Blood of Tyrants

Page 18

 

  Chapter 18

  LAURENCE SLEPT ONLY ILL, the night of the seventh September; his head was pillowed on his folded coat, where he stretched on Temeraire’s arm, and he raised it at a dozen sounds, a dozen noises, all his mind alive to the wide road of possibilities opening before them. In the distance there was the occasional sound of musketry, now and again a faintly heard roar: the Cossacks on their dragons and horses were harrying the French lines.

  The Russians had previously established a small redoubt at the town of Shevardino, a meager fortification of only a few logs piled atop one another, which now Kutuzov meant to use as a lure to dangle before the French—another day’s distraction before the great conflict unfolded, and another day which might allow him to slip away if the dragons did not materialize.

  Laurence slept again, woke again, this time to the sound of resonant dragon voices near-by. He roused to see another of the scarlet dragons, wearing the symbols of a jalan commander, speaking low with Chu and bowing deeply. “No, Shao Ri, it is not to be supposed we might travel without attracting any attention,” Chu said. “You have done all that you could. Establish your camp and bring forward your troops. ”

  “As you command, General,” Shao Ri said, and with a final bow went aloft again; Laurence sat up as Temeraire lifted his own head, and Chu looked over at them.

  “So you are awake? It’s just as well,” Chu said, “for we have had some bad luck. A patrol of those French dragons came upon the leading edge of Shao Ri’s jalan, late last night, and three of them escaped. He says,” he added, “they are good fliers: too bad! You had better go and tell Kutuzov. The French will be falling back at once, of course, unless they are very stupid; but if he moves quickly enough there may be a chance to strike him on the road. ”

  Temeraire flew very quickly indeed. “It would be the outside of enough,” he said as they went, the air tearing with great violence at Laurence’s hair and the skirts of his coat, “for Napoleon to escape, after all the trouble we have gone to, and when he has come all this way. ”

  “We will bring him to battle sooner or late,” Laurence answered, but he felt as much urgency as Temeraire did, and sprang down from his back with jarring haste directly they had landed, to push his way into the camp; he waited impatiently while a cold, reluctant aide went to rouse Kutuzov, and counted every dragging minute as a blow.

  There were many of these: he stood for nearly three hours in the cold, damp morning air, watching others go in and out, all the while the sky lightened; the coming day’s heat was still only a distant promise. At last the tent-flap was raised, and he was admitted; Kutuzov was not yet finished dressing, and sat at the remnants of his breakfast in the company of several Russian officers, nobles all, and most of them to Laurence’s eye useless hangers-on. “Good morning, Captain?” Kutuzov said, very placidly, almost sleepily, but there was a hard note to the words.

  “Sir,” Laurence said, without preamble, “we have been made: the French reconnoitering behind us spied the first jalan on the approach. They will have fallen back at once, certainly, unless we move to engage. It may already be too late. ”

  One man, a colonel named Toll, gave a half-snorted laugh, stifled; a few other men of the company smiled with a kind of gentle condescension, as though to say that Laurence’s little joke had been amusing enough, but wasn’t it stale by now? Kutuzov folded his hands together over his belly, leaning back in his chair, and contemplated Laurence with the careful expression of a scholar at a rare specimen, trying to make it out properly. “Hahm,” he said. “I wonder if Napoleon is so easily to be put off the battle he has been seeking for so long. ”

  “By all means,” Laurence said grimly, “if his alternative is destruction, and if by doing so he can fall back on better ground, knowing that we will now make ourselves the pursuers, and come to meet him on a position of his choosing. ”

  “Be that as it may,” Kutuzov began, in mild noncommittal tones, which Laurence might with pleasure have shaken out of him; already the candles in the tent were growing dim and unnecessary. The sun was up outside.

  The tent-flap was thrust aside, impatiently; a young captain of hussars pushed inside and said, panting and breathless, “Sir, the Cossacks report the French have left their pickets; they are gone—there is a cloud on the road for ten miles, going west. The French are falling back everywhere. ”

  Kutuzov paused; the tent was silent. Laurence saw every man of the company staring at him in return, as though they began at last to believe: it was nearly anticlimax when scant moments later a young courier captain stumbled in, pale, and blurted, “There are a thousand dragons coming from the east. ”

  The weather was choking-hot and the clouds of dust upon the road, stirred up by many marching feet, rose so high that Temeraire coughed and coughed as he flew; he could make out nothing at all of the French Army, and very little even of their own directly below.

