by Naomi Novik
“I beg your pardon,” Tharkay said. “I prefer not.”
Laurence paused, his hand arrested mid-air above the map.
“Arkady, I am sure, will oblige,” Tharkay said, “but someone else must captain him. I regret,” he added, with a lash of irony, “I have not the luxury of setting aside, for a time, the veneer of civilization; I must be a little more careful. A temporary viciousness may be pardonable in a gentleman, even admirable; but it must brand me forever a savage. Laurence, what are you doing?”
The question was simple enough, and ought to have afforded any of a dozen answers; one after another presented themselves for his consideration. “Killing soldiers,” Laurence said, at last, “most of whom are starving; and making them vicious, so they give us still-better excuse.”
It had the poor advantage of being true; giving it voice, Laurence tasted all its ugliness on his tongue. He sat down and put a hand over his mouth, and found his face was wet. He could not speak again for a little while, struggling to master himself and his voice; at last he said to Tharkay, hoarsely, “If you will not, what will you do?”
He did not mean the question in the immediate sense, and Tharkay did not take it so. He shrugged in his restrained way, the movement of a hand only. “There is work enough in the world,” he answered, “and little enough time.”
“And no-one to decide, but yourself,” Laurence said. “No authority but your own conscience.”
“There are authorities to choose from,” Tharkay said, “to suit any action, if you like; I prefer to keep the choice a little closer.”
It seemed to Laurence the most miserably solitary existence imaginable; isolated by more than distance or even disdain. “How do you bear it? The choice, and all the consequences thereof, alone—”
“Perhaps use has reconciled me; or,” Tharkay said dryly, “perhaps I simply have less natural inclination to hold myself responsible for the sins of the world, rather than for my own.”
Laurence covered his face with his hands a moment, and shut his eyes against the filtered reddish light. The hayloft smell of straw and the vanished horses, warm and familiar, and the sulfur bite of the dragons outside; wood-smoke and Arkady’s smug prattle, broken occasionally by Temeraire’s more resonant protests.
“Very well,” he said, and went out, leaving the orders upon the table.
Chapter 15
FORGIVE ME,” LAURENCE SAID. Temeraire had settled himself for the night, curled up comfortably in an old, well-plowed field behind the barn, fallow now and full of soft dry grass underneath the snow. They were alone, or nearly so. Demane and Sipho and Roland and Allen were all tucked into the curve of Temeraire’s haunch, under a little lean-to which Demane and Roland had worked out of a tent and a few sticks, and rigged to Temeraire’s side, as it was warmer to sleep against him so than in the tent alone. But all four were fast asleep. Arkady at last had stopped telling stories, and was now busily making up to Iskierka, to sleep near in the heat she gave off. Temeraire had sniffed a little in disdain, and curled his own tail about the lean-to, just to be sure his crew would sleep warm, and dry besides.
He did not at once understand, what Laurence was apologizing for, until Laurence had explained a little. “Forgive me,” Laurence repeated. “Bad enough that I used myself so; to have used you likewise, is unpardonable—”
“But Laurence,” Temeraire said, at once glad and baffled, “it was my fault, surely: it was my notion we should go to France in the first place. Only, I did not know that they should take your capital, and your rank; and I am sorry—”
“I am not,” Laurence said. “I should give more than that, and count it cheap, to preserve my conscience; I am ashamed to have submitted to despair so far as to ever have thought differently.”
Temeraire did not wish to argue in the least: Laurence sounded like himself again, if still drawn and perhaps unhappy, and that was worth anything; but privately he could not help a certain resentment that a conscience seemed to be so very expensive, and yet had no substantial form which one might admire, and display to one’s company.
“But,” he said, heroically, “I did mean what I said, dear Laurence, about the talon-sheaths, and I do wish you may sell them, and buy some new things for yourself: I would like my conscience to be just as clear.”
Laurence said, with even a touch of amusement, “I am sorry to have neglected my coat, if it has given you so wretched a notion of my finances, but I am not so wholly impoverished.” More gently he added, “There will be no more pavilions, I am afraid, but I hope I need not be an embarrassment to you.”
