Blood of Tyrants (57 page)

The French—whom Laurence realized, when the smoke cleared well enough to see their uniforms, were not Frenchmen but Italians, recruited from another of Napoleon’s conquests—would surely have retreated in the face of their disadvantages, if any opportunity offered them; but as they were behind the only stone walls in their vicinity, they could get no better shelter than where they were, and by removing themselves from it would have exposed themselves both to the relentless artillery and to the snatching talons of the dragons above.

From necessity they held their position, answering as best they could, and so valiantly that they could only be winnowed down a little at a time, and the fires of the town crept ever closer towards them.

They held for an hour, pushed back slowly, and then Laurence through his glass saw movement through the immense towering clouds of smoke. “Temeraire,” he said, “take us aloft, if you please,” but Zhao Lien’s scouts were already darting back to report to her: Davout’s corps had arrived, with fifty French dragons in support.

For the next four hours, the battle roared back and forward through the town: at first the French fell back, under their newly arrived air cover, and the Russians with a shout charged into its narrow lanes and took possession; then they themselves were forced back by the terrible weight of the French artillery and their advantage in infantry. The town changed hands five more times, that dreadful afternoon: many of the wounded could not be rescued, and a sudden change in the wind drove the spreading flames abruptly further on. As those who could not walk were engulfed by the spreading flames, the shrieks of the dying rose like a noise out of perdition from the smoke.

“Dear God,” Laurence said. “Temeraire—Temeraire, can you interrupt them? For God’s sake, we must have a cease-fire, and get those men out of the way.”

They passed the word to Zhao Lien, and then Temeraire flung
himself aloft and roared terribly, shatteringly: so hugely that all those below halted a moment and covered their heads against it. Emily and Baggy flung out a great white trailing sheet and waved it in the wind, and for a moment the guns fell silent; Zhao Lien sent in four of the supply-dragons, to snatch up the wounded of both sides, and bear them limp and half-scorched out.

The pause stretched on for a moment, for a minute, for three. Laurence half-wondered if perhaps it might go on, no-one wishing to continue: if a little space might break through whatever illusion it was permitted men to desire battle and to give it. It seemed as though all the world held its breath; and then a small company of artillery from de Beauharnais’s corps touched off a primed gun, near the center, and the conflict was rejoined even as the wounded—and the many dead which had been taken up from among them—were laid out moaning upon the ground.

“Laurence, when we do not even want this town anyway, particularly,” Temeraire said, looking sadly over the miserable wretches. “There is nothing splendid in it; if there ever were, it is surely quite ruined now, and if we
did
win this battle, we should have gained nothing but to say that we had won: that cannot be enough.”

“The town may not be of significance in itself,” Laurence said, “but it is immensely so as a gateway to our main sources of supply and beyond that to the Russian munitions-factories; if Napoleon managed to seize a great magazine for himself, and so hamper our own supply, he might well cripple the Russian Army.”

As the battle continued, Zhao Lien directed her dragons steadily and conservatively: their advantage against the French was no longer so overwhelming, for besides the removal of the second
jalan
, they had been reduced by injuries: the Chinese armor, though excellent against talon and tooth, which it deflected easily, did not withstand rifle-fire as did chainmail. Of the 200 dragons of the remaining
jalan
, 150 were fighting-beasts, of whom nearly 30 were presently in the care of the surgeons; and their scouts and spies had
recorded nearly 80 beasts in fighting trim still to Napoleon’s tally, though not all of those were to be seen. So she was careful not to commit her entire force: 50 beasts presently were napping on the ground below, conserving their strength, leaving them 70 against 50 in the air.

Laurence had kept all this time scanning the town with his glass: even with all the advantages of elevation, he could scarcely make out anything for the smoke, layers upon layers of it, white and grey and smudged black, except when the blaze of cannon-fire briefly illuminated a company. “The French are presently heavily committed to those streets in the north-east,” he said, having made out their positions, “and I do not see any of their guns pointing to their rear. If we should come around for a single pass, and level the buildings behind them with the divine wind, we should likely roll them up: and they are supporting the right flank of their army.”