  It was splendid nevertheless to be flying once more at the head of the assembled jalan, and flying now not to some contrived mission but to a real battle, where he and these dragons should fight properly and win a magnificent victory and defeat Napoleon at last. He would like to see what the Ministry should say to Laurence then, Temeraire thought with an intense private sensation of delight.

  Nothing could have been more satisfying than the behavior of the Russians, when at last they had seen the ranks of the jalan. The heavy-weights had been quite abashed into silence, looking overhead as the legions came on, singing their flying-song and the beat of their wings making a great hollow rushing sound like the wind in the tops during a gale. The Russian soldiers had many of them formed, quite without orders, into their defensive squares with bayonets held aloft bristling, until General Kutuzov had sent men around to tell them all that these dragons were their allies, and some old men in very long beards and robes had gone out amongst the troops and made loud speeches.

  “Those are priests,” Dyhern said, “and they are telling them that you are sent by God to smite the enemies of Russia. ”

  “Oh,” Temeraire said in strong indignation, “we are not; why should they suppose God had anything to do with it? We are sent by the Emperor. I do not see why God should get the credit of it, at all. ” But in spite of his objections on this score, he could not deny being pleased when slowly the soldiers instead began to cheer lustily, and clash their bayonets together in an unmusical sort of welcome. Kutuzov was even so kind as to order a salute fired, from the great guns; although this startled the dragons nearest those guns a great deal and caused a degree of confusion as they recoiled and tangled with the niru nearest them, and it required half-an-hour to quite smooth out the resulting disarray.

  “Of course they had no business not to believe us,” Temeraire said to Laurence, “but I cannot deny they are proving ready to make handsome amends for it, and I do not know it is not more gratifying to have such a change. ”

  “I should be more ready to enjoy it,” Laurence said, “if not bought at such a cost: Napoleon will make us pay dearly for this mistake. ”

  Napoleon had evidently no sooner received the news of his deadly danger than he had at once leapt into action and flung his men back onto the road—an immense gamble on his part: if Kutuzov had only moved more quickly, the French should have been vulnerable to an attack in their rear. But with the crisis upon him, as so often before, Napoleon had disdained the smaller course and seized the one avenue of obtaining some compensatory advantage, which the choice of ground might give him, against the suddenly altered balance of power between himself and his enemies.

  And he had been rewarded, for the moment of great danger had passed. The bulk of the French Army, falling back west by forced marches, had been already well away before the Russians had roused, and as soon as the sky had grown even a little light, the French dragons had begun their quick hop-scotch portage of men and guns, and sped them even further away.

  Temeraire could not but regret the opport
unity lost, but after all, they would win in any case, and in some way it seemed more sporting, that Napoleon should know what force would meet him, and have a chance to do his very best, and then be defeated anyway. “Not, of course,” he said hastily, “that I mean we ought not have taken advantage of the opportunity, or that it would have been unfair; this is war, after all, and I do not mean to be romantical—but as it has been lost, anyway, we may console ourselves that the quality of our victory will be the greater, if no-one can say Napoleon did not have a fair chance to win, that he was only taken by surprise. ”

  “When we are in battle with the greatest general of this age, and perhaps of any,” Laurence said, “I will be glad enough for victory of any kind; we can ill afford to sacrifice this chance or any other. ”

  Temeraire refused to be so pessimistic: Napoleon was not trying to get away entirely, which would have been maddening; he had only fallen back on a nearby town, Tsarevo Zaimische, and soon the battle would be joined properly—although it seemed, not to-day, but tomorrow. Kutuzov was advancing their army, but they would not be in position properly until late, and then there would not be enough time to engage the enemy.

  Chu growled deeply in his throat. “And where are we to get supply, if we do not defeat him the next day?” he demanded, and summoned Shen Shi to join him and Temeraire in proceeding to Kutuzov’s tent; although at least General Kutuzov came out at once to speak to them now, and listened with attention to their difficulties.

  “We have four days’ adequate supply on hand, and of that we require three to reach our nearest resupply point,” Chu said, his tone glacially polite.

  “Which means, sir,” Laurence said, having translated this, to the perplexed pause which received it, “that the legions should have to quit the field by mid-day tomorrow, regardless of the circumstances of the battle. ”

  Kutuzov at once sent for his own quartermasters, and an urgent conference was held. “General, we cannot procure three hundred head of cattle overnight!” one of these worthies protested. “Not unless you mean to starve the entire army for three days to feed them. ”

  “What do we want with three hundred head of cattle?” Chu said, with a disparaging snort.

