Page 55 of League of Dragons (Temeraire)
“I trust, Midwingman, that nothing more will be said on the subject,” Laurence said.
“I am not a goose, to go about honking everywhere,” Roland said. “But there shan’t be any keeping it quiet, sir. Every man topside heard him, and every man aboard heard Fidelitas, and I dare say a dozen beasts heard Cavernus putting in her mite on the subject; it shan’t stay a secret.”
“No,” Laurence said, “but it may be known, without being formally brought to my notice.”
“It might be better if itwere,now,” she said pointedly.
Laurence knew what she meant. He had certainly just saved the allied army, through extraordinary efforts, and Whitehall could not dismiss him at this particular moment; if he meant to call Poole to any official account, now was the time. “That will be all,” he said. She frowned, then touched her hat and left the room. Laurence sat back heavily in his chair—a more comfortable one than many he had used on campaign; he had been assigned a house for his quarters, large enough to boast a sitting-room inhabited by a writing-table. He understood Roland’s resentment—shared it. But any court-martial convened against Poole would face the remarkable difficulty of convicting him of dereliction of duty when his duty had in fact been performed to the utmost: when his dragon had led a dangerous charge and had won through to relieve Temeraire and Iskierka, just in time, and secure the retreat.
The case could only be won by a public argument that Poole had tried to persuade Fidelitas to do otherwise—and that his efforts had failed; that his dragon had willfully disobeyed him. That knowledge was even now traveling through the Corps at the speed of rumor, surely to the anger and anxiety of every officer who had taken it as truth that dragons were devoted blindly to their captains. Laurence was not even sure that a court of aviators would be willing to admit that it had happened. Poole would be invited to say that he had changed his mind and had told Fidelitas so, too quietly to be overheard. Many would refuse to believe that a dragon had committed the act from any sense of duty; he would either have done it at the behest of another dragon, or, by a still more uncharitable interpretation, for the sake of prize-money.
“And I cannot say Poole was unquestionably guilty, in any case,” Laurence said tiredly. “He might well have argued that the risk of a charge outweighed the value of saving us—that he desired to take a safer course.”
“But if he had gone round, he should never have come in time to save the guns, which were in much more danger than I was,” Temeraire said, with an optimistic gloss upon his own peril. “And without the guns, everything should have been lost, anyone could see that. Poor Fidelitas! I am very sorry I was so abrupt with him to-day: he was behaving so oddly that I was sure he had done something to be ashamed of, but I see it is only that he was ashamed of Poole, and everyone else was pitying him. We must do something for him, Laurence. I do not suppose there is any hope of a prize?”
“No,” Laurence said. They would be on short commons, if anything, by the end of the week. A great deal of supply had been abandoned behind the enemy lines.
“Then a medal,” Temeraire said decisively. “He certainly ought to have a medal.”
“We will consider the matter tomorrow,” Laurence said. “For now, you should be asleep: I made sure you would be so when I came, and I am sorry to have found otherwise. You have eaten enough?”
“Yes,” Temeraire said. “All the third flight handsomely said they would go without, because they had eaten in the afternoon before they fetched the supply here, so we ate well. And really I am notverytired,” but here he yawned, enormously, and moments after putting his head down murmuring, “but now that Emily is back, and you have assured me all is well…” he was snoring in a remarkably stentorious way, which made the shrubs near his nostrils tremble violently with every exhalation.
Laurence rested a hand on the soft muzzle and left it there a few moments, feeling the steady thrumming of breath moving beneath, before he continued on to the courier-clearing, where Yu Li awaited him, herself drooping with fatigue. Laurence hesitated; he had heard enough of her report that he knew he must urgently hear the rest, and take the news on to the headquarters, but she had been going back and forth all day in their service and now was shivering badly; the night had turned cool, and Jade Dragons did not have the flesh to keep them warm when they were not flying. He looked towards the large manor, overlooking the encampment, where the senior staff were assembling, and slowly asked, “Do you think you might be able to come inside the house?”
She followed his courier to the manor, and came up the stairs behind him, to the great consternation of the guards. She was only some eight feet long from head to tip of tail, but her talons and teeth were remarkable enough for all that. But Hammond flung open the door from within and rushing out onto the top of the stairs seized Laurence by the hand, nearly wringing it in greeting. “Admiral!” he cried. “He has halted on the road outside Dresden. He has certainly halted. We have it confirmed beyond a doubt.”
