Blood of Tyrants (39 page)

Arkady was not yet well enough to fly, but that dawn they had loaded him onto Kulingile, who was good-natured enough not to mind his ongoing sighs and restless shifting. He had shown them the way to a pass through the mountains, not far from the encampment where he had been chained, and a valley at its end with a small and glacier-cold pond fed by a trickling cleft in the rock.

“Here,” he had said, “this is where they took us. We saw them having a drink, so Tharkay thought we should ask them for direction; but after he climbed off my back, and spoke with them, suddenly they sprang on him.”

“What did you do?” Temeraire said.

“Oh, well,” Arkady said, “I thought it would be a very good thing if I could only get away, so I could come round and free him later, of course—so I tried to fly away as quick as I could; but those red fellows are fast, even if they do not look it much,” he added disgruntled.

“As though he had any right to be,” Temeraire had said indignantly to Laurence, after, “once he turned tail and left poor Tharkay, and I am sure would never have given him another thought.”

Arkady and Kulingile were waiting for them there in the valley when they descended with Chu; Temeraire had been sure to fly on ahead as quickly as he could, without pausing for conversation. “What is this?” Chu demanded. “Who is that peculiar dragon, and why have we come here?”

“Sir,” Laurence said, “I beg your pardon for the maneuver which has brought you here. We have reason to believe we have all been practiced upon, to an extent difficult to swallow; but we have not a hope of demonstrating it, without your assistance.”

But Chu received the explanation of Arkady’s presence, and of Fela’s treachery, with enormous skepticism; Temeraire laid back his ruff to see it, and said angrily, “I suppose you would rather believe that we are all liars—that
I
am a liar, and Laurence as well, even though he is the Emperor’s adopted son.”

Chu snorted a little. “
That
does not disqualify anyone to be an emperor’s son, or an emperor for that matter: what is an emperor but one who tells a lie that all the world believes?”

Temeraire was rather taken aback by this remark, which made an uncomfortable sort of sense, and did not quite know how to answer it. Chu waved a wing-tip dismissively and said, “But in any case, I do not think you liars; I think you want China to make alliance with this foreign nation of yours, and so you are willing to believe the lies of others. General Fela, to have committed such treachery? To have sent false reports, and connived at the attempted murder of the crown prince?”

“Sir,” Laurence said, “
have
you seen any evidence at all, of the rebellion which he claimed was so greatly resurgent as to challenge his own forces?” General Chu was silent in answer, frowning; in the cold mountain air, the breath from his nostrils drifted forth in pale clouds.

“Then I ask you to indulge us this far,” Laurence went on. “You yourself commanded the army which cleared away the last insurgency. You are well acquainted with these mountains, and whatever rebel fastnesses were taken and secured by the army at that time. Is there anywhere close-by, where they might have taken and concealed a prisoner? If we can find our man, we may find answers with him; his guards may be questioned, and other evidence found.”

“Hm,” Chu said, after a moment, and then he said, “Well, it will not hurt for us to take a look.”

He leapt aloft, Temeraire after him, both dragons beating far up to where the air grew thin and cold. A thin clouding layer of haze reduced the mountains to faded blue, but the sharp and angular lines of their peaks might be clearly seen below. Temeraire heard Laurence’s breath coming quickly; his own was laboring in his chest, and his wings working mightily to keep with Chu.

Chu did not keep them so high long, but soon dropped to a more comfortable height. There he flew in ruminative circles a while, and then beat up a second time, as though to confirm some conclusion; then he swung in easy circles back down to the clearing. He plunged his head into the cold pool and drank deep, then raising his head shook water from his mane vigorously.

“It is a long while since I hunted these mountains,” he said, half-aside to himself, “but I have not forgotten all the bolt-holes of the rabbits yet. There was a White Lotus fortification, a cave, near Blue Crane mountain. And there is some smoke coming from the mountain-side now.”

•  •  •

“Ha, this makes me feel like a young soldier again,” Chu said, peering over the mountain’s ridge, “flying over the northern plains looking for the enemy, under the great Kang-Xi Emperor! It is not at all respectable, of course,” he added, “for either of us; but it can be excused in this case, I think.”

