Blood of Tyrants
Page 11

Chapter 11
CHU 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—
But after all, it had. Laurence slowed his steps and halted. He had doubted, and felt that doubt gnawing at his belly, when he ought not have. Even now he was merely unhappy; he was not surprised.
He had reached Temeraire’s pavilion. Temeraire lay within, Mei beside him, both of them heavily asleep after their dinner and their congress. Laurence stood silently by Temeraire’s head, listening to the sighing breath with all its sussurations; he half-wished to wake him, to unburden himself. But Laurence did not feel he could confide in Temeraire with Mei mere paces away; he scarcely wished to speak any of it aloud at all. If Hammond were lying—
Laurence shook his head to himself; no, he would not think so, even in the back of his mind, of a man he had no right to believe vicious. Hammond had spoken to him frankly and then given him his word, when he might as easily have concealed all. But he need not be lying, merely himself unaware. What if there were some more vicious and less official plot under way?
Laurence could too-easily imagine opium smugglers, already subtly encouraged by their own government and eager for more profit, might well decide to fuel an internecine conflict to open fresh markets for their wares; and perhaps to undermine the Imperial authority which was too plainly their only real restraint, if they knew the British Government would applaud them so long as they brought back shiploads of silver and gold, regardless how obtained.
In three days’ time, they would be in the mountains, hunting for whatever traces might be found of the rebellion. Laurence hoped that they would not find any condemning evidence of British involvement—a wretched, cowering thing to be forced to hope for. But if such a plot were under way, if any proof were to be found, that would destroy any chance of alliance—would condemn them all, and very likely bring Mianning down with them.
Laurence tried to persuade himself he was wrong, that he was unreasonable even to fear; and yet he was unsuccessful. “I would almost wonder if I am fevered,” he said, low, “if this is some lingering consequence of the injury to my mind; that I now entertain thoughts of the darkest nature—”
“Captain, I cannot think it at all likely,” Mrs. Pemberton said.
Laurence had unburdened himself to her only hesitantly, unsure what counsel she could give him; he could not disclose to her all his thoughts. He could not confide any particulars to her which should in any way tend to discredit their country. He had said nothing of opium, nothing of smugglers, nothing of the accusation that British plotters might support the rebellion; he spoke only in the most general terms, and of his own mind.
But he had begun lately to find her company a balm against his own confusion of mind and spirit: a relief from questions and from the anxious tension of his fellow-officers; her conversation a welcome change from the constrained silence that fell upon the others so often. Her cool and sensible nature was itself a worthy solace, but better than that, she was no close connection of his own; she had been employed for Emily’s protection only a little more than a year, and they had not been intimates previously, his own time preoccupied by his duties and his fellow-officers his true companions.
She said, “I cannot speak with very much authority on your past; however, sir, I will speak for your present: you are a rational man, and if you have fears, they are founded on sensible causes. I do not mean to say you may not be mistaken: certainly you may, and you speak in such forboding terms to make me hope you are, whatever it is you fear; but you are not in the least given to building castles in the air.
“I am no physician,” she continued, “but I have had to do a great deal of nursing in my life; and I have seen illness and injury alter a man’s character or a woman’s to no little extent. But not in such a wise that you would appear yourself in every other respect, act according to your former character at all times, and remain competent, save in this one particular instance. That, I must find too remarkable to believe—I am sorry if that opinion should distress you, in this circumstance, more than please you.”
He was silent; she was not wrong, that was the heart of it. He would willingly have heard himself called a lunatic to find his fears unfounded. “I must always value your honest opinion,” Laurence said, “whatever its conclusions; I thank you, sincerely, and for imposing on you in such a manner.”
“There is no imposition felt, Captain Laurence, I assure you,” she said, and looked up as footsteps came: a moment later, Emily had put her head around the corner of the folding-screen to see them sitting outside the tent, before the fire.
“Oh,” she said, “Captain, I didn’t know you were here; did you want me for something? I have just been over at the next fire over those rocks: and you needn’t frown, Alice, they are all girls there.”
“Oh, dear,” Mrs. Pemberton said, with a sigh.
“Not that sort!” Emily said. “I mean soldiers: more than half of them on the dragons are girls. Not just the captains, though some of them, too; but nearly all those fellows who manage the baggage. I dare say we ought to just bunk in with them instead of perching out here away from everything.”
