by Naomi Novik
“If we don’t take care of that Fleur-de-Nuit, we will be,” Granby said. “If we engaged him tonight—?”
Laurence shook his head, not in disagreement but in doubt. “They are taking precious good care he is not exposed. To get anywhere near we would have to come in range of their artillery, and get directly into their midst; I have not seen him stir out of the covert since we arrived. He only watches us from that ridge, and keeps well back.”
“They would hardly need the Fleur-de-Nuit to tell them we were doing something tomorrow, if we made a great point of singling him out tonight,” Tharkay pointed out. “He had much better be dealt with just before we begin.”
No one disagreed, but puzzling out the means left them at sixes-and-sevens a while. They could settle on nothing better than staging a diversion, using the littler dragons to bombard the French front ranks: the glare would interfere with the Fleur-de-Nuit’s vision, and in the meantime the other dragons would slip out to the south, and make a wider circle out to sea.
“Though it won’t do for long,” Granby said, “and then we will have all of them to deal with, and Lien, too: Temeraire can’t fight her with three hundred men hanging off his sides.”
“An attack such as this will rouse up all the camp, and someone will see us going by sooner or late,” Kalkreuth agreed. “Still it will gain us more time than if the alarm were raised at once; I would rather save half the corps than none.”
“But if we must circle about so far out of the way, it will take a good deal more time, and we will never get so many away,” Temeraire objected. “Perhaps if we only went and killed him very quickly and quietly, we might then get away before they know what we are about; or at least thumped him hard enough he could not pay any more attention—”
“What we truly need,” Laurence said abruptly, “is only to put him quietly out of the way; what about drugging him?” In the thoughtful pause, he added, “They have been feeding the dragons livestock dosed with opium all through the campaign; if we slip him one more thoroughly saturated, likely he will not notice any queer taste, at least not until it is too late.”
“His captain will hardly let him eat a cow if it’s still wandering in circles,” Granby said.
“If the soldiers are eating boiled grass, the dragons cannot be eating as much as they like, either,” Laurence said. “I suspect he will prefer to ask forgiveness than permission, if a cow goes by him in the night.”
Tharkay undertook to manage it. “Find me some nan-keen trousers and a loose shirt, and give me a dinner-basket to carry,” he said. “I assure you I will be able to walk through the camp quite openly; if anyone stops me I will speak pidgin to them and repeat the name of some senior officer. And if you give me a few bottles of drugged brandy for them to take from me, so much the better; no reason we cannot let the watch dose themselves with laudanum, too.”
“But will you be able to get back?” Granby asked.
“I do not mean to try,” Tharkay said. “After all, our purpose is to get out; I can certainly walk to the harbor long before you will have finished loading, and find a fisherman to bring me out; they are surely doing a brisk business with those ships.”
Kalkreuth’s aides were crawling around the courtyard on hands and knees, drawing out a map in chalks, large enough for the feral dragons to make out and, by serendipity, colorful and interesting enough to command their attention. The bright blue stripe of the river would be their guide: it passed through the city walls and then curved down to the harbor, passing through the French camp as it went.
“We will go single-file, keeping over the water,” Laurence said, “and pray be sure the other dragons understand,” he added anxiously to Temeraire, “they must go very quietly, as if they were trying to creep up on some wary herd of animals.”
“I will tell them again,” Temeraire promised, and sighed a very little. “It is not that I am not happy to have them here,” he confided quietly, “and really they have been minding me quite well, when one considers that they have never been taught, but it would have been so very nice to have Maximus and Lily here, and perhaps Excidium; he would know just what to do, I am sure.”
“I cannot quarrel with you,” Laurence said; apart from all considerations of management, Maximus alone could likely have taken six hundred men or more, being a particularly large Regal Copper. He paused and asked, tentatively, “Will you tell me now what else has been worrying you? Are you afraid they will lose their heads, in the moment?”
“Oh; no, it is not that,” Temeraire said, and looked down, prodding a little at the remains of his dinner. “We are running away, are we not?” he said abruptly.
“I would be sorry to call it so,” Laurence said, surprised; he had thought Temeraire wholly satisfied with their plan, now that they meant to carry out the Prussian garrison with them, and for his own part thought it a maneuver to applaud: if they could manage it. “There is no shame in retreating to preserve one’s strength for a future battle, with better hope of victory.”
“What I mean is, if we are going away, then Napoleon really has won,” Temeraire said, “and England will be at war for a long time still; because he means to conquer us. So we cannot ask the Government to change anything, for dragons; we must only do as we are told, until he is beaten.” He hunched his shoulders a little and added, “I do understand it, Laurence, and I promise I will do my duty and not always be complaining; I am only sorry.”
It was with some awkwardness in the face of this handsome speech that Laurence recognized, and had then to convey to Temeraire, the change in his own sentiments, an awkwardness increased by the bewildered Temeraire’s dragging out, one after another, all of Laurence’s own earlier protests on the subject.
