His Majesty's Dragon t-1

by Naomi Novik

  Then there was a tremendous roaring above them: the ground shuddered, branches tumbling down in a rain of dry leaves and pine needles, and an immense old tree was wrenched whole out of the ground beside them: Temeraire was above them, beating wildly as he tore away the cover. More bellowing, now from Praecursoris: the French dragon’s pale marbled wings were visible in the dark, approaching, and Temeraire writhed around to face him, claws stretching out. Laurence dragged himself up and threw himself onto Choiseul, bearing him down to the ground with all his weight: he was retching even as they struggled, but Temeraire’s danger spurred him on.

  Choiseul managed to turn them over and force an arm against Laurence’s throat, pressing hard; choking, Laurence caught only a glimpse of motion, and then Choiseul went limp: Harcourt had fetched an iron bar from Lily’s gear and struck him upon the back of the head.

  She was nearly fainting with the effort, Lily trying to crowd between the trees to reach her; the crew were rushing into the clearing now at last, however, and many hands helped Laurence up to his feet. “Stand over that man there, bring torches,” Laurence said, gasping. “And get a full-voiced man here, with a speaking-trumpet; hurry, damn you,” for above, Temeraire and Praecursoris were still circling each other, claws flashing.

  Harcourt’s first lieutenant was a big-chested man with a voice that needed no trumpet: as soon as he understood the circumstances he cupped his hands around his mouth and bellowed up at Praecursoris. The big French dragon broke off and flew in wild desperate circles for a moment as he peered down to where Choiseul was being secured, and then with drooping head he returned to the ground, Temeraire hovering watchfully until he had landed.

  Maximus was housed not far off, and Berkley had come to the clearing on hearing the noise: he took charge now, setting men to chain Praecursoris, and others to bear Harcourt and Choiseul to the surgeons; still others to take away poor Wilpoys to be buried. “No, thank you, I can manage,” Laurence said, shaking off the willing hands that would have carried him as well; his breath was returning, and he walked slowly over to the clearing where Temeraire had landed beside Lily, to comfort both the dragons and try to calm them.

  Choiseul did not rouse for the better part of a day, and when he first woke he was thick-tongued and confused in his speech. Yet by the next morning, he was once again in command of himself, and at first refused to answer any questions whatsoever.

  Praecursoris had been ringed round by all the other dragons, and ordered to remain on the ground under pain of Choiseul’s death: a threat to the handler was the one thing which could hold an unwilling dragon, and the means by which Choiseul had intended to force Lily to defect to France were now used against him. Praecursoris made no attempt to defy the command, but huddled into a miserable heap beneath his chains, eating nothing, and occasionally keening softly.

  “Harcourt,” Lenton said at last, coming into the dining room and finding them all assembled and waiting, “I am damned sorry, but I must ask you to try: he has not spoken to anyone else, but if he has the honor of a yellow rat he must feel some explanation owed you. Will you ask him?”

  She nodded, and then she drained her glass, but her face stayed so very pale that Laurence asked quietly, “Should you like me to accompany you?”

  “Yes, if you please,” she said at once, gratefully, and he followed her to the small, dark cell where Choiseul was incarcerated.

  Choiseul could not meet her gaze, nor speak to her; he shook his head and shuddered, and even wept as she asked him questions in an unsteady voice. “Oh damn you,” she cried at last, crackling with anger. “How could—how could you have a heart to do this? Every word you have said to me was a lie; tell me, did you even arrange that first ambush, on our way here? Tell me!”

  Her voice was breaking, and he had dropped his face into his hands; now he raised it and cried to Laurence, “For God’s sake, make her go; I will tell you anything you like, only send her out,” and dropped it back down again.

  Laurence did not in the least want to be his interrogator, but he could not prolong Harcourt’s suffering unnecessarily; he touched her on the shoulder, and she fled at once. It was deeply unpleasant to have to ask Choiseul questions, still more unpleasant to hear that he had been a traitor since coming from Austria.

  “I see what you think of me,” Choiseul added, noting the look of disgust on Laurence’s face. “And you have a right; but for me, there was no choice.”

