Blood of Tyrants (30 page)

She added to Laurence and Granby afterwards, before they themselves mounted, “But it will slow us down, if they have to be clambering all over creation while we fly, with only belt-harness. Will there be any more dragons, any time soon, so we could let the fellows ride?”

That question was answered late that afternoon: beneath them the markers changed, and instead of Peking the name of another city was shown, unfamiliar to them all; General Chu glancing down saw it, and said something to one of the Jade Dragons. The green dragon nodded, with three quick efficient jerks rolled up her banner, handed it on to the second, and wheeling shot away into the upper air and south-easterly, vanishing with almost unbelievable speed.

She returned scarcely an hour later, dropping back into place, and took up her banner again. They flew on another two hours, and as the sun descended Laurence saw in the distance four dragons, three red and a blue, gathered at a marker up ahead. Even as their own company approached, the party leapt aloft to meet them and fell into place off their left flank and slightly above, in a simple arrow-head formation, the blue dragon at the rear and center. The leader, who wore a thin flat band of silver about his neck, bobbed his head respectfully to Temeraire and to Chu, but not a word was said: they all flew onwards together.

Laurence could crane about to peer at them more closely, at least at their underbellies, and could see the other aviators doing so all amongst their company. The three red dragons wore a kind of light armoring, thin hammered plates sewn together and bound
very near the skin; it was heaviest at the pockets where the legs met the body, padded a little there. They carried not a single man amongst them; Laurence had seen a few upon their backs, but those were not visible from below, and did not at any time come climbing into view.

The blue dragon, on the other hand, wore no armor but bore a silken carrying-harness, some thirty men aboard in rows down its sides, and long nets between those rows bulged with supplies. It flew a little below the red dragons, and Laurence realized after a time observing that where the three red beat their wings in time, the blue beat his at a pace off-set and quicker, three to each stroke of the larger beasts. “I wonder if it improves his speed,” Laurence said.

The next day two more such groups joined them; the day after, another. By the end of the first week, as they crossed the border into the neighboring province, they flew with forty dragons at their back.

C
HU CALLED HALTS NOW
two hours earlier, and these occurred in staggered fashion: first he landed, and the formation with him, accompanied by one of the four-dragon clusters; the rest of the body flew onwards, and might be observed for some distance ahead landing two groups at a time in sequence, spreading themselves out across a wide territory.

No sooner did these land but the crew were leaping off the blue dragons, bringing with them the packed nets, then the blue dragons all went aloft again and flew off to either side of the course of their flight, returning an hour later with motley supply acquired, Laurence could only guess, at storehouses and villages around them, which all of it went into cooking-vats already prepared by the crew and full of boiling water. Bags of grain formed the largest part of this supply, with only a few oxen or sheep or pigs to leaven the porridge, and there was now no opportunity to pick out the meat: all went into the pot and was cooked an hour, then served out.

“It does not seem right they should all have to work so hard when we only sit and wait,” Temeraire said, observing their labors, but Chu, overhearing him, shook his head.

“We are too big to spend our time on supply,” he said. “We must save our energies for the heat of battle.”

“But it is far more pleasant to do the fighting, and have someone else bring your dinner,” Temeraire said. “I do not understand why anyone should agree to do it.”

Chu shrugged. “They are paid twice, of course.”

“Oh,” Temeraire said, with a nearly longing sigh. “Twice?”

“General,” Laurence said, listening to their exchange in some surprise; it had not occurred to him that dragons might be paid at all, “might it be possible to bring on a few more such dragons to aid with our own company’s supply?”

Chu immediately bowed to him formally and said, “It will be done at once,” and vanished off issuing orders before a startled Laurence could even say he had only meant to ask, and not to command. By dawn the next day three more blue dragons had joined their own party, bringing carrying-harnesses, and the much-relieved ground crewmen were given leave to be carried on their backs.

Laurence began to suspect that he had merely given Chu an excuse for what the general must have longed to do: the blue dragons and their crews managed to snatch away all the supply meant to go in the belly-netting while the British dragons were refreshing themselves at the fountain, and they were already packed and waiting expectantly for boarding before anyone had seen what they were about. Harcourt uncertainly said, “Well, I suppose it would be churlish of us to insist they give us back our baggage,” and the dragons went aloft with only their officers, with a marked increase in speed.

“I would be glad to be enlightened,” Chu said to Temeraire as they flew that day, “why the rest of those men may not go and ride aboard the porters also.”

“Well,” Temeraire said, “the officers are needed in battle, of course: if we should be attacked by surprise, we would not like to be taken aback.”

“Ah,” Chu said. “And may I inquire why we are to expect an ambush under the present circumstances?”

This was a fair-enough question. Their company had ceased to grow day by day, but it did not need to grow any further; it was difficult to envision so massive a force meeting with any kind of truly unexpected attack. Laurence had not known what three
jalan
would be, neither had any of them: it was staggering to think that a company of this size might be so casually assembled, and sent to deal with a mere provincial unrest. He did not think he had heard of forty dragons being brought together in England since the Armada.

“We had sixty at Shoeburyness,” Granby said that night, over their own helpings of porridge, “during the invasion; and Napoleon brought over a hundred, though he had to send a good number of them back. So it’s been done, but not at the drop of a handkerchief, I will say.”

It was plainly the substitution of porridge for raw cattle which made so vast a difference in what force could be fielded, Laurence supposed: he would have expected it to take more of a toll on the size and strength of the beasts, but though none of the Chinese soldier-dragons approached the sheer massive bulk of Kulingile or Maximus, they were by no means undersized.

“For my part, I should not mind sending our men onto those porters,” Sutton said: Messoria’s captain, the oldest of them, and a fellow of much seniority. “I expect Chu would like us all to fly lighter, and I cannot blame him; we are bounding their speed.”

