Tongues of Serpents: A Novel of Temeraire

by Naomi Novik

  Temeraire tried to paddle a bit, to move himself along; another united heave, and he slid a few more inches through the muck. A few men fell to their knees, panting; all but hanging from the rope. Caesar snapped, “There’s enough of that, we are all pulling, aren’t we? Get up, then.”

  They crawled back up. Forthing sent Sipho down the line with a swallow of rum for each man—the last dribbled end of their supply, with nowhere to look for more; but he did not mix it with water, and the taste of the hard liquor heartened them, more a memory of satisfaction than a reality with the sun still beating upon them, but with a great straining effort they drew again upon the ropes, and Caesar, for all his complaining, threw his powerful shoulders fully into the effort.

  Kulingile, too, strained; he drew great heaving breaths, and his long claws scrabbled into the earth as he leaned into the harness, and then abruptly his slack and crumpled sides belled out very like sails catching the wind into smooth roundness. He gasped in his thin fragile voice, and clawed furiously at the ground again; Demane was by his head, encouraging and pulling also. “What is the matter?” he said, then catching sight of the swelled-out sides said, “Dorset! Dorset, what is wrong with him!”

  “Not now!” Forthing snapped, “all together, heave—” The ropes slid upon the oilcloth and putting their heads down they one and all pulled: feet dug into the sand, driving up dark red hillocks of the damp sand below. One man started to sing, “There were two lofty wyrms from Old England came,” and one after another took it up: awkward voices, dry and cracked with the heat and lack of water, and tuneless; but their feet crept on, little by little the ropes crept after them, and Temeraire was moving.

  Then abruptly someone yelled, “Christ, the buggers are coming at us,” and the ropes were falling. Caesar turned in the yoke and was instantly in a tangle as men dropped all the slack of the ropes and began to run, as a couple of the bunyips made a sudden darting-quick lunge down the slope, lean and serpentine, broad splayed feet webbed a little between narrow clawed fingers to give them purchase on the sand.

  Roland was too short to get more than her fingertips on the rope; she had her pistol out already, and her first shot caught the advancing bunyip in the thigh. It flinched back, its mouth opening on a peculiar and incongruous sound, a low throaty howl more like the coughing of a hyena than the hiss of a reptile, and then it came swarming on again.

  “Roland!” Temeraire called, very anxiously, and Laurence found his hand uselessly clenching upon his sword hilt. “If I should roar,” Temeraire began, but he could not—the divine wind would as surely have killed Roland herself, or more likely brought the whole slope down upon them and buried them bunyips, men, and dragons all together into a single common grave. Temeraire strained his neck, but he was too far to reach.

  She held her position coolly; she was already reloading, the cartridge tearing in her teeth, black powder into the barrel and then the wadding and the bullet rammed down hard, powder in the pan, and she took aim and fired again as it drew nearer.

  The second shot took it in the throat, and the howl was choked; blood ran deep, near-black from the wound, very like dragon blood, dripping upon the sand and making small wet pockets in the red earth; the bunyip curled over itself coughing. Young Ensign Widener had his small single pistol drawn now: he fired also, though the recoil nearly staggered him, and the second bunyip flinched from the noise; then instead of continuing after the fleeing men, it darted for the ropes themselves.

  It moved a little awkwardly, perhaps, over the sand: a quick but skittering motion, the hind legs small and the forelegs enormous and disproportionate, and two strange half-circle stubs rising between the shoulders, small webbed ridges. Seen in profile, it had an enormous lantern-jawed head, built to crush and grip, and the talons of the forelegs were short but hard gleaming-black horn; it seized upon the rope and took a length between its jaws and began to pull.

  “Damn you all for cowards!” Roland yelled over her shoulder as she reloaded, “come back here and stop them; or they’ll pick us all off,” and she fired again; Forthing had dragged himself free of the ropes, and Demane, who had been at the end: he dived for Laurence’s pistols, in amongst his things, and fired again at the bunyip.