For safety, their campfire had been established at the very edge of camp; their tent was of double thickness and sheltered further by the folding-screen: Laurence had solicited a pair of pistols, from the aviators, for Mrs. Pemberton, and had shown her how to send up a flare, if need be.
Laurence stared at Emily. “Do you mean to tell me half their army is women?” he demanded, to his dismay recalling he had without the least consciousness stripped and bathed at several of their previous nightly halts, in full view of Chinese companies. “Are the dragons so insistent upon it?”
“It’s not the beasts at all,” Emily said. “They tell me they can come instead of their brothers, if their families like, so they don’t have to spare the boys from the fields.”
“Well,” Laurence said, helplessly. He found it difficult to accept, and yet he was no pot to be calling names for kettles: if not his daughter, then a young woman under his tutelage was in the service; he could scarcely condemn those families, if it were the accepted mode. But he should have to tell Forthing and also his fellow-captains at once: if the men should work out they were surrounded by an encampment full of young women, they would surely run riot and make nuisances of themselves, given half an opportunity.
“Are they willing,” he began to ask, and then Emily leapt at him, in one straight bound across the small campfire, and knocked him to the ground as a sharp blade thrust down through the air towards him.
Emily rolled away from him, and came up drawing her sword; Mrs. Pemberton with a cry had fallen back upon the tent. Laurence drew his own sword: five men were descending upon them, drawn metal gleaming in firelight. Their sabers were peculiarly workmanlike: a wide blade at the tip and tapering to the hilt, and they wore black that made them almost invisible against the dark; one scattered the fire with the end of his sword, stamping out embers. Laurence swung a wide circle leaping forward to press them back, and seized one still-burning branch; he thrust it towards the nearest man’s eyes and then fell back with Emily, putting the tent at their backs before the men closed in.
The steady rhythm of sword-strokes occupied his next moments to the exclusion of thought: no room for anything but answering to one strike and another. He and Emily had the reach of them, their own blades the longer and the better, but they were outnumbered. She fought well at his side, matching his pace. There was a brief opening; he shouted, “Ho, the camp!” at the top of his lungs, “Murder!” and they were fighting again.
Laurence bent to parry low, and only just in time brought his sword back up to catch a slash meant for his throat. Another did catch him in the shoulder, but he wrested himself away before he felt more than the tip scoring his flesh; he heard the thick wool ripping away around the blade, and dropping the burning brand managed to reach up and wrench the blade away from the man’s grip.
But he was forced to pay for it: the third man, on his left flank, lunged for Laurence’s exposed side with two knives in his hands, feinting one at his eyes. Laurence turned to slash back, but Emily was there, her sword flying upwards, and she sheared away the man’s hand halfway to the elbow, blood spurting from the stump; she reversed her grip on the blade and jammed it brutally through his chest, and booted his corpse off with a shove of her foot into the other standing beside him.
Now there were four: Laurence whirling back struck one of the men upon the bridge of his nose with the pommel of the short sword he had taken, and then ripped the man’s throat with the blade as his head tipped back.
A pistol-crack came jumping-loud from over his shoulder, deafening in his ear; Laurence felt a few hot flecks of burning powder on his chin, and saw a thin thread of smoke rise from his sleeve; a hole stood in the chest of the man on Emily’s left. Mrs. Pemberton stood pale with the smoking pistol in her hands a moment, then she let it fall and reached to raise the other from the pocket of her skirt; Emily, turning, snatched it from her hands and shot another.
“Captain!” a shout came, “Captain Laurence—” and a young man, his personal servant Ferris, came scrambling over the rocks; Forthing was on his heels.
The last attacker looked at the corpses of his fellows and the approaching men; Laurence caught for his arm, but too late. The man turned his blade inwards and throwing himself away fell upon it; when Laurence turned him over with his foot, his eyes beneath the sooty mask were staring blind and dead.
“Good God,” Ferris said panting, coming to a halt; he held a pistol, which he carefully uncocked and put back onto his waist. “You are not hurt, sir, I hope?”