Captain Berkley grunted his own agreement, setting down his mug of beer. “I will tell the fellows to strip Maximus bare,” he said, “and have them go aboard those blue dragons: I can cling on to a neck-strap well enough by my own solitary self. Do you suppose they will really let us take these beasts, after this rebellion of theirs is put down, only because we’ve pranced about and waved a sword with them?”

“If so, I would call the help cheap at the price,” Sutton said, and all the aviators murmured in agreement. “I would be glad to see Boney’s face if we show up on his eastern doorstep with these forty fellows at our backs: a nasty shock for him, I would say, and all the more so with the Army in the Peninsula nipping at him from that side. He won’t be looking for us to have so many beasts, not after—”

He halted; the conversation fell into an awkward silence; all eyes turned towards Laurence. Laurence had meant to ask how matters stood in the Peninsula. “You will excuse me, gentlemen; good night,” he said instead, and went away from the fireside; shortly their conversation resumed at a louder and a happier pitch behind his back.

He could not blame his fellow-aviators for preferring his absence; their situation was a complex and a precarious one, and they could not be glad for any reminder of the disordered state of his mind when he made so crucial a member of their company. He was uneasy himself; about too many things. He stood in the cool night air, looking out past the fires. They were sheltering this night in an open field, dotted with their handful of tents and the great lumps of the sleeping dragons. At the center of the camp stood the one enormous and—to his mind—absurd silk-draped pavilion erected for Temeraire: a cleverly contrived sheet of wooden shingles sewn together, which could be rolled for carrying; unfolded and stiffened with poles, and mounted on tall shafts, it formed a high roof from which enormous drapes of red silk hung billowing in the wind. It was wreathed also in thin wispy trailers of fog: Iskierka lay not far away, upwind of it, glaring at the elaborate structure and emitting envy and steam together.

Laurence’s own tent, a gaudy but more prosaic affair, stood directly beside. At the moment, though, Temeraire and Mei lay entwined within the pavilion still; Laurence could not immediately seek his bed without intruding. He turned aside instead, and went slowly through the avenues of their small encampment, until he saw Hammond’s tent on the lee side of a small rise, with Churki sleeping half-curled about it.

“A moment, please, I beg your pardon,” Hammond said, rummaging urgently in his packs, which had only just now been delivered him from their luggage; he did not enjoy flying, and had still less enjoyed the last strenuous stretch. “Ah, there.” He took out a sheaf of folded and mostly dry leaves, which he moistened with
water and put into his mouth to chew. “I ought never have left them with the baggage; those porters took it away, and I have not had a leaf all day. Thank Heavens,” he said, lowering himself to sit upon one of the camp-stools. “Forgive me, Captain: what did you say?”

“That I cannot account for it, sir,” Laurence said, remaining himself standing. “The size of this force is nothing short of extraordinary. Lord Bayan ought have moved Heaven and earth to keep them from being assigned to my command. He ought have retracted his accusations, and protested, sooner than promoting this expedition in any way.

“I should not like to think he or this General Fela had any cause to believe such a thing,” Laurence added, “—that we should be offering aid to these rebels; much less any proof.”

“He can have none, none at all,” Hammond said, with a firm nod, “and indeed I scarcely know how we are supposed to have managed it: that we should have somehow supplied the wants of a gang of rebels from so distant a position.”

“By the sale of opium, as I understand it,” Laurence said, watching his face, “shipped to their shores, the profit of which is also meant to be our motive, as little as that ought to answer for any honest man. Mr. Hammond, do our factors in Guangzhou knowingly disregard the prohibition on the importation of this drug?”

He asked it abruptly, half-ashamed to ask; his suspicions, as inchoate and confused as his memories, troubled him. He did not wish to accuse, he did not think any accusation merited.

But, “Oh,” said Hammond, with an easy shrug, “no more than you might expect. There is scarcely any market here in China for most of our goods, and enormous markets for their goods in the West: the deficit was quite unmanageable, until opium was introduced. His Majesty’s Government was very alarmed by the quantity of specie flowing out at the time, very alarmed indeed; the drug quite reversed the situation.

“Naturally,” he said hastily, glancing at Laurence’s expression, “naturally, that does not mean—that is, I do not mean at all to say that we are promoting any evasion of the official regulations. Only, there is a certain ebb and flow, in these matters. A limit is established which is excessively severe—it drives prices higher—we make our best efforts to impress it upon the merchantmen—but Captain, you must know it is difficult to make men restrain themselves when they have risked their lives to go around the world, and they can double the profit of their journey by smuggling in a chest or two—”

“Thank you, I have heard enough,” Laurence said grimly. “I dare say it is difficult to make men restrain themselves, when you wink at them.”

Hammond flushed. “I must reject such a characterization of the work of our factors,” he said, “—utterly reject it, Captain; I wish you would not insist on reducing such tangled matters to angels and devils. And in any case,” he added, “I do say categorically we have not the least interest in promoting this rebellion: I assure you I myself have scarcely heard of it, save as a piece of distant history; they were put down years before I ever came to my post.

“On that, I am happy to give you my word: and if that does not suffice, sir, I am afraid I cannot satisfy you,” Hammond finished defiantly.

Laurence left him without courtesy; he thrust the drape of the tent out of his way and strode out angrily into the darkening camp, voices mostly fallen silent. He was
not
satisfied; he was by no means satisfied. He remembered his vigorous words in the Emperor’s chambers, to Mianning himself: they now felt like more than half a lie. He would not have spoken so if Hammond had told him this much beforehand. It had not occurred to him that any representative of the King, or even the officials of the East India Company, would endorse maneuvers so deceitful; and if they would, what more else might they not do? It had not occurred to him—