Herequired no antecedent, and the guards overhearing the news brightened as much as did Laurence. “I cannot think why,” Laurence said, though he returned Hammond’s handshake with all the enthusiasm this news invited, and came into the house with him, forgetting his own company. “He could have had us in striking-distance in two hours’ flight—you are sure he has not merely stopped to bring up stragglers?”
“His stragglers are three-quarters of his army,” Hammond said. “Now that Blücher has rejoined us, he does not have enough men to meet us. He has sent half his dragons back to Erfurt, to bring the rest of his infantry along by portage. We will have three days, at least. Come in, you must come in at once,” Hammond continued, and drew Laurence along into the large dining room where the senior staff was assembled, without even noticing the dragon trailing behind them.
Even there, Yu Li at first escaped observation—Marshal Blücher coming forward to greet Laurence with a fervent embrace, and the other officers acclaiming him with all the energy of men who knew very well how closely they had skirted disaster and defeat. “His Majesty will wish to see you,” Blücher said. “You have eaten?”
A stifled yelp interrupted their greetings: Yu Li had inquisitively come up to the table, which was littered with maps tacked together to form a sweeping whole. She put her head out on its long neck to examine their positions, very much startling the young staff-officer next to her, who nearly knocked over his neighbors as he went stumbling back. “I beg your pardon,” Laurence said hastily. “Gentlemen, this is Lung Yu Li, who has been sent from the Chinese legions.”
There was an enormous silence. Yu Li broke it herself, saying in Chinese, “This is a very handsome map, but those men are not over there,” while leaning forward to make several alterations to the disposition of figures with the talons of her foreleg, nudging some here and there in small increments until she was satisfied with their arrangement. She straightened up from the table and blinked around at the company, who wore a general expression of disquiet: a dragon did not generally appear in a dining room, and even Laurence had to admit of a vague sense of something decidedly out of place, as though a caricature from theGazettehad abruptly come to life.
“Sir,” Laurence said to Blücher, “her news does not permit of any delay, further than has already been occasioned. Marshal Kutuzov ought to hear it at once, if he can be disturbed.”
“Ah! He cannot,” Blücher said heavily. “Marshal Kutuzov has died.”
—
The men gathered around the table with the Tsar were divided neatly by dress: the statesmen neat and in good order, the serving-officers unshaven and in clothing stained with sweat and retreat; their faces were equally bleak, however, and Yu Li’s news was not calculated to make them less so.
“By the Dread Lord’s order, the legions departed from Xian directly on receiving the Dread Lord’s order,” Yu Li said, “and proceeded without delay through Yutien and made the crossing of the Taklamakan Desert. Since then we have encountered a steady resistance which has hindered the secure establishment of our supply. As a consequence, we must establish a sufficient presence at each depot to defend it, and our supply-flights must travel in larger groups, which in turn necessitates an increase in supply, and thereby greatly delays our advance.”
“Feral raiding?” a Russian officer asked, when Laurence had translated this far. “I dare say they do not know how to manage wild beasts, when they have none in their own country, but any respectable guards ought to be able to fend them off.”
Laurence was sure Yu Li did not refer to ordinary feral attacks as might be made on any army’s supply, and when he asked her of the arrangements made to avoid these, she said, with a severe eye upon the officer who had spoken, “Naturally, as is necessary to any civilized army, we have a sufficient supply allocated to be able to give appropriate presents to those dragons whose territory we must cross. But our gifts have been refused. These attacks are bent upon destruction, not theft.”
There was a pause, as this sank in. Every man there knew that Kutuzov’s intention had been, as nearly as could be managed, to arrange a trap almost exactly like the one which had nearly closed upon Napoleon’s army in Russia, in the last campaign. He had meant to penetrate as far westward as he could during the winter, and on meeting Napoleon’s advance retire by small piecemeal stages, grudgingly surrendering territory and stretching the French lines of communication, until the arrival of the legions from the East should abruptly shift the balance of aerial power, and allow him to strike a crushing blow—with, they had all confidently expected, the assistance of the Austrians, who would under those circumstances have finally come off the fence. Napoleon had already overset much of this design by leaping forward to seize Dresden and force them so far westward in a single blow. Even a small delay in the legions’ arrival would now have been a cause for concern.
“How long?” Wittgenstein asked finally, breaking the silence.
“General Zhao Lien regrets that it will not be possible to assemble along the Vistula before two months have passed,” Yu Li said.
“We do not have two months,” Blücher said. “We do not have two weeks.”