  Laurence had been keeping himself strictly to questions, but this paltry attempt at excuse inflamed him beyond his resistance. With contempt, he said, “You might have chosen to be honest, and done your duty in the place you begged of us.”

  Choiseul laughed, with no mirth in the sound. “Indeed; and when Bonaparte is in London this Christmastime, what then? You may look at me that way if you like; I have no doubt of it, and I assure you if I thought any deed of mine could alter that outcome, I would have acted.”

  “Instead you have become a traitor twice over and helped him, when your first betrayal could only be excused if you had been sincere in your principles,” Laurence said; he was disturbed by Choiseul’s certainty, though he would never conceive of giving any sign as much.

  “Ah, principles,” Choiseul said; all his bravado had deserted him, and he seemed now only weary and resigned. “France is not so under-strength as are you, and Bonaparte has executed dragons for treason before. What do principles matter to me when I see the shadow of the guillotine hanging upon Praecursoris, and where was I to take him? To Russia? He will outlive me by two centuries, and you must know how they treat dragons there. I could hardly fly him to America without a transport. My only hope was a pardon, and Bonaparte offered it only at a price.”

  “By which you mean Lily,” Laurence said coldly.

  Surprisingly, Choiseul shook his head. “No, his price was not Catherine’s dragon, but yours.” At the blank look upon Laurence’s face, he added, “The Chinese egg was sent as a gift for him from the Imperial Throne; he meant me to retrieve it. He did not know Temeraire was already hatched.” Choiseul shrugged and spread his hands. “I thought perhaps if I killed him—”

  Laurence struck him full across the face, with such force as to knock him onto the stone floor of the cell; his chair rocked and fell over with a clatter. Choiseul coughed and blotted blood from his lip, and the guard opened the door and looked inside. “Everything all right, sir?” he asked, looking straight at Laurence; he paid not the slightest mind to Choiseul’s injury.

  “Yes, you may go,” Laurence said flatly, wiping blood from his hand onto his handkerchief as the door closed once again. He would ordinarily have been ashamed to strike a prisoner, but in this moment he felt not the slightest qualm; his heart was still beating very quickly.

  Choiseul slowly set his chair back upright and sat down once more. More quietly, he said, “I am sorry. I could not bring myself to it, in the end, and I thought instead—” He stopped, seeing the color rise again in Laurence’s face.

  The very notion that for all these months such malice had been lurking so close to Temeraire, averted only by some momentary quirk of conscience on Choiseul’s part, was enough to make his blood run cold. With loathing, he said, “And so instead you tried to seduce a girl barely past her schoolroom years and abduct her.”

  Choiseul said nothing; indeed, Laurence could hardly imagine what defense he could have offered. After a moment’s pause, Laurence added, “You can have no further pretensions to honor: tell me what Bonaparte plans, and perhaps Lenton will have Praecursoris sent to the breeding grounds in Newfoundland, if indeed your motive is for his life, and not your own miserable hide.”

  Choiseul paled, but said, “I know very little, but what I know I will tell you, if he gives his word to do as much.”

  “No,” Laurence said. “You may speak and hope for a mercy you do not deserve if you choose; I will not bargain with you.”

  Choiseul bowed his head, and when he spoke he was broken, so faint Laurence had t
o strain to hear him. “I do not know what he intends, precisely, but he desired me to urge the weakening of the covert here most particularly, to have as many sent south to the Mediterranean as could be arranged.”

  Laurence felt sick with dismay; this goal at least had been brilliantly accomplished. “Does he have some means for his fleet to escape Cadiz?” he demanded. “Does he suppose he can bring them here without facing Nelson?”

  “Do you imagine Bonaparte confided in me?” Choiseul said, not lifting his head. “To him also I was a traitor; I was told the tasks I was to accomplish, nothing more.”

  Laurence satisfied himself with a few more questions that Choiseul truly knew nothing else; he left the room feeling both soiled and alarmed, and went at once to Lenton.