  The shots took chips off the rock, and one struck home; the second bunyip howled and let go the rope, retreating; it stopped only to nose the first, still bleeding, and they together skittered limping back up the slope to rejoin the rest of the watchful band, the others more patient, more prepared to wait.

  Their effort had not been in vain, if it had cost them: the ropes hung slack and all ahoo, Caesar only making matters worse with his efforts to work loose, and the chewing had worn through a couple of strands of the cable. Forthing inspected the damage grimly, and then he said, “Back to the work, gentlemen,” and detailed off Roland and Demane with pistols to stand guard.

  The men straggled back from their panicked flight, but not all of them: two did not return, and Laurence looking up at the ridge noted that there were fewer bunyips watching than before; they had not failed to take advantage, then, of the confusion which they had created. “It is not at all fair,” Temeraire said stormily, “that they will do such things where I cannot even try to fight back; low, and sneaking, and they ought to be ashamed. I am glad that we have drunk their water, and wrecked their territory; I will do it again, whenever I am loose.”

  They resumed their effort. Caesar was untangled; the damaged rope was mended, a little, as best it could be, and Fellowes wrapped some oilcloth about the gnawed section and sewed it down with waxed thread. The men spat upon their hands, and rubbed them with dirt, and took hold.

  No one sang. Inch by inch, Temeraire shifted. “If you should exhale, just as they heave,” Laurence said, “you might make a little more slack in the sand,” and the trick helped, a little. All together breathed in, and took hold, and exhaling pulled; Temeraire breathing out opened a small gap of softness in the quicksand, into which they might drag him a little further.

  “Oh,” he said, abruptly, “pull! Pull harder, I think I can feel a little rock—” and with this encouragement they all threw their backs into another throw, and then all were stumbling onto their knees with the ropes gone suddenly slack, as Temeraire gave a low struggling hiss and managed to pull himself nearly a foot further along.

  He was obliged to stop, panting, but he did not sink back; they drew the ropes slack again, and with another heave, now all their efforts united, his breastbone rose several more inches from the clinging mirk.

  Laurence swung down onto Temeraire’s shoulder and said, “Mr. Forthing, if you will fetch me a shovel, I think we may begin to do some good clearing some of this away,” and they detailed away some five of the men to the work: shoveling away the quicksand from before Temeraire’s body, to the sides, while the hauling teams yet strained to assist him in the effort of climbing free.

  The evening was coming on a little; the watching bunyips one after another began to disappear, as Temeraire made his slow and creeping escape. When at last they freed his first foreleg, coming loose with a gargled sucking noise like a choked drain running clear, the last of them were gone, and when Roland and Demane warily went to look over the edge of the slope, they returned to report no sign of the bunyips anywhere upon the flat plain of the desert: likely they had gone somewhere beneath the earth, to brood upon the failure of their attempt, and perhaps to envision another.

  With his forelegs free, Temeraire might more easily exert force, and they restrung the ropes around his mid-section, behind the foreleg joints, to better pull; he began to drag himself onward, little by little, and they dug around the ends of his wings to free them. Then around the hindquarters, as little by little he crawled the rest of the way out and crumpled exhausted upon the solid ledge of rock, free at last, and caked thickly with red sand dried onto him by the sun.

  “Oh, how tired I am,” he said, and closed his eyes; they were united in thirst and hunger, but exhaustion commanded sti
ll more of their spirit, and the men were dropping where they stood.

  Laurence sat down and leaned against Temeraire’s side, heedless of the red sand crumbling over his coat, and closed his eyes; then he opened them again, and looked up as Iskierka came spiraling down from the clouds and demanded, “Whatever have you been doing? You are all over sand; and where is the egg? You might have found it again by now.”

  Chapter 12

  ISKIERKA DID at least go hunting for them, when she had understood what had happened, and helped to dig a channel from the quicksand pit which drained the water into a rock basin, where they might drink; so she was not useless, but she was still inclined to be critical and particularly of their having lost the trail.

  Temeraire informed her with some asperity that he would have liked to see her do better, with a firestorm and a typhoon to be managed, all at once—if it had not precisely been a typhoon, it seemed far too mild to call it only a thunderstorm, and not at all reflective of the experience—and added, “And there was the third egg to be managed, also, at the time.”