“I have not, I hope, changed in essentials,” Laurence said, struggling for justification in his own eyes as well as his dragon’s, “but only in my understanding. Napoleon has made manifest for all the world to see the marked advantages to a modern army of closer cooperation between men and dragons; we return to England not only to take up our post again, but bearing this vital intelligence, which makes it not merely our desire but our duty to promote such change in England.”
Temeraire required very little additional persuasion, and all Laurence’s embarrassment, at seeming to be fickle, was mitigated by his dragon’s jubilant reaction, and the immediate necessity of presenting him with many cautions: every earlier objection remained, of course, and Laurence knew very well they would face the most violent opposition.
“I do not care if anyone else minds,” Temeraire said, “or if it takes a long time; Laurence, I am so very happy, I only wish we were at home already.”
All that night and the next day they continued to labor over the harnesses; the cavalry-horses’ tack was soon seized upon and cannibalized, and the tanners’ shops raided. Dusk was falling and Fellowes was still frantically climbing with his men all over the dragons, sewing on more carrying-loops, of anything which was left—leather, rope, braided silk—until they seemed to be festooned with ribbons and bows and flounces. “It is as good as Court dress,” Ferris said, to much muffled hilarity, as a ration of spirits was passed around, “we ought to fly straight to London and present them to the Queen.”
The Fleur-de-Nuit took up his appointed position at the usual hour, settling back on his haunches for the night’s duty; as the night deepened, the edges of his midnight blue hide slowly faded into the general darkness, until all that could be seen of him were his enormous dinner-plate eyes, milky white and illuminated by the reflections of the campfires. Occasionally he stirred, or turned round to have a look towards the ocean, and the eyes would vanish for a moment; but they always came back again.
Tharkay had slipped out a few hours before. They watched, anxiously; for an eternity counting by the heartbeat, for two turns counting by the glass. The dragons were all ranged in lines, the first men aboard and ready to go at once. “If nothing comes of it,” Laurence said softly, but then the palely gleaming
eyes blinked once, twice; then for a little longer; then again; and then with the lids drooping gradually to cover them, they drifted slowly and languorously to the ground, and the last narrow slits winked out of sight.
“Mark time,” Laurence called down to the aides-decamp standing anxiously below, holding their hourglasses ready; then Temeraire leapt away, straining a little under the weight. Laurence found it queer to be conscious of so many men aboard, so many strangers crowding near him: the communal nervous quickening of their breath like a rasp, the muffled curses and low cries silenced at once by their neighbors, their bodies and their warmth muting the biting force of the wind.
Temeraire followed the river out through the city walls: staying over the water so that the living sound of the current running down to the sea should mask the sound of his wings. Boats drawn up along the sides of the river creaked their ropes, murmuring, and the great brooding bulk of the harbor crane protruded vulturelike over the water. The river was smooth and black beneath them, spangled a little with reflections, the fires of the French camp throwing small yellow flickers onto the low swells.
To their either side, the French encampment lay sprawling over the banks of the river, lantern glims showing here and there the slope of a dragon’s body, the fold of a wing, the pitted blue iron of a cannon-barrel. Lumps that were soldiers lay sleeping in their rough bivouacs, huddled near one another under blankets of coarse wool, overcoats, or only mats of straw, with their feet poking out towards the fires. If there were any sounds to be heard from the camp, however, Laurence did not know it; his heart was beating too loudly in his ears as they went gliding by, Temeraire’s wingbeats almost languidly slow.
And then they were breathing again as the fires and lights fell behind them; they had come safely past the edges of the encampment with one mile of soft marshy ground to the sea, the sound of the surf rising ahead: Temeraire put on eager speed, and the wind began to whistle past the edges of his wings; somewhere hanging off the rigging below, Laurence heard a man vomiting. They were already over the ocean; the ship-lanterns beckoned them on, almost glaring bright with no moon for competition. As they drew near Laurence could see a candelabrum standing in the stern-windows of one of the ships, a seventy-four, illuminating the golden letters upon her stern: she was the Vanguard, and Laurence leaned forward and pointed Temeraire towards her.
Young Turner crept out onto Temeraire’s shoulder and held up the night-signal lantern where it could be seen, showing the friendly signal out its front, one long blue light, two short red, with thin squares of cloth laid over the lantern-hole to make the colors, and then the three short white lights to request a silent response; and again, as they drew nearer and nearer. There was a delay; had the lookout not seen? was the signal too old? Laurence had not seen a new signal-book in almost a year.
But then the quick blue–red–blue–red of the answer shone back at them, and there were more lights coming out on deck as they descended. “Ahoy the ship,” Laurence called, cupping his hands around his mouth.
“Ahoy the wing,” came the baffled reply, from the officer of the watch, faint and hard to hear, “and who the devil are you?”
Temeraire hovered carefully overhead; they flung down long knotted ropes, the ends thumping hollowly upon the deck of the ship, and the men began to struggle loose from the harness with excessive haste to be off. “Temeraire, tell them to go carefully, there,” Laurence said sharply. “The harness won’t stand hard use, and their fellows will be next aboard.”
Temeraire rumbled at them low, in German, and the descent calmed a little; still further when one man, missing his grasp, slipped and went tumbling down with a too-loud cry that broke only with the wet melon-thump sound of his head striking against the deck. Afterwards the others went more warily, and below, their officers began to force them back against the ship’s rails and out of the way, using hands and sticks to push them into place instead of shouted orders.
