He tried to look and nearly had his neck wrenched around for his pains, the only comfort that he could glance downward and see the egg against his breastbone, the oilskin wrappings shining wet with rain. But the harness did not look so tight, he thought with sudden anxiety, and then the wind struck and he was tumbling, his head bowed down nearly below his forelegs, the blazing orange of the fire suddenly become the sky, the ground yawning with blue cloud-canyons, and then turned over and over, blurring; he could not spread his wings.
He stretched his jaws wide and drew in all the breath he could; the wind cut a little as he fell back towards the earth and the heat rose up instead, and he felt lighter as his chest filled out. He managed to twist himself sideways, and open his wings out straight up and down, in the line of his falling, and banking just a little into the wind caught an up-draft back towards the blue-black heights of the storm, already reaching a talon towards the egg, anxiously, to try and see: he brushed it very gently and carefully with the edge of a knuckle; it was there, it was safe.
“Secure that rigging there, if you please, Mr. Roland,” he heard Lieutenant Forthing shouting, and as the fire roared up in pursuit behind them, Temeraire might have heard Laurence’s voice; but he was not perfectly sure. But he could not look, he could not turn; the fire was below, the storm above, blind and unmeaning ferocity in every direction, so vast one could not even see the limits of it. He did not see Caesar anywhere, anymore. The sky was so dark, so black, smoke and thunderclouds and no relief, and somewhere there might be sunlight, but so far as Temeraire was concerned there was none left in the world at all, and no direction, either.
He put down his head and flew on.
Laurence nodded his thanks as Roland gave him the small cup of water, and drained it off despite the bitter and acrid taste. Water was rushing with great violence along the once-dry creek bed and had collected in deep puddles over the flat baked surface of the ground, but all choked with ash and dirt, undrinkable until it had been poured through a handkerchief to strain it as clean as it might be gotten.
The landscape had been wholly altered: trees reduced to black-twig skeletons, the thick grasses all gone as if into vapour, leaving behind only scorched and blackened patterns upon the ground which in places still sent up thin lines of smoke. Only the thick dark green bushes yet survived, more or less; the fire had only skirted along their line, and on the other side a region of the sparser vegetation had escaped destruction. Distantly ahead, the fire continued on, a thick black smudge against the sky.
Temeraire lay sleeping, his breath coming in low, worrying rasps. He had landed and thrust his muzzle into the rushing stream to drink long and deep, despite the clots of debris; then had fallen into a stupor. Dorset had listened to his chest and his throat and shaken his head.
Caesar had flown limping into their camp perhaps half-an-hour later, dripping-wet and exhausted from being tumbled about but a little less wretched: Rankin had steered him into the sheeting rain, far to the west along the cloud, where the fire had not been able to take hold. “I would not mind a bite, anyway,” he said, drowsily, with his head upon his forelegs; his grey hide was streaked and mottled with charcoal.
Meat proved no difficulty, except for their fatigue. Many of the desert creatures formerly hidden by the scrub had been robbed of shelter where they had not also been robbed of life; there were twelve kangaroos lying upon the earth near enough to be dragged back to the creek, their fur already singed off and the flesh partly cooked through. The aviators wearily set about the gathering and butchering, under the direction of Gong Su. The best Laurence could say of the convicts was that they were keeping quiet and out of the way, having been doled out a reduced ration of grog. Maynard was forced to take his own glass at the opposite end of the camp, alone and in disgrace.
“I shouldn’t like to go aloft on this harness again, sir, not without repairs,” Mr. Fellowes said, climbing down from Temeraire’s side with a segment of leather, to show him a buckle which looked as though it had been made of soft clay, pulled and stretched long and misshapen. “Not the worst of it, either: all the buckles are gone ahoo: softened by the heat, I think, and twisted up with all that buffeting we took.”
“Do what you can with the supplies, Mr Fellowes; in any case we cannot think of leaving tomorrow,” Laurence said tiredly, running his sleeve across his forehead; Temeraire would need the rest, and the pursuit should have to wait, if it were not now rendered quite hopeless. “Mr. Forthing, Mr. Loring, we will have a little order in this camp, I hope: let us have a couple of fires, and clear some of this debris; and perhaps if these gentlemen will dig us a pit near enough the water channel, it will give us a little cleaner water for drinking.”
“Yes, sir,” Forthing said, and went to work upon the convicts, sending those of them less greenish than the others to fetch their shovels; Laurence realized belatedly he had not thought anything of giving an order, nor evidently the officers of obeying: the united power of crisis and habit, he supposed, on both sides.
The sun was sinking, through the shredded remains of the storm clouds and the haze of smoke: all the sky become true extravagant splendour of purple and crimson and violent pink, gold-limned clouds and shafts of light flaring out like beacons through their gaps. There was not enough strength among them for any great labor. They managed with the shovels to rake away the worst of the smoky, stinking debris; the hole was dug in a curve of the creek and gradually began to fill up with water, filtered in through the dirt.
There was biscuit and the meat, thoroughly tasteless and without any scent and difficult to chew. “Can you stew them softer?” Laurence asked Gong Su, over the three kangaroos set aside for Temeraire; Gong Su nodded, but said, “They will be better in the morning,” and Laurence nodding did not wake Temeraire to eat.
They slept uneasily, with a watch of four men all the night. The plains glowed with lingering embers all around, like a field of fallen stars burning gold, and a haze of orange-lit smoke hung in the west, as if the sun had chosen not to set but only to drop below the horizon. The creek’s roar died away little by little. Laurence woke twice when Temeraire fell into a coughing fit, shudders rippling down his hide, and his head bent over; but Temeraire did not himself fully rouse, his eyes still closed to slits even as he trembled and spat grey-streaked phlegm.
“No, I am well, very well,” Temeraire croaked out frog-like the next morning, although he swallowed the kangaroo, stewed into small half-disintegrated lumps, only very slowly and with visible pain, and reluctantly. “We must go on: we must find the trail again.”
“My dear,” Laurence said quietly, feeling a species of sneak, “I understand your feelings, but we must be practical: we must consider the egg which we yet have, and put its safety before the one which has been lost. Any strange territory is dangerous, wholly unguided as we are; we have already nearly come to grief one and all, and several of our company have suffered worse misfortune. We risk the last egg with every moment we continue: only your utmost exertions were sufficient to preserve it from this last disaster; if we should encounter a second such, could you honestly declare your present strength equal to the task?”
Temeraire was silent, his head bowed deeply over the last, the tiny egg. Laurence could not repress acute guilt: deeply unfair to use Temeraire’s feelings so against him, perhaps even smacking of dishonesty, yet Laurence could not for a moment wish to withdraw, if by such a low method he might persuade Temeraire to take the rest necessary for his own health, even if a thousand eggs should be cracked upon the sands. “When you are recovered,” Laurence said, “and the fire has died down, we will have more opportunity of finding the trail again. There is this benefit: the fire has quite cleared the landscape for our search.”