“You should never be,” Temeraire said, and nudged Laurence with his nose.
Laurence stroked his muzzle. “I do not know what our course will hereafter be,” he said. “I owe apologies, more than this, and must make them; and then I must write to Wellesley—I know not how, but I must tell him we will not continue in this manner. There will be no more of this slaughter without quarter. We will manage our prisoners somehow; and we will rather seek out than flee any force which has a gun, or a few dragons.”
Temeraire had not known how worried he had been, until the source of the distress had lifted; but his spirits rose almost effervescently at Laurence’s words. “How happy I am to hear it,” he said, adding, “and I am sure we will take a great many prizes.” However brave a face Laurence wished to put on it, Temeraire felt this could not but be reassuring.
“More likely,” Laurence said, “Wellesley will order me to come back and be hanged at once.”
“If he does, you shall not go,” Temeraire said indignantly, flaring his ruff.
“No,” Laurence said, after a moment. “I shall not.”
Sir,
I must beg your leave to acquaint you with an Alteration in the methods of our company, to which I hope you will not object, for humanity’s sake, despite some increase in Inconvenience and in Danger, which all those officers in His Majesty’s service presently reporting to me, and those dragons likewise, have gladly agreed to support, venturing rather their persons than their conscience…
Along these lines the letter was written, with difficulty, and by Gherni it was sent. They established their new camp between North Seaton and Newbiggin-by-the-Sea, and began to put up a stockade manned with volunteers from the countryside. “We are making a nice honey-pot for them to rescue,” Sutton commented, as the dragons cheerfully tore up trees: they had no guns to defend the walls.
“Then at least they will have spent the time and effort to come for them, which they would otherwise have used to bring fresh troops over from France,” Laurence said. In any case, no-one objected; it shamed him again to see how greatly the other officers and dragons both were relieved by the alteration in their practice. He expected daily however an answer from Wellesley, relieving him of the command, and wondered what he should say to the other captains when it came; if Wellesley should have found some other officer to carry on the work.
But no letter came: three days later a great noise arose in the morning around their camp: many ferals bursting in upon them eagerly with news, and before their combined chatter could be worked out, the great dragons of the Corps were already landing everywhere, laden with men. One company after another were put off onto the ground, supplies, artillery, and the dragons leapt away again with scarcely more than a call of greeting. Above them more dragons were flying past, all the British Army on the move.
Wellesley arrived a little past noon, and commandeered the old half-derelict barn, where the crews had been sleeping, for his headquarters. “Out, the rest of you,” he said, jerking his head at the crew and even the aides sweeping out the floor, fixing Laurence in place with a cold look. “Cleverly done, Laurence,” Wellesley said, when they were alone. “Not so simple after all, are you?”
Laurence was silent, uncertain, until Wellesley added, “I will not waste my breath asking who on my staff passed you the news, but you will understand me: if you have the infernal gall to waste my time now, wi
th some damned attempt at extortion, I will shoot you myself.”
And then Laurence understood: Wellesley thought his letter had been timed deliberately, on the very eve of his southward advance, to establish Wellesley’s own responsibility for the slaughter of the French irregulars.
“I will not hear a damned word about pardon from you,” Wellesley said, “not a one. In three days’ time we will meet Bonaparte, and if I win, no-one will give a damn whatever accusations you like to make. And of course,” he added, icily, “you will be well-looked-after in the event we lose. Rowley!” he bellowed. “Get my desk in here, and call in the general staff.”
Officers began to pour in, struggling under tables and maps and chairs. Laurence was almost at once pressed away from Wellesley as they thronged around him, and any reply Laurence might have made was lost in the crowd.
He felt the urgent wish to push through, to seize Wellesley and to argue; but he forced himself to be still. It did not matter. He could make no denial Wellesley would believe. In any case, that Wellesley thought him a blackguard for refusing to continue, rather than for having begun at all, made little difference; Laurence had earned the condemnation, and he might as well bear it for the wrong cause.
