His Majesty's Dragon t-1

by Naomi Novik

  Temeraire mimicked the motion; his expansion was less visually dramatic, as he lacked the vivid markings of the female Regal Copper and was of course less than a fifth of her size as yet, but this time he managed a much louder roar. “Oh, there,” he said, pleased, dropping back down to four legs. The cows were all running around their pen in manic terror.

  “Much better,” Laetificat said, and nudged Temeraire’s back approvingly. “Practice every time you eat; it will help along your lung capacity.”

  “I suppose it is hardly news to you how badly we need him, given how our affairs stand,” Portland said, turning to Laurence; the two of them were standing by the side of the field, out of range of the mess the dragons were about to make. “Most of Bonaparte’s dragons are stationed along the Rhine, and of course he has been busy in Italy; that and our naval blockades are all that is keeping him from invasion. But if he gets matters arranged to his satisfaction on the Continent and frees up a few aerial divisions, we can say hail and farewell to the blockade at Toulon; we simply do not have enough dragons of our own here in the Med to protect Nelson’s fleet. He will have to withdraw, and then Villeneuve will go straight for the Channel.”

  Laurence nodded grimly; he had been reading the news of Bonaparte’s movements with great alarm since the Reliant had put into port. “I know Nelson has been trying to lure the French fleet out to battle, but Villeneuve is not a fool, even if he is no seaman. An aerial bombardment is the only hope of getting him out of his safe harbor.”

  “Which means there is no hope, not with the forces we can bring to it at present,” Portland said. “The Home Division has a couple of Longwings, and they might be able to do it; but they cannot be spared. Bonaparte would jump on the Channel Fleet at once.”

  “Ordinary bombing would not do?”

  “Not precise enough at long range, and they have poisoned shrapnel guns at Toulon. No aviator worth a shilling would take his beast close to the fortifications.” Portland shook his head. “No, but there is a young Longwing in training, and if Temeraire will be kind enough to hurry up and grow, then perhaps together they might shortly be able to take the place of Excidium or Mortiferus at the Channel, and even one of those two might be sufficient at Toulon.”

  “I am sure he will do everything in his power to oblige you,” Laurence said, glancing over; the dragon in question was on his second cow. “And I may say that I will do the same. I know I am not the man you wished in this place, nor can I argue with the reasoning that would prefer an experienced aviator in so critical a role. But I hope that naval experience will not prove wholly useless in this arena.”

  Portland sighed and looked down at the ground. “Oh, hell,” he said. It was an odd response to make, but Portland looked anxious, not angry, and after a moment he added, “There is just no getting around it; you are not an aviator. If it were simply a question of skill or knowledge, that would mean difficulties enough, but—” He stopped.

  Laurence did not think, from the tone, that Portland meant to question his courage. The man had been more amiable this morning; so far, it seemed to Laurence that aviators simply took clannishness to an extreme, and once having admitted a fellow into their circle, their cold manners fell away. So he took no offense, and said, “Sir, I can hardly imagine where else you believe the difficulty might lie.”

  “No, you cannot,” Portland said, uncommunicatively. “Well, and I am not going to borrow trouble; they may decide to send you somewhere else entirely, not to Loch Laggan. But I am running ahead of myself: the real point is that you and Temeraire must get to England for your training soonest; once you are there, Aerial Command can best decide how to deal with you.”

  “But can he reach England from here, with no place to stop along the way?” Laurence asked, diverted by concern for Temeraire. “It must be more than a thousand miles; he has never flown further than from one end of the island to the other.”

  “Closer to two thousand, and no; we would never risk him so,” Portland said. “There is a transport coming over from Nova Scotia; a couple of dragons joined our division from it three days ago, so we have its position pretty well fixed, and I think it is less than a hundred miles away. We will escort you to it; if Temeraire gets tired, Laetificat can support him for long enough to give him a breather.”

