Victory of Eagles

No one moved at first; then Laurence reached out and took a short cutlass, from the heap. The lieutenant looked into his face, and knew him, but said nothing. Turning to the opening Laurence worked his shoulders out, hands quickly beneath his feet to support him, and eeled out as the lieutenant started calling again. Shortly, a rope was flung down to him from the deck above, so he could brace himself against the hull. Many faces peered over anxiously, all strangers; then another man came sliding down over the rail, and another, to work on the other harpoons.

Making a bright target against the ship's paintwork, Laurence began the grim effort of sawing away at the cable, strands fraying one at a time. The rope was cable-laid: three hawsers of three strands, well wormed and thick as a man's wrist, parcelled in canvas.

If he were killed, at least his family would be spared the embarrassment of his hanging. He was only alive now to be a chain round Temeraire's neck, until the Admiralty judged the dragon pacified enough by age and habit that Laurence might be dispensed. That could mean he faced years, long years, mouldering in gaol or in the bowels of a ship.

It was not a purposeful thought, no guilty intention; it only crossed his mind involuntarily, while he worked. He had his back to the ocean and could not see anything of the frigate or the larger battle beyond: his horizon was the splintered paint of Goliath's side, lacquered shine made rough by splinters and salt, and the cold sea was climbing up her hull and spraying his back. Distant roars of cannon-fire spoke, but Goliath had let her guns fall silent, saving her powder and shot for when they should be of some use. The loudest noises in his ears were the grunts and effort of the men hanging near-by, sawing at their own harpoon lines. Then one of them gave a startled yell and let go his rope, falling away into the churning ocean; a small darting courier-beast, a Chasseur-Vocifère, was plunging at the side of the ship with another harpoon.

The beast held it something like a jouster in a medieval tournament, with the butt rigged awkwardly into a cup attached to its harness, for support, and two men on its back bracing the rig. The harpoon thumped dully against the ship's side, near to where Laurence hung, and the dragon's tail slapped a wash of salt water up into his face, heavy stinging thickness in his nostrils and dripping down the back of his throat as he choked it out. The dragon lunged away again even as the Marines fired off a furious volley, trailing the harpoon on its line behind it: the barb had not bitten deep enough to penetrate. The hull was pockmarked with the dents of earlier attempts, a good dozen for each planted harpoon marring her spit-and-polish paintwork.

Laurence wiped salt from his face against his arm and shouted, ‘Keep working, man, damn you,’ at the other seaman still hanging near him. The first strand was going, tough fibres fraying away from the cutlass edge and fanning out like a broom. He began on the second, rapidly, although the blade was going dull.

The roar of the cannon made him jerk, involuntarily, and the ball came whistling across the water, skipping two, three times along the wave-tops, like a stone thrown by a boy. It looked as though it came straight for him, an illusion. The whole ship groaned as the ball punched at the bows, and splinters flew like a sudden blizzard out of the open portholes. They peppered Laurence's legs, stinging like a flock of bees, and his stockings were quickly wet with blood. He clung on to the harpoon arm and kept sawing; the frigate was still firing, her broadside rolling on, and the roundshot hurtled at them again and again. There was a sickening deep sway to Goliath's motion now as she took the pounding.

He had to hand the cutlass back and shout for a fresh one to get through the last strand. Then at last the cable was cut loose and swinging away free, and they pulled him back in. He staggered when he tried to stand, and went to his knees slipping in blood: stockings laddered and soaked through red; his best breeches, the ones he had worn for the trial, were pierced and spotted. He was helped to sit against the wall, and turned the cutlass on his own shirt, for bandages to tie up the worst of the gashes; no-one could be spared to help him to the surgeons. The other harpoons had been cut and they were moving at last, coming around. All the crews were fixed by their guns, savage in the dim red glow, teeth bared and mazed with blood from cracked lips and gums, their faces black with sweat and grime, ready to take vengeance.

Suddenly, a loud pattering like rain or hailstones came down: small bombs with short fuses dropped by the French dragons. Lightning flashes were visible through the boards of the deck. Some rolled down through the ladderways and burst in the gun-deck, hot flash-powder smoke and the burning glare of pyrotechnics, painful to the eyes. Then the cannon were speaking as they hove around in view of the frigate, and the order came down to fire.

