“The villagers shan’t come out while we have the dragons here,” Harcourt said. “If we leave them outside—”
“No,” Laurence said; he did not mean to waste time on such things. He cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted, “We are officers of the King. You will come out at once, or we will have the dragons tear down the houses until you do.”
There was no reply, no stirring. “Temeraire,” Laurence said, and indicated a small neat cottage near the end of the village lane. “Bring it down, if you please.”
Temeraire looked at it, and said uncertainly, “Shall I roar?”
“However you choose,” Laurence said.
“Ought I bring it all down at once?” Temeraire asked, turning his head to inspect the cottage; he darted a look back at Laurence, as if trying to gauge his real intent. “Perhaps, if I just took off this chimney—”
“Oh, you are taking too long,” Iskierka said, and promptly blasted it with fire, the dry thatched roof going alight in a merrily crackling instant.
It burned fiercely, putting out sharp smoke; the flames licking out eagerly towards its neighbors; Laurence sat waiting, and after a moment a cellar door creaked open and a few men came forth, “Put it out, for God’s sake put it out,” one of them begged gasping. “All the village will catch—”
“Berkley, if you will be so good,” Laurence said; Maximus took off the burning roof, and laying it on the ground scraped some dirt over it with a clumsy swipe, leaving it half-buried. Laurence looked back at the villagers, who stared up at him pale and sweating. “Which way did the French go?”
“Towards Scarrow Hill,” the older man said after a moment, his voice still trembling. “With all our cattle, every last one—” The faint lowing of a cow from the woods made him a liar on that point, but Laurence did not care. “They left not an hour—”
“Very good; to quarters, gentlemen, and let the riflemen make ready,” Laurence said over his shoulder, to the other captains. “Aloft, Temeraire, along the road.”
They caught the French fifteen minutes later, and heard them first: singing a bawdy snatch of “Auprès de ma blonde, qu’il fait bon, fait bon, fait bon” as they marched through a forested section: then they emerged out onto the road again, cattle in a string bellowing and throwing their heads, uneasy as they scented the dragons aloft. The men pulled irritably on the cows’ heads and tried to drag them along. They did not look up.
Temeraire craned his head back and looked at Laurence. Ten dragons came on behind them. “Mr. Allen,” Laurence said, “signal the attack.”
Chapter 14
I DO NOT SEE what is wrong with it,” Iskierka said, still nibbling upon the charred beef bones of her dinner. “They are stealing the cows for their dragons, it is not our fault if their dragons are too lazy to come and get the cows themselves.”
“It is not wrong,” Temeraire said, dissatisfied, “precisely.”
“Not very sporting, though,” Gentius said. “They did not even have a gun.”
“The village did not have a gun, either, or even muskets,” Lily said, “so it was not very sporting of those soldiers, in the first place.”
“Anyway,” Iskierka added, with an air of smug virtue, “we must obey our orders.”
Temeraire did not argue further. It was not that he minded for himself, anyway, very much, although it had not been a very interesting battle: they had dived, the soldiers had fired a few shots, and then they had all run away into the woods, if they were not dead; it had lasted scarcely five minutes, and nothing to show for it. Except of course the cows, but those they mostly had to give back.
He was not going to say so, of course, but he rather felt Iskierka was right. If the soldiers had not wanted to be attacked, they ought not have been going about in other people’s territory, taking their food and much more than they could eat themselves. Only, he was a little worried, because it seemed the sort of thing that Laurence might have minded, and he felt instinctively there was something strange, that Laurence did not seem to care.
The villagers certainly had been very grateful. “Two months to spring. We would have starved, or near enow; thank ye, sir,” the village headman said, the half-burned cottage quite forgiven, as the others came nervously out to look over their cattle and their goods, and make their own anxious courtesies.
A few young men from Maximus’s ground crew had driven back those cows which had not been killed or panicked to death in the fighting; Gladius and Chalcedony had carried back the two large carts of grain, also, and the villagers had sent word back along the road, to those others pillaged, to come and share what there was left to have.
But Laurence did not seem pleased by their many thanks, either; he only nodded, and said, “Send word also that if you should see or hear of any French movements, you are to light a beacon: smoke, or a bonfire at night, and we will come for it if we see.”
Gong Su had taken those cows which had been killed; enough for all the dragons to have a little fresh roast beef, and then a share of soup and bones and meat mixed with vegetables and grain, for all the crew and everyone in the village besides. The atmosphere was celebratory, and all the more when the villagers brought out a concealed store of honey wine. Temeraire had even enjoyed a cupful poured into his mouth, so he might close his jaws on it and keep the crisp fragrant smell on his tongue.
Laurence had not eaten very much, and now he came away from the village and the celebration, back to Temeraire’s side; but only to get out his maps again and study the roads.
Temeraire drew a deep breath, watching him, and said valiantly, “Laurence—Laurence, I have been thinking. Perhaps you might sell my talon-sheaths. I do not mean just now,” he added, hurriedly, “but, when the war is over—”
“Why?” Laurence said, a good deal more absently than Temeraire felt such an offer merited. “Are you tired of them?”
“No, of course not, who could become tired of them?” Temeraire said, and then paused; he was not sure how he might explain, without betraying his knowledge of the loss which Laurence had concealed, surely because it wounded him greatly. “I only thought,” he tried, “that perhaps you might like to have some more capital, as you have given me so much of it yourself.”
“I have no need of capital,” Laurence said, “and you had better keep them, against future need. I thank you for the offer; it was handsomely made,” he added, which ought to have been a tremendous relief, but Temeraire found that instead he was only unhappier, for having tried his most desperate notion and found it of no use. Laurence had not seemed even a little moved by the prospect of having so splendid a treasure for his own; the gratitude had been only formal.
He put his head down upon his forelegs and watched Laurence a little longer; Laurence had a lamp, and in the light, he looked a little odd—he was not quite clean-shaven, Temeraire realized, and there was some dried blood upon his jaw, which he had not taken off. His hair was tied roughly back, and grown long. But he did not seem to care for any of it; all his attention was for the map, and the figures he was studying.
“May I not help you, Laurence?” Temeraire asked at last, rather hopelessly, for lack of any other idea.
Laurence paused over the papers, then put one sheet out with the lamp upon it. “Is it large enough for you to see?—it is the tax roll for the last year. I expect the French will first plunder the wealthier estates and villages, so we will look for them there.”