There was some sort of activity at the cave, certainly: as Temeraire raised his head cautiously to peek over, alongside, he could see that the fortifications by the mouth of the large cavern had been rebuilt, and fresh traces of cart wheels tracked through the dust of the slope and into the entryway.

“Either we
have
found your nest of traitors, which I do not suppose in the least,” Chu said, “or we have found the rebels. But we will soon find out. We will go back to camp, and send ten
niru
here to investigate thoroughly—”

“Temeraire!” Laurence said sharply, and Temeraire sprang for Chu and bowled him over the slope, only just in time as three dragons plunged towards them from a concealed height above, talons outstretched, and plowed dirt and stone into a cloud where they had been: three scarlet dragons, the very honor-guard which had been appointed to Chu by Fela.

Though flung off his feet, Chu nimbly rolled his entire body over itself and got up roaring. “What is this outrageous behavior?” Chu said, rearing up onto the slope and bellowing at them. “You
are
traitors! Lost to all decency and right thinking!”

The scarlet dragons half-cowered from him a moment, plainly hesitant, as well they ought to have been, but Temeraire could see that they did not mean to stop. He gathered his breath, his chest swelling, and as the red dragons steeled themselves to leap he roared, shaping the thunder of the divine wind into their path, and the slope crumbled away and left them tumbling down in a heap of stones and broken shale, falling trees entangling their limbs. That seemed poetic justice to him, after his own half-burial. “It serves them all very well,” he said, dropping down to his own feet.

“Temeraire!” Laurence called to him. “We must away at once,
before they can call more assistance. If you and Chu only return to camp, with this evidence, Fela is undone; they must slay you at once, or face disaster.”

“The disaster they have made for themselves!” Chu said angrily. “Come: your companion is right, we must get back to camp.” But there was no chance; more of the scarlet dragons were spiraling down from the clouds, all the dozen dragons and more who had been guarding them in the camp: Fela’s loyalists, and all too plainly a willing part of his conspiracy.

“Let me down!” Arkady was squawking, further down the slope, where he and Kulingile had waited for Temeraire and Chu to finish their spying.

“Well, hurry up then!” Demane said, as Arkady scrambled off Kulingile’s back and crept hastily away into a narrow crevasse, peering out and up at them with only the tip of his grey nose showing.

Still they were three against a dozen, and Temeraire struggling to gather his breath again. Chu said, “Quickly, behind me!” and leapt aloft. Temeraire and Kulingile dropped in behind him. Chu darted into a gap between two mountain ridges, angling himself sharply to pass his wings through the space, and led them onwards through a dizzying rush of mountains: thick green slopes and grey stone flying past at such a speed that Temeraire could only blindly follow, twisting himself to meet every new gap and losing his sense of direction all over again at every third turning.

Kulingile was gasping, but at last they burst out between two peaks into the air over a valley, and beneath them, chasing through the very channel they had fled along, were the traitorous dragons. “Now!” Chu said, and Temeraire gathered his breath and roared out, and the peak before him shattered; boulders toppling. Kulingile flung himself down after them, and bore two of the red dragons to the ground beneath his wickedly long talons, drowning them in the rockslide before he sprang aloft again.

The enemy had split up their ranks, however, and still more beasts were coming; six and six from either side approaching, and
another six descending from above. The odds were too great. “We must try and fight a way through for you,” Chu said to Temeraire. “You must return to camp, with the Emperor’s son,” and while Temeraire could appreciate that sentiment, his heart recoiled at the idea that he should flee and leave others to fend off the enemy. He felt very sorry suddenly he had ever criticized Laurence for risking himself; he had never properly understood how dreadful it would be.

“We cannot on any account desert you, General,” Laurence said. “Your own survival must be of paramount importance: if you can win back to camp, you will be trusted and obeyed, where we may be considered too partial, and your death somehow laid at our door by further machinations.”

“Laurence,” Temeraire said, “perhaps you ought to go with General Chu, and—”

The knot of dragons was closing in upon them; but shrieks and cries erupted, as a torrent of flame enveloped their hindquarters and Iskierka burst through their ranks behind it, her talons raking along their sides in either direction. “What are you all hovering about here and talking for?” she demanded, whipping about them mid-air. “Don’t you see you are under attack? Hurry up and do some fighting! The others are coming as quick as they can.”