There was nothing for a long moment but the mindless fury of the ship's guns going: impossible to think in that roaring din, smoke and hellish fire in her bowels choking away all reason. Laurence reached up for the port-hole when they had paused, and hauled himself up to look. The French frigate was reeling away under the pounding, her foremast down and hulled below the water-line, so each wave slapping away poured into her.

There was no cheering. Past the retreating frigate, the breadth of the Channel spread open before them. All the great ships of the blockade were as entangled and harassed as they had been. Bucephalas and the mighty Gloucester, both 100 guns, were near enough to recognize. They wore cables rising up to three and four dragons; a flock of French heavyweights and middleweights industriously tugging them every which way. The ships were firing steadily but uselessly, clouds of smoke that did not reach the dragons above.

And between them, half a dozen French ships-of-the-line, come out of harbour at last, were stately going by, escort to an enormous flotilla. A hundred and more, barges and fishing boats and even rafts in lateen rig, all of them crammed with soldiers, the wind at their backs and the tide carrying them towards the shore, tricolours streaming proudly from their bows towards England.

With the Navy paralysed, only the dragons of the Corps were left to stop the advance. But the French warships were firing something like pepper into the air above the flotilla, in quantities that could never have been afforded if it were. It burned. Red spark fragments glowed like fireflies against the black smoke-cloud hanging over the boats, shielding them from aerial attack. One of the transport boats was near enough that Laurence saw the men had their faces covered with wet kerchiefs and rags, or huddled under oilcloth sheets. The British dragons made desperate attempts to dive, but recoiled from the clouds, and had instead to fling down bombs from too great a height: ten splashing into the wide ocean for every one which came near enough to make a wave against a ship's hull. The smaller French dragons harried them too, flying back and forth and jeering in shrill voices. There were so many of them, Laurence had never seen so many: wheeling almost like birds, clustering and breaking apart, offering no easy target to the British dragons in their stately formations.

One great Regal Copper, who might have been Maximus: red and orange and yellow against the blue sky, flew at the head of a formation with Yellow Reapers in lines to each wing, but Laurence did not see Lily. The Regal roared, audible faintly even over the distance, and bulled his formation through a dozen French lightweights to come at a great French warship: flames bloomed from her sails as the bombs at last hit, but when the formation rose away again, one of the Reapers was streaming crimson from its belly and another was listing. A handful of British frigates, too, were valiantly trying to dash past the French ships to come at the transports: with some little success, but they were under heavy fire, and if they sank a dozen boats, half the men were pulled aboard others, so close were the little transports to one another.

‘Every man to his gun,’ the lieutenant said sharply. Goliath was turning to go after the transports. She would be passing between Majestueux and Héros, a broadside of nearly three tons between them. Laurence felt it when her sails caught the wind properly again: the ship leaping forward like an eager racehorse held too long. She had made all sail. He touched his leg: the blood had stopped flowing, he thought. He limped back to an empty place at a gun.

Outside, the first transports were already hurtling onward to the shore, lightweight dragons wheeled above to shield them while they ran artillery onto the ground. One soldier rammed the standard into the dirt, the golden eagle atop catching fire with the sunlight: Napoleon had landed in England at last.

Chapter Two

The question sent out, Temeraire found the prospect of an answer almost worse. Before, the world itself had been undecided. If Laurence was still in it he might as easily stay alive as not, and so long as Temeraire continued to believe, Laurence was alive, at least in part. At best, the news would report that he was still imprisoned. As the day crept onward, Temeraire began to feel that certainty was a weak reward for the risk of receiving an answer to the contrary, a possibility Temeraire could not bear to envision. A great blankness engulfed him if he tried, like a grey sky full of clouds above and below, fog all around.

He wanted distraction badly, and there was none, except to talk to Perscitia, who was at least interesting, if infuriating also. Perscitia liked to think herself a great genius, and she was certainly unusually clever, even if she could not quite grasp the notion of writing. Occasionally, to Temeraire's discomfiture, she would leap quite far ahead, and come out with some strange notion, from none of the books Temeraire had read, that could neither be disproved, nor quarrelled with.

But she was so jealous of her discoveries that she flew into a temper when Temeraire informed her that any of them had been made before, and she was resentful of the hierarchy of the breeding grounds, which denied her the just desserts of her brilliance. Because of her middling size, she had to make do with an inconvenient poky clearing down in the moorlands, about which she complained endlessly. It provided little more than an overhang to shelter from the rain.

