast this notion of not having Celestials in harness; we ought to have half-a-dozen flares to hand. ”
Forthing had his pistols. “Whatever are you doing?” Temeraire said in irritation, looking round, as he shot them off one after another into the air. “If there is anyone, you will warn them off. ”
“I hope I do, before you run yourself into their teeth,” Forthing returned, and he fired again. He was sitting on Temeraire’s back directly between his wing-blades, where Temeraire could not conveniently reach around to stop him.
Temeraire snorted in irritation, and beat on quicker following the trail, and coming round had to pull up hard as it descended abruptly between two jagged rising walls of stone. He caught an updraft and threw himself up along the wall and caught onto the summit so that he might take a quick look over, unsuspected from below—he did not at all mean to be foolishly reckless, whatever Forthing and Ferris might think.
And then “Oh,” Temeraire said, in astonishment, and pulled himself up higher to peer over the ridge and into the valley below. “Arkady? Whatever are you doing here?”
Arkady stood in the midst of a small encampment otherwise hastily and very recently abandoned: tents left pitched and a fire-pit still smoking; ragged bundles of supplies everywhere and one bleating sheep staked out at the far end of a gully.
“Why am I here?” Arkady said. “I am looking for you, and see what it has got me. ” He did present an appearance very unlike himself, drooping and his grey hide dull and grimed with dust.
Temeraire landed beside him, baffled extremely. The last he had seen Arkady, they had parted on the shores of Britain, not long before Temeraire had embarked on his transportation and taken ship with Laurence for New South Wales. Arkady and his feral band of dragons had been persuaded to take up service with the Aerial Corps in exchange for a regular payment of cattle; but they were natives of the Pamirs, nearly two thousand miles west of China. If he had decided to throw over the Corps, Temeraire could not imagine why he would have come here; and in any case, he was still under har
ness.
Under harness, and something else: “Whatever is that thing upon your back?” Temeraire said, nosing at it cautiously. Temeraire had never seen its like: iron bars linked together in a long chain, the ends of two bars pierced through Arkady’s wings, and others dangling down to Arkady’s back—and then Temeraire drew his head back in horrified disgust: the ends were barbed spikes, and they had been planted into Arkady’s flesh.
“They put it upon me,” Arkady said, “so I cannot fly; it is dreadful if I even move my wings a little. Take it off me at once!” And he leaned against Temeraire miserably.
Forthing and Ferris had already leapt cautiously from Temeraire’s back to his, to inspect the chains. “I don’t dare touch that,” Forthing said to Ferris, “do you? We want a surgeon, double-quick: I dare say we could spoil him for ever flying again, if we took it out wrong. ”
Ferris was looking with grim disgust at the bindings also. “We ought try and get the links open, if we can,” he said. “Then at least he won’t be forever pulling on it. ”
“But who put it on you?” Temeraire said, still bewildered, “and what did you want with me? And if you were looking for me, why would you be here? I was not here, until presently; are you saying you have just come from Peking?”
“Why do you say such ridiculous things?” Arkady said. “As though I meant to be here, in this dreadful condition! We were going to Peking: there was some letter you sent, that you meant to go there, or so Admiral Roland said. And as for what did I want with you, how dare you ask me such a thing. What has happened to my egg?”
“Your egg!” Temeraire said, with a guilty start of remembering.
Arkady was rousing up despite his miserable state, and he blazed on reproachfully. “I left it in your charge, on that great ship, to take to New South Wales; then I hear you are in Brazil instead, and going on to China. Why are you not there, keeping watch upon it?”