  “Which was nowhere near as good an egg,” Iskierka said disapprovingly, “as anyone could tell, only looking at it, and now you see what has come of it. Finish eating and hurry up, then, as we are bringing you along,” she added to Kulingile, “which I do not understand.”

  Kulingile could not really be accused of eating slowly: he was taking everything which had been left, in gulps the very limit of his capacity. His sides had collapsed into their odd folds again only a little while after they had first swelled out; but twice more during the effort they had inflated and then crumpled once more. Demane was anxious, but it did not seem to have hurt the dragonet, Temeraire thought; at least, Dorset had not said anything dire, though he had examined Kulingile closely afterwards.

  “So he might yet fly, after all, even if he cannot just yet,” Temeraire said. “I did not always have the divine wind. Anyway, Laurence wished it: it would be immoral to leave him behind, as I understand it.”

  “I don’t see what morality has to do with carrying about someone who cannot fly,” Iskierka said.

  “We have been carried about by the Allegiance, ourselves, when we could not have flown all the way,” Temeraire said, “and if we did leave him, he would have to starve, as he cannot hunt; or what if those bunyips tried to snatch him? He was small enough, when he hatched, that they might have managed it.”

  “I don’t see why you always want to dwell on and on about what will happen with things that are properly none of your affair, and far away,” Iskierka said, dismissively.

  Even Granby, to Temeraire’s dismay, did not seem to wholly approve; he looked wincingly at Kulingile, and Temeraire overheard him saying, to Forthing, “I don’t need to be told how it was: I am sure Rankin was a brute about it, and set his back up instead of explaining properly; I only wish I had been here sooner.”

  To Laurence he made no reproach directly, but said with excessive heartiness, “Well, one never knows in these cases what may happen, after all; although, we cannot be too slow—Riley can give us a little more time, he must wait for something to do with the monsoon, but—although, it is just as well, for there was still no news from England about Bligh, so perhaps …” and then trailed off in a very awkward way, and began instead to speak of the bunyips.

  It was very irritating, and Temeraire was still tired, and sore; there was sand everywhere sand could be, and nothing like enough water to be properly washed, or even to drink as much as he liked; so he was by no means in a happy mood as the men boarded him again. “I wish,” he said to Laurence, “I do wish that other dragons were not always thinking me peculiar; not that anyone would value Iskierka’s opinion, but it makes one doubtful.”

  “I hope you never doubt the value of charity,” Laurence said, “regardless of any contrary opinion which you should meet: do you imagine Iskierka would have concerned herself particularly with the fate of the French dragons, as a consequence of the spreading of the disease?”

  “No-o,” Temeraire said, and looking slantwise asked, “Laurence, then you are quite sure that we have done as we ought?”

  “Very sure,” Laurence said. “And consider, my dear: a week ago his imminent death was certain, and now he is eating well and steadily gaining weight, and he was of material use in extracting you from the quicksand. I must think his prospects of further improvement are high.”

  That was not precisely what Temeraire had meant, but he was very cheered to know that Laurence felt the two acts were connected in such a way, and equally necessary; he had wondered sometimes if Laurence might have had some regrets—some feeling of disappointment, that Temeraire had asked so much of him. He did not at all mind bringing Kulingile along, or carrying him forever, if it should mean Laurence were not distressed.

  And, he suddenly realized to his consolation, if he were doing so, then it was not really as though Demane was not his own anymore: if Kulingile was to be always riding with him, then it was more as though he was part of Temeraire’s crew himself. “And,” he told Kulingile, who listened intently, “if we should see some action, I think you might be of very real use, as no one might board while you were on my back: if only you can contrive not to grow very much more.”

  “Well, I will try,” Kulingile said, but then he took the second half of the lizard in front of him and threw his head back and swallowed the whole thing at once, so that it traveled down his throat as a distended lump, as much as to say, Look how much I have eaten.

  “That is not going to help,” Temeraire said, exasperated.

