Page 45 of League of Dragons (Temeraire)
“Oh!” Iskierka gave her present victims, a pair of French light-weights, a last pursuing gout of fire. “As though I should need any help to manage anyone at all,” and she was tearing off after the big French cross-breed, who was serving as the anchor of their artillery-cover.
Quite naturally, a handful of the middle-weights from the left flank came to help screen him. “There,” Temeraire said. “Requiescat, pray knock us a hole on the left.”
“Do you mean their left, or my left?” Requiescat said, circling him lazily, as though they had all the time imaginable. “And whichisthe left; I am no hand at remembering.”
“Over that large building with the green steeple!” Temeraire said irritably.
“Have him take the rest of the ferals with him,” Laurence said, and Temeraire passed along the order—for what it was worth, as nearly all the Scottish dragons were busy rummaging through the sacks of the shattered wagons below; but some half a dozen of the smaller ones went after Requiescat when he called them to order, even if they were not likely to be much use.
Meanwhile, however, Temeraire’s new signal-ensign Quigley was putting out the flags—ready incendiariesandfall in behind leader.Temeraire fended off an attempt by a couple of over-daring young French beasts, who did not know better than to come at him from his lower flank—a quick hovering twist and he was doubled on himself. He roared at them as they closed. Both wheeled away with cries of anguish, a lighter lesson than they had asked for, Temeraire felt; but he did not have time to pursue them at present. Requiescat had gone barreling through the lines, his head down and the rifle-fire pinging harmlessly off his helm, and the ferals had gone in after him clawing about the dragons who had been first bowled out of the way and were struggling to beat back up into place.
“Excellent,” Laurence said. “Make your pass when ready, Temeraire,” and Temeraire plunged into the disorder of the French line with his legs tucked in carefully, the long-unaccustomed feeling of his bellmen scrambling about in the rigging below, which was growing noticeably lighter as they cast off the incendiaries in their careful way—he could feel each one being handed along a line of men until it reached the end of the rigging, just below his tail, and there down a line of three men suspended by lines, to the last one who ignited the fuse and let the bomb drop.
Obituria and Cavernus were with him—Cavernus another of their formation-leaders, a Malachite Reaper, who had come over with Granby from Edinburgh; she was a bit standoffish, and not above middle-weight, but a really clever flyer. All their formations came behind them, their crews dropping their own bombs. Not one in five landed anywhere useful, of course, and each one was necessarily small; that was the trouble with incendiaries—and worse, there was no sign of Fidelitas, who ought to have come along, too. Temeraire, startled, did a quick survey over the battlefield as he finished his pass; the dragons of Fidelitas’s formation were circling uncertainly, many of them having small unhelpful skirmishes with French beasts—and Fidelitas himself was down among the baggage-carts, with the ferals.
“Oh!” Temeraire said, indignant.
“Can you manage another pass?” Laurence called, at the same moment; they had created some noise and confusion on the ground beneath, but not as much as one might have hoped—not as much asfourformations should have done. But the French dragons were recovering from their buffeting now, coming for them in their dangerous swarming numbers, and if he tried to lead the others back through that cloud instead of going round back to their own lines, Obituria was sure to take some injury; she was not quick enough. Fidelitaswouldhave been, Temeraire thought resentfully.
He cast an eye quickly over the ground below—the incendiaries had at least thoroughly disordered the twenty gun-crews covering the French center; those would take several minutes to begin firing again. “Laurence, I might take those guns, myself, if the others could keep the French dragons off my back a little longer,” Temeraire called back, proposing an alternative, and Laurence gave the word. The signal-flags flashed out, telling the rest of the dragons to cover his pass. But Obituria seemed perplexed; she was already climbing up out of combat-height to circle back to the allied line, without any orders at all, and even though the signal-ensign on her back ought to have been watching the flag-dragon, she did not turn round. Fortunately, Cavernus rallied her own formation to make a shield—but the smaller dragons, unsupported, would not be able to hold for long. Temeraire calculated quickly—he would have to go straight at the gun-crews, flying over the French infantry before them; he could not afford the time to circle round and come from their rear.
There was no more time to consider; either he must go at once, or they must give up, accept that their pass had failed in such a clumsy manner in front of everyone, when itoughtto have gone well. Temeraire whirled and dived low even as he caught a glimpse of Laurence raising the speaking-trumpet to call him off, and steeled himself against the frantic spattering of musket-balls that struck his chest and legs from the French infantry below—like being bitten all over by rats or something equally unpleasant, and he could not even give vent to a hiss of displeasure; he required every last ounce of breath.
Halfway from the guns, he began roaring at measured intervals, just as though he meant to raise up a wave. Men and horses collapsed and scattered even before the shorter roars, and most of the already-disordered artillery-crews broke and began to flee in every direction; faintly he heard voices crying,“Le vent du diable!”as they ran. But one brave crew had stayed by the third gun in the line—blood streaming over their faces and hands, and the ground near them still smoking where an incendiary had landed not far away, but they were holding fast, exhorted by a tall young officer in a shako with its once-proud plume replaced by a makeshift bunch of chicken feathers. They were trying to bring the gun to bear—on him.