“Oh,” Temeraire said, writhing a little in shame and discomfort; he did not know how to tell Arkady what had happened. His egg had been treated with the greatest of care; but that had not availed anything: it had hatched out Caesar, a most disagreeable dragon, who had taken as captain none other than the paltry Jeremy Rankin. “I did assure Caesar,” Temeraire offered desperately in his own defense, “that he needn’t take on anyone he didn’t like; that I should not have permitted Rankin to force harness on him—only Caesar would have it, because he learnt that Rankin is the son of an earl, and, I believe, very rich—”
“Ah! Why did you not say so at once?” Arkady closed his eyes in relief. “Then all is well. I am sorry I doubted you,” he said handsomely. And by way of heaping coals of fire on Temeraire’s conscience went on, “Only some very strange stories came to us, that you had lost an egg—that someone had stolen it from under your nose—”
Temeraire squirmed even more wretchedly. He had indeed lost an egg to thieves, though not Arkady’s, and it was not much excuse that he had found it safely hatched in the end; the egg had not hatched in British hands, and anything might have happened to it during the long dreadful chase across the desert. He seized upon the quickest excuse to change the subject. “Well, I did not lose your egg, at all,” he said hastily, “and I am very happy to have been able to reassure you on the subject. So that is why you came from England?”
“Yes,” Arkady said, “for Wringe is brooding again,” triumphantly, “and you may be sure we were not going to let go another egg, when the first had not been properly looked after. But now that it seems there was right care taken, I suppose we will let the officers have it, after all. ”
“Well, I am sure they will look after it properly,” Temeraire said, relieved to have escaped with so little of the scolding he guiltily felt he deserved, “but now pray tell me, how did you come here? I suppose you took transport to Guangzhou?”
He had already worked out the picture: surely General Fela’s men had seen Arkady being taken prisoner by the rebels, and had misunderstood; they had thought he was bringing the opium, when instead he had been their helpless prisoner.
But Arkady said, “No, of course not! It is eight months at sea; there was no time for that! I suppose you would have gone somewhere else by the time we came, the way you have been running all over the world. We came by the Pamirs, and to Xian, because we thought this would be a quicker way to Peking. Instead here I am all chained up, and you have gone on somewhere else. ”
“I do not see that you have any business complaining about my having gone on,” Temeraire said, a bit indignantly, “as I have gone on here, and otherwise I dare say the rebels would have kept you chained up here forever. ”
“Rebels?” Arkady said. “What rebels?”
“The White Lotus,” Temeraire said, “who took you prisoner. But it will all be all right now,” he added, “for this proves you were not bringing them opium: if you were, they would certainly not have chained you up. ”
“I was not bringing opium to anyone, but I do not know anything about this White Lotus, or any rebels,” Arkady said. “I was chained up by some great red dragons, a dozen at least. I fought them very bravely, but there were too many of them: they held me down for the men to put those chains on me, though we were only flying through and asking them the way to Peking. ”
“Red dragons?” Temeraire said, puzzling. “Like the dragons in the army?”
“Yes,” Arkady said, “in jeweled collars, and their men shouted at us a long time, but I do not understand how they talk, nor do I want to. ”
“What is he saying?” Forthing said, looking up from his search of the camp, as Sipho came scrambling out of one of the tents with an odd blade in his hand, wide at the end and narrow at the hilt, and brought it over to them.
“Look what I found,” Sipho said. “There are more of them, inside. ”
“That might do, to pry these open,” Ferris said, reaching for it.
“That is not what I mean!” Sipho said. “These are the same kind of swords those fellows used when they tried to murder the captain. ”
“Oh!” Temeraire said, whipping his head around. “Oh, these are not the rebels; these are the assassins! Where did they go?” Temeraire demanded of Arkady. “How many of them were there—”
“How many of who?” Arkady said, opening his eyes again to slits and glaring sullenly: he had drooped weakly against Temeraire’s side again. “I did not count them: there were enough to chain me up. Hundreds, I suppose! Why do you not get this thing off my back so I can fly again?”