‘So why do you not take a better place?’ Temeraire said, exasperated. ‘There are several very nice ones directly over there, in the cliff face; you would be much more comfortable there, I am sure.’

‘One does not like to be quarrelsome’ Perscitia said being evasive and entirely false: she liked very well to be quarrelsome, and Temeraire did not understand what that had to do with taking an empty cave, either, but at least it diverted the subject.

The only event of note was that it rained for a week without stopping, with a steady driving wind that came in to all the cave-mouths and permeated the ground, and made everyone perfectly miserable. Temeraire was very glad of his antechamber, where he could shake off the water and dry before retreating to the comfort of his larger chamber. Several of the smallest dragons, courier-weights living in the hollows by the river, were flooded out of their homes entirely. Feeling sorry for their muddy and bedraggled state, Temeraire invited them to stop in his cavern, while the rain continued, so long as they first washed off the mud. They were, at least, loud with appreciation for his arrangements.

A few days later, when he was once again solitary and brooding over Laurence, a shadow crossed over the mouth of his cave. It was the big Regal Copper, Requiescat; he ducked in through the antechamber and came into Temeraire's main chamber, uninvited. He gazed around the room with an impressed air, and nodding said, ‘It is just as nice as they said.’

‘Thank you,’ Temeraire said, thawed a little by the compliment. He did not feel much like company, but remembered he must be polite. ‘Will you sit down? I am sorry I cannot offer you tea.’

‘Tea?’ Requiescat said absently. He was busy poking his nose into the corners of the cave, even putting his tongue out to smell them, as if he were at home; Temeraire's ruff began to bristle.

‘I beg your pardon,’ he said, stiffly, ‘I am afraid you have found me unprepared for guests,’ which he thought was a clever way of hinting that Requiescat might go away again.

But the Regal Copper did not take the hint; or at any rate he did not choose to go. but instead settled himself comfortably along the back of the cave and said, ‘Well, old fellow, I am afraid we will have to swap.’

‘Swap?’ Temeraire said, puzzled, until he divined that Requiescat meant caves. ‘I do not want your cave,’ adding hastily, ‘I am sure that it is very nice, but I have just got this one arranged to suit me.’

‘This one is much bigger now,’ Requiescat explained, ‘and it is much nicer in the wet. Mine,’ he added regretfully, ‘has been full of puddles all week; wet clear through to the back.’

‘Then I can hardly see why I would change,’ Temeraire said, still more baffled, and then he sat up, outraged and astonished, and let his ruff spread fully. ‘Why, you are a damned scrub,’ he said. ‘How dare you come here, and behave like a visitor, when all the time it is a challenge? I have never seen anything so devious in my life; it is the sort of thing Lien would do,’ he added, cuttingly. ‘You may get out at once. If you want my cave you may try to take it. I will meet you anytime you like: now, or at dawn tomorrow.’

‘Now, now, let us not get excited,’ Requiescat said soothingly. ‘I can see you are a young fellow, right enough. A challenge, really! It is nothing of the sort; I am the most peaceable fellow in the world, and I do not want to fight anyone. I am sorry if I was ham-handed about it. It is not that I want to take your cave, you see—’ Temeraire did not see, in the least, ‘—it is a question of appearances. Here you are a month, with the nicest cave, and you nowhere near the biggest either.’ Requiescat preened his own side, a little. He certainly outweighed any dragon Temeraire had seen, except Maximus and Laetificat. ‘We have our own little ways here, of arranging things to keep everyone comfortable. No one wants any fighting to cut up our peace, not when there is no need. It would be a nasty-tempered sort of fellow who would get to fighting over one cave versus another, both of them large and handsome; but distinctions must be preserved.’

‘Stuff,’ Temeraire said. ‘It sounds to me like you have become so lazy, having all your meals given to you and nothing to do, that you do not even want to put yourself to the trouble of properly bullying other people. Or maybe,’ he added, having made up his mind to be really insulting, ‘you are just a coward, and thought I was the same. Well, I am not, and I am not going to give you my cave, either, no matter what you do.’

