Tongues of Serpents t-6

by Naomi Novik

  Caesar was ahead, stretched out long and flying all-out in a straight line, beating and beating: Temeraire fixed upon his grey body and flew as best he could. The smoke still climbed after them, in rising tendrils mingling into columns mingling into sheets, thickening along the ground as all the heaped growth was consumed. His breath whistled painfully in his throat, a particular effort every time, and the thunder roared abruptly very near, out of the huge building clouds overhead; he twisted away on instinct, quite uselessly: the lightning had already struck the ground, perhaps a quarter-of-a-mile distant, and another tree was burning like a torch on its hill of red and gold.

  The cold air felt better on his hide, in his throat; but the wind struck him from one side and then the next. One great buffeting gust came rushing at them from above, wet and shockingly cold after the heat, and Caesar was tumbled over: his left wing and shoulder blown hard down, and turning his other directly into the gust, so he was blown every which way, and Temeraire with a laboring burst of speed came under him only just in time to right him; sharp painful sting as Caesar’s claws scrabbled on his hide.

  Caesar steadied a little, and then they were taken apart again by the wind, another dragging gust which pulled Temeraire suddenly fifty feet straight upwards, only barely managing to keep his wings from snapping against his back.

  “Laurence, Laurence,” Temeraire called, to be sure that Laurence had not been hurt, by Caesar’s claws, nor any of his crew; or he tried to call, but nothing came from his throat, so far as he could hear. The thunder was going off again, like cannon or worse, beside him and ahead, all at once: the sky above blazing with great gunpowder-flashes of lightning which showed the clouds going up and up and up like mountains full of cavernous hollows, false promises of shelter, and the edges billowing and crawling out and in, like living things brooding.

  He tried to look and nearly had his neck wrenched around for his pains, the only comfort that he could glance downward and see the egg against his breastbone, the oilskin wrappings shining wet with rain. But the harness did not look so tight, he thought with sudden anxiety, and then the wind struck and he was tumbling, his head bowed down nearly below his forelegs, the blazing orange of the fire suddenly become the sky, the ground yawning with blue cloud-canyons, and then turned over and over, blurring; he could not spread his wings.

  He stretched his jaws wide and drew in all the breath he could; the wind cut a little as he fell back towards the earth and the heat rose up instead, and he felt lighter as his chest filled out. He managed to twist himself sideways, and open his wings out straight up and down, in the line of his falling, and banking just a little into the wind caught an up-draft back towards the blue-black heights of the storm, already reaching a talon towards the egg, anxiously, to try and see: he brushed it very gently and carefully with the edge of a knuckle; it was there, it was safe.

  “Secure that rigging there, if you please, Mr. Roland,” he heard Lieutenant Forthing shouting, and as the fire roared up in pursuit behind them, Temeraire might have heard Laurence’s voice; but he was not perfectly sure. But he could not look, he could not turn; the fire was below, the storm above, blind and unmeaning ferocity in every direction, so vast one could not even see the limits of it. He did not see Caesar anywhere, anymore. The sky was so dark, so black, smoke and thunderclouds and no relief, and somewhere there might be sunlight, but so far as Temeraire was concerned there was none left in the world at all, and no direction, either.

  He put down his head and flew on.

  Laurence nodded his thanks as Roland gave him the small cup of water, and drained it off despite the bitter and acrid taste. Water was rushing with great violence along the once-dry creek bed and had collected in deep puddles over the flat baked surface of the ground, but all choked with ash and dirt, undrinkable until it had been poured through a handkerchief to strain it as clean as it might be gotten.

  The landscape had been wholly altered: trees reduced to black-twig skeletons, the thick grasses all gone as if into vapour, leaving behind only scorched and blackened patterns upon the ground which in places still sent up thin lines of smoke. Only the thick dark green bushes yet survived, more or less; the fire had only skirted along their line, and on the other side a region of the sparser vegetation had escaped destruction. Distantly ahead, the fire continued on, a thick black smudge against the sky.