  “Twenty would serve excellently, if they are animals like this one,” Shen Shi said, indicating an unhappy bullock in the near distance, intended for the Russian couriers, “and ninety tons of grain. A hundred and ten, if we must transport it ourselves, so long as the supply is within forty miles. ”

  This list of requirements was so at war with the understanding of the Russian supply-officers that some argument was required even to persuade them to believe it correctly conveyed to them; then at last with some doubtful reluctance one said to the others, “The magazine at Mozhaisk is sufficiently supplied. We might get pigs from the farms near Kozhukhovo—”

  Some seven of the supply-dragons set off at once, with a few rather alarmed Russian officers flung aboard with the crew to smooth the paths of the requisition, and the immediate crisis was averted; but Chu shook his head disapprovingly as they went back to their own campsite. “If they don’t have enough dragons for their infantry, of course this kind of sluggish maneuvering must be the consequence,” he said, “but what a mess! I expect those French will have dug in like moles by the time we get started in the morning. ”

  Indeed, when Temeraire went aloft shortly afterwards to have a look, he could see the French working frantically on earthworks and fortifications—the heavier dragons were holding entire trees in place, lengthwise, piled upon one another while men lashed them with rope and the middle-weights heaped up dirt to either side. “That is an inordinate number of trees,” Tharkay said to Laurence, as they took their turns peering down through the glass.

  “Those trees have been cut, not torn up,” Laurence said, after some further study. “How the devil have they managed to cut down a hundred trees—”

  “They are cutting down another, over there,” Gerry piped up, and looking Temeraire saw not a heavy-weight but three light-weight dragons instead, who were using a kind of saw which was little more than a long toothed chain with one end run around a wheel, which two of them turned rapidly by a crank while the third steadied the tree; the trunk was being torn through at extraordinary speed, and when it had been reduced to only a thin sliver, a heavy-weight was waved down; when she had seized it, several men chopped at the remaining portion with axes until she was able to break it off and carry it away.

  “They will have a palisade by morning, at this rate,” Laurence said.

  As they returned towards their own encampment, towards the Russian rear, Temeraire stopped briefly to speak with Grig, who with his fellows was perched on a hill watching not the preparations for the battle, but the Chinese supply operations, behind their lines: the thirty cooking-pits, spaced at intervals so three niru might gather to eat around each one; two pigs and a great deal of wheat had gone into each one, and the bubbling stews were now being attended by five of the Shen Lung, who were stirring at occasional intervals, while another five were busy digging additional watering-holes with the assistance of their crews; the rest were napping while their crews worked on spare harness or cleaned them, or tended to the fighting-dragons who had come back with wounds to be tended.

  “How many of you there are,” Grig said to Temeraire, in amazement, “and how well all of you eat! I haven’t seen so many dragons ever, except in the breeding grounds when I was hatched, and no-one gets enough to eat there. ”

  He looked down at his own covert as he spoke. The twenty Russian heavy-weights were presently feasting on what Temeraire could not deny were some very handsome cows, which would have been splendid if properly roasted, or perhaps stewed with some potatoes. But the Russian aviators plainly had no notion of anything of that sort, and the resulting scene was little better than an abattoir, the heavy-weights all tearing the cows apart violently, snapping and hissing at one another in arguing over the best bits of the innards in a very showy way, meanwhile scattering and wasting a great deal of the meat, and most of the blood sinking into the ground. Temeraire sniffed and turned aside.

  “There is no reason that a great many dragons cannot partake in battle, and eat well, too, if only things are managed properly, and everyone has a fair share,” he said. “Our supply-dragons are paid for their work, too,” he added to the assembled dragons, who had cautiously edged a little closer to hear, “which is like being given treasure. ”

  Grig and several of his companions tittered softly together at this, as though Temeraire had made an excellent joke; Temeraire put back his ruff and said severely, “I am not making fun! They are paid wages, which are put into a bank account, and which they can take out as gold and silver, whenever they should like. Look!” He pointed at one of the Shen Lung just then flying in with a load of rocks, which she meant to use for damming up a stream. “Look, you can see for yourselves, Lung Shen Mei, there, has a very handsome gold chain about her neck. ”

  The Russian dragons looked, and were silent; one of them said, low, “It is enough to make one think,” and many of the others rustled their wings uneasily, and eyed Temeraire and one another sidelong; they edged in towards one another and away from the speaker, who flung his head back defiantly, though he also threw a nervous look at Temeraire.