Requiescat did not rise to the remarks, but only shook his head dolefully. ‘There, I am not a clever chap, so I have made a mull of explaining, and now your back is put up. I suppose we will have to get the council together, or you will never believe me. It is a bother, but it is your right, after all.’ He heaved himself back to his feet and added, infuriatingly, ‘You may keep the place until then; it will take me a day or so to get word to everyone,’ before he padded out again, leaving Temeraire quivering with rage.

‘His cave is the nicest,’ Perscitia said anxiously, later, ‘at least, we have certainly always thought so. I am sure you would like it, and maybe you could make it even more pleasant than this? Why don't you go and see it before quarrelling?’

‘I do not care if it is Ali Baba's cave, and full of gold and lamps,’ Temeraire said, not even trying to master his temper. It felt better to be angry than miserable, and he was glad of having something else to think about instead of that which he could do nothing to repair. ‘It is a question of principle. I am not going to be bullied, as though I were not up to fighting him. If I made the other cave nice, he would only try and take it back, I am sure. Or some other dragon would try and push me out. Who are this council?’

‘It is all the biggest dragons,’ Perscitia said, ‘and a Longwing, although Gentius does not bother to come out much anymore.’

‘All of them his friends, I suppose,’ Temeraire said.

‘Oh no; no one much likes Requiescat.’ Moncey said, perched on the lip of Temeraire's cave. ‘He eats so much, and will never take less, even if it's short commons all around. But he is the biggest, and there should not be fighting, so the general rule is that caves go by who is strongest if there is any quarrel. No one is allowed to take a place out of his class, or others will get jealous and squabble.’

‘You see, it is just as I told you: all unfairness,’ Perscitia said bitterly, ‘as if the only quality of any importance were one's weight, or how good one is at scratching and biting and kicking up a fuss; never any consideration for really remarkable qualities.’

‘I grant it has some practical sense as a way to choose caves,’ Temeraire said, ‘but it is nonsense that after I have taken one— One that he might have had at any time before I came, and did not want —he should be able to snatch it from me after I have gone to so much trouble to make it nice. And he is not stronger than me, either, if he does weigh more. I should like to know if he has sunk a frigate, alone, with a Fleur-de-Nuit on his back? And as for distinction, my ancestors were scholars in China while his were starving in pits.’

‘Be that as it may, he knows all the council, and you don't,’ Moncey said, practically. ‘You are hardly going to fight a dozen heavyweights at once, and beg pardon, but no one looking at you would say, “right-o, there is a match for old Requiescat.” Not that you are little, but you are a bit skinny-looking.’

‘I am not. Am I?’ Temeraire said, craning his head anxiously to look back at himself. He did not have spines along his back the way Maximus or Requiescat did, but was rather sleek; perhaps a bit long for his weight, by British standards. ‘But anyway, he is not a fire-breather, or an acidspitter.’

‘Are you?’ Moncey inquired.

‘No,’ Temeraire said, ‘but I have the divine wind. Laurence says that is even better.’ However, it belatedly occurred to him that perhaps Laurence might have been speaking partially; certainly Moncey and Perscitia looked blank, and it was difficult to explain just how it operated. ‘I roar, in a particular sort of way—I have to breathe quite deeply, and there is a clenching feeling, along the throat, and then—and then it makes things break—trees, and so on,’ Temeraire finished in an ashamed mutter, conscious that it sounded very dull and useless, when so described. ‘It is very unpleasant to be caught in it,’ he added defensively, ‘at least, so I understand from how others have reacted, if they are before me when I use it.’

‘How interesting,’ Perscitia said, politely, ‘I have often wondered what sound is, exactly; we ought to do some experiments.’

‘Experiments aren't going to help you with the council,’ Moncey said.

Temeraire switched his tail against his side, thinking, before saying with some distaste, ‘No, I see that: it is all politics. It is plain to me: I must work out what Lien would do.’

He cornered Lloyd, the next morning, and said, ‘Lloyd, I am very hungry today; may I have an extra cow, to take up to my cave?’

‘There, that is a little more like it,’ Lloyd said approvingly; not deaf at all to a request so satisfactory to his own ideas of dragon-husbandry. He ordered it directly, and while waiting Temeraire asked, attempting a casual air, ‘I do not suppose you might recall, who Gentius has sired?’