“Emily,” he said, turning instead, and beckoned her back into the building; she was peering in at the door cautiously, to one side of the stampede. “Take Demane and go up and get those hayloft doors open,” he told her, “so Temeraire and the other dragons can hear.”
He went outside himself: it was already becoming impossibly cramped upon the ground, though more trees had been uprooted, and a broad avenue opened up to the road: every dragon who had landed, dropping off men, was soon jostling for space at the hayloft.
“We shan’t manage like this,” Jane said, Excidium having landed after a warning hiss had cleared him a place. “Dragons over the rank of lieutenant only may stay: the rest of you must go on with the rest of the Army, and get the news from your officers or your captains. We have had to give them all ranks, thanks to your Temeraire’s splendid scheme,” she added dryly to Laurence. “The rest of them turned miserably sulky and wanted epaulettes of their own; frivolous creatures.” She patted Excidium, who looked rather smug with two epaulettes of deep fire orange, to match the edges of his massive wings.
They had scarcely made a little order, and themselves crammed back into the barn, before Wellesley began: his aides put up a map of Chatham roads, the mouth of the Thames where it spilled into the Channel, with all the small towns and villages thereabout. Their positions were marked, and a low murmur went about: their backs would be to the sea.
“Well, gentlemen, I see you like our position as well as I hope our friend Bonaparte will do,” Wellesley said. “The Navy and the Corps have all but cut off his connection to the Continent, and the countryside has risen. He loses now each day a hundred men, and each week two dragons, for lack of supply. He can ill afford to refuse us a pitched battle, if we offer it to him on what I trust he will think reasonable terms.”
The terms seemed indeed reasonable—from the French perspective. Laurence wondered if Wellesley meant by such an arrangement to stiffen the backs of the soldiers, by denying them any avenue of retreat save through the French troops before them.
“Colonels Featherstone and Bree, you will take the center. Your position is the most essential: you must hold, until you are signaled,” Wellesley said. “Yield before the moment is ripe, and he will split our forces, and destroy us at his leisure. You are not to advance, under any circumstances: you are only to form square and hold. Colonel Rethlow, you will back them with the artillery.
“The cavalry will take position on either flank, with the rest of our infantry positioned here, and here,” he indicated, “and the Corps will hold off any French attempt to charge our center from aloft. All our design, gentlemen, as I hope you gather,” he went on, “is to hold fast, while they spend the best part of their strength, and divert their attacks from our center, until the signal is given.
“The order of march then being sounded, we will gradually withdraw along either flank—” Two of the aides heaved up a fresh map, with new positions marked, yielding to the French the very center position which had been so vigorously defended. “—and cut him off from his aerial support and whatever reserves he may have yet kept back, and launch our attack against his rear. General Paget, it will be your task to ensure that Bonaparte himself remains within our circle. General Ollen, your artillery will be directed towards Bonaparte’s reserves, rather than the main body of his force, to keep them from rejoining him.
“Our aim, gentlemen, is the capture of this tyrant, and an end to his perpetual war. I will be satisfied with nothing less, and I assure you their Lordships have agreed with my judgment.”
With only this brief and unsettling plan of battle, he concluded and dismissed them all, adding, “Colonel Featherstone, a word with you.” He drew that officer aside privately, thus preventing many other officers of the general staff, who themselves plainly wanted a word, and more than one.
Laurence went out to Temeraire, who was rather regretfully submitting to being rigged out in carrying-harness. “We are taking this company,” he said, as Laurence came, “or so he tells me—” The infantry officer nodded to Laurence, a little stiffly, and touched his hat.
“Very good,” Laurence answered, and stifled his doubts. To risk dividing their forces so, yielding the center to Napoleon and then directing all their force deliberately between him and his reserve, to be pounded upon from either side, seemed a terrible risk to run; if it made more likely Napoleon’s capture, it made also more likely that the French should simply overrun them. But Wellesley was not a fool, and if he meant to tolerate all the weaknesses and dangers of his planned course, he had some cause. He had certainly taken pains to evade any questions, and any protests which might have been made against him to the ministers, by delaying the conference until the deployment already had begun. There was nothing for it now, but to trust him.