A low rumbling of distant thunder came, and came, and came, growing louder and more near. Temeraire looked up in alarm, and saw the narrow shelf of rock above them crumbling. “Look out!” Ferris called out, but there was no time to get him aboard, to get any of them aboard: the rock was coming down in a roaring torrent. Temeraire lunged and put himself above Sipho and Ferris, and scraped Forthing in quickly beneath him as well with one foreleg; then the rockslide was upon them, boulders pounding Temeraire’s hips and back painfully as a rain of pelting pebbles and sand roared down with them. Arkady pressed up against his side, taking less of the brunt though squalling furiously nonetheless.
The noise died away first; then the rocks settled, though the air was still full of choking, clouding dust. Temeraire sneezed and sneezed, and coughed, and said hoarsely to Arkady, “Do stop yowling; it does not make matters any better. ” He shook his head to cast off the worst of the dust; he would have liked to wipe his eyes against his forelegs, but the pebbles and stones had buried him up to his withers.
“You are not wearing this monstrosity,” Arkady returned, “and you are half out of the rocks,” with some justice, for the rocks cascading over Temeraire’s back had covered Arkady to the base of his neck, so only his head and his wing-tips poked out. “Aren’t you strong enough to heave out of them and get us loose? It hurts,” he added plaintively.
“I am sure it does hurt; I am not at all comfortable myself,” Temeraire said. “And I dare say I might
get us out,” he added, although he was not in the least certain; he felt very unpleasantly pinned, “but I cannot risk shifting these rocks. I am sure if I moved they would kill Ferris and Sipho, and Forthing, in a trice. There is nothing to do for it but wait until someone should find us,” he finished glumly.
He did not in the least look forward to being found in such an absurd position, having done nothing whatsoever heroic, and found only Arkady, who was of no use to anyone; and Temeraire supposed that now the assassins would have fled to some new hiding place long before he should ever be dug out.
“I do not see why that mountain should have chosen now of all times to fall down on us,” he added resentfully, and looking up saw some men peering down upon him from the ruined summit: men in soldiers’ uniforms. “Oh!” he said. “You there,” he called, raising his voice, “send word to the camp—”
“Why are you talking to them?” Arkady said. “Hurry and get loose, and never mind about your men, I am sure they will be all right! Those are them, those are the ones who put these chains on me!”
Temeraire jerked his head around to stare at Arkady. “What?” he said. “But those are soldiers from the army—” and broke off, in understanding and in swelling wrath. “I will kill General Fela, I will,” he vowed.
“You will not kill anyone if you are stuck under those rocks,” Arkady said, “Quick, quick!” and looked with fear as the soldiers began to pick their way down the loosened slope, with long sharp pole-arms in their hands.
“And you have seen nothing of him since?” Laurence asked, frowning.
O’Dea shrugged. “Mr. Ferris was aboard, and Mr. Forthing, too,” he said, “and that young black fellow. I suppose they may have run into a thunderstorm, or gone afoul of some mountain current; ah, it’s sure there’s many a dragon’s bones littering these peaks, Captain. And those pernicious rebels out there somewhere, no doubt looking for a choice target. ”
“Yes, thank you, O’Dea,” Laurence said. The more likely, and perhaps worse possibility, was that Temeraire had fled the camp in misery, and wished to avoid Laurence entirely; that Temeraire did not wish to return. Laurence stood a moment in the pavilion, worrying the straps of his well-worn harness in his hands, the carabiners hanging empty. He should not have cared so much as he did; his heart ought not have been bound up so completely, and yet he could not but recognize that it was. There, perhaps, was his answer: loving Temeraire, and seeing in him all dragonkind, he had not been able to take refuge behind some comforting fiction of their being mere beasts. He wondered now that he had ever thought them so. It had outweighed treason, in his heart; he was not sure he had been wrong.
He looked hesitantly over the camp. They were still under guard, the scarlet dragons watching from their posts, and the British dragons had not tried to go on maneuvers. Chu had evidently ordered patrols of the region, but only by the other dragons under his command. Laurence had seen them overhead, flying in small groups.