“Nothing to signify,” Laurence said, looking at Emily, who did not show blood anywhere. He was a little torn: surely it ought to have been his own duty to shield her from danger, and yet in the moment he had not the least difficulty classing her with himself as a combatant, and he could not help taking a degree of pride in her skill and courage; she had been as resolute a fighter as he could have wished at his side. “Ma’am, I trust you are well?”
“I must be,” Mrs. Pemberton said, though she had not let a tight grip on Emily’s arm. “I am perfectly untouched; only, very shaken. Emily—”
“It takes you so, the first time,” Emily said to her, consolingly. “Pray don’t give it a thought; that was a very pretty shot. What? Oh! No, I am fine; they didn’t get a touch on me. They scarcely tried: I don’t think they cared a lick about the two of us; they meant to kill the captain.”
“And it will be wonderful, at this rate,” Iskierka said with mean satisfaction, “if these assassins do not get their way, when you are always busy making up to this Imperial flirt of yours, and paying no attention.”
Temeraire would have hissed her down, but he hardly could; wretched guilt silenced him. He ought have been there; no assassin ought ever have been able to get so close to Laurence. “Only,” he said unhappily, “Laurence ought to have been asleep—or at least, safe within the camp; I do not understand how he ever came to be so exposed.”
He clawed the dirt of the clearing; whyever had he gone to sleep without seeing Laurence properly settled? He thought Laurence had only gone to have supper with the other captains; Laurence had told him to rest and be comfortable—surely Temeraire ought have been able to rely on him. Laurence could not have imagined Temeraire would be in the least comfortable, knowing that Laurence was endangering himself.
Iskierka snorted. “It is easy to say, he ought to have been asleep: he wasn’t, he was nearly being stuck with swords,” she said. “I don’t see that you should be blaming him, when you didn’t take the trouble to look out for him properly. You may be sure, Granby,” she added, “if you ever are a prince, I will not begin to neglect you; not that I am very sorry anymore that you are not, since all it would mean is that people were always trying to kill you.”
“Come, dear one, pray don’t stir up Temeraire,” Granby said, coming from the tents. “Temeraire, there’s no harm done: Laurence hasn’t a scratch.”
“He does too have a scratch,” Temeraire said, “—upon his shoulder; and his coat has been ruined. Whatever was he doing so far from the pavilion?”
“You cannot go calling a mere pinprick a scratch,” Granby said, “and I am sure we will put him in the way of a new coat, soon enough. He went out there to have a word with Roland, that’s all.”
But Laurence had not gone out to speak with Emily. “Why, I wasn’t there,” Emily said, when Temeraire asked her later, as they packed for resuming their flight, what had been so urgent as to induce Laurence to go so far upon the outskirts of camp. “I only came upon them later; I suppose he wanted to talk to Alice. Mrs. Pemberton, I mean,” she added.
“What?” Churki said, lifting her head up abruptly from her sniffing over the packs, and ruffling up the feathers of her collar. “What is he doing with Mrs. Pemberton?”
“Lord, I don’t know,” Roland said. “He likes to talk to her, I suppose because she’s a gentlewoman; you know he is ever such a stickler.”
“Hrmmr,” Churki said, frowning, but then she smoothed down her feathers. “Well,” she said to Temeraire, “I do not have a real claim, and I suppose Laurence is older; although I had thought of her for Hammond. But I do not mean to interfere,” she said, as though making a handsome concession.
“Interfere with what?” Temeraire said, in alarm. “Whatever do you mean? I am sure Laurence does not think of her like that, at all—”
“Why should he not?” Churki said. “She is a hearty young woman: she might bear him children for twenty years, if they begin quickly. Certainly they should neither of them wait any longer; a man should begin to have children at twenty, in my opinion, and a woman at sixteen.”
Temeraire stalked away from them and back to the pavilion. “I do not see why she must always be on about Laurence marrying,” he complained in some irritation to Mei, who very kindly put aside the poetry she was reading to comfort his distress. “Laurence has quite enough to do, as it is. He has his crew to oversee, and there is the war, which we must contrive to win; and when that is done, there will be our valley, and I dare say I will find him another fortune, sooner or later, which he will have to manage. I do not see that he at all ought to marry.”
“Well,” Mei said, “if he is not married already, certainly he ought not without the Emperor’s approval, and the choice must be carefully made. There is no call for a prince to marry in haste; concubines may suffice him quite well.”