“Is everyone down?” Temeraire asked Laurence; only a handful of the crew were left, up on his back, and at Laurence’s nod, Temeraire carefully let himself down and slipped into the water beside the ship, scarcely throwing up a splash. There was a great deal of noise beginning to rise from the deck, the sailors and soldiers talking at one another urgently and uselessly in their different tongues, and the officers having difficulty reaching one another through the crowd of men; the crew were showing lanterns wildly in every direction.
“Hush!” Temeraire said to them all sharply, putting his head over the side, “and put away those lights; can you not see we are trying to keep quiet? And if any of you do not listen to me or begin to scream, like great children, just because I am a dragon, I will pick you up and throw you overboard, see if I do not,” he added.
“Where is the captain?” Laurence called up, into a perfect silence, Temeraire’s threat having been taken most seriously.
“Will? Is that Will Laurence?” A man in a nightshirt and cap leaned over the side, staring. “The devil, man, did you miss the sea so much you had to turn your dragon into a ship? What is his rating?”
“Gerry,” Laurence said, grinning, “you will do me the kindness to send out every last boat you have to carry the message to the other ships; we are bringing out the garrison, and we must get them embarked by morning, or the French will make the country too hot to hold us.”
“What, the whole garrison?” Captain Stuart said. “How many of them are there?”
“Fifteen thousand, more or less,” Laurence said. “Never mind,” he added, as Stuart began to splutter, “you must pack them in somehow, and at least get them over to Sweden; they are damned brave fellows, and we aren’t leaving them behind. I must get back to ferrying; God only knows how long we have until they notice us.”
Going back to the city they passed over Arkady coming with his own load; the feral leader was nipping at the tails of a couple of the younger members of his flock, keeping them from meandering off the course; he waved his tail-tip at Temeraire as they shot by, Temeraire stretched out full-length and going as fast as he might, as quiet as he might. The courtyard was in controlled havoc, the battalions marching out one after another in parade-ground order to their assigned dragons, boarding them with as little noise as could be managed.
They had marked each dragon’s place with paint on the flagstones, already scratched and trampled by claws and boots. Temeraire dropped into his large corner, and the sergeants and officers began herding the men quickly along: each climbed up the side and thrust his head and shoulders through the highest open loop, getting a grip on the harness with his hands or clinging to the man above, trying for footholds on the harness.
Winston, one of the harness-men, flew over gasping, “Anything that needs fixing, sir?” and ran off instantly on hearing a negative, to the next dragon; Fellowes and his handful of other men were dashing about with similar urgency, repairing loose or broken bits of harness.
Temeraire was ready again; “Mark time,” Laurence called.
“An hour and a quarter, sir,” came back Dyer’s treble; worse than Laurence had hoped, and many of the other dragons were only getting away with their second loads alongside them.
“We will get faster as we go along,” Temeraire said stoutly, and Laurence answered, “Yes; quickly as we can, now—” and they were airborne again.
Tharkay found them again as they dropped their second load of men down to one of the transports in the harbor; he had somehow gotten on deck, and now he came swarming hand-over-hand up the knotted ropes, in the opposite direction from the descending soldiers. “The Fleur-de-Nuit took the sheep, but he did not eat the whole thing,” he said quietly, when he had gotten up to Laurence’s side. “He ate only half, and hid the rest; I do not know it will keep him asleep all night.”
Laurence nodded; there was nothing to be done for it; they had only to keep going, as long as they could.
A suggestion of color was showing in the east, now, and too many men still crowded the lanes of t
he city, waiting to get aboard. Arkady was showing himself not useless in a time of crisis; he chivvied along his ferals to go quicker, and himself had already managed eight circuits. He came sailing in for his next load even as Temeraire finally lifted away with his seventh: his larger loads took more time to get aboard and disembark. The other ferals too were holding up bravely: the little motley-colored one whom Keynes had patched up, after the avalanche, was showing himself particularly devoted, and ferrying his tiny loads of twenty men with great determination and speed.
There were ten dragons on the decks of the ships, unloading, as Temeraire landed, mostly the larger of the ferals; the next pass would see the city close to empty, Laurence thought, and looked at the sun: it would be a close-run race.
And then abruptly from the French covert rose a small, smoking blue light; Laurence looked in horror as the flare burst over the river: the three dragons who were in transit at the moment squawked in alarm, jerking from the sudden flash of light, and a couple of men fell from their carrying-harnesses screaming to plunge into the river.
“Jump off! Jump, damn you,” Laurence bellowed at the men still climbing down from Temeraire’s harness. “Temeraire!”
Temeraire called it out in German, almost unnecessarily; the men were leaping free from all the dragons, many falling into the water where the ships’ crews began frantically to fish them out. A handful were stuck still on the carrying-harnesses, or clinging to the ropes, but Temeraire waited no longer; the other dragons came leaping into the air behind him, and as a pack they stormed back to the city, past the shouts and now-blazing lanterns of the French encampment.