She whipped away again, and Temeraire dived after her, indignant at her reproaches; he roared as she flamed, and together they broke apart the other side of the closing net just as the arrow-head formation massed behind Lily came diving towards them all. “Hah,” Maximus called, as he swung by, “we thought you might have got yourselves into trouble, after those guard-dragons slunk off: we followed them here, and so you have.”

“We did not get ourselves into trouble, at all,” Temeraire said. “It came to us, without any effort on our parts.”

Chu was falling in on his left flank, calling to Temeraire, “Hurry! Tell them to send up a signal! Blue lights and red, together!”

Temeraire was inclined to think, himself, that they were quite
enough to manage the enemy; together their formation had dealt with quite more than a dozen dragons, and the red dragons were not as large as himself, much less Maximus and Kulingile. But Laurence shouted the word on to Granby, through his cupped hands, and in a moment the flares went up: blue lights bursting against the mountain-side, and Iskierka followed them with a torrent of red flame.

Dodging another pass from the red dragons, Temeraire noticed that the fighting had doubled back over the cave, and too late realized they had been neatly herded. Soldiers were coming out of the cave-mouth and hoisting into the air bundles which, when the scarlet dragons dived to seize them, proved to be enormous weighted nets.

Four of the scarlet dragons threw themselves in a tumbling pass through the narrow gaps in the formation, their crews lashing out with long barbed whips in either direction that threatened the British dragons’ wings and managed to cut the formation apart, while others in groups of three pounced with the nets. Nitidus and Immortalis were falling off in one direction, a net catching at Nitidus’s wing and leg, so that he would have plummeted into the jagged mountains but for Immortalis giving him support.

Another three of the dragons managed to entangle Lily and Messoria and flung nets over them both, carrying them to the ground, wings and limbs thrashing as they roared, men of their crews broken and bloody beneath them as they fell. Three of the scarlet dragons were feinting at Maximus, drawing him in one direction and another, their crews carving up his flanks with the long whips while the British riflemen fired volleys that the twisting and darting of the dragons sent astray.

The scarlet dragons were fighting too well together, Temeraire realized in dismay: being so nearly alike they all might take any position in the fighting, and exchange places, and alter their formations to suit any particular moment of the fighting. Meanwhile Maximus and Dulcia were the only ones left, and Dulcia could not
do very much to help Maximus, outweighed by the scarlet beasts as she was.

He could not go and help; he and Iskierka were struggling to keep together as the enemy beasts came towards them, and even with her fire, it was proving dreadfully difficult: he could not build up enough force behind the divine wind to use it to proper effect over and over. Iskierka only just turned her head over his back and burnt up a net as it flew for his wings; he managed to dive beneath her belly and roar away three dragons coming from beneath with their crews aiming for her with stakes topped by pointed steel caps.

Below, he heard terrible screams, and smelled the acrid bite of Lily’s poison: she had righted herself. The spray of her acid had gone through the net and spattered the defenders before the cave-mouth, and with a great heave, she and Messoria burst free, themselves bellowing as they brushed against a few lingering drops.

But Temeraire could see Kulingile being driven down: one of the scarlet dragons had flung herself at him in a sacrificial roll, hurtling into his chest heedless of his clawing talons. As he reeled back, three others seized on him with jaws and talons closing over his wings and his legs, tearing at the membranes. Temeraire wanted to fly to his rescue, but he could not gather the divine wind, or drag himself free: he was being dragged down as well. “Laurence!” he cried in alarm, thrashing, trying to see if Laurence was still on his back, still hooked on and safe, as three dragons pinned him to the mountain-slope.

Chu roared, coming down upon the back of one of the red dragons, and seized the younger beast by the neck and wrenched it expertly sidelong; the dragon shrieked and fell off Temeraire’s shoulder. “Hah!” Chu said, and seizing one of the fallen trees from the slope flung it at the dragon on Temeraire’s other legs, and Temeraire managed to heave up; the last of the three dragons fled aloft. “Come along!” Chu said. “It is time for us to get out of the fighting.”