The wide mouth of the iron cannon gaped hideously round as they struggling turned it inch by inch. Staring down its dark maw, Temeraire tried not to think of all the dreadful things Perscitia had said about being struck by cannon-shot, and especially not of poor Chalcedony, who had gone down so horribly in the Battle of Shoeburyness with a ball to the chest. He could only try to outrun them: if he shifted his course now, the divine wind would collapse, and it would not do against all those guns; it was not enough just to destroyone.
He kept his roars coming, kept flying, even as the gunners frantically tamped down the wadding, and loaded in the shot. And then he was close enough: even as they were putting the slow-match to the tube, he gathered one last breath and roared enormously, collapsing the other waves into a single monstrous force, and the divine wind rolled out over them.
The gun rang so violently it might have been church-bells, pealing. The crew fell away like rag dolls, collapsing; Temeraire glimpsed with sorrow the officer with his feathers sinking, his eyes gone red with blood. And then the barrel exploded. Flames and bits of iron and splinters, red-hot and smoldering, flew in every direction. All along the ridge of the low hill, the oaken carriages of the guns were shattering as though they had been struck by cannon-fire. Those men who had not fled fast enough or far enough littered the ground unmoving, in a wide fan-shape marking the path of the divine wind.
And as Temeraire lifted away, wincing, the entire hill upon which the guns had stood abruptly collapsed, as though some essential foundation had shattered. Dirt and sand and pebbles cascaded away in a tremendous wash, burying the nearest ranks of French infantry to their ankles where they had not already been decimated by the hail of metal.
The French ranks near-by were dismayed by the attack, and the dragons above reeled back; Cavernus and her formation wheeled into a diamond-shape round Temeraire, sheltering him as he got back aloft, and together they climbed out of fighting-height and dashed back to the safety of the allied lines. Temeraire had the satisfaction of seeing Eroica’s signal-ensign dip flags in a quick salute, as they swept past. His breath was short, and now that the moment of crisis had passed, the bullet-wounds stung fiercely; there seemed a great many of them.
“Report, Mr. Roland,” Laurence called.
“Flinders lost, Warrick wounded, sir,” Emily Roland called, hanging off halfway up his side. “A dozen hits to the chest, and the bellmen cannot stanch two.”
“Mr. Quigley, signal Iskierka that we are going to the field-hospital, and to hold the line until we return,” Laurence called.
“Surely that can wait until the battle is over,” Temeraire said, flinching; oh, how he hated the surgeons. “Truly, Laurence, I do not feel them in the slightest.”
But Laurence was inflexible; with a sigh Temeraire put down at the clearing, and tried to console himself that at least Keynes was with them again—the finest dragon-surgeon of Britain’s forces, and the quickest hand at getting the wretched musket-balls out. It was not a verygoodconsolation, however.
“What the devil were you about, giving them your whole belly for washing?” Keynes demanded in great irritation, having ordered Temeraire to sprawl on his side—a highly uncomfortable position, nearly squashing one wing—while he clambered about with his savage long-bladed knives, and his assistants scuttling behind him with the dish.
“Well, I did notwantto!” Temeraire said, protesting. “But there was nothing else to be done, after Obituria had flown off. It would scarcely have gone better if I had circled around while Cavernus and the others were bowled over, and then the French could have come at me from aloft. Ow!” Another ball had dropped into the dish, with its inappropriately pleasant chiming sound, and the hot searing iron had been pressed to the wound to close it. “Surely that is all of them.”
“I know a bullet-hole when I see one, damn your scaly hide,” Keynes said, jabbing him again.
Laurence had with difficulty restrained his first instinctual reaction on the battlefield, which had been a murderous one; but hearing Temeraire say straight-out what ought to have been plain—which surelyhad beenplain, to Obituria’s captain—renewed his rage afresh. For a moment sight dimmed, one of those too-vivid memories seizing him, and he was in the night sky over the ocean, theValériebelow them: her lanterns and the muzzles of her cannon glowing red-hot, the only lights upon her decks. The wind in his face and the shock of impact: the barbed ball tearing into Temeraire’s chest from her skyward guns.
He shook the darkness away and stood again in daylight, torn grass and mud churned up with thick rivulets of dragon blood spattered across his boots, the low groans of injured dragons and men. Temeraire still bore that scar, a knot the size of Laurence’s fist, drawn flesh and dulled scales; he liked to paint it over sometimes for vanity. If there had been a skyward gun in the French emplacement; if they had fired off that last round in time, a difference of half a minute—
“That is all of them,” Keynes said, straightening up, “and more than there ought to have been.”
Laurence did not let anger go, but dismissed it to return later; the battle was not over. “Can he fly, Mr. Keynes?”
