“Why, damn you, Laurence,” Granby said, and walked away.
“Of course Granby is not happy,” Iskierka said, yawning, when Temeraire went so far as to ask her. “I am not happy either, this is all very boring, and we have no treasure. But it is still better than just carrying soldiers about, or patrolling. At least we are doing something. And it is orders, anyway, which you ought not question,” she added; Temeraire put back his ruff.
FARMERS NOW SLAUGHTERED their own cattle, if they heard the French approaching, and poisoned their grain; villagers in makeshift armed bands ambushed soldiers while they slept; and one foraging mission after another returned to their encampments empty-handed, when they returned at all. An unwise outpost commander, sorely pressed, at last made the mistake for which Laurence had been waiting, and sent out his dragons to hunt for themselves; the farms immediately around their encampment had already been depleted, and the beasts separated to look farther afield.
“There are nine, two of those big grey ones, and the rest are all smaller, with three only a little bigger than I am,” one of their small spies informed them. “The big ones went alone, south, and the others went towards a town north-northeast, with a red steeple, and parted there.”
Laurence nodded, and Gong Su led the feral to his reward, a portion of mutton stewed with rabbit, which the little dragon tore into ravenously: the supply of meat was growing increasingly thin throughout the countryside.
“I am sure we can beat seven dragons,” Temeraire said, his ruff already excited, and his tail switching.
“We are not going to fight seven,” Laurence said. “We are going after the Chevaliers.” He laid out his map quickly and showed them alclass="underline" a large estate lay some three miles south of the outpost, with a dairy.
They kept high, over the cloud cover, and emerged only just above the estate: the Petit Chevaliers were yet on the ground, eating. It had likely been a few days since their last meal, and they were trying urgently to make up for it. Two carcasses already each lay stripped down to bones, and they had moved to thirds; their crew had dismounted and were with similar energy ransacking the dairy-house.
“Those are milch cows,” Demane said indignantly, peering down at the dragons and their repast; his own people were great herdsmen, and valued their proper husbandry high.
“Signal the attack,” Laurence said, and Temeraire roaring plummeted with the rest; the Chevaliers panicked and flung themselves aloft, instinctively. One leapt only to meet Maximus’s full weight upon her back, and bellowing dreadfully was driven down, straight down, into the ground again, and with a snapping crack went silent. Maximus staggered off and shook himself, dazed by the impact; she did not move, and her captain crying her name flung himself heedless across the field towards her.
The other Chevalier managed to beat a little farther aloft, and shouldered past Chalcedony’s eager but over-optimistic attempt to repeat Maximus’s feat, bowling the Yellow Reaper over; but Iskierka was lunging with ferocious glee, and a torrent of flame engulfed the Chevalier’s wing and neck.
“Ow!” Chalcedony said, barely dodging the edge of the flames himself. “You needn’t hit me!”
“Well, get out of the way, then!” Iskierka called over her shoulder, already pursuing the crying Petit Chevalier, whose hide and tender membrane showed the blackened and scorched marks of her flame. The dragon was trying to come back around: his captain was yet upon the ground, and despite the wounds, the dragon would not abandon him.
“Je me rends!” the captain cried, from the ground, through a speaking-trumpet; he was waving a white handkerchief furiously. “Je me rends!”
It was the only hope for his dragon. Lily was winging in from the other direction, and Temeraire hovered aloft; the Reapers in a group had barred every point on the rose. In a moment they would bring the Petit Chevalier down.
For a moment, Laurence did not move. A heavy-weight was difficult to manage—their orders—Then he said, “Mr. Allen, signal Captain Berkley: take charge of prisoner. Temeraire, tell that dragon to land, there by those trees, and keep away from his captain.”
The rest of the French aviators backed away as the dragons came down, and fled into the dairy-house and the woods behind; the dead dragon’s crew dragged their captain away, the man weeping openly like a child; Laurence looked down at the misery and hatred in their faces, turned briefly up towards him.
The French captain submitted to being bound, and while his dragon called to him anxiously, was put aboard Maximus. “Is he fit to fly, Berkley?” Laurence asked.
“I am only a little jarred,” Maximus said, trying to nose at his own chest. Berkley’s surgeon Gaiters was already palpating the massive ribs with his hands, carefully, in either direction.
“I do not believe there is a crack,” he said, “but a few days’ rest—”
Berkley snorted. “After this? Not unless we were in Scotland. They will be out in force after us.”
“No,” Laurence said, still cold, “they will not. They cannot afford it.”
In the morning the first reports came from their little spies: the French heavy-weights were retreating south, towards London, forced back into territory under more thorough French control, where their hunger could be satisfied. Slowly after them the rest of the combat-weight beasts also melted away, more every day as the stores depleted, until nothing remained but the small couriers. Now the infantry were exposed, unless they kept in their encampments and did not stir out; in which case they would starve. A few large bands went out with artillery, but could not find enough for all, and in desperation soon broke into smaller parties for foraging; these were at their mercy.
Blue pins for the small French companies daily marched across his maps, back and forth from their encampments; one by one they were plucked out and laid back into their tin, and Laurence rinsed blood mechanically off his hands at the wash-basin. Very little thought now was required, and he was glad of it, distantly. Their own supply gave them no difficulty; if they landed near a town or a village, meat would somehow be managed for them and the dragons, cows or pigs or mutton, even if the villagers themselves went hungry as a consequence. Occasionally the French tried again a pursuit, orchestrated from farther south, but so much early warning reached them they had merely to draw back a little, and let the dragons sleep, while a flock of little ferals kept watch.
They had been raiding then nearly two months, when Arkady arrived the first week of March in a great flurry of noise, carrying Tharkay and with three of his ferals for escort, and at once began to parade before Temeraire and the others to tell them of his adventures since their last meeting. He had only been patrolling with the others, but by his account he had fought hordes of French dragons, and captured many prizes, and he bragged that they would do well, now he had come to join them; at which news Temeraire laid back his ruff in irritation.
“I have a message for you, from Wellesley,” Tharkay said to Laurence, and came inside with him. The implacable maps were laid out upon a makeshift table, a door laid over two old trestles, inside the small cottage where he had sheltered overnight; Tharkay stood in the doorway looking out while Laurence opened the letter. Their camp was a strange, silent place: no prisoners but the one solitary French officer, the captain, desolately sitting outside a hut with his hands loosely tied and bound to a stake in the ground, under guard by a couple of Granby’s bellmen. The massacred trees, which the dragons used for their sweeping, were in a great heap at the edge of camp and the dark bare branches darker still with dried blood, a forest’s graveyard. Every man went about his work silently, and without either fuss or satisfaction; they had killed fifty men that morning.