  Laurence was relieved to hear the proposed plan, but the conversation made him aware how very unpleasant his circumstances would be until his ignorance was mended. If Portland had waved off his fears, Laurence would have had no way of judging the matter for himself. Even a hundred miles was a good distance; it would take them three hours or more in the air. But that at least he felt confident they could manage; they had flown the length of the island three times just the other day, while visiting Sir Edward, and Temeraire had not seemed tired in the least.

  “When do you propose leaving?” he asked.

  “The sooner, the better; the transport is headed away from us, after all,” Portland said. “Can you be ready in half an hour?”

  Laurence stared. “I suppose I can, if I have most of my things sent back to the Reliant for transport,” he said dubiously.

  “Why would you?” Portland said. “Laet can carry anything you have; we shan’t weigh Temeraire down.”

  “No, I only mean that my things are not packed,” Laurence said. “I am used to waiting for the tide; I see I will have to be a little more beforehand with the world from now on.”

  Portland still looked puzzled, and when he came into Laurence’s room twenty minutes later he stared openly at the sea-chest that Laurence had turned to this new purpose. There had hardly been time to fill half of it; Laurence paused in the act of putting in a couple of blankets to take up the empty space at the top. “Is something wrong?” he asked, looking down; the chest was not so large that he thought it would give Laetificat any difficulty.

  “No wonder you needed the time; do you always pack so carefully?” Portland said. “Could you not just throw the rest of your things into a few bags? We can strap them on easily enough.”

  Laurence swallowed his first response; he no longer needed to wonder why the aviators looked, to a man, rumpled in their dress; he had imagined it due to some advanced technique of flying. “No, thank you; Fernao will take my other things to the Reliant, and I can manage perfectly well with what I have here,” he said, putting the blankets in; he strapped them down and made all fast, then locked the chest. “There; I am at your service now.”

  Portland called in a couple of his midwingmen to carry the chest; Laurence followed them outside, and was witness, for the first time, to the operation of a full aerial crew. Temeraire and he both watched with interest from the side as Laetificat stood patiently under the swarming ensigns, who ran up and down her sides as easily as they hung below her belly or climbed upon her back. The boys were raising up two canvas enclosures, one above and one below; these were like small, lopsided tents, framed with many thin and flexible strips of metal. The front panels which formed the bulk of the tent were long and sloped, evidently to present as little resistance to the wind as possible, and the sides and back were made of netting.

  The ensigns all looked to be below the age of twelve; the midwingmen ranged more widely, just as aboard a ship, and now four older ones came staggering with the weight of a heavy leather-wrapped chain they dragged in front of Laetificat. The dragon lifted it herself and laid it over her withers, just in front of the tent, and the ensigns hurried to secure it to the rest of the harness with many straps and smaller chains.

  Using this strap, they then slung a sort of hammock made of chain links beneath Laetificat’s belly. Laurence saw his own chest tossed inside along with a collection of other bags and parcels; he winced at the haphazard way in which the baggage was stowed, and was doubly grateful that he had been careful in his packing: he was confident they might turn his chest completely about a dozen times without casting his things into disarray.

  A large pad of leather and wool, perhaps the thickness
of a man’s arm, was laid on top of all, then the hammock’s edges were drawn up and hooked to the harness as widely as possible, spreading the weight of the contents and pressing them close to the dragon’s belly. Laurence felt a sense of dissatisfaction with the proceedings; he privately thought he would have to find a better arrangement for Temeraire, when the time came.

  However, the process had one significant advantage over naval preparations: from beginning to end it took fifteen minutes, and then they were looking at a dragon in full light-duty rig. Laetificat reared up on her legs, shook out her wings, and beat them half a dozen times; the wind was strong enough to nearly stagger Laurence, but the assembled baggage did not shift noticeably.

  “All lies well,” Laetificat said, dropping back down to all fours; the ground shook with the impact.

  “Lookouts aboard,” Portland said; four ensigns climbed on and took up positions at the shoulders and hips, above and below, hooking themselves on to the harness. “Topmen and bellmen.” Now two groups of eight midwingmen climbed up, one going into the tent above, the other below: Laurence was startled to perceive how large the enclosures really were; they seemed small only by virtue of comparison with Laetificat’s immense size.