To take Iskierka up, or Lily, or one of the heavy-weights, would at once be provoking and leave their own party too bare. But one of the Yellow Reapers was sleeping near-by, Immortalis, and his captain, Little, was sitting beside the drowsing beast and sketching a little upon a writing-desk—an illustration of a Chinese pistol, which he had evidently got somehow from one of the soldiers, perhaps in exchange for his own. He had a neat hand; Laurence paused and Little looked up from his work and straightened.
“Captain Laurence,” he said, formally.
“Captain,” Laurence said, “I would not disturb you, but Temeraire has been gone some time, and I—I have some reason for believing him in some distress. May I presume so far as to ask you to take me up in search of him?”
“Ah,” Little said, and was silent, obviously hesitant. Laurence recalled too late that Little had been awkward about him and had avoided conversation whenever conversation might be avoided. Easy to understand, now: Little of course had known of the treason which Laurence had committed, even when Laurence himself had not. Little had known the stain upon his character, and perhaps cared more than the other aviators; because Granby sympathized, and Harcourt, did not mean they all did so.
“I beg your pardon,” Laurence said. “I have not the least desire to impose on you; pray consider the request withdrawn. ” He would have gone, at once, but Little rose hastily.
“No, no,” Little said. “I do beg your pardon. Of course we ought to go and find him. ”
They had flown a couple of widening circuits of the camp when Immortalis turned his head over his shoulder and said to Little, “Augustine, what is that there, do you think?” A plume of smoke and dust was rising from a knot of mountains not far in the distance.
“That is no ordinary rockfall; that is black powder,” Laurence said, when they had gone close enough for the sulfurous smell to reach them.
“The rebels, do you suppose?” Little said. “We had better have a quick look,” he told his dragon, and came rounding over the smoke, cautiously, to find Temeraire buried in stones up to his collarbone with a small grey dragon by his side, its head marked with a bright crimson patch like a birthmark.
“Good God, is that Arkady?” Little said.
“Do you know that beast?” Laurence said, startled. “Is he is one of ours?”
“Yes, but what the devil he is doing in China, I should like to know,” Little said. “Immortalis, take us down there. What they have been doing to get themselves buried like that—”
There were some soldiers already clambering over the stones towards the two imprisoned dragons; but Temeraire whipped his head around on his long neck and snapped at them, his jaws clashing on empty air: the men were beyond even his reach. “Temeraire!” Laurence called out surprised as he leapt from Immortalis’s back.
“Laurence!” Temeraire cried, catching sight of them, “Laurence, look out! They are assassins, all of them. ”
“What?” Little said, himself just slid down from Immortalis’s back.
A shadow was growing on the ground beneath them, and Laurence, seeing it, turned and shouted to Immortalis through cupped hands, “Aloft again, quick!” while he and Little both dived for safety. A great scarlet beast in armor came heavily down where Immortalis had just in time darted away, its claws digging furrows in the rock; the beast roared and swung its head narrow-eyed over them all.
Laurence scrambled away over the loose stones, towards Temeraire and Arkady. The red-patch dragon looked down at him and said in a strange tongue, which Laurence only a little followed, “Make Temeraire move! They will all be squashed anyway, if those men kill him. ”
“Laurence, be careful,” Temeraire called anxiously. “Do not get anywhere near these fellows; and that is for you,” he added, snapping again at one of the soldiers, who had lunged at him, a weapon a little like an old-fashioned halberd in his hand, a curved and wicked blade bound to the end of a long staff, which he jabbed at Temeraire’s eyes. “Ow!” Temeraire added, and Laurence saw one of the other soldiers had climbed up onto his back and was stabbing the blade down towards Temeraire’s spine.
Laurence realized then in sudden horror that Temeraire was not merely buried but helpless to free himself; Temeraire could not move, and the soldiers might carve him at their leisure like a side of slaughtered beef. He drew his sword and leapt for the would-be murderers. The ground was perilously uncertain, a loose slide of pebbles beneath his feet. Still, he scrambled for the top of Temeraire’s back and charged the man jabbing at the great column of the spine.