  The news cast a heavy pall upon the whole covert. The captains had not broadcast the details, but even the lowliest cadet or crewman could tell that a shadow lay upon them. Choiseul had timed his attempt well: the dispatch-rider would not reach them again for six days, and from there two weeks or more would be required to see any portion of the forces from the Mediterranean restored to the Channel. Militia forces and several Army detachments had already been sent for; they would arrive within a few days, to begin emplacing additional artillery along the coastline.

  Laurence, with additional cause for anxiety, had spoken to Granby and Hollin to raise their caution on Temeraire’s behalf. If Bonaparte were jealous enough of having so personal a prize taken away, he might well send another agent, this one more willing to slay the dragon he could no longer claim. “You must promise me to be careful,” he told Temeraire as well. “Eat nothing unless one of us is by, and has approved it; and if anyone whom I have not presented to you seeks to approach you, do not under any circumstances permit it, even if you must fly to another clearing.”

  “I will have a care, Laurence, I promise,” said Temeraire. “I do not understand, though, why the French Emperor should want to have me killed; how could that improve his circumstances? He would do better to ask them for another egg.”

  “My dear, the Chinese would hardly condescend to give him a second where the first went so badly astray while in the keeping of his own men,” he said. “I am still puzzled at their having given him even one, indeed; he must have some prodigiously gifted diplomat at their court. And I suppose his pride may be hurt, to think that a lowly British captain stands in the place which he had meant to occupy himself.”

  Temeraire snorted with disdain. “I am sure I would never have liked him in the least, even if I had hatched in France,” he said. “He sounds a very unpleasant person.”

  “Oh, I cannot truly say. One hears a great deal of his pride, but there is no denying that he is a very great man, even if he is a tyrant,” Laurence said reluctantly; he would have been a great deal happier to be able to convince himself that Bonaparte was a fool.

  Lenton gave orders that patrols now were to be flown only by half the formation at a time, the rest kept back at the covert for intensive combat training. Under cover of night, several additional dragons were secretly flown down from the coverts at Edinburgh and Inverness, including Victoriatus, the Parnassian whom they had rescued what now seemed a long time ago. His captain, Richard Clark, made a nice point of coming to greet Laurence and Temeraire. “I hope you can forgive me for not paying you my respects and my gratitude sooner,” he said. “I confess at Laggan I had very little thought for anything but his recovery, and we were shipped out again without warning, as I believe were you.”

  Laurence shook his hand heartily. “Pray do not give it a thought,” he said. “I hope he is wholly recovered?”

  “Entirely, thank Heaven, and none too soon, either,” Clark said grimly. “I understand the assault is expected at any moment.”

  And yet the days stretched out, painfully long with anticipation, and no attack came. Three more Winchesters were brought down for additional scouting, but one and all they returned from their dangerous forays to the French shores to report heavy patrols at all hours along the enemy’s coastline; there was no chance of penetrating far enough inland to acquire more information.

  Levitas was among them, but the company was large enough that Laurence was not obliged to see much of Rankin, for which he was grateful. He tried not to see the signs of that neglect which he could do no more to cure; he felt he could not visit the little dragon further without provoking a quarrel which might be disastrous to the temper of the whole covert. However, he compromised with his conscience so far as to say nothing when he saw Hollin coming to Temeraire’s clearing very early the next morning with a bucket full of dirty cleaning rags and a guilty expression.

  A great coldness settled over the camp as night came on Sunday, the first week of waiting gone: Volatilus had not arrived as expected. The weather had been clear, certainly no cause for delay; it stayed so for two further days, and then a third; still he did not come. Laurence tried not to look to the skies, and ignored his men doing the same, until that night he found Emily crying quietly outside the clearing, having crept away from the barracks for a little privacy.

  She was very ashamed to be caught at it, and pretended there was only some dust in her eyes. Laurence took her to his rooms and had some cocoa brought; he told her, “I was two years older than you are now when I first went to sea, and I blubbered at night for a week.” She looked so very skeptical at this account that a laugh was drawn from him. “No, I am not inventing this for your benefit,” he said. “When you are a captain, and find one of your own cadets in similar circumstances, I imagine you will tell them what I have just told you.”