The old Longwing cracked a bleary eye, when Temeraire landed, and peered at him rather incuriously. ‘Yes?’ he said. His cave was not so large, but a comfortable dry hollow tucked well under the mountainside, on ground overlooking a curve of the creek; so positioned that he only had to creep downhill for a drink, and walk a short distance to a large flat rock full in the sun, where he presently lay napping.

‘I beg your pardon for not coming to visit you before, sir,’ Temeraire said, inclining his head, ‘I have served with Excidium these last three years at Dover—Your third hatchling,’ he added, when Gentius looked vague.

‘Yes, Excidium, of course,’ Gentius said, his tongue licking the air experimentally. Temeraire laid the cow down before him, butchered with the help of Moncey's small claws to take out the large bones. ‘A small gift to show my respect,’ Temeraire said, and Gentius brightened. ‘Why, that is trés gentil of you,’ he said, with atrocious pronunciation, which Temeraire remembered just in time not to correct, and took the cow into his mouth to gum at it slowly with the wobbly remainders of his teeth. ‘Most kind, as my first captain liked to say,’ Gentius mumbled reminiscently around it. ‘You might go in there and bring out her picture,’ he added, ‘if you are very careful with it.’

The portrait was rather odd and flat-looking, and the woman in it very plain, even before time and the elements had faded her; but it was in a really splendid golden frame, so large and thick that Temeraire could take it delicately between two talon-tips to lift it, and carry it out into the sun. ‘How beautiful,’ he said sincerely, holding it where Gentius could at least point his head in its direction, although his eyes were so milky with cataracts he could not have seen it as more than a blur in the golden square.

‘Charming woman,’ Gentius said, sadly. ‘She fed me my first bite, fresh liver, when my head was no bigger than her hand. One never quite gets over the first, you know.’

‘Yes,’ Temeraire said, low, and looked away unhappily; at least Gentius had not had her taken from him, and put who knew where.

When he had put the portrait back with equal care, and listened to a long story about one of the wars in which Gentius had fought – something with the Prussians, where pepper guns had been invented: very unpleasant things, especially when one had not been expecting them – then Gentius was quite ready to be sympathetic, and to shake his head censoriously over Requiescat's behaviour. ‘No proper manners, these days, that is what it is.’

‘I am very glad to hear you say so: that is just what I thought, but as I am quite young, I did not feel sure without advice from someone wiser, like yourself,’ Temeraire said, and then with sudden inspiration added, ‘I suppose next he will propose that if any of us have some treasure that he likes, gold or jewels, we must give it to him: it follows quite plainly.’

That was indeed enough to rouse Gentius up, with so handsome a treasure of his own to consider. ‘I do not see that you are wrong at all,’ he said, darkly. ‘Of course, we cannot have Winchesters taking caves fit for Regal Coppers, there would be no end of trouble and quarrelling, and sooner or later the men will involve themselves, and make it all even worse. They somehow think Reapers of less use than Anglewings, because there are more of them and they are clannish, instead of the other way round, and they have many more such odd notions. But that is not the same as taking away a cave perfectly suitable to your weight and standing.’ He paused and said delicately, ‘I do not suppose you had a formation of your own?’

‘No,’ Temeraire said, ‘at least, not officially. Arkady and the others fought under my orders, and I was wing-mates with Maximus: he is Laetificat's hatchling.’

‘Laetificat, yes; fine dragon,’ Gentius said. ‘I served with her, you know, in '76; we had a dust-up with the colonials at Boston. They had artillery above our positions—’

Temeraire came away eventually with Gentius's firm promise to attend the council-meeting, and returned to his cave pleased with the success of his primary efforts. ‘Who else is on the council?’ he asked.

While Perscitia began listing off names, Reedly, a mongrel half-Winchester, courier-weight with yellow streaks, piped up from the corner, ‘You ought to speak to Majestatis.’

Perscitia bristled at once. ‘I see no reason why he ought do any such thing. Majestatis is a very common sort of dragon; and he is not on the council, anyway.’

‘He made sure I got a share of the food, when we were all sick, and things were short,’ Minnow said, on the other side. She was a muddy-coloured feral with touches of Grey Copper and Sharpspitter and even a little Garde-de-Lyon, which had given her vivid orange eyes and blue spots to set off her otherwise drab colouring.

