Blood of Tyrants (44 page)

The streets had wound through a narrow and unpleasantly scented warren of crammed-in impoverished buildings, approaching the gates of the small main covert of the city. Hammond had at least gained them the use of the British embassy’s courier Placet, a glum Winchester of middling years whose captain, a man named Terrance, contented himself with his isolate post through a good-humored drunkenness: they could not presently fly their usual routes with the French Army blocking them to east and north. Dragon and man were both snoring in harness, and were roused only with difficulty for the flight out to the encampment: this lying some ten miles and more beyond the city limits.

“
Three
of you, now?” Placet said with a sigh at Dyhern’s addition to their party, though he outweighed an elephant handily and could have taken several more passengers without any real trouble. “Well, I suppose you had better lock yourselves on; we won’t get there any sooner.”

The encampment was barely respectable, by Chinese standards, though its appearance astonished Dyhern to silence. Shen Shi and her escort, eight of the common blue dragons and their numerous crews, had labored extensively: large cooking-pits were covered with rough-hewn stone lids, and over these enormous mats of wood and metal had been unrolled, on which dragons might sleep warm: more stood yet unused and waiting. Wells had been sunk up on a hill, near-by, and channels dug to bring the water rolling downstream, diverted into distinct pools for drinking and for bathing, and continuing on towards the cattle pens.

Above all this stood the great gauzy pavilion which had been
erected once more for Temeraire, and beside this the one for Chu, where the general was napping; as they approached he raised his head, peering narrowly at Dyhern, and before Hammond could address him on the subject of the missing beasts demanded in tones of irritation, “Well, is
this
a Russian general, finally? Where are his maps? Will he tell me where the enemy is? My army cannot travel any slower than they already are.”

Hammond, mouth half-opened, recalled himself and stammered, “Sir, no, this is Captain Dyhern, a Prussian officer, a friend of Captain Laur—that is, I mean, of His Imperial Highness. But so far as the army goes, we had come to ask you that very—that is to say, to inquire of you, where your army might be. I am afraid the Russians have had no reports, from the countryside, of any substantial forces approaching—”

He trailed off, in the face of Chu’s stare, and fell silent. “Your remarks are very peculiar,” Chu said. “Are you complaining because we are
not
spoiling the territory of our allies? My troops are not undisciplined yearlings.”

“I beg your pardon,” Hammond said, “but surely by now many of the—of the
niru
will have joined up, in preparation for the final muster? Even a quarter of a
jalan
could not escape notice—”

“No,” Chu said, “nor travel more than twenty miles in a day, through this barren and unsettled countryside, before they had to stop to be sure they could feed themselves; certainly stripping the farmers bare to do so.”

Laurence could not but recognize the plain sense of Chu’s remarks: he realized in dismay he had unconsciously gone too far in assigning to the Chinese legions some fantastical power of supplying their wants, by the example he had seen within China itself, where undoubtedly there had been, unseen, supply depots and warehoused goods in the near distance available to the building force. “Sir,” he said, “do you mean they are traveling in their individual
niru
? Keeping some substantial distance from one another?”

“Twenty miles, at least,” Chu said, agreeing: indeed a sufficient
separation to permit even many groups of dragons, traveling four at a time, to make themselves nearly invisible within the vastness of the Russian countryside. “It will require four days to muster the full force upon the battlefield: but that,” he added in some heat, “must be presently!

“I have already sent the couriers to delay their pace, having seen the inadequacy of our supply here, but they cannot merely halt where they are, nor slow very much: the countryside is too poor. We must find the enemy, concentrate to defeat him, and disperse again to return.”

Hammond cleared his throat and said, “Sir, I am—I entirely take your point, and—and I beg you do not suppose I in the least mean to question your arrangements; but perhaps if—perhaps if some fraction of the force might be assembled, and summoned hence—”

Chu lowered his head to stare at him. “Why?”

“The Russians think us liars,” Laurence said bluntly, when Hammond would have continued to evade. “They do not believe that the force is coming.”