  Temeraire lay sleeping, his breath coming in low, worrying rasps. He had landed and thrust his muzzle into the rushing stream to drink long and deep, despite the clots of debris; then had fallen into a stupor. Dorset had listened to his chest and his throat and shaken his head.

  Caesar had flown limping into their camp perhaps half-an-hour later, dripping-wet and exhausted from being tumbled about but a little less wretched: Rankin had steered him into the sheeting rain, far to the west along the cloud, where the fire had not been able to take hold. “I would not mind a bite, anyway,” he said, drowsily, with his head upon his forelegs; his grey hide was streaked and mottled with charcoal.

  Meat proved no difficulty, except for their fatigue. Many of the desert creatures formerly hidden by the scrub had been robbed of shelter where they had not also been robbed of life; there were twelve kangaroos lying upon the earth near enough to be dragged back to the creek, their fur already singed off and the flesh partly cooked through. The aviators wearily set about the gathering and butchering, under the direction of Gong Su. The best Laurence could say of the convicts was that they were keeping quiet and out of the way, having been doled out a reduced ration of grog. Maynard was forced to take his own glass at the opposite end of the camp, alone and in disgrace.

  “I shouldn’t like to go aloft on this harness again, sir, not without repairs,” Mr. Fellowes said, climbing down from Temeraire’s side with a segment of leather, to show him a buckle which looked as though it had been made of soft clay, pulled and stretched long and misshapen. “Not the worst of it, either: all the buckles are gone ahoo: softened by the heat, I think, and twisted up with all that buffeting we took.”

  “Do what you can with the supplies, Mr Fellowes; in any case we cannot think of leaving tomorrow,” Laurence said tiredly, running his sleeve across his forehead; Temeraire would need the rest, and the pursuit should have to wait, if it were not now rendered quite hopeless. “Mr. Forthing, Mr. Loring, we will have a little order in this camp, I hope: let us have a couple of fires, and clear some of this debris; and perhaps if these gentlemen will dig us a pit near enough the water channel, it will give us a little cleaner water for drinking.”

  “Yes, sir,” Forthing said, and went to work upon the convicts, sending those of them less greenish than the others to fetch their shovels; Laurence realized belatedly he had not thought anything of giving an order, nor evidently the officers of obeying: the united power of crisis and habit, he supposed, on both sides.

  The sun was sinking, through the shredded remains of the storm clouds and the haze of smoke: all the sky become true extravagant splendour of purple and crimson and violent pink, gold-limned clouds and shafts of light flaring out like beacons through their gaps. There was not enough strength among them for any great labor. They managed with the shovels to rake away the worst of the smoky, stinking debris; the hole was dug in a curve of the creek and gradually began to fill up with water, filtered in through the dirt.

  There was biscuit and the meat, thoroughly tasteless and without any scent and difficult to chew. “Can you stew them softer?” Laurence asked Gong Su, over the three kangaroos set aside for Temeraire; Gong Su nodded, but said, “They will be better in the morning,” and Laurence nodding did not wake Temeraire to eat.

  They slept uneasily, with a watch of four men all the night. The plains glowed with lingering embers all around, like a field of fallen stars burning gold, and a haze of orange-lit smoke hung in the west, as if the sun had chosen not to set but only to drop below the horizon. The creek’s roar died away little by little. Laurence woke twice when Temeraire fell into a coughing fit, s
hudders rippling down his hide, and his head bent over; but Temeraire did not himself fully rouse, his eyes still closed to slits even as he trembled and spat grey-streaked phlegm.

  “No, I am well, very well,” Temeraire croaked out frog-like the next morning, although he swallowed the kangaroo, stewed into small half-disintegrated lumps, only very slowly and with visible pain, and reluctantly. “We must go on: we must find the trail again.”