“Aren’t those a sort of whore?” Temeraire said, doubtfully. “I know Laurence does not hold with visiting those—”
“No, no,” Mei said, “a concubine, bound to him and him alone; surely that woman who travels with you, who is under guard by your young soldier, is one of his?”
Temeraire flattened down his ruff. “No!” he said. “That is Mrs. Pemberton; she is Emily’s chaperone, and why we must needs have brought her along, I am sure I do not in the least know! Laurence hasn’t any concubine, at all.”
“What, none?” Mei said, staring at him with her eyes widening.
“No,” Temeraire said, suddenly wary.
“None!” Mei cried. “Prince Mianning has seven: one has borne him a promising boy of four already, with another child coming soon. However is he to have heirs?”
So Temeraire spent the day’s flight in high dudgeon, speaking to no-one. Why would everyone see Laurence married? He did not see that it was anyone’s concern, other than his own. “You are quite well, Laurence?” he asked, turning his head around. “Are you certain you are not feverish, and warm through?”
“I am perfectly comfortable, I thank you,” Laurence said, tiredly, and fell silent again. They had searched the camp through and searched again, of course, all the rest of the night and in the early hours of the morning, looking for any trace of the assassins—whence they had come, what their purpose, but without a trace at all.
By the end, General Chu had shrugged and said he supposed the men were mere outlaws, having made the attempt only to get at Mrs. Pemberton and Emily. Which was perfect nonsense: Emily was quite a remarkable young officer, but Temeraire did not see that there was anything out of the ordinary about Mrs. Pemberton, nor why anyone should have gone to particular lengths to get at her.
“I must suppose,” Laurence had said to him and to Hammond, after they had given up the futile search, when morning light at last coming had uncovered nothing more of use, “that this is another endeavour of the conservative faction.”
“I will make the argument, sir, if I may,” Hammond had said to Laurence with a somewhat stiff tone, “that this explains their willingness to permit this expedition. To separate you from the Imperial court, exposed to such blatant attempts as these upon your life which their partisans may nevertheless easily explain away, must be sufficient good in their eyes, and preclude the notion that they must have some real complaint to make.
“I suppose,” he added, “that we may expect more of these assaults, when we have reached camp: General Fela is, we know already, one of their partisans; and they must rely on your death, in severing the one formally acknowledged tie between our nations, to remove the impulse to alliance.”
“Then we ought not go any further,” Temeraire had said, in high alarm. “We ought to return at once to the court; and then I will squash Lord Bayan, and that will put a stop to these assassination attempts.”
But Hammond had protested at once, and Laurence shook his head as well. “Prince Mianning has had the right of it: the reward we seek is proportionate to the risk we run,” he said. “An alliance between our nations might well change the course of the war and the fortunes of all Europe, if not the world entire: we cannot give up the chance of it merely for a personal fear. This force alone, if we can bring it to bear smartly, may well make the difference between victory and defeat.”
He had gone to sleep then in his tent having been awake all the night; and now when Temeraire glanced back towards him, Laurence had drifted once more to sleep again. Temeraire wished he had made Laurence promise to keep close to him at all times henceforth, and in particular not to go speak with Mrs. Pemberton again: when Laurence woke, he would discuss it with him, perhaps. He was only not entirely certain how to open the conversation: he shied from the thought that Laurence might object, might dislike the request.
“Temeraire,” Baggy said, calling out to him through cupped hands, “be a good fellow: will you tell me how to say ‘spend the night with me’?”
Temeraire obliged him, but asked, “But why should you need to ask Junichiro that? You are already quartered together.”
“No, no,” Baggy said hurriedly, “I didn’t mean to ask him; I don’t mean to ask anyone; I was only curious.”
“He means to ask one of those soldier-women, I suppose,” Junichiro said, contemptuously, “in defiance of your captain’s orders: a shameful lack of discipline.”
“Oh!” Temeraire said. “I dare say he is right; what are you about?”
“What did he say?” Baggy said, eyeing Junichiro doubtfully.
“That you mean to pester the Chinese soldiers,” Temeraire said, “even though you know very well Laurence has said not to.”