  “I am not really afraid,” she said, weariness and cocoa having combined to make her drowsy and unguarded. “I know Excidium will never let anything happen to Mother, and he is the finest dragon in all Europe.” She woke up at having made this slip, and added anxiously, “Temeraire is very nearly as good, of course.”

  Laurence nodded gravely. “Temeraire is a great deal younger. Perhaps he will equal Excidium some day, when he has more experience.”

  “Yes, just so,” she said, very relieved, and he concealed his smile. Five minutes later she was asleep; he laid her on the bed and went to sleep with Temeraire.

  “Laurence, Laurence.” He stirred and blinked upwards; Temeraire was nudging him awake urgently, though the sky was still dark. Laurence was dimly aware of a low roaring noise, a crowd of voices, and then the crack of gunfire. He started up at once: none of his crew were in the clearing, nor his officers. “What is it?” Temeraire asked, rising to his feet and unfurling his wings as Laurence climbed down. “Are we being attacked? I do not see any dragons aloft.”

  “Sir, sir!” Morgan came running into the clearing, nearly falling over himself in his haste and eagerness. “Volly is here, sir, and there has been a great battle, and Napoleon is killed!”

  “Oh, does that mean the war is over already?” Temeraire asked, disappointed. “I have not even been in any real battles yet.”

  “Perhaps the news may have grown in the telling; I should be surprised to learn that Bonaparte is truly dead,” Laurence said, but he had identified the noise as cheering, and certainly some good news had arrived, if not of quite such an absurd caliber. “Morgan, go and rouse Mr. Hollin and the ground crew with my apologies for the hour, and ask them to bring Temeraire his breakfast. My dear,” he said, turning to Temeraire, “I will go and learn what I can, and return with the news soonest.”

  “Yes, please, and do hurry,” Temeraire said urgently, rearing up on his back legs to see above the trees what might be in progress.

  The headquarters was blazing with light; Volly was sitting on the parade grounds before the building tearing ravenously into a sheep, a couple of groundsmen with the dispatch service keeping off the growing crowd of men streaming from the barracks. Several of the young Army and militia officers were firing off their guns in their excitement, and Laurence was forced to nearly push his way through to reach the doors.

  The doors to Len
ton’s office were closed, but Captain James was sitting in the officers’ club, eating with scarcely less ferocity than his dragon, and already all the other captains were with him, having the news.

  “Nelson told me to wait; said they’d come out of port before I had time to make another circuit,” James was saying, out of the corner of his mouth and somewhat muffled by toast, while Sutton attempted to sketch the scene on a piece of paper. “I hardly believed him, but sure enough, by Sunday morning out they came, and we met them off Cape Trafalgar early on Monday.”

  He swallowed down a cup of coffee, all the company waiting impatiently for him to finish, and pushed his plate aside for a moment to take the paper from Sutton. “Here, let me,” he said, drawing little circles to mark the positions of the ships. “Twenty-seven and twelve dragons of ours, against thirty-three and ten.”

  “Two columns, breaking their line twice?” Laurence asked, studying the diagram with satisfaction: just the sort of strategy to throw the French into disarray, from which their ill-trained crews could hardly have recovered.

  “What? Oh, the ships, yes, with Excidium and Laetificat over the weather column, Mortiferus over the lee,” James said. “It was hot work at the head of the divisions, I can tell you; I couldn’t see so much as a spar from above for the clouds of smoke. At one time I thought for sure Victory had blown up; the Spanish had one of those blasted little Flecha-del-Fuegos over there, dashing about quicker than our guns could answer. He had all her sails on fire before Laetificat sent him running with his tail between his legs.”

  “What were our losses?” Warren asked, his quiet voice cutting through the high spirits of their excitement.

  James shook his head. “It was a proper bloodbath and no mistake,” he said somberly. “I suppose we have near a thousand men killed; and poor Nelson himself came in a hairsbreadth of it: the fire-breather set alight one of Victory’s sails, and it came down upon him where he stood on the quarterdeck. A couple of quick-thinking fellows doused him with the scuttlebutt, but they say his medals were melted to his skin, and he will wear them all the time, now.”