“We already know about the French being here, there has been some fighting,” Miller said. “Some bright militia-officer has raised the countryside and beat them properly over at Wembley, and at Harlesden last night. That is why we are here: I am carrying a colonel’s commission for him.”
“Oh!” the young lady said, having hung back a little from their conversation. “Have they beat, at Harlesden? Georgie will have been there—I must go tell Mother—” She half-turned, then turned back and curtseyed, and then hesitantly raised her hand a little, and Hollin stepping towards her brought it to his lips, also a little hesitantly, and said, “Your servant, Miss Jemson, and I hope my rounds might bring me again—”
“I hope so, too,” she said, pink, and having dared so far, turned and fled.
“Sir, if the news is in, and Miller will tell them where we are, we might keep looking—” Hollin said, turning back, his own cheeks a little ruddy.
“Oh, no; no, thank you, there’ll be none of that,” Miller said. “Your orders is not to be wandering over all Creation, it is to go and get the dragon and come back; well, if you haven’t got the dragon, you can do what is left, and that is to come back. If they want you to keep looking, they will tell you so. We will fly in company, like we ought when there is news like this to be bringing back, in case one of us is brought down. A hundred dragons out wild, eating people as like as cows? I don’t know what you was thinking not to return at once, except to save the neck of one as don’t deserve—”
“Captain Miller—” Hollin said.
“Enough,” Laurence said. “I do not intend to be the subject of quarreling in circumstances such as these. Captain Hollin, we had some rational hope of finding Temeraire quickly, having arrived so shortly after the dispersal of the breeding grounds; now we can have none. I am very sensible of your generosity, but will not trespass upon it further. Let us go at once.”
He had steeled himself to it, and now wanted nothing more than to have it over. The quicker he returned, the less damage would be done by his having kept them out, selfishly, further contrary to his duty; success only could have made it forgivable. Even then he ought to have been reproached. Granby was right, all along. His discipline had been wholly corrupted, Laurence saw now. Perhaps the effects were all the worse because he had not been brought up properly within the Corps, and had let the sudden liberty of the service, looser by necessity than the Navy, go to his head completely and become license.
He swung himself up and over onto Elsie, after Hollin had climbed up, and silently strapped himself in, heavy with self-reproach. He had no attention for their surroundings, or the journey, and let the cold wind coming in their faces make him dull. Devastatio flung himself ahead far of Elsie, by way of further self-puffery, which he was able to manage as she was burdened by two instead of one. It was all that saved them: because of the distance, the Petit Chevalier could not come at them together, and so he bore down on Devastatio alone in the lead.
The little Winchester squalled and tumbled straight down, blood streaming from his wing and side where he had been savagely clawed. He managed to right himself with great hissing gulps of breath, puffing out his sides until his fall slowed enough for him to gain purchase, but he was not flying properly, only able to limp half-skewed to the ground. Satisfied that he had been grounded, and might be retrieved at leisure, the Petit Chevalier wheeled about, and turned his attention to Elsie.
The name of the French breed was appropriate only by comparison with the Grand Chevalier; the heavy-weight coming towards them was some eighteen tons, his claws already stained with Devastatio’s blood, and he roared threateningly as he came on. Elsie gave a small desperate gasp and dived out of his way. She twisted nearly upside down to evade, setting Laurence and Hollin both dangling from their straps, and shot forward with all her might past the great dragon’s belly, rifle-shot from the bellmen whistling like wasps past their heads.
But she was too weighted down to get her full speed. The Petit Chevalier doubled back on himself and set in steady pursuit: over distance his strength would tell, and he would have them, if she could not escape before then. And he was fast enough to keep her in his sights an hour, Laurence judged, looking down over Elsie’s side to watch the dragon’s shadow flashing by over the ground.
It came chasing after Elsie’s smaller shadow like a racing cloud, pouring up and down the curves of the hills, darkening slopes and sending deer bounding away through the trees. The outline of the dragon remained steady as the ground rolled away beneath them with blazing speed, at least twenty-five knots with the wind howling and tearing at their clothing, no matter how low they crouched against Elsie’s neck.
The Petit Chevalier roared behind them. Laurence could not lift his head up into the wind to look back, but they were over a broad stretch of farmland, fields in neat snow-powdered squares bordered by roads, so the dragon-shapes made perfect silhouettes upon white, and as Elsie’s first desperate sprinting failed, the distance between the two shadows began slowly and inexorably to narrow.
And then, sliding into place behind the Petit Chevalier’s shape, a third shadow joined the line: beginning first as a small speck and rapidly growing, larger and larger and larger, until at last it swallowed up the other, and with a dreadful shattering roar a tremendous Regal Copper came thundering down from above. The enormous red-and-gold beast pounced directly upon the Petit Chevalier, serving him out with the very trick he had used on Devastatio, and without any restraint bowled him over and down.
The two heavy-weights went tumbling, head-over-heels, snarling and snapping wildly, uncontrolled; a couple of men went flying wildly off the French dragon’s back, and munitions, bombs, and rifles tumbling loose towards the countryside. Laurence had no idea how the Regal Copper’s crew were managing, and then he realized the dragon had no harness at all.
Elsie was panting as she slowed, curving in a wide arc so they could look back at the titanic struggle. “Oh, I am glad,” Elsie said, gulping air between words. “I am not—quite sure I could have run away from that big French one.”
“I hope we may not need to run away from that other fellow,” Hollin said, a sentiment which Laurence shared: the Regal Copper outweighed the other dragon by at least another seven or eight tons. He had now got his claws into the Chevalier’s shoulders and was scratching at him with his hind legs, shaking him all the time so the riflemen could not get their feet enough to fire at him properly; and the handful of wild shots which they managed did not trouble him greatly.
It was a savage style of fighting, and if cruder than formation-flying, on the level of such an individual contest the unexpected ferocity told worse than discipline. The Chevalier squalled at last, frantically, and with a great convulsive heave managed to tear himself free, leaving great torn gashes in his flesh, three furrows along each shoulder almost like bars of rank. He bolted headlong away, leaving the Regal Copper in possession of the field.
The victorious beast spread his wings, glowing vividly red with the sun behind them, and roared triumphantly after the Petit Chevalier, a great deep bellowing noise like hosts of thunder, and then the Regal Copper turned to look at them and said, in tones of great disapproval, “Well, and what are you about? I don’t think much of your sense, taking on a fellow that size.”
“Pray,” Elsie said timidly, “we didn’t mean to, only he came on us all of a sudden; and Devastatio is hurt.”
“Oh, there is another of you?” The Regal turned and scanned over the ground. They had drifted some way off in the fighting, and Devastatio had tried to drag himself under some trees, for concealment, but Regal Coppers had tolerable eyesight from a sufficient distance, and after a bit of scanning about he said, “Ha, there he is,” and flew over to the hiding place, landing with a tremendous thump. “You lot were all told this morning not to come round here,” the big dragon said severely, nosing over Devastatio’s wounds. “I said those big Frenchies were going to be going up and down carrying soldiers about all this way, didn’t I? This is going to be nasty, healing.”