Blood of Tyrants (52 page)

“Surely we might help them,” Temeraire said, unhappily, but even as he half-stooped towards the struggle, involuntarily, another roaring sounded below, and he backwinged, recoiling instinctively: a hail of canister-shot went whistling by not a hundred feet distant.

“We have already helped them,” Laurence said to Temeraire, as they drew back. “We have put a stop to Napoleon’s aerial attacks: the French would otherwise be enacting a terrible bombardment against the Russian troops. And the guns which he is using to keep the Chinese legions off, he cannot direct against the infantry.”

“But he seems to have enough of them to do both,” Temeraire said: there were hundreds and hundreds of field guns, it seemed, on both sides. “Laurence, whyever is Napoleon insisting on such a battle? Surely
he
can see, as well as we can, that he is lost: that he is only dragging things out dreadfully, for everyone, and killing so many on all sides.”

“He has little alternative,” Laurence said, “save if he chose to abandon his army, and flee back to France in a state of ignominy: in a pursuit, our aerial advantage would shortly begin to tell ruthlessly against him; we would have been able to overwhelm his rear-guard, and catch him and his army strung out upon the road. Most likely he yet hopes for some mistake upon our part, which would
permit him to use his own advantage in artillery and in ground troops.” But the Russians were being quite careful to avoid that: as the fortifications and the heavy woods kept them from coming at the full body of the French Army, General Barclay had positioned his soldiers along the road to Moscow to the south, to guard against any attempt on the part of the French to slip away again during the night, or to sneak some substantial portion out to flank the Russian Army.

Junichiro had unexpectedly begged to be allowed to come aloft with them, on every one of Temeraire’s passes: he had become, to Temeraire’s gratification, quite a reformed character, and in the course of their journey from China to Russia had acquired a great deal not only of English but of French; to-day he had been avidly studying the order of battle of the armies on both sides. He ventured now, from Temeraire’s shoulder, to say, “This seems something between a battle and a siege,” and Laurence nodded in agreement.

As a siege might take months or even years to lift, that was by no means encouraging, and it was only meager consolation when Laurence said, “They cannot have the supply to hold out for more than a few days, Temeraire, even if they eat the cavalry-horses: you can see for yourself they have virtually no cattle amongst their baggage.”

It did not make Temeraire feel much better, either, to see Vosyem and the rest of the Russian heavy-weights sitting disgruntled in their own encampment, sullenly tearing at the ground and snapping at one another, when he came past them: Chu had sent a word to the Russian generals hinting that perhaps it would be easier for the Chinese legions to operate if they were not being fouled and harassed by their own allies. The Russian heavy-weights had several times bulled through the
niru
formations to engage the enemy directly, with nothing but ill-effect all around.

Temeraire sighed and looked back towards the battlefield: the guns had begun roaring more energetically. The front row of the
fences had at last fallen, but the French had got away their guns, and raced back behind the shelter of the second row; the artillery were now pounding away at the Russian troops who had seized the first row, before those men might even have enjoyed a moment’s respite from their victory. The batteries of artillery aimed against the sky were yet sheltered behind a third row of fences, and overlooking them were the massed ranks of Napoleon’s Imperial Guard, as yet withheld from all the fighting. But aloft, the
niru
were battering steadily and systematically away at the French dragons.

“Ah, there you are,” Chu said, when Temeraire came down in the encampment. “This is Colonel Zhao Lien, commander of the third
jalan
,” he said, presenting Temeraire to one officer, a heavy-set dragon of pale green, with a bristling spine of tendrils and a mane not unlike Chu’s own, in scarlet; she bowed her head politely before continuing her report.

“The quantity of smoke produced by the guns has made it most difficult to obtain a clear understanding of the organization of the enemy’s forces,” she said, “but their reserves are substantial, and I have determined their supply may be a great deal better than we have supposed to be the case. I sent a small foray against their rear, upon the ground, which was repulsed swiftly by the repositioning of their guns, but one of my dragons was able to seize a packet from their supply-waggons—”

She indicated this, a large square bundle which had been hastily rewrapped; when one of her crewmen opened it up again, Temeraire bending down to sniff found it full of long hard strips of some dark brown stuff that smelt strongly of spice; pieces were handed around, and when Temeraire chewed it, he found that it was meat: quite tough and dry and salty, but perfectly good to eat.