“I will ask Zhao Lien at once,” Temeraire said, eagerly, and shot to her side; she looked more than a little anxious—small wonder; Laurence could well believe she would not like in the least to return to China with the news she had lost a Celestial, and even a dubious sort of Imperial prince—but there were nearly twenty guns established in the exposed position, and she could not fail to see the advantage of knocking such a hole in the French artillery.

“Very well,” she said, reluctantly, at last, “—only wait a moment: the seventh and the fifteenth
niru
have performed with particular excellence, and deserve the honor of escorting your pass.” She waved aloft two companies from the resting dragons below, and recalled those two named companies from the battle; surrounded thus by six beasts flying in protective pattern, Laurence almost felt himself back in England, formation-flying, as they swung out around the town.

Sweeping his gaze over the battlefield as they flew, Laurence saw, aboard one of the French middle-weights, a tall captain in flying-leathers looking at them through his own glass who plainly recognized the danger they posed; his ensign began at once putting
out urgent signal-flags. The smoke concealed these from the men below, however; and the French were too hard-pressed to send enough relief to overcome Temeraire’s escort. The captain bent forward over his dragon’s neck, and the beast fell back from the fighting and turning flung itself gallantly towards the ground, going to warn the artillery-men in person.

“Quickly,” Laurence said, “quickly, before they can turn round the guns—”

Their course by necessity was taking them wide around the town, as French artillery range covered nearly every inch of it and beyond its limits; Temeraire increased his speed, while his escort struggled to keep pace with him. Below, the middle-weight had managed to perch for a moment upon a collapsed building, hopping from one foot to the other and trying to keep her bell-men from being scorched while the captain shouted down to the artillery company.

The men were frantically dragging round several of the guns, to aim towards their approach, but their horses were stumbling with drooping heads, already weak, and the guns were surely scorching-hot from their work. Temeraire threw himself forward, roaring, and the buildings, weakened already by fire, began to shatter as the divine wind struck: the center of the walls collapsing inwards and the half-burnt roofs falling after them, until the whole went tumbling forward in a sudden crashing wave of burning tinders, a great blinding rush of orange sparks and ash spraying up, very much as from a fire stuck by a poker and stirred, and buried the guns and the men with them.

The French dragon had snatched one gun from the wreck, crying out with pain at the heat; the bell-men stretched their hands out to seize a few of the soldiers as she flung herself aloft. She was laboring away as Temeraire pulled up again, and Laurence alarmed called, “Temeraire! Temeraire, we must pull back!” for Temeraire was plainly unsatisfied with the immense success of his maneuver and half-instinctively had begun beating in pursuit, though this
course should bring them too close to another battery of French artillery.

“Oh—” Temeraire said, stifled, and turned away: but a little sluggishly, and the roar of guns came from beneath as they came briefly into range.

Laurence caught Baggy, when he would have ducked, and kept him standing straight; the boy abashed glanced to see if anyone else had noticed his brief lapse. But his nearest neighbor, Roland, was hanging halfway out over Temeraire’s shoulder, her carabiner straps extended to full length, and shouting enemy positions down to Forthing below: he was directing Laurence’s handful of bell-men in flinging bombs down.

A whistling of round-shot came nearly past Laurence’s ear; behind him another struck one of the dragons on Temeraire’s left, scored its side, and as it jerked away, crying, tore a terrible gaping rent through its wing. Temeraire nearly turned back to catch him, but the other dragons of the
niru
were already closing in to support their wounded comrade. “Onward straight!” Laurence shouted through his speaking-trumpet: the other dragons would try to stay with Temeraire, and if he turned backwards they would find themselves snarled and vulnerable. The guns below had been meant for firing on the enemy infantry, at the other end of the town, but in a moment they would be reloaded with canister-shot, and a second volley would be sure of doing terrible damage among them.