  There was not very much more water to be had, either, as they flew onward: the water-holes which they found were almost all drying up, in the heat of the day, in a suspicious manner. “I expect they are telling one another to dry them up for us,” Temeraire said, rather disgruntled, as he lapped a little water up from a rocky basin; he could not take nearly as much as he wanted, as it should have to serve for all.

  “Well, let us dig up some more of these coverings, and then I will breathe fire in at them,” Iskierka proposed. “That will bring them out, and they will soon learn not to be causing trouble for us.”

  “I don’t see why you must be so quarrelsome,” Caesar said. “I suppose if you want to be dragging up their houses all over, you can’t be too angry if they don’t like it, and I don’t much fancy waking in the middle of the night up to my neck in sand, either. We might leave them a kangaroo or two, and see if that sweetens them up to give us water.”

  “As if we were going to give them presents, after the way they have behaved,” Temeraire said, revolted, and Iskierka snorted her disdain; but much to their shared dismay, Laurence and Granby thought the idea sound.

  “Consider, my dear, the very real difficulty we should have in constantly facing the objections of so widespread and hostile a force,” Laurence said, “if indeed they are communicating, as you imagine not without grounds.”

  “And we are not here to pick quarrels with bunyips or anyone else, for that matter,” Granby said. “We are here to find that egg, and be shot of this wretched desert; if they like to live here, there is no reason we shouldn’t leave it to them, if you ask me.”

  To make matters still worse, Rankin alone disagreed. “You will only encourage the creatures by bribing them,” he said, “and induce them to think humans more worthwhile prey: they ought to be eradicated one and all.”

  If he did concede so far as to not at once fire all the bunyips’ lairs—which was a pity, as it seemed to Temeraire an excellent strategy, particularly as the bunyips should also have to flee the smoke, and come out for a proper fight, instead of hiding away—Temeraire could not quite see his way clear to leaving the bunyips a kangaroo.

  “It is no more thrown away than letting that one stuff it into his gullet,” Caesar said, meaning Kulingile, but for his part, Temeraire felt he should rather feed Kulingile twenty kangaroos than see the bunyips profit from one, when he had hunted it down.

  �
�If we had begun by tearing up their homes,” he said, “I might see the justice in it, but after all, we did not; we did not even know they were there, until after they had stolen some of our men, and eaten them, which is barbarous anyway. If anyone were to be apologizing and giving presents, it ought to be them and not us; instead they are only quarreling more, by stealing the water, now, too.”

  “If they have brought the water there in the first place, it seems to me they aren’t the ones doing the stealing,” Caesar said, but that was plainly absurd; it was not as though the bunyips had made the water. The water was there, and they had only moved it to a place most convenient for themselves, to trick people into coming near their traps; another part of a low sneaking strategy which deserved not the least bit of credit.

  “Anyway, they might have said something if they did not like us to drink. They set the water out on purpose, and make it look as though it is not theirs, so it does not seem to me they can complain if we treat it like any other water,” Temeraire said.

  But it was very tiring and inconvenient to have to stop, over and over, to drink what little they could get at any one water-hole. It was not even restful, for one could not feel refreshed with so little to drink, and his throat ached all the worse. Temeraire still felt a deep unpleasant ache in his forelegs and hindquarters after his ordeal, and it was more of an effort than it ought to have been to spring aloft every time.

  He sighed a little; and they must again fly sweeps, to watch for any fragment of pottery or silk or anything else which might have been brought from China; of course he was glad to have found the trail again, but there was no denying it was pleasanter flying when they could only guess, and go on flying straight.

  However, watching the ground as they drew near yet another half-dry water-hole, he did at length near the end of the day catch sight of a little movement: a shadow which did not quite fit the rest of the ground, and Temeraire realized all at once it was one of them, the bunyips. He dived at once, stretching, and the bunyip burst suddenly into motion, skittering away across the sand towards a bare patch of ground, and as Temeraire reached, it squirmed itself madly beneath the earth, casting up a cascade of sand at its heels as it burrowed.