  “Well, you should think,” Temeraire said, “that you needn’t live in such a wretched manner as you do. You ought to have liberties, and be paid wages if you do choose to obey orders—which you needn’t, if you do not want to—”

  “But if we do not obey, they will send us back to the breeding grounds,” one said, “to go hungry. ”

  “If they do not give you enough food, they cannot complain if you go and take some, elsewhere,” Temeraire said. “It is not as though they can make you stay there, if you do not like to. ”

  They all stared at him, as though he had said something very peculiar; but before Temeraire could inquire further, a Russian aviator came out from his tent an
d saw them speaking together, and began shouting and pointing at them, cracking his short whip. He jerked on the chain of one of the heavy-weight dragons, rousing him up and turning him towards the assembled group, and the small dragons burst away in a frightened cloud, dispersing.

  “Come away, Temeraire,” Laurence said, “before that fellow comes up here, and demands to know what we are about. I am damned if I will apologize to him for interference, and more so if I will tell him what you were saying to those beasts: the poor wretches have enough to bear, without being cuffed about further. ”

  “Laurence,” Temeraire said, leaping aloft, “do you suppose that they do keep the dragons in the breeding grounds, somehow, even if they are hungry?”

  Laurence was silent, then heavily said, “I imagine they might set the heavy-weights upon them, if they try to leave. ”

  “But how could the heavy-weights agree to hurt a dragon so much smaller than they are, and who was only hungry, and not taking anything of theirs?” Temeraire said. “Surely they would feel perfect scrubs for doing such a thing. Although I do see,” he added, “that it would be hard to refuse anyone who had given you so much treasure, and helped guard it; one would feel the most extraordinary sense of obligation. Laurence,” he said suddenly, with dawning realization, “Laurence, is that why you do not care anything for fortune?”

  “I cannot claim to be so unworldly as to care nothing for fortune,” Laurence said, “but I hope that I am unwilling to be a slave to it. ”

  The notion that fortune might enslave had not previously occurred to Temeraire, and it did not sit very well, but he could not deny that the Russian heavy-weights seemed to be quite willing to put on chains, all for treasure. “But I cannot believe,” he decided, “that they are so dreadful as to pen up small dragons for it; not, at least, without giving them a chance to refute it: I will ask Vosyem. ”

  “Pray save your inquiries for after the battle,” Laurence said. “We cannot hazard a division among our forces now. That might indeed offer Napoleon an advantage he would be quick to seize; and you may be sure that no argument or quarrel could have so powerful an effect, towards your ends, as the demonstration you and the legions—and for that matter, the enemy—are presently setting forward before the eyes of the Russian high command and so many of their young officers, of the immense advantage to be gained by an honorable and just treatment of dragons. ”

  Temeraire did see the necessity of defeating Napoleon, first, before they tried to do anything else; but that only made it all the more aggravating that Napoleon refused to be properly defeated. Anyway he did not see why the Russian dragons had let things get into such a fix, in the first place: even if the heavy-weights did behave so badly, surely the little dragons could sneak out, one after another—or they might mass themselves into groups, and all but a few dash past—there were any number of ways Temeraire might imagine, for them to slip out of the breeding grounds, and once out, they might go anywhere they liked.

  He devised several dozen such strategems, that afternoon, while there was nothing to do but wait: Laurence had urged him to rest, but Temeraire found he could not sleep properly with the enemy so very close—with victory so very close. He drowsed only a little, and ate his porridge unenthusiastically—he did appreciate, of course, how efficient porridge was, and how necessary to supply a force as large as their own, but he was growing rather tired of it—and then looked around for distraction: but Laurence was closeted with Tharkay and his officers, discussing their positions in the coming battle. That was a somewhat delicate matter, with Tharkay and Dyhern and Ferris not properly officers, although in Temeraire’s opinion that ought not count for much when one considered how ragged the proper officers were, and anyway—he sighed—it seemed they would very likely not have much to do. General Chu had hinted very strongly that Temeraire needn’t expect to do a lot of fighting, himself. It did not seem fair, somehow, that he and Laurence should have made it at all possible for them all to have such a splendid battle, and now have no real share of it themselves.

  He decided to discuss his thoughts with Grig—in an entirely hypothetical manner; he would not at all provoke a quarrel—and looked for him; Grig was for once not directly in their camp, but sitting on the edge of it, and watching a couple of other Russian dragons hanging about with the long and messy supply-train of the army. They were a sort of dragon Temeraire had not seen at all amongst the Russians before, closer to middle-weight and without any bony plates, colored in green and fawn brown, and they wore only light harness.

