Wellesley’s new orders were not very different: he only directed their efforts more particularly towards the eastern coast, and carefully avoided any word to suggest what those efforts should be; all was left unstated, and Wellesley closed by saying, and you are welcome to this jabbering creature and his fellows, if you can make better use of them.
“Very good,” Laurence said, setting it aside. He drew out the map of the North Sea coast, to consider it: there had been some raiding near Stickney, last week, and an outpost near Cromer, one of the places the Fleur-de-Nuits would likely be landing with fresh troops, when they could get across. “They must send out foragers there twice a week,” Laurence said to Tharkay. “I will send you there with Berkley, and free the rest of us to go after them at Stickney; if you begin near the outpost and circle outwards, you are likely to find the foragers soon enough; there ought not be more than fifty men. They have stopped sending out larger bands. Berkley will approach from their forward direction, and you will cut off their avenue of retreat—”
“I beg your pardon,” Tharkay said. “I prefer not.”
Laurence paused, his hand arrested mid-air above the map.
“Arkady, I am sure, will oblige,” Tharkay said, “but someone else must captain him. I regret,” he added, with a lash of irony, “I have not the luxury of setting aside, for a time, the veneer of civilization; I must be a little more careful. A temporary viciousness may be pardonable in a gentleman, even admirable; but it must brand me forever a savage. Laurence, what are you doing?”
The question was simple enough, and ought to have afforded any of a dozen answers; one after another presented themselves for his consideration. “Killing soldiers,” Laurence said, at last, “most of whom are starving; and making them vicious, so they give us still-better excuse.”
It had the poor advantage of being true; giving it voice, Laurence tasted all its ugliness on his tongue. He sat down and put a hand over his mouth, and found his face was wet. He could not speak again for a little while, struggling to master himself and his voice; at last he said to Tharkay, hoarsely, “If you will not, what will you do?”
He did not mean the question in the immediate sense, and Tharkay did not take it so. He shrugged in his restrained way, the movement of a hand only. “There is work enough in the world,” he answered, “and little enough time.”
“And no-one to decide, but yourself,” Laurence said. “No authority but your own conscience.”
“There are authorities to choose from,” Tharkay said, “to suit any action, if you like; I prefer to keep the choice a little closer.”
It seemed to Laurence the most miserably solitary existence imaginable; isolated by more than distance or even disdain. “How do you bear it? The choice, and all the consequences thereof, alone—”
“Perhaps use has reconciled me; or,” Tharkay said dryly, “perhaps I simply have less natural inclination to hold myself responsible for the sins of the world, rather than for my own.”
Laurence covered his face with his hands a moment, and shut his eyes against the filtered reddish light. The hayloft smell of straw and the vanished horses, warm and familiar, and the sulfur bite of the dragons outside; wood-smoke and Arkady’s smug prattle, broken occasionally by Temeraire’s more resonant protests.
“Very well,” he said, and went out, leaving the orders upon the table.
Chapter 15
FORGIVE ME,” LAURENCE SAID. Temeraire had settled himself for the night, curled up comfortably in an old, well-plowed field behind the barn, fallow now and full of soft dry grass underneath the snow. They were alone, or nearly so. Demane and Sipho and Roland and Allen were all tucked into the curve of Temeraire’s haunch, under a little lean-to which Demane and Roland had worked out of a tent and a few sticks, and rigged to Temeraire’s side, as it was warmer to sleep against him so than in the tent alone. But all four were fast asleep. Arkady at last had stopped telling stories, and was now busily making up to Iskierka, to sleep near in the heat she gave off. Temeraire had sniffed a little in disdain, and curled his own tail about the lean-to, just to be sure his crew would sleep warm, and dry besides.
He did not at once understand, what Laurence was apologizing for, until Laurence had explained a little. “Forgive me,” Laurence repeated. “Bad enough that I used myself so; to have used you likewise, is unpardonable—”
“But Laurence,” Temeraire said, at once glad and baffled, “it was my fault, surely: it was my notion we should go to France in the first place. Only, I did not know that they should take your capital, and your rank; and I am sorry—”
“I am not,” Laurence said. “I should give more than that, and count it cheap, to preserve my conscience; I am ashamed to have submitted to despair so far as to ever have thought differently.”
Temeraire did not wish to argue in the least: Laurence sounded like himself again, if still drawn and perhaps unhappy, and that was worth anything; but privately he could not help a certain resentment that a conscience seemed to be so very expensive, and yet had no substantial form which one might admire, and display to one’s company.
“But,” he said, heroically, “I did mean what I said, dear Laurence, about the talon-sheaths, and I do wish you may sell them, and buy some new things for yourself: I would like my conscience to be just as clear.”
Laurence said, with even a touch of amusement, “I am sorry to have neglected my coat, if it has given you so wretched a notion of my finances, but I am not so wholly impoverished.” More gently he added, “There will be no more pavilions, I am afraid, but I hope I need not be an embarrassment to you.”
“You should never be,” Temeraire said, and nudged Laurence with his nose.
Laurence stroked his muzzle. “I do not know what our course will hereafter be,” he said. “I owe apologies, more than this, and must make them; and then I must write to Wellesley—I know not how, but I must tell him we will not continue in this manner. There will be no more of this slaughter without quarter. We will manage our prisoners somehow; and we will rather seek out than flee any force which has a gun, or a few dragons.”
Temeraire had not known how worried he had been, until the source of the distress had lifted; but his spirits rose almost effervescently at Laurence’s words. “How happy I am to hear it,” he said, adding, “and I am sure we will take a great many prizes.” However brave a face Laurence wished to put on it, Temeraire felt this could not but be reassuring.
“More likely,” Laurence said, “Wellesley will order me to come back and be hanged at once.”
“If he does, you shall not go,” Temeraire said indignantly, flaring his ruff.
“No,” Laurence said, after a moment. “I shall not.”
Sir,
I must beg your leave to acquaint you with an Alteration in the methods of our company, to which I hope you will not object, for humanity’s sake, despite some increase in Inconvenience and in Danger, which all those officers in His Majesty’s service presently reporting to me, and those dragons likewise, have gladly agreed to support, venturing rather their persons than their conscience…
Along these lines the letter was written, with difficulty, and by Gherni it was sent. They established their new camp between North Seaton and Newbiggin-by-the-Sea, and began to put up a stockade manned with volunteers from the countryside. “We are making a nice honey-pot for them to rescue,” Sutton commented, as the dragons cheerfully tore up trees: they had no guns to defend the walls.