  “My dear,” Laurence said quietly, feeling a species of sneak, “I understand your feelings, but we must be practical: we must consider the egg which we yet have, and put its safety before the one which has been lost. Any strange territory is dangerous, wholly unguided as we are; we have already nearly come to grief one and all, and several of our company have suffered worse misfortune. We risk the last egg with every moment we continue: only your utmost exertions were sufficient to preserve it from this last disaster; if we should encounter a second such, could you honestly declare your present strength equal to the task?”

  Temeraire was silent, his head bowed deeply over the last, the tiny egg. Laurence could not repress acute guilt: deeply unfair to use Temeraire’s feelings so against him, perhaps even smacking of dishonesty, yet Laurence could not for a moment wish to withdraw, if by such a low method he might persuade Temeraire to take the rest necessary for his own health, even if a thousand eggs should be cracked upon the sands. “When you are recovered,” Laurence said, “and the fire has died down, we will have more opportunity of finding the trail again. There is this benefit: the fire has quite cleared the landscape for our search.”

  “But also all the trail,” Temeraire said sadly. “I cannot see how we should ever find them again if we wait at all; although I suppose I am being foolish. The trail is lost, and there is no help for it. Oh!” he cried. “I am glad we are never to go back to England again, Laurence: I do not think I should ever be able to look Cantarella in the face.”

  Temeraire cast his wings up and hid his head beneath them, afterwards, and did not care to speak; Laurence rested his hand on Temeraire’s muzzle, for what comfort wordless sympathy might convey, and then fetched his writing-case and sat beside him in the dim shadowed cavern the wing-membranes made, pale bluish-grey light filtering in through their translucence. Laurence had been keeping a log of the journey, from the habit of service days; now he added the annotation,

  Our present Location remains uncertain: we have been thrown thoroughly off any course, and we cannot be sure of the hour until we have made Noon, if the Sun should prove visible, at present it remains concealed within the extensive Haze. We are encamped beside a Creek, but this may as easily be the same dry bed of two days heretofore, or one entirely new, so I have not put it on the Chart. I hope we will retrace our steps towards Sydney, soon, when Dorset feels Temeraire is up to so much Activity.

  He wrote to Jane afterwards, a separate sheet to enclose with the letter he had already begun to her: he felt he could not put off so unpleasant a task on Granby as to convey the intelligence of the loss of the egg. If it had not been estimated so valuable in England, here it had been priceless, where the long journey would make any shipment of additional eggs all the more difficult; and if Jane had fresh hostilities to contend with, in Spain, she would all the less wish to spare more eggs to the very hypothetical breeding grounds of this new continent.

  The camp was quiet, except for coughing. Laurence sipped at a mug of grog at intervals himself, the heat a little soothing against the rawness of his throat; there was a heaviness to his limbs, and despite all the game easy to hand, he did not wish to eat apart from a little biscuit soaked in water, which went down softly.

  No one had much appetite. Aviators often did not set a regular meal hour, and lately the scarcity of water had made their mealtimes still more irregular, occurring when sufficient number of the party began to make a noise of protest; to-day no one spoke, even as the day advanced and the noon hour must have gone, even though the sun had not shown itself clear. The younger aviators only had any interest in their surroundings, more resilient: Demane had been foraging, and Roland had organized Sipho and Paul Widener—Rankin’s signal-ensign, an anxious and fretful sort of boy—to butcher his findings and put out the meat to dry, sprinkled thoroughly with salt. For their immediate delectation, they roasted a brace of large lizards on sticks: Demane had found them alive but so dazed by smoke and thunder they might be taken by hand.

  “It is quite good, sir,” Roland said, offering some to Laurence, but what little of the smell he could perceive over the clouding of his senses was not appealing enough to provoke his deadened appetite.

  They had already more meat than they would require for the return voyage; Demane went out again anyway, unable to resist the bounty, and coming back in the space of less than half-an-hour put down his latest trophy, a handsome-sized kangaroo, only a little singed, and then ducked under Temeraire’s wing.

  Laurence looked up; Demane said, “There are men there, on the other side of those dunes.”