“I don’t!” Baggy said, with a quick furtive look over at Laurence, who yet slept. “Only we are coming up on a city, and I dare say there will be a girl or two about; that is all. And what business is it of yours,” he hissed, to Junichiro.
Temeraire had been drifting himself, with more attention to the air currents than to the landscape; now he looked ahead. There was a blue smudged haze on the horizon, a long narrow blot. “That is Xian,” General Chu said, peering ahead, “and we have all made good time, I see.”
“We all?” Temeraire said, and squinted. There were five small clouds converging upon the city—clouds which might each of them have been a flock of birds. “Baggy, perhaps you might wake Laurence,” he said uncertainly.
Baggy clambered carefully over to rouse Laurence; Junichiro was standing in his own straps, his eyes shaded with one hand, staring. Laurence came awake at once and opened his long spyglass; he gazed through it in silence. “Yes,” Laurence said finally. “Those are dragons. Temeraire, will you ask Chu if those companies are coming to join us?”
They were all nearing the walls of Xian, at almost the same pace; already Temeraire could make out the long banners flying before each of them, and the steady rhythmic beat of the wings: each one a company the size of their own.
“Of course; did the Emperor not command three jalan attend to this task?” Chu answered over his shoulder, absently; he himself was eyeing the companies on their way, critically. “But Commander Li is a couple of niru short, I see. Well, we will recruit them from the city outpost here: it is good for fat guardsmen to get a little exercise.”
That evening, Temeraire looked down from an enormous pavilion, established upon the fortified city wall: two hundred dragons and more sleeping beneath him, many in other pavilions, some draped over the walls, others on the open ground at their base; several of the companies had gone to encamp some distance from the city, and their fires might be seen dotting the low hills. Laurence stood beside him, a hand upon his foreleg, with Forthing near-by and Ferris also; scarcely any man of the aviators had said a word, since the company had assembled.
“I understand from General Chu that we leave early on the morrow, Mr. Forthing,” Laurence said finally. “Pray encourage the men to go to their sleep, if you please, and let us get those camp-followers out of the pavilion; they will never get any rest otherwise.”
“Yes, sir,” Forthing said, touching his hat; he lingered looking for a moment more, and turned away.
“We cannot reach the mountains in less than another week, I suppose,” Temeraire said to Laurence, trying for nonchalance: he felt a little daunted, though he did not like to admit it, by the size of their assembled force. “We must be a little slower, with so—so very many dragons.”
“I imagine so,” Laurence said, soberly. He gave Temeraire’s flank a pat and sought his own bed, and Temeraire settled himself; the only one left awake was Junichiro, who was standing half-hidden against one of the pavilion columns, nearly at the edge, still looking down at the great crowd of dragons. “You had better go to sleep also,” Temeraire said, yawning. “Not that you are doing anything much, but you will have to get up and go aloft, anyway.”
Junichiro said, low, “I have never heard of so many dragons gathered.”
“Well,” Temeraire said, glad to exchange his own private surprise for authority, “of course China is a very large country, and they know dragon-breeding very well here, and dragon-husbandry. There is really nothing very unusual in the size of this force; it is nothing to be amazed at, after all, when there are so many dragons here. I dare say the Emperor could call together an army ten times the size, if he liked.”
Junichiro was quiet again; Temeraire half-shut his eyes and had just begun to drift off comfortably, before Junichiro abruptly asked, “That transport ship we came upon, the large one—how many are there, in Britain?”
“Well, we captured two French, only last year,” Temeraire said, “so I think we are up to twenty; they take a good deal of building.” He yawned again, pointedly, but Junichiro did not take the hint, and only kept standing there; and then Gong Su came climbing up the stairs from the ledge below, and bowed. “I hope I am not intruding, Lung Tien Xiang; I only wished to see that you and His Highness have everything you might require, and that you are satisfied with our preparations, and the humble force under your command.”
Temeraire sighed; he could hear Maximus snoring away behind him, and he was very ready to go to sleep himself. “Yes, there is nothing wanting, thank you very much,” he said politely, however. “I understand we will be leaving very early in the morning? It is very kind of you to look in on us, but I am sure you should be asleep as well: Laurence has already gone to bed.
“And if you have any questions,” Temeraire said to Junichiro, hitting upon the notion to divert him, “I am sure Gong Su can tell you anything you would like to know, about the jalan; I was only just telling him,” Temeraire added, “that of course, this is not an exceptionally large force: that China has so many dragons, that one cannot really be astonished.”