There were several other men drawing close down the unsteady slope, but Laurence thought for the moment of nothing but the enemy immediately before him. He dived under the man’s swing, that already-bloody blade shaving painfully along the back of his head, taking skin and hair with it; but Laurence came up inside the man’s guard and, seizing his shoulder, drove his sword up between the loose plates of armor, through and through the man’s body to his back. The soldier was a young man, only a scruff of
beard yet grown; his eyes and open mouth stared and clouded, and the halberd fell away with a clatter to the rocks as Laurence heaved the body off his blade.
Laurence looked down at Temeraire’s wound: the scales had resisted, but the flesh was hacked enough to let grey bone show through, stained with the dark dragon blood that ran away in rivulets down Temeraire’s back. The enormous lump of the backbone, the size of Laurence’s trunk nearly, had defied the halberd’s strokes so far, but five men more were nearly upon him, and if unopposed they could hack away at it, like woodsmen together felling some great monster of the forest.
“Laurence!” Little called, and Laurence reached down to catch the end of the halberd, which Little had taken hold of, and was holding outstretched to him. Little used it to scramble more easily up the slope of rocks to Laurence’s side; he drew a pistol from his belt, and his own sword.
Above them, Laurence saw Immortalis feinting bravely around the Chinese beast, which outweighed him so greatly. But the red dragon was not merely the stronger but the more maneuverable, its long lanky body snapping with great agility back upon itself almost, allowing it to turn sharp in mid-air, and its wings had something in common with the structure of Temeraire’s own, which allowed him to hover. Immortalis could merely hold it off briefly, and not hope to defeat it.
“If Immortalis went back to camp, to raise the alarm?” Laurence said to Little.
Little looked up at Immortalis with a grim expression, and back at Laurence, shaking his head. “That last day of flying, those fellows could manage twenty knots,” he said. “A Yellow Reaper can’t get above sixteen. If he turns tail, he’ll only be brought down by the hindquarters. ”
He spoke with a hard flat tone, as though he were not speaking of the death of his beast, but when one of the soldiers came down off the slope, Little leveled his pistol and fired with a look of very savagery, distorting his face which in ordinary repose bore almost a poet’s half-dreamy look. He hurled the pistol into another man’s face, and sprang forward to meet the halberd and cut him down.
Laurence leapt with him, to take advantage of the unsteady footing the men would have as they came off the slope. He felt all the same useless fury he saw in Little’s face: to see Temeraire brought so low, so hideously, and by a pack of cowards and traitors—murderers indeed—burned through him with an intensity that came from no rational font. Laurence had seen his ship sink; he had suffered that—he was sure he had suffered it, though the name slid from his mind. He remembered sea-water pouring in waterfalls through the gunports; he remembered sitting in a boat rowing, rowing, while the masts slid in ragged tatters beneath the waves.
The Goliath, he suddenly thought, as his sword met the halberd-stave with a clanging; and he jerked his head in a shake to send away the false memory—he had not served on Goliath since the Nile; Goliath had not sunk there. But the feeling stayed on his tongue: black powder ash and the smell of burning sails, and the roaring torrent. And yet that pain, that sorrow, was distant and removed by comparison.
He set his teeth and flung his enemy’s weapon wide by sheer brute force, heaving it up and clear, and risked the brief opening, overbalancing himself for an extra inch of reach, so that the tip of his sword tore open the man’s throat. Blood spilled down his neck along a bloody line, but as Laurence completed the stroke and stumbled away, it suddenly spurted red with ferocious energy. The soldier clapped a hand up to the gush and then fell to knees and toppled away over the side.
Laurence caught himself on Temeraire’s back with one hand and tried to twist himself up to his feet; but not quickly enough, and he felt another blade catch his sword-arm and bite into the meat of the muscle. He jerked away from the hot pain, falling, and rolled along Temeraire’s back hearing Temeraire above roaring in fury.