“Hm,” Shen Shi said, inspecting it. “That is very clever: they do not need cattle, then.”

“No,” Zhao Lien said, “and they had fifty pallets of a similar style on hand.”

Chu made a low grunt. “Well, then they can hold out at least a
week,” he said, “but why would they have had so much meat, for this number of dragons—” He fell silent, scratching at the ground ruminatively.

“I will say, General,” Zhao Lien said, “that it seems to me the enemy are fighting very conservatively.”

“Hm,” Chu said. “Colonel, I wish you to take four
niru
and scout—where are those maps? What is to the north of our position?”

Temeraire looked back and forth between them, conscious that he had not quite followed their train of thought, and wondering how he might ask without looking somehow foolish. Chu was bending low over his maps, and then suddenly, very near-by, a blasting of thunder erupted, a cannonball-whistling. Temeraire looked up and around, in surprise, and then recoiled with a cry as something hot and terrible seared along his side. Roars of pain went up on all sides of him—canister-shot was flying down all over the rear of the camp. “Aloft!” Laurence was shouting from his back, through his speaking-trumpet. “All aloft, at once! Get into the air!”

Temeraire flung himself up, blindly, backwinging, and took up the cry himself as he went, roaring it out as loudly as he could; as soon as he was up, and out of the flight path of the balls, he could see the guns firing upon them: a tiny clearing, some four hundred yards to the north, where the French had established a small battery of three-pounders. They were firing at a furious pace: not even pulling their guns back into place after they fired, nor even trying to aim, merely reloading and firing again and again; all they cared for was to hit anything in the Russian rear at all, and even more guns were being dragged out from the trees behind them.

But they had as yet no covering-fire, nor aerial defenders; Temeraire hissed in fury and circled towards them, out of their line of fire. Plunging towards them, he drew in his breath, once and twice and three times, swelling all his chest with air, and roaring fell upon the line of guns, sweeping them and seeing men and horses fall
screaming to the ground before the divine wind, while he caught at the hot guns and tipped them over into a clanging, tumbling heap.

Musket-fire spat against his flank, hot stinging bursts of pain, but he was through and pulling up and away, the guns silenced, their crews shattered. Looking back he saw the wreckage they had already made in that brief span of time: the cooking-pits clogged with dirt and smoking metal, many spoilt; a dozen of the Shen Lung moaning upon the ground, bleeding, many of the wounded dragons injured again also; and near the half-collapsed pavilion—

Temeraire flung himself down again next to Chu: the general’s great scarlet side was heaving, and with each breath a gush of blood rose up and spilled black from three gaping wounds, clustered near the top of his back; his wings lay limp against his sides. “No, no,” Temeraire said, wretchedly. Five of the Chinese dragon-surgeons were already at work, digging their arms within to bring out the shot: one was calling for long tongs to be brought. Another managed to draw out one, which had struck upon a rib; the ball had burst like a star, and another torrent of blood followed it when the surgeon pulled it out.

Chu’s eyes were closed; he coughed, rattling, and blood trickled from the sides of his mouth; one of the surgeons was thrown from his back. Temeraire almost nosed at him, but timidly held back; he did not know what to do. Zhao Lien landed beside him and said, “I have ordered five
niru
to the north, accompanied by couriers, to scout for more of the enemy attempting to flank us, as General Chu directed. What are your commands?”

She was speaking to him, Temeraire realized; she was asking him for orders. Abruptly, Temeraire felt rage swelling hot in his breast; he imagined with burning satisfaction throwing himself to the front, commanding all the legions to fall in behind him and overturn the French defenses, smash their artillery and then slaughter all their ranks, no matter what the cost. He would drive them forth with the divine wind, and avenge—

“Temeraire,” Laurence said softly, a hand on his neck, and
Temeraire dragged in a breath; he looked at Zhao Lien, and saw her regarding him narrowly, warily, as though she feared what he might do. He swallowed and said to Laurence, in English, “Laurence, what ought I do, now?”