Gong Su looked at Junichiro thoughtfully. “Indeed. If you are interested in such matters,” he said to that young man, “perhaps I will speak with His Highness. There might be a place for you in the service of the crown prince: it may well be that relations with your nation will at some point assume a closer character than at present, and I do not believe we have very many officials with knowledge of your tongue.”
Junichiro paused, then bowed. “I am honored by your consideration, but I cannot think of leaving the service of Captain Laurence.”
“As you wish,” Gong Su said, and made his good nights, retiring formally and disappearing again down the stairs; Temeraire meanwhile had roused up again to eye Junichiro doubtfully.
“I cannot see why you would say such a thing, when you have not the least interest in doing anything, or even learning English: it seems to me you would do very well to stay here and help the crown prince, if he means to make better friends with your country.”
“China is no friend of my country,” Junichiro said flatly, and looking one last time down at the immense dragon-horde below turned and vanished into the back of the pavilion, to bed down amongst the other officers.
They woke early and the aviators breakfasted only lightly; there was nothing but a bit of porridge for them, and water for the dragons. “I cannot conceive how such a force is to be supplied or maintained at all,” Laurence said to Temeraire, as he went up again. “We must surely strip the countryside bare as we go.”
But as they all began to go aloft, several dragons of varying colors in green-and-gold trappings took up positions throughout the flying armada, and raised a strident chant to which the larger dragons all matched their wingbeats: they began at once to set a grueling pace, greater by far than their speed before. Temeraire had not been hard-pressed so far, during all their journey. Even now, of course, he was not at all struggling, but he had to keep his head down and think about every stroke to keep up their speed.
Before the sun had reached its zenith, they had covered a hundred miles of distance, Laurence told him: they were flying nearly fifteen knots. Temeraire would not at all have minded a pause for rest or drink or food, but none was called, and he did not at all mean to be the one to propose it. General Chu himself did not seem to be having any difficulties, and he was a great deal older. Poor Maximus and Kulingile were both of them having a bad time of it, however, and late in the afternoon Berkley raised signal-flags to say he was dropping behind, and would catch them up shortly. He signaled Demane, too, to keep with him; the two huge dragons sank towards the ground. Temeraire privately would not have minded at all stopping to rest with them, if only he could have thought of a way to suggest it, between one wingbeat and the next.
The mountains grew before them all afternoon. In the foothills, as they drew near at last in the late evening, Temeraire glimpsed below a supply depot prepared for them, surely over weeks: pens holding cattle and swine, and enormous granaries; oh, how he would have delighted in a cow, that very moment. The very thought of the sweet gush of juicy blood upon his tongue made his ruff prick forward for a moment.
Their force, he abruptly realized, was breaking apart again into smaller parties, three or four groups splitting away from the main body at one time, the blue dragons diving to take up some supplies from the pens below, and each such company then vanishing into the craggy mountains, to some ledge or cavern or hidden valley. They overflew a few of them already busy making camp, and Temeraire was wondering how much further it would be to their own, when at last they came over a ridge and saw outspread below the bowl of a valley full of tents, and in the middle of an open landing ground several men in armor, one of them in the lead with a splendid cloak, and with them a large wooden chest.
The Jade Dragons with their banners had already landed, and disposed of themselves to either side of the landing grounds; General Chu was stooping towards them. Temeraire came to earth beside him, making a great effort to descend gracefully, easily, as though he were not in the least tired; but he was glad to fold his wings. And then General Chu said sharply, “What is that smoke coming from, there to the west?”
The man in the cloak bowed low and said, “Honored General Chu, we have this very morning destroyed a stronghold of the rebels: and if those in your company are British, we gladly await their explanation for this.”
He turned and beckoned: the chest, nearly six feet long, was carried forward; Temeraire saw to his surprise it was a sea-chest, the front painted with a banner reading LYDIA. They flung the lid open, and inside to the very lip was loose sackcloth, and the chest was heaped with large round balls, wrapped in faded brown petals. “What is that?” Temeraire said over his shoulder, to Laurence, who was gazing down upon it with a hard and grim expression.
“Opium,” Laurence said.