A low murmur of general agreement went around. A crowd had gradually accumulated in Temeraire's cave to offer their advice and remarks. A good many of the smaller dragons had interested themselves in Temeraire's case: those he had sheltered and their acquaintances, and the not-insignificant number, who had some injury, real or imagined, to lay at Requiescat's door. ‘And he is not on the council only because he does not care to be; he is a Parnassian.’ she said to Temeraire.

‘If he were a Flamme de Gloire, it would hardly signify,’ Perscitia said coldly, ‘as he does nothing but sleep all the time.’

Moncey nudged Temeraire with his head and murmured, ‘Corrected her once, six years ago.’

‘It was only an error of arithmetic!’ Perscitia said heatedly. ‘I should have found it out myself in a moment, I was only preoccupied by the much more important question—’

‘Where does he live?’ Temeraire asked, interrupting. He felt that anyone who had no time for politics must be rather sensible.

Majestatis was indeed sleeping when Temeraire came to see him; his cave was out of the way, and not very large. But Temeraire noticed that there was a carefully placed heap of stones, along the back, which blocked one's view into the interior. If he widened his pupils as far as they would go, he thought he could make out a darker space behind them, as if there were a passageway going back deeper into the mountainside.

He coiled himself neatly and waited without fidgeting, as was polite. But at length, when Majestatis showed no signs of waking, Temeraire coughed, then coughed again a little more emphatically. Majestatis sighed and said, without opening his eyes, ‘So you are not leaving, I suppose?’

‘Oh,’ Temeraire said, his ruff prickling, ‘I thought you were only sleeping, not ignoring me deliberately. I will go at once.’

‘Well, you might as well stay now,’ Majestatis said, lifting his head and yawning himself awake. ‘I don't bother to wake up if it isn't important enough to wait for, that's all.’

‘I suppose that is sensible, if you like to sleep better than to have a conversation,’ Temeraire said, dubiously.

‘You'll like it better in a few years yourself,’ Majestatis said.

‘I do not expect so,’ Temeraire said. ‘At least, the Analects say it is not proper for a dragon to sleep more than fourteen hours of the day, so I shan't, unless,’ he added, desolately, ‘I am still shut up in here, where there is nothing worth doing.’

‘If you think so, what are you doing here, instead of in the coverts?’ Majestatis said. He listened to the explanation with the casual sympathy of one listening to a storyteller, and passed no judgment, other than to nod equably and say, ‘A bad lot for you, poor worm.’

‘Why have you come here?’ Temeraire ventured. ‘You are not very old, yourself; do you really like to sleep so much? You might have a captain, and be in battles.’

Majestatis shrugged with one wing-tip, flared and folded down again. ‘Had one, mislaid him.’

‘Mislaid?’ Temeraire said.

‘Well,’ Majestatis said, ‘I left him in a water-trough, but I don't suppose he is still sitting there.’

He was not inclined to be very enthusiastic, even when Temeraire had explained,. He only sighed and said, ‘You are young, to be making such a fuss out of it.’

‘If I am,’ Temeraire retorted, ‘at least I am not complacent, and ready to let this sort of bullying go on, when I can do something about it; and I do not mean to be satisfied,’ he added, with a pointed look at the back of Majestatis's cave, ‘to arrange matters better only for myself.’

Majestatis's eyes narrowed, but he did not stir otherwise. ‘It seems to me you are as likely to make it worse for everyone at least. There's no wrangling now, and no one is getting hurt.’

‘No one is very comfortable, either,’ Temeraire said. ‘We all might have nicer places, but no one will work to improve theirs; they will not if they know it may be taken away from them, at any time, because they have made it nice. Once a cave is yours, it ought to be yours, like property.’

The council looked a little dubious at this argument, when Temeraire repeated it to them the next afternoon. Early that morning, the rain had been broken by a strong westerly wind sweeping the clouds scudding before it. They had gathered in a great clearing among the mountains, full of pleasant broad smooth-topped rocks, warmed by the sun. Majestatis had come after all, and Gentius, although the old dragon was mostly asleep after the effort of making the flight. He was curled up on the blackest rock, murmuring occasionally to himself. Requiescat sprawled inelegantly across half the length of the clearing, making himself look very large. Temeraire disdained the attempt and kept himself neatly coiled, with his ruff spread proudly, although he privately wished he might have had his talon-sheaths, and a headdress such as he had seen in the markets along the old silk caravan roads; he was sure that could not fail to impress.