“Hum,” Requiescat said, licking his chops thoughtfully, “that’s so, but I don’t see as we have to go finding her at all. She and those fellows know where the rendezvous is as well as anyone, and they have some men and their compasses with them, if they should get themselves lost like hatchlings. We can just go on and let them catch us up.”
“They must know we would miss them, after they have been gone so long,” Temeraire said, “so I expect that they have got themselves into a fight, and are probably all dying somewhere full of French bullets.” He did not sound as though he would be very sorry to find as much the case.
Wringe squirmed as Temeraire pointedly translated this for her, but still said nothing. “Temeraire,” Laurence said, low, “it is not only foolishness on her part; this is a challenge to your authority.”
“Oh!” Temeraire said, and, having told Wringe as much, he added, “so now you will tell me, or else,” and when she continued mute, he drew a great expanding breath and roared out, over her head.
“Payom zhe reng!” Wringe said, flattening herself to the ground, and everyone jumped. A gentle pattering like rain came from the trees in the path of Temeraire’s roar, old acorns shaken loose into the dead leaves, and a few small birds dropping stone-dead. Gong Su promptly went in after them while Wringe muttered her confession: the miscreants had gone back towards London with a notion of taking some of Napoleon’s army by surprise, winning either treasure or accolades. There had been no very well-formed goal; they had gone looking for a fight as much as for any practical reward.
“We ought to go on and leave them to catch up,” Temeraire said, panting a little, still ruffled and angry, “just as Requiescat says, except then I dare say she will come back with two eagles or something like, and there will be no living with her at all.”
Laurence did not like to ill-wish aloud, but if Iskierka had so overridden Granby as to make herself a deserter, she was unlikely to be guided in any other respect of sense, and he thought Temeraire’s earlier expectation was the more likely to be met.
But Temeraire brightened after a moment and added, “Anyway, I do not suppose anyone can blame us for going after her, to fetch her back, Laurence? After all, she is very important; or so everyone says.”
The roads beneath them were empty as they flew back towards London, warily and quick. The haze of dust which the British soldiers raised had already settled, and no sign of French pursuit. No-one much was to be seen out of doors, except farmers and herdsmen at their husbandry: cattle and crops cared nothing for Napoleon or politics, and implacably demanded all the same attention. But even these few men kept their heads low, and hurried through their work as much as could be done; by late afternoon the countryside seemed nearly deserted, with the sun yearning impatiently to its rest.
“We ought to see her miles off, if she is showing away as she always does,” Temeraire was saying ungraciously, as they flew, and then he pricked up his ruff: a small speck in the distance, coming closer, had emerged from the clouds and begun to resolve itself into wings.
It was Gherni: a much-battered Gherni, panting with the speed of her flight, and her face mazed with a trickle of blood she ineffectually tried to rub off against her shoulder, now and again, only smearing it about into a brick-red film overlaid on her blue hide. Tharkay was with her, and he leapt down to Temeraire’s back from hers mid-flight, like a boarder, but tethered by a long double strap of thick leather. He unclipped it from his own waist as soon as he had landed and latched on to Temeraire’s harness; Gherni caught up the snapping-free loose end, which jangled loudly with small clapper bells, and wrapped it around her own forearm a few times.
“What is that?” Temeraire said, with interest, craning his head to see.
“I had it made in Istanbul, my last journey,” Tharkay said, and to Laurence said, “Iskierka has been taken.”
He led them to Arkady and the other deserters, huddled and licking their wounds in the shelter of a tall hill that shielded them from the road, casting an afternoon shadow long enough to conceal them from cursory observation from aloft. The red-patched feral roused when Temeraire came in to land, and mantled his wings defensively.
“That is enough, you shan’t bristle at me,” Temeraire said. “You knew very well you were behaving like a—” He paused, for consideration. “—like a scrub, or else you shouldn’t have sneaked, and if you have been served out as you deserved, it is no-one’s fault but your own. You had better to be sorry and promise not to do it again, than hiss.”
“They broke away a little before noon,” Tharkay told Laurence, as they squatted down and scraped clean a patch of dirt, for him to sketch out the action. “Well-managed: they had been going into the clouds all morning, and making a noise with their singing, so by the time we realized they had turned us around you were all far out of ear-shot. Granby’s gunners shot off a few flares, but it was a hopeless effort.
“From there our luck was as evil as it might have been: two hours flying towards London without any challenge, so we were on Bonaparte’s doorstep by the time we came on any other beasts; and then it was Davout’s advance guard out gathering cattle: two Grand Chevaliers and another half-a-dozen heavy-weights. Of course all of them went directly for her; I think I saw sixty men jump for her back at once. Arkady grew remarkably less deaf to me, after that, and we managed to get away; but the French already had Granby trussed like a chicken on one of the Chevaliers and were racing him away as fast as they could go, with Iskierka flinging herself madly after them.”
“I knew I ought never have let her have Granby,” Temeraire said stormily. “Now look how she has lost him, and not even in a real battle. We ought to get him back and leave her to them, and good riddance.”
Laurence exchanged a glance with Tharkay: it was by no means good riddance to lose their one fire-breather to the French, no matter how recalcitrant. “Did you see where they went?” Laurence asked, low.
“Straight for London,” Tharkay said.
Chapter 10
I AM AN OFFICER NOW, though,” Temeraire said, “so I do not see why I must wait.”
“You might be a general, and it will not make you any smaller,” Laurence said. “A twenty-ton dragon must give over trying to sneak, and that is our only hope at all of getting Granby out.”
“But what if you should be captured,” Temeraire said, “and then I would be just as bad as Iskierka: it is my duty to keep you safe.”
They had fought very nearly this same battle before, however, in Istanbul, and his protests were rather an expression of unhappiness than fresh and determined objections. “We have not time to quarrel; Granby’s very life if not his liberty may depend on quick action,” Laurence said gently, and Temeraire sank to his belly with his ruff pinned back, threshing the matted straw of the meadow uneasily with his claws and raking up dust and furrowed earth with it.
Laurence was grateful for the established habit of the conversation, if a little guilty, for it allowed him to practice a degree of deceit: he knew under ordinary circumstances, he would not in this same situation go, however much he might wish to. If he were captured, Temeraire would be prisoner, and in their already dire straits the risk could not be run, not for so slim a chance as they faced to bring out Granby and Iskierka.
The circumstances were not ordinary. Laurence was a man already dead in law. He could not value preserving his own life very high; and so long as he were killed instead of captured in the attempt, which he had some right to hope might be arranged, Temeraire would not be lost to Britain: he had made the agreement with Wellesley, and now was bound directly, not only through Laurence himself.