  The crews were followed in turn by the twelve riflemen, who had been checking and arming their guns while the others rigged out the gear. Laurence noticed Lieutenant Dayes leading them, and frowned; he had forgotten about the fellow in the rush. Dayes had offered no apology; now most likely they would not see one another for a long time. Perhaps it was for the best; Laurence was not sure that he could have accepted the apology, after hearing Temeraire’s story, and as it was impossible to call the fellow out, the situation would have been uncomfortable to say the least.

  The riflemen having boarded, Portland walked a complete circuit around and beneath the dragon. “Very good; ground crew aboard.” The handful of men remaining climbed into the belly-rigging and strapped themselves in; only then did Portland himself ascend, Laetificat lifting him up directly. He repeated his inspection on the top, maneuvering around on the harness with as much ease as any of the little ensigns, and finally came to his position at the base of the dragon’s neck. “I believe we are ready; Captain Laurence?”

  Laurence belatedly realized he was still standing on the ground; he had been too interested in the process to mount up himself. He turned, but before he could clamber onto the harness, Temeraire reached out carefully and put him aboard, mimicking Laetificat’s action. Laurence grinned privately and patted the dragon’s neck. “Thank you, Temeraire,” he said, strapping himself in; Portland had pronounced his improvised harness adequate for the journey, although with a disapproving air. “Sir, we are ready,” he called to Portland.

  “Proceed, then; smallest goes aloft first,” Portland said. “We will take the lead once in the air.”

  Laurence nodded; Temeraire gathered himself and leapt, and the world fell away beneath them.

  Aerial Command was situated in the countryside just south-east of Chatham, close enough to London to permit daily consultation with the Admiralty and the War Office; it had been an easy hour’s flight from Dover, with the rolling green fields he knew so well spread out below like a checkerboard, and London a suggestion of towers in the distance, purple and indistinct.

  Although the dispatches had long preceded him to England and he must have been expected, Laurence was not called to the office until the next morning. Even then he was kept waiting outside Admiral Powys’s office for nearly two hours. At last the door opened; stepping inside, he could not help glancing curiously from Admiral Powys to Admiral Bowden, who was sitting to the right of the desk. The precise words had not been intelligible out in the hall, but he could not have avoided overhearing the loud voices, and Bowden was still red-faced and frowning.

  “Yes, Captain Laurence, do come in,” Powys said, waving him in with a fat-fingered hand. “How splendid Temeraire looks; I saw him eating this morning: already close on nine tons, I should say. You are to be most highly commended. And you fed him solely on fish the first two weeks, and also while on the transport? Remarkable, remarkable indeed; we must consider amending the general diet.”

  “Yes, yes; this is beside the point,” Bowden said impatiently.

  Powys frowned at Bowden, then continued, perhaps a little too heartily, “In any case, he is certainly ready to begin training, and of course we must do our best to bring you up to the mark as well. Of course we have confirmed you in your rank; as a handler, you would be made captain anyway. But you will have a great deal to do; ten years’ training is not to be made up in a day.”

  Laurence bowed. “Sir, Temeraire and I are both at your service,” he said, but with reserve; he perceived in both men the same odd constraint about his training that Portland had displayed. Many possible explanations for that constraint had occurred to Laurence during the two weeks aboard the transport, most of them unpleasant. A boy of seven, taken from his home before his character had been truly formed, might easily be forced to accept treatment which a grown man would never endure, and yet of course the aviators themselves would consider it necessary, having gone through it themselves; Laurence could think of no other cause that would make them all so evasive about the subject.

  His heart sank further as Powys said, “Now then; we must send you to Loch Laggan,” for it was the place Portland had mentioned, and been so anxious about. “There is no denying that it is the best place for you,” Powys went on. “We cannot waste a moment in making you both ready for duty, and I would not be surprised if Temeraire were up to heavy-combat weight by the end of the summer.”