Chu snorted and shook out his fringed mane with disgust. “They will certainly believe it when they have three hundred dragons eating every last scrap of wheat in twenty miles around this city, but they will not be very happy, and less so when I will have to send all my
jalan
away again before we have even seen any fighting!”

“I am very glad to see you, Captain Dyhern,” Temeraire said, “and oh! It is the greatest shame, about Eroica: we must try and find out where he is, and I dare say then we can get word to him that you are at liberty. Perhaps we will take some French dragons prisoner, and I will ask them: I am sure no dragon could fail to be sympathetic to his situation, nor wish him to be denied a reunion with you.”

“Temeraire,” Laurence said, “you could not ask them to commit treason against their own nation.”

“I do not see why it should be treason,” Temeraire said, “when their nation has no business keeping Dyhern away from Eroica: you might as well say Moncey committed treason, because he told me you were on
Goliath
,” recalling with a shudder his own dark days in the breeding grounds of Wales; Moncey and his fellow feral Winchesters had been his only hope of himself being reunited with Laurence, then.

“But if they do not like to talk to me about it,” he added, “I will speak to Moncey himself when we are back in England. I do not see any reason why one of the Winchesters mightn’t nip across and have a word with some of the unharnessed French dragons, from their own breeding grounds. They did as much only to gossip; indeed, Captain, I am sure we will be able to find him for you.”

Dyhern flushed red, when Temeraire had finished; he said, “I will thank you, if it can be done,” very shortly, and then stepped away; Laurence said to Temeraire quietly, “My dear, pray do not raise false hopes: a thousand things may arise to prevent our being able to assist him.”

“Well, I will not say anything more about it, at present,” Temeraire said, but privately he did not see why it should be at all difficult: after all, Eroica must be somewhere, very likely with other dragons about, and it seemed very poor-spirited to be getting in the dumps without having at least asked properly. So far as Temeraire could see, Dyhern had only ever spoken to other men, and not tried to ask any dragons at all, much less the couriers or better yet the unharnessed dragons of the breeding grounds, and the ferals, who had the most chance of flying about as they liked.

“I don’t suppose you know any of the unharnessed dragons in this country?” he asked Placet.

“You suppose rightly,” Placet said. “I haven’t seen hide or wing of a feral, and as for their couriers here, they are rudesbys; they speak some outlandish stuff and don’t care to even nod their heads,
in a friendly way, when they see you. They only go and take their pig, and sit in a corner and stare at you, as though they supposed you meant to come and steal it from them.” He sighed heavily. “Not all of us get to go gallivanting about the world to charming places, with fancy dinners, and gewgaws; but one would think that perhaps the Admiralty might let a fellow come home, once in a while. But I don’t complain, of course,” he added.

“Well, there must be a breeding ground here, somewhere,” Temeraire said, “and at the very least, they must have a bigger covert near-by for their own beasts: and,” he added in sudden inspiration, “Laurence: surely we ought to go and speak to them in any case. I dare say the dragons will know all that Chu would like, about where the French Army is; they must be hearing of it from their officers every minute.”

Dyhern could speak the Russian tongue, and direct them to the main covert of the Russian beasts, some twenty miles from the city, on the opposite side from their own encampment. It seemed a peculiarly inconvenient arrangement, in its relation to the encampment they had been allocated: when he drew it upon a map for them to see, there could hardly have been a greater distance, and yet keep both in an hour’s flight of the city. Temeraire flattened his ruff at this discourtesy.

“Let us be a little more generous than that,” Laurence said. “We have claimed the approach of three hundred beasts; even doubting us, they may well have wished to give us as much room as possible. I can conceive of no other reason that would place us at opposite ends. They can hardly imagine that we should seek a quarrel with their own dragons, when we are come as their allies.”

“No, indeed,” Temeraire said in some irritation, a state which only increased upon their arrival: the Russian covert was far better placed than the ground which they had been allocated, with better drainage, several small ponds and lakes sharing ground with a series of low craggy foothills, into which hollows had been dug and large roofs built out to make neat and comfortable dens, and from
aloft many of these looked quite deserted but for small bands of men: Temeraire felt he and Chu might at least have been invited to take up residence, as a gesture of courtesy to the senior officers of their force, even if there were not enough room for all the dragons which were coming.