“If you will be counseled by me,” Laurence said, “we will determine which of the three
jalan
commanders is senior, and appoint them to the command.”

Temeraire took another breath, and nodded; he said to Zhao Lien, “Who is the senior commander, of the three
jalan
?”

She sat back upon her haunches, relaxing a little. “I am,” she said.

“Then—then you shall take command, until General Chu is quite recovered,” he said, though he could not help but think longingly, one more time, of the glorious vision of his charge. “And I am quite sure,” he added savagely, “that there
are
more soldiers coming; it is just the sort of thing Napoleon likes to do, so you had better plan as though there were.”

Zhao Lien turned to a limping Shen Shi, who had one badly torn wing, and conferred with her about supply; then she turned and said, “If the soldiers who approach are a substantial force, our situation will be extremely precarious.”

“But we still outnumber them so heavily in the air!” Temeraire said, uncertainly. “Of course we must still beat them, surely.”

“We cannot be assured of doing so in the present position,” Zhao Lien said. “An immediate assault upon the artillery must lose us half our fighting troops. This, having diminished our aerial advantage, may permit the enemy to hold their well-fortified positions against us. If they have sufficient ground forces to strike against the flank of our allies’ ground soldiers—”

Interrupting her explanation, Lung Yu Fei came blazing into the camp as swiftly as a rocket, skidding in the dirt as she pulled up: Temeraire regarded her with dismay even before she opened her mouth and said, “There is a whole army coming, from the north-east: they are coming through the trees on foot.”

•  •  •

Once again now the advantage changed hands, as abruptly as before; but Kutuzov’s caution had not deserted him even in an apparent moment of triumph: he had placed his rear-guard to cover the road to Moscow, and had kept a great many of his forces uncommitted to the battle. Even before the French reinforcements had completed half their advance, the Russian Army was melting away again eastward, escaping the trap.

Laurence and Temeraire scarcely touched ground the next four hours, trying as best they might to create a unified action with the Russian forces: a coordination almost impossible to achieve when the two of them were nearly the sole interlocutors between the two bodies of troops. The battle had lent itself to a sharp separation between commands; the retreat by no means did so, for the Russians badly needed air cover, and the French had been reinforced by some forty dragons more, under the command of the very dragon Laurence had noted at the false negotiations: Marshal Ombreux.

“We cannot keep flying about in this manner,” Laurence said, when they had made the fourth frantic pass back to Kutuzov’s headquarters, trying for some clarification in orders which had already seemed inapplicable. “Temeraire, see if you can find Grig, and persuade him and the rest of those Russian light-weights to go-between for us.”

What the officers of those dragons should think, of his summarily appropriating their beasts, Laurence cared little; he had already privately resolved that if their conditions were not ameliorated, he should ask Temeraire to offer the poor creatures safe passage back to China, with the
jalan
, on the conclusion of the hostilities. “And if the officers at headquarters do not care to listen to them,” he added, “I dare say they will be persuaded, at the next moment when they wish to send us orders.”

Grig was easy to find: he had been trailing them, and he and several of his companions were by no means unwilling to help once
Temeraire had assured them of sharing the dinner of the Chinese dragons that night; they soon worked out for themselves an effective rotation whereby each dragon went in turn to the high command. To the credit of Kutuzov’s staff, whatever dismay they might have felt at seeing their old order overturned, they did not allow it to deter them: Grig returned from his flight carrying a Russian officer with him, a young man of noble family from Kutuzov’s staff, who had with real courage tied himself onto the smaller dragon’s harness-rings with nothing but his belt, the better to convey the orders.

As the withdrawal advanced, the
jalan
were pressed into service to carry away the guns and thereby speed the pace of the retreat. The Cossacks carried out a whirling and ferocious defense in their rear; but the heavier French dragons massed for a sortie now and again, and in such occasions, Temeraire would quickly call out and send back a few
niru
to engage and drive them away.