Temeraire put on a burst of speed, and carried them back out of range; they swung back to Zhao Lien, who said nothing, but looked at the wounded dragon as he was helped tenderly to the ground; Temeraire hung his head, and as plainly did not require the lecture. He flew down to stand beside the wounded dragon, asking his name unhappily—“Lung Zhao Yang, Honorable One,” the dragon said, trying despite his injuries to bow his head.

“I am very sorry I should have led you too close to the guns,” Temeraire said, low, and stayed watching anxiously while the surgeons inspected the terrible damage to the wing, shaking their heads with concern.

“Do not wholly reproach yourself,” Laurence said quietly. “We have silenced eighteen guns, and made a material change to the course of the battle; their position has been badly weakened. It must be counted worth the cost.”

Temeraire nodded a little, unhappily, but did not say anything; he went back aloft watching, until abruptly a small panting Russian dragon came flying wildly towards the village from the north-east, and threading their own ranks dropped himself unceremoniously onto Temeraire’s back amidst the crew, sending them all scrambling and himself nearly trembling with his speed and the effort of his flight: it was Grig.

“Oh,” Temeraire said, coldly, having craned his head around in astonishment to be so boarded, “—you.”

“Yes, but pray,” Grig said, between his gulped breaths, “pray don’t be angry, not now: they are all coming. I couldn’t stop them; they won’t listen to me. If only you can persuade them—”

“What has happened?” Laurence said sharply, and looked back the way that Grig had come: a low grey cloud, moving fast, approaching.

“Murat went to the breeding grounds on the Motsha River,” Grig said, “and let them all go. He told them—”

The cloud was resolving into a great mass of dragons, most of them grey-white beasts with also a handful of smaller black dragons like the Russian couriers, flying raggedly and slowly but coming onward for all that: not towards the battlefield, nor towards their army, but heading directly for the supply-train in their rear. Temeraire flung himself towards their path, but even as he tried to intercept their course, they were already flying past like hurtling comets, lean and swollen-bellied and hollow-ribbed, some of them with eyes nearly shut and others dripping a kind of trailing slime from the sides of their mouths.

The Shen Lung, though ordinarily not combatants, were nevertheless well prepared to guard the supply against enemy attack: the twenty of them in the rear rose up swiftly to form a knot of protection over the cooking-pits, but preparation was no match for the
number and desperation of the loosed ferals, in a battle whose sole question was, whether the supply should be ruined, or not. Some ferals blindly flung themselves heedless of claws and teeth down, and dragged quartered pigs dripping from the pits, then fled with their prizes away; others avoided the defenders and threw themselves instead further on to fall upon the rearing, terrified carthorses of the supply-train stretched down the road to the south.

These, too, were defended promptly by their drivers, who despite the little warning they had been given with courage unshipped their pikes and began to thrust at the snatching ferals; but there were not dozens of dragons, but a hundred and more, and though maddened with hunger they were not dumb beasts. They quickly began to form impromptu bands: one beast or two would draw the defenders, and the other snatch a horse away in that brief opening; then all three together would dart off bearing their trophy.

In the span of ten minutes, all had been reduced to utter chaos in the Russian baggage: carts unhorsed or overturned, and the rest trying both to defend themselves and keep their frantic horses from destroying themselves with their plunging, desperate attempts to break loose from their traces and escape. The Cossack aviators were trying to do what they might, but even massed, their small beasts could not stand against the grey dragons when the latter were so blindly determined to bull their way through.

The ferals were indiscriminate in their hunger: Laurence saw, looking back, that there was some chaos also in the French rear, where a few knots of starving dragons had hurled themselves against their supply-train; but Murat had evidently aimed the beasts well, and the general course of their flight was leading directly to the Russian rear. A dozen afflicted the French; it seemed near a hundred and more had fallen upon the Russians.

The
niru
who had been held in reserve had now come aloft. “Pray do not hurt them, if you can help it!” Temeraire called to them, as they joined him and began to swiftly work to envelop the rampaging cloud of ferals. “Let us try and force them to the ground:
I am sure if only we can, they will listen to us, once we give them a little food.”