He descended through a brush of low straggly trees and scrub and nudged his way to the hollow nearest the border of the covert, and then he halted short, staggered, as the morning sun crept through behind him and broke like a stream upon the mass of a mighty and glittering hoard.

Gold—jewels—silver—Temeraire did not know where to look. Heaps of brass pieces, long chains of thick links of bright metal, dazzling great chunks of polished stone and glass, long carved sticks of polished ivory and mahogany and ebon, great cups and plates—dented and scratched from lying in a heap, but what did that matter when there were so many of them! so large!—and swords, and helms, and even huge bolts of cloth—velvet and silk, stained perhaps and torn, but still luxurious—enormous carved chests of wood heaped high with glinting shards of glass in colors, huge blocks of marble carved—

“Temeraire!” Laurence said, and Temeraire shook himself all over and jerked up his head. A low rumbling hiss of warning reached his ears, and he saw only then the huge dragon sprawled over the ground—she was lying upon the very heap itself, as though she had so much treasure she might make a bed of it.

She had a peculiar appearance: her body was sheathed in great plates of bony armor overlapping one another, not unlike the Prussian dragons Temeraire had met before, but to a far greater extent, and she seemed to bulge strangely underneath them: thick rolls swelled over her shoulders, and a large hump upon her back. Steel spikes and great steel rings had been bolted to her natural armor, silver over the natural green coloration of her hide, and were bristling all over her body; she was enormous, larger than himself and nearly as great as Maximus.

She reared herself up with a great heave; several other dragons scrambled away from between them. Temeraire had not noticed them before, either: small frightened-looking creatures, light-weights, mostly grey and white; they did not have the same armor plates, but the steel rings were planted in their bodies as well.

“Temeraire,” Laurence said again, “she must fear you are here to quarrel over that treasure; we must reassure her at once.”

“Oh,” Temeraire said, “oh—yes. Of course. Of course I am not here to challenge her. Pray tell her so, Dyhern,” a little wistfully: only look how much treasure there was! And he could surely have made a successful challenge, and perhaps won some of it for Laurence—“But we are allies,” he said, mastering himself with an effort, “and we must think of our duty first. I am not at all going to challenge her, no matter how much treasure she has.”

“We had better go away at once,” Dyhern said to Laurence, low, in French. “The beast will pay no mind to us: why should she? We are not her captain, nor her officers; you will do your cause no good if you provoke a quarrel.”

“Sir,” Laurence said, “dragons cannot be blamed for not speaking to us, if we do not address ourselves to them. Pray translate for Temeraire, if you can, and let us make the attempt; we will certainly not engage. If she attacks, we must withdraw at once, Temeraire, without offering a blow in return.”

Temeraire did not at all like the notion that if she should strike him, he should be obligated to run away; she would think him a terrific coward, and all those other dragons who were watching as well. “I do not see any reason she should attack me,” Temeraire said. “I have done nothing to her, and I do not mean to; nothing at all.”

Dyhern spoke to the dragon in Russian; Temeraire pricked his ears forward to listen to it: quite different from any tongue he had ever learned. But the enormous dragon did not pay him any attention, nor even look at him: instead she bared her teeth at Temeraire and hissed again, taking a step towards him that required no translation
at all. He swelled up his chest, his ruff flaring: “I am not to be hissed at, if you please,” he said coldly in French, “as I am perfectly able to manage you, if you
do
want to be quarrelsome.”

“Temeraire—” Laurence began, but one of the small dragons, who had ducked behind the great one, put out his narrow white head, arrow-shaped, and said something timidly in a queerly accented French, “What do you want, please, if you are not here to fight?”

“Oh, you speak French, do you?” Temeraire said. “Well, we are here to find out where the French Army is: Napoleon, I mean. We are your allies,” he added, “and might have expected a more polite welcome than this, I must say; I do not know what you are about, when someone cannot even land to pay a visit, without being hissed at and treated like a thief. And you may tell
her
so, anytime you like.” There was a great deal of righteous satisfaction in making this speech, which a little consoled Temeraire for
not
being able to fight.