  “Why,” Temeraire said, coming over to join Grig, “those fellows look likely: why are they not fighting? I dare say they would be more use than those heavy-weights, if we had enough of them: where did they come from?”

  Grig gave a start when Temeraire came down. “They aren’t Russian dragons, at all,” he said, ruffling his wings to his back, and indeed Temeraire had scarcely landed before a man, very portly and red-faced, in high boots and a brown waistcoat and no coat at all, was stomping over with an angry expression, from the waggons, to shout in broad colonial English, “I’ve already told you fellows to be off: they aren’t for sale, and I’ll be damned if—” only to halt in some surprise when he saw that neither Grig nor Temeraire had any officers.

  “Why, you are Americans,” Temeraire said, rather doubtfully. “Whatever are you doing here?”

  “You may be sure we aren’t here by any choice of mine, that is blasted certain,” the sweating man said. “Where else can we be, with Oudinot and Saint-Cyr in St. Petersburg all but confiscating goods, and standing between us and our ship? I would rather get thirty cents on the dollar for my wares than ten; but if you scaly brutes and your rotten pack of whip-happy overseers don’t keep off Josiah and Linden, I will take my cargo back to Boney’s gang and make them welcome to it, and I’ll call in my ship and sell them every last bale of wool in the hold, too, see if I don’t. ”

  It seemed that the Russians had already made several attempts to buy the merchant’s dragons, who eyed Temeraire with some understandable nervousness and edged back from him, refusing to say a word, even though he explained quite clearly he had not the least interest in delivering them to the Russian service. “I don’t suppose,” he said at last, “that you are acquainted with John Wampanoag?” which produced something of a thaw.

  “We are out of New Jersey, ourselves,” the fat waistcoated merchant said, mopping his forehead, when he had at last sat down, somewhat more assured of their peaceable intentions, “but I have heard his name, of course; I don’t suppose there’s many Yankees who haven’t. Well, if you are a friend of John Wampanoag, I guess you are all right; and it’s true you don’t have a look of those other big fellows, always snapping and yelping in that queer gabble of theirs that a man can’t fit his tongue around. But what are you doing mixed up in this business, then?”

  Explanations made, Temeraire wished to be introduced to Josiah and Lindy, but they only spoke a language called Unami and not English; their employer was a Mr. Calvin Jefferson, and when Temeraire tentatively asked that man, he stridently denied their having any interest in taking part in the battle. “Get themselves shot, all for someone else’s quarrel; I should think not,” he said, bristling.

  “Well, I will not pretend to understand it,” Temeraire said, somewhat doubtfully; he wondered if maybe the dragons would have expressed different sentiments, if only they could have spoken for themselves in the matter, “but naturally they should not fight if they do not like; I suppose the Shen Lung will not be fighting, either. Only it seems a shame for them to be here, just when we are sure to win a splendid victory, and not have a share in it. ”

  Jefferson snorted. “It’s soon enough to brag of your victory after you’ve won it,” he said. “I don’t set myself up as an expert on the matter, but it seems to me that Bonaparte’s done pretty well for himself on these occasions in the past. ”

  He gave them a very nice cup of tea, however, and he had some very fine wool
en cloth, of which he made Temeraire a present large enough to make Laurence a new coat; as a sample, he said. “I have three thousand bales of it,” he said very mournfully, “sitting just out of cannon-shot of St. Petersburg harbor; and if these Russian fellows would only make me a reasonable offer, I guess I could land it north of the city, and they could ship it down to Tver: if the French don’t take that, pretty soon. ”

  “I do call that handsome,” Temeraire said to Grig, as they flew back to his own camp, very pleased with the use of his afternoon, “and I am sure I do not know why your people have not bought his wool. ”

  “Well, he has no-one else to sell it to,” Grig said, “except Napoleon, who is offering less,” which was a point that Temeraire had not quite considered. “Of course, I do not know much about these things,” Grig added.

  Laurence received the gift with pleasure, although he professed himself surprised by the presence of the traders. “I suppose I ought not be,” he said. “They seem to be everywhere in the world, these days; and in the article of speed their ships are scarcely to be outmatched. Blaise told me he crossed paths with one of their schooners, in his Atlantic crossing to Brazil, and he would have sworn she was doing fourteen knots, in a light wind.

  “But this merchant may have gambled badly,” Laurence added, “if he was hoping to see his price driven up: God willing, we may end the war tomorrow. Come, my dear, you must try and get some rest. ”