  The men were for attacking at once, “before they creep away again, and come lurking upon us during the night, and steal away another,” O’Dea said, presenting this to Laurence and Rankin, as a petition on their behalf. “Even the little one ought be able to do for them—” meaning Caesar, rather bloodthirstily, and Rankin said icily, “That will be quite enough, Mr. O’Dea; when your opinion is desired again it will be solicited.”

  A good deal of resentful muttering followed this, which the convicts did not trouble themselves to keep low; Rankin ignored it roundly, but Laurence shook his head a little: he had seen mutiny before, and with less motivation than the conviction of imminent murder. With Temeraire and even Caesar a little ill and groggy, there could be a real mischief done, if the convicts chose to try and seize upon himself or Rankin, or even another of the crewmen whom Temeraire valued.

  “It is not them,” Demane said, loudly and impatiently. “They do not have the egg.”

  Temeraire stirred, here, from his restless drowse, and raised his head: when he understood, he brightened and said, “But perhaps they may know where the others have gone—” and swinging his head towards the convicts asked, “Can no-one of you speak with them?”

  “It is no good talking to them,” O’Dea said, “what we want is some quick action: if they know we are here, they are sure to run off again, and steal back—”

  “They do know we are here,” Demane said. “They saw me taking the kangaroo.”

  “Well, he is a black fellow, though, isn’t he; one of them,” one man said; Demane was certainly of sable complexion, but hailing from the south of Africa had no more in common with the natives than this accident of coloration; although Laurence supposed doubtfully this might engender some common feeling, or at least defer the suspicion which their own appearance, so far different, might provoke.

  “Are any of you gentlemen conversant with their tongue?” Laurence said, and after a little shuffling O’Dea granted that he had some experience; so, too, did a Richard Shipley, one of the younger of the convicts, not twenty and one, who said, “Though not much more than to trade some rum or some buttons for—well, sir, for a little company,” with a blush.

  “I cannot see how that will be any use here,” Temeraire said anxiously. “I might make out a little bit, or they might know some other language: perhaps I ought to come as well.”

  “That must substantially diminish any hope of their receiving us in a friendly manner,” Laurence said, and checked his pistols, instead, which if smaller were no less deadly.

  He and Tharkay and Forthing took their two prospective interpreters, however inadequate, and Demane led them over the charred dunes perhaps a mile from the camp, near the far edge of the seared band where the marks of the fire ended and the vegetation had escaped. The aborigines had already collected their own supply of game, many dead animals strung together, and were standing near the unburnt ground, holding some discussion amongst themselves: four men, and a youth perhaps a few yea
rs older than Demane. Laurence was surprised, when they drew nearer, to see that the ground before them was burning, and evidently by their doing. They were watching it with narrow, careful attention, and stamping out flames which leapt back towards them.

  The aborigines received them not unwarily but without open hostility, and when Shipley and O’Dea hesitantly spoke, they listened and made some reply. This at once exceeded the translators’ limits; Shipley said, “It don’t sound at all like, a word or two maybe.”

  Laurence turned instead to pantomime and sketchwork, in the conveniently empty canvas of the burnt ground which showed his lopsided figures red against the black of the ash; he tried to draw a picture of the egg, large, being carried away by small men—blank looks only—and then held out a fragment of the pottery.

  This opened some species of communication: the aborigines nodded, and one held out a spear-thrower, which Laurence was startled to see decorated at the end with a string of porcelain beads in red and blue, and another of jade and pearls. He pointed at the pistol in Laurence’s belt. Laurence shook his head and said, “No, I thank you,” rather bewildered to be offered such a bargain in the middle of the desert. The hunter shrugged and equably accepted refusal, and when Laurence brought out his map and laid it out, they were willing enough to look down at the chart.

  This, however, they did not seem to think meaningful; they touched the paper between their fingers appreciatively, and traced the colored lines of ink, but turned it upside-down and back without sign of recognition, even the territory lately traversed which Laurence pointed out to them, the newly marked creek beds and salt pans and hills which must have been familiar landmarks; but perhaps the aborigines did not have the habit of mapmaking.