“By this argument you should soon reduce all loyalty to a mere competition of bribery,” Laurence said. “If I had thought for one instant that those robes should so secure your affections as to make you wink at treason, I should have thrown them on the fire directly, regardless of what distress you might feel; and,” he added, with a degree of heat, “I am growing inclined to think Jia Zhen knew precisely what he did when he made you so extravagant a gift.”
“I do not mean only the robes,” Temeraire protested weakly, but he was very much shocked that Laurence should even consider so hideous an act, and added, “and I hope you would never really do anything so dreadful. Of course I cannot help but feel kindly towards them, and the Government is always behaving like a scrub; that is not any of their fault, and certainly it is no fault of the robes.”
He looked back at the pavilion in much distress: the Otter, small and quick, had already turned broadside to the harbor, and as he watched, and flinched, the roar of the cannon echoed across the water. The ball went sailing high—they had the cannon elevated—and came down upon one graceful high-pointed corner of the pavilion’s roof, in an instant carrying away the elaborately carved dragon and smashing through the tiles. A distant shriek of wood breaking, which sounded queerly as though it came from somewhere to the east, and a cloud of splinters bursting away; a clatter of more red tiles went sliding down into the gap, and the dark hole stood dreadfully jagged against the elegant line.
“Oh!” Temeraire cried in distress, “Laurence, only look; and if anyone should have been below—”
He darted a little closer—of course he would not do anything, not now he did see it must be still more wrong; but he could not help it—
“Temeraire,” Laurence said.
“No, of course I will not,” Temeraire said, despairingly. “I suppose I might not even knock down the cannonballs, as they flew?” He did not know if the divine wind would allow it, but—
Laurence’s answer, whatever it might have been, was entirely lost to Temeraire; instead all the world went spinning round and full of noise, roaring, and he was driven in a tumbling rush down into the ocean swell, green foaming light everywhere, choking into his nose and into his throat. Temeraire struggled wildly to right himself, belling out his sides, and he burst back up through the surface, coughing and coughing. “Laurence,” he managed, choking, twisting his neck around in panic—but Laurence had not been snatched: he was there, streaming wet and short one of his boots, but dangling safely from his harness and pulling himself back into position.
“There,” Iskierka said, beating back up and away, looking down at him, “so much for your scheming; as though you were so very clever, and no-one had any business making out that you meant to do something to the ships, behaving like a sneak.”
“I did not, at all!” Temeraire said, calling up at her wrathfully, because that was a wicked lie; he had never meant to hurt the ships, “and I think you have been a great deal more of a sneak than I might have been in ages, jumping down upon me like that with no warning.”
“You may complain all you like,” Iskierka said, “but it is no more than you deserved; I will not let you hurt Granby in the service any more than you already have. He is going to be an admiral, and a lord, too; like Roland’s mother.”
“Pray be quiet, you wretched selfish creature,” Granby said, calling through his speaking-horn. “Laurence, are you all right? She would have it he meant to do something—”
Laurence was occupied with a wracking cough, but he managed reassuringly to say, “I have had a ducking before now—perfectly well.”
“Temeraire did mean to do something,” Iskierka said, “whatever he may say; and I have stopped him, which I hope you will tell that captain when he goes back to England; I am sure they will be glad to hear of it,” she added, in a very self-satisfied manner.
“Oh!” Temeraire said. “If I did mean to do something, you should never stop me,” and he took a deep breath and flung out his wings and beat them wildly, swelling out his sides as much as he might; with a lashing of his tail and hindquarters, as though he were trying to lunge back onto the Allegiance after a swim, he managed to get back into the air.
He meant to teach Iskierka a sharp lesson, despite Laurence’s protest, but gunfire called his attention back to the ships, the spattering of rifles going, and not the great guns. Tharunka had come flying out from the pavilion with a couple of men in belly-netting, who were holding great dripping sacks. Temeraire could smell the stuff even at the distance, as they upended it over the Otter and then the Nereide in turn: a clotted, dribbling mess of half-spoiled fish and rotting seaweed, black as tar. As Tharunka stayed quite high to be clear of the rifle-fire, it splattered all over the sails and the poor sailors high up in the crow’s nest, whatever did not miss the ships entirely and land in the water. It was not less than the ships deserved, for their attack, but it seemed quite useless to Temeraire; the bow-chasers were perhaps splashed a little, and the carronades on the quarterdeck, but the gun-deck of course was not touched at all.
The harbor bell was ringing, as Tharunka flew hurriedly away to the shore, and then the waters of the harbor began to churn as one and then another, the sea-serpents breached the stained water and began to claw their way up the sides of the ships and onto the decks, stretching their long necks up towards the slurried sails.
The speed with which the serpents moved was appalling—the massive beasts were struggling one against another to get a purchase on the ships, pushing and shoving to get at what was evidently pure delectation, and meanwhile beneath them the deck pitched and heaved as their weight threw the ship all ahoo. The unfortunates in the rigging, coated in the slime, were immediate victims, snatched like particular tidbits even as the men tried in desperation to flee down the ropes. Wide jaws tore at the cables, and the spars yawed wildly and went tumbling down, throwing more of the slush upon the men on the deck, to draw the serpents’ attention.
A smaller of the serpents had managed to wriggle itself onto the deck of the Nereide entirely almost, only its long tail dangling back over the side, and it began to pursue the sailors with such enthusiasm that it thrust its entire head into the fore ladderway. The axes were coming out now, however; axes and the great guns firing, and as Temeraire and Iskierka flew to the ships, beating urgently, Laurence saw a tall man leap forward and swing down upon the small serpent’s neck, directly behind the head which had been thrust below.
In two strokes he had cleaved the spine, and the body went into furious convulsions that tore the head the rest of the way from the body, spurting dark blood in torrents across the deck. It ran orange-red over the ship’s white-painted rail and down its side, and the smell of dragon blood mingled with the fish-rot and kelp.
Temeraire dived and seized hold of one serpent by the shoulders, dragging it away from the ship as it lashed and flung back its open maw to try and snap at him, the coils and coils of its great length twisting and the small forelegs clawing at the air. Laurence could see directly down into its jaws and throat, looking over Temeraire’s neck, and a pallid hand within desperately clinging to the tissue of the gullet, a face bloodied but not yet senseless gazing up at him in utter horror before the serpent’s thrashing shook the man loose and he vanished still whole deeper into the creature’s belly.
The serpent was unmanageable with its enormous mass drawn out of the water and so violently clawing—“I cannot keep hold of it,” Temeraire panted, struggling to drag it still further; but then Iskierka called, “Only a moment, keep clear!” and dived in. She blasted its dangling length with flame, the skin and scales crisping up and roasting with a dreadful stink; the serpent made a high thin shrieking noise and curled around itself like a beetle as Temeraire dropped it at last back into the water.