THE DEGREE OF EXCITEMENT which Temeraire felt, expressed itself nearly as pain: his ruff expanded, whenever a few minutes passed where he did not make an effort to smooth it out, and drew a pounding tightness all along the line of his neck. He tried now and again to curl himself for a little rest, but it was impossible: no more of wretched raids, no more hiding, no more carrying anyone about; a real battle at last.
Their coverts were established also on the coast, but well to the flanks of the battle, to north and south. Temeraire could see the dotted lines of fishing huts scattered away around them, a few distant yellow candle-gleams, and the rocky coastline a dark mass against the faintly lighter sky, the steady ongoing roar of the surf behind them. It was yet dark; the voices of the Fleur-de-Nuits, scouting their positions, echoed overhead. Occasionally a flare was shot off to blind them, or a few dragons chosen by lot went up to chase a few of them away.
Laurence rose a little before dawn, and climbed down from Temeraire’s back, to look out towards the battlefield.
“Is Napoleon there?” Temeraire asked Laurence, eagerly. “Have they come?”
“Yes,” Laurence said. “They are in pickets; put your head down and you will see them.”
Temeraire lowered his head and tipped it so he had one eye aimed along the ground: against the deep grey of the sky as it lightened, he could see atop a hill the tiny narrow lines of the pickets: narrow posts, little more than sticks, each leaning a little in one direction or another, and the lumpy dark shapes at their base: the sleeping soldiers, thus kept in their columns. Overhead, the stars were dimming and going out: a thick grey fog rolling in from the water, as the sky grew paler.
“It is time,” Laurence said. Fellowes stirred, behind Temeraire’s leg, and yawning rose to see to the harness.
Temeraire rumbled softly, deep in his throat, and called, “Majestatis, Ballista—it is time to get everyone up.”
“I still do not like this plan at all,” Perscitia said, fretfully, as they
all ate: fresh cattle, saved for this morning, and nearly everyone had all they wanted. “I do not see what the use is, in fighting so hard to keep them from the center, and then letting them have it after all; why not give it to them at once, to begin? And are you quite sure they are there?”
The question was not as odd as it seemed; the fog had grown so thick they could see nothing from the ground but the trees just about the clearing: the presence of their own army had to be taken on faith, much less the enemy.
“Yes, I am quite sure,” Temeraire said. “Laurence pointed them out to me, just before morning. We will see them better once we are aloft, I am sure.”
Rain fell in a thin icy drizzle as they went up: they had all drawn lots to see who should have which shift, as Admiral Roland had insisted they might not all fight at once, and Temeraire did see the sense in keeping some back, when the battle should be very long. He was very relieved to be leading up the first rank, however, and hoped privately that the fog might last; and perhaps Laurence would not notice when it was mid-day and time for their own rest.
He could not, after all, see much better from above. Pockets of mist like seething cauldrons stood in every low valley, and still more great towering clouds were rolling majestically in from the sea, so high they stretched up to engulf him as much as the ground below, with gusts of sharp rain that pattered noisily on his wings. As they flew on towards the battlefield, he began to catch glimpses of the soldiers in their companies on the march, all arranged a little differently, like patches of cloth in odd sizes, some long as ribbons and only five men across, others great massed bodies upon the field.
All rippled smoothly over the ground, columns of white and black and blue and red, on either side, gliding up over the hills, down again into the valleys to be swallowed up in the fog. Even then, he could still hear the strange noise they made marching: less a thumping, which he might have expected, than a regular hissing, as their clothing or their boots brushed against one another with each stride. The wet ground muffled their steps. The trumpets sounded, a joyful encouraging noise no matter who had blown them; and the cannon spoke in orange flame to announce the battle had been joined, somewhere.
