Kalkreuth’s aides were crawling around the courtyard on hands and knees, drawing out a map in chalks, large enough for the feral dragons to make out and, by serendipity, colorful and interesting enough to command their attention. The bright blue stripe of the river would be their guide: it passed through the city walls and then curved down to the harbor, passing through the French camp as it went.
“We will go single-file, keeping over the water,” Laurence said, “and pray be sure the other dragons understand,” he added anxiously to Temeraire, “they must go very quietly, as if they were trying to creep up on some wary herd of animals.”
“I will tell them again,” Temeraire promised, and sighed a very little. “It is not that I am not happy to have them here,” he confided quietly, “and really they have been minding me quite well, when one considers that they have never been taught, but it would have been so very nice to have Maximus and Lily here, and perhaps Excidium; he would know just what to do, I am sure.”
“I cannot quarrel with you,” Laurence said; apart from all considerations of management, Maximus alone could likely have taken six hundred men or more, being a particularly large Regal Copper. He paused and asked, tentatively, “Will you tell me now what else has been worrying you? Are you afraid they will lose their heads, in the moment?”
“Oh; no, it is not that,” Temeraire said, and looked down, prodding a little at the remains of his dinner. “We are running away, are we not?” he said abruptly.
“I would be sorry to call it so,” Laurence said, surprised; he had thought Temeraire wholly satisfied with their plan, now that they meant to carry out the Prussian garrison with them, and for his own part thought it a maneuver to applaud: if they could manage it. “There is no shame in retreating to preserve one’s strength for a future battle, with better hope of victory.”
“What I mean is, if we are going away, then Napoleon really has won,” Temeraire said, “and England will be at war for a long time still; because he means to conquer us. So we cannot ask the Government to change anything, for dragons; we must only do as we are told, until he is beaten.” He hunched his shoulders a little and added, “I do understand it, Laurence, and I promise I will do my duty and not always be complaining; I am only sorry.”
It was with some awkwardness in the face of this handsome speech that Laurence recognized, and had then to convey to Temeraire, the change in his own sentiments, an awkwardness increased by the bewildered Temeraire’s dragging out, one after another, all of Laurence’s own earlier protests on the subject.
“I have not, I hope, changed in essentials,” Laurence said, struggling for justification in his own eyes as well as his dragon’s, “but only in my understanding. Napoleon has made manifest for all the world to see the marked advantages to a modern army of closer cooperation between men and dragons; we return to England not only to take up our post again, but bearing this vital intelligence, which makes it not merely our desire but our duty to promote such change in England.”
Temeraire required very little additional persuasion, and all Laurence’s embarrassment, at seeming to be fickle, was mitigated by his dragon’s jubilant reaction, and the immediate necessity of presenting him with many cautions: every earlier objection remained, of course, and Laurence knew very well they would face the most violent opposition.
“I do not care if anyone else minds,” Temeraire said, “or if it takes a long time; Laurence, I am so very happy, I only wish we were at home already.”
All that night and the next day they continued to labor over the harnesses; the cavalry-horses’ tack was soon seized upon and cannibalized, and the tanners’ shops raided. Dusk was falling and Fellowes was still frantically climbing with his men all over the dragons, sewing on more carrying-loops, of anything which was left—leather, rope, braided silk—until they seemed to be festooned with ribbons and bows and flounces. “It is as good as Court dress,” Ferris said, to much muffled hilarity, as a ration of spirits was passed around, “we ought to fly straight to London and present them to the Queen.”
The Fleur-de-Nuit took up his appointed position at the usual hour, settling back on his haunches for the night’s duty; as the night deepened, the edges of his midnight blue hide slowly faded into the general darkness, until all that could be seen of him were his enormous dinner-plate eyes, milky white and illuminated by the reflections of the campfires. Occasionally he stirred, or turned round to have a look towards the ocean, and the eyes would vanish for a moment; but they always came back again.
Tharkay had slipped out a few hours before. They watched, anxiously; for an eternity counting by the heartbeat, for two turns counting by the glass. The dragons were all ranged in lines, the first men aboard and ready to go at once. “If nothing comes of it,” Laurence said softly, but then the palely gleaming eyes blinked once, twice; then for a little longer; then again; and then with the lids drooping gradually to cover them, they drifted slowly and languorously to the ground, and the last narrow slits winked out of sight.
“Mark time,” Laurence called down to the aides-decamp standing anxiously below, holding their hourglasses ready; then Temeraire leapt away, straining a little under the weight. Laurence found it queer to be conscious of so many men aboard, so many strangers crowding near him: the communal nervous quickening of their breath like a rasp, the muffled curses and low cries silenced at once by their neighbors, their bodies and their warmth muting the biting force of the wind.
Temeraire followed the river out through the city walls: staying over the water so that the living sound of the current running down to the sea should mask the sound of his wings. Boats drawn up along the sides of the river creaked their ropes, murmuring, and the great brooding bulk of the harbor crane protruded vulturelike over the water. The river was smooth and black beneath them, spangled a little with reflections, the fires of the French camp throwing small yellow flickers onto the low swells.
To their either side, the French encampment lay sprawling over the banks of the river, lantern glims showing here and there the slope of a dragon’s body, the fold of a wing, the pitted blue iron of a cannon-barrel. Lumps that were soldiers lay sleeping in their rough bivouacs, huddled near one another under blankets of coarse wool, overcoats, or only mats of straw, with their feet poking out towards the fires. If there were any sounds to be heard from the camp, however, Laurence did not know it; his heart was beating too loudly in his ears as they went gliding by, Temeraire’s wingbeats almost languidly slow.
And then they were breathing again as the fires and lights fell behind them; they had come safely past the edges of the encampment with one mile of soft marshy ground to the sea, the sound of the surf rising ahead: Temeraire put on eager speed, and the wind began to whistle past the edges of his wings; somewhere hanging off the rigging below, Laurence heard a man vomiting. They were already over the ocean; the ship-lanterns beckoned them on, almost glaring bright with no moon for competition. As they drew near Laurence could see a candelabrum standing in the stern-windows of one of the ships, a seventy-four, illuminating the golden letters upon her stern: she was the Vanguard, and Laurence leaned forward and pointed Temeraire towards her.
Young Turner crept out onto Temeraire’s shoulder and held up the night-signal lantern where it could be seen, showing the friendly signal out its front, one long blue light, two short red, with thin squares of cloth laid over the lantern-hole to make the colors, and then the three short white lights to request a silent response; and again, as they drew nearer and nearer. There was a delay; had the lookout not seen? was the signal too old? Laurence had not seen a new signal-book in almost a year.