  “Sir, I beg your pardon, but I have never heard of the place, and I gather it is in Scotland?” Laurence asked; he hoped to draw Powys out.

  “Yes, in Inverness-shire; it is one of our largest coverts, and certainly the best for intensive training,” Powys said. “Lieutenant Greene outside will show you the way, and mark a covert along the route for you to spend the night; I am sure you will have no difficulty in reaching the place.”

  It was clearly a dismissal, and Laurence knew he could not make any further inquiry. In any event, he had a more pressing request. “I will speak to him, sir,” he said. “But if you have no objection, I would be glad to stop the night at my family home in Nottinghamshire; there is room enough for Temeraire, and deer for him to eat.” His parents would be in town at this time of year, but the Galmans often stayed in the country, and there might be some chance of seeing Edith, if only briefly.

  “Oh, certainly, by all means,” Powys said. “I am sorry I cannot give you a longer furlough; you have certainly deserved it, but I do not think we can spare the time: a week might make all the difference in the world.”

  “Thank you, sir, I perfectly understand,” Laurence said, and so bowed and departed.

  Armed by Lieutenant Greene with an excellent map showing the route, Laurence began his preparations at once. He had taken some time in Dover to acquire a collection of light bandboxes; he thought that their cylindrical shape might better lie against Temeraire’s body, and now he transferred his belongings into them. He knew he made an unusual sight, carrying a dozen boxes more suitable for ladies’ hats out to Temeraire, but when he had strapped them down against Temeraire’s belly and seen how little they added to his profile, he could not help feeling somewhat smug.

  “They are quite comfortable; I do not notice them at all,” Temeraire assured him, rearing up on his back legs and flapping to make certain they were well seated, just as Laetificat had done back in Madeira. “Can we not get one of those tents? It would be much more comfortable for you to ride out of the wind.”

  “I have no idea how to put it up, though, my dear,” Laurence said, smiling at the concern. “But I will do well enough; with this leather coat they have given me, I will be quite warm.”

  “It must wait until you have your proper harness, in any case; the tents require locking carabiners. Nearly ready to go, then, Laurence?” Bowden h
ad come upon them and interjected himself into the conversation without any notice. He joined Laurence standing before Temeraire’s chest and stooped a little to examine the bandboxes. “Hm, I see you are bent on turning all our customs upside down to suit yourself.”

  “No, sir, I hope not,” Laurence said, keeping his temper; it could not serve to alienate the man, for he was one of the senior commanders of the Corps, and might well have a say in what postings Temeraire received. “But my sea-chest was awkward for him to bear, and these seemed the best replacement I could manage on short notice.”

  “They may do,” Bowden said, straightening up. “I hope you have as easy a time putting aside the rest of your naval thinking as your sea-chest, Laurence; you must be an aviator now.”

  “I am an aviator, sir, and willingly so,” Laurence said. “But I cannot pretend that I intend to put aside the habits and mode of thinking formed over a lifetime; whether I intended it or no, I doubt it would even be possible.”

  Bowden fortunately took this without anger, but he shook his head. “No, it would not. And so I told—well. I have come to make something clear: you will oblige me by refraining from discussing, with those not in the Corps, any aspects of your training. His Majesty sees fit to give us our heads to achieve the best performance of our duty; we do not care to entertain the opinions of outsiders. Do I make myself clear?”

  “Perfectly,” Laurence said grimly; the peculiar command bore out all his worst suspicions. But if none of them would come out and make themselves plain, he could hardly make an objection; it was infuriating. “Sir,” he said, making up his mind to try again to draw out the truth, “if you would be so good as to tell me what makes the covert in Scotland more suitable than this for my training, I would be grateful to know what to expect.”

  “You have been ordered to go there; that makes it the only suitable place,” Bowden said sharply. Yet then he seemed to relent, for he added, in a less harsh tone, “Laggan’s training master is especially adept at bringing inexperienced handlers along quickly.”