“Laurence!” Temeraire cried, and did manage to heave himself a little despite the weight of stones, tumbling all of them off their feet together, and straining he brought his head around and snatched the soldier with the dripping pole-arm in his jaws.
There was something dreadful in watching a man broken between those enormous jaws; Temeraire cracked his body like walnut shells, and flung the wreck of him to the ground. He roared again, that terrible shattering roar, and the soldiers involuntarily cowered back from it.
But he could roar only to the sky. He could not turn that power upon them, not without breaking apart the unstable slope and burying them one and all in a shared tomb, and aloft, the red dragon was closing in on her tiring adversary. Immortalis darted low beneath her, and tried to claw at her belly, but with striking speed she reversed herself again and caught him, claws tearing into Immortalis’s shoulders, driving him with a powerful thrust of her great body into the ground.
“Immortalis!” Little cried, anguished. The red dragon had seized him with her jaws by the back of the neck, just below his skull, and was shaking him like a rat terrier, a great clawed foot holding his thrashing body pinned. She would break his neck in a moment; then she would be free to do as she wished, and Temeraire and Arkady yet pinned into helplessness.
Then a roaring above, and a monstrous shadow falling: Kulingile came down with Demane and Junichiro and Baggy all three upon his back and his claws outstretched, the scarlet dragon an easy target for him. She gave an undignified squawk of alarm and let Immortalis go, but too late: Kulingile smashed her down into the ground. He closed his jaws midway down along her throat and wrenched her neck away from her body with brute force. Laurence heard the audible crack, and she collapsed into dead weight.
“Captain,” Demane cried from Kulingile’s back, his voice sharp and high with anxiety, “where is Sipho?”
“I have not the least idea,” Laurence said, grimly anxious himself; there was no sign of the boy, nor of his officers, and the cascade of rock that had buried Temeraire and Arkady would have crushed them like insects.
The would-be assassins were trying to flee, too late. Laurence had heretofore thought Kulingile of a remarkably placid nature, but that was not in evidence now as the great golden beast turned towards them: having been roused to violence and with Demane’s fear driving him, he hissed and swept the soldiers into a broken heap onto the ground with a few swipes of his massive talons, careless of them as a child with its toys; only a few of them groaned and moved a little, and soon they, too, were still. Junichiro leapt down from Kulingile’s back and drawing his own sword stood over the bodies, while Baggy cautiously collected away their blades.
“Sipho is here,” Temeraire said, “underneath me; I will keep him quite safe, only get Laurence back to the camp where he will be safe, at once; hurry!”
“I am certainly not leaving until I see you freed,” Laurence said.
“Are you sure you hadn’t better go, after all?” Little said to him, doubtfully, and Laurence, startled, looked at him. “Your head is all over blood. ”
Laurence reached up to wipe the grime from his face, and finding his hand come away red with gore felt back to where his scalp hung open and wet. “Help me fold it up again,” he said. “A head wound is always a bloody nuisance; but unless my brains are out in the air, I suppose it will not kill me. ”
Little gave him his neckcloth, to tie it up with; and Laurence settled himself by Temeraire’s side to wait out the slow, cautious labor. Kulingile scraped away the loose crumbling rock only a little at a time, so as to free Temeraire without risking the death of the trapped men below, if they had survived so long, buried alive; meanwhile Junichiro and Baggy wordlessly helped Little to get thick bandages from Immortalis’s belly-netting, to pack into his sluggishly bleeding wounds; the poor dragon lay heavily and breathing in gulps.
Temeraire also was silent, his head resting awkwardly upon a heap of loose-piled rock, breath wheezing a little through his nostrils; the rocks pressed in upon his sides and drove them inwards, forcing him to struggle for his air. Laurence stroked the soft muzzle while he waited. He had longed for the feelings which might have driven him to tr
eason, having only the stark barren knowledge of it; here, seeing Temeraire so vulnerable to murder and treachery, he had instead been roused to sentiments of great violence, unexplained by reason. He groped after the truth of himself like a prisoner in Plato’s cave, watching shadows.
The grey dragon, Arkady, was rather the worse for wear; his eyes were drifting half-shut and groggy, and his breath came noisily: the weight of stone had pressed still more of the breath out of him. Laurence watched him with concern, seeing Temeraire’s fate looming ahead if he was not quickly freed, and only with an effort held himself back from urging Kulingile to work faster. Demane had as much right to fear for his brother, and the dragons were not yet in truly dire straits.
“Laurence,” Temeraire said, hoarsely, breaking the silence suddenly. “Laurence, I must beg your pardon. ”
“There is no cause, as far as I know,” Laurence said. “I hope you know I do not hold you responsible for my own actions—where I have allowed myself to be persuaded, the decision must in the end have been my own. And where apologies between us may have been merited, in the past, and there made, I hope you do not imagine me so unreasonable as to expect you to repeat them. ”
“Oh! That is very easy to say,” Temeraire said, unhappily, “when you do not know the half of it. You do not know—” He heaved a breath, which rolled a cascade of pebbles from his back. “Laurence, it is not only the treason; it is not only your rank: I lost you all your fortune,” he said. “I lost you—ten thousand pounds. A court took it away from you, because you could not answer the charge. ”
Laurence waited, but this seemed the sum total of Temeraire’s great confession. “I hope you do not think me so wretchedly mercenary as to weigh that in any wise with the rest,” he said, more than half outraged.
“I suppose you have forgotten that, as well,” Temeraire said. “But ten thousand pounds is an enormous sum! Why, Gentius said to me it should be worth a dozen eagles, like we took from Napoleon. ”
“I am perfectly aware of the size of the sum; and as it might be ten times the greater and still not buy me a thimbleful of honor, I must beg leave to continue to disdain it by comparison,” Laurence said. “I suppose I have been in the way of twice that sum, in prize-money, if I had chosen to ask for a prize-cruise or to chase shipping, instead of harrying the enemy’s forces if ever I could. ”
“But that is all the worse,” Temeraire said, with a heaving gasp. “For you got it just so, honorably, and it was all your own. You had won it, by yourself, before ever I was hatched; it was not our fortune, at all; it was yours. I had not the shadow of a right to do such a dreadful thing, and after you had built me a pavilion as well. I did offer you my talon-sheaths,” Temeraire added wretchedly, his voice sinking low, “but oh—you would not take them; as though I could not even repair the injury. ”
Laurence struggled to make sense of it. He had seen Temeraire gloating over the prized sheaths, to Laurence’s mind a singularly absurd piece of adornment which made any sort of eating ten times the more awkward and battle impossible; and he thought Temeraire would have seen his wings clipped off his back before surrendering them. “I suppose if you imagine it a kind of theft,” he said slowly, “I can better comprehend your misery; but if I have been plundered by a court, either it was unjustly, which cannot be your fault, or for some act of my own. In any case,” he added, with as much energy as he could, “I do assure you I do not regard it; I am not made in the least wretched by that loss. ”
Temeraire was silent, and then said low, “Very well. Not by that, perhaps; but certainly by—” He halted, and then said even more softly, “Surely you would be happier, if you had—if you had never found my egg; if you had not harnessed me at all. ”
Laurence hardly knew how to answer; it seemed to him true as well. Temeraire dragged in a breath and added with a strange rasp like the hum of bee-wings beneath it, “If you would prefer—I will stay in China, alone; if you would like. You may go wherever you like. Or, or you may stay here, where no-one would call you a traitor, and I—I will—”
He halted, evidently fumbling for some alternative, but Laurence said, “No. ” It came easily to his mouth, as easily as anything: that itself would have to be answer enough. “I would not make the exchange,” he said, “even now; what I have done, what I have chosen, I would not unmake, even if I could. ”