Empire of Ivory (23 page)

not quite be separated one from another.

She advanced slowly into harbor, dwarfing all the shipping

in the port into insignificance, and a kind of grim silence

descended upon the town as she fired her salute to the

fort: a rolling thunder of guns that echoed back from the

face of the mountain, and settled gently upon the town like

a fog. Laurence could taste the powder-smoke at the back of

his mouth. The women and children had vanished from the

streets by the time her anchors were let plunging down.

It was dreadful to see how little they had truly to fear,

when Laurence went down to the shore and had himself rowed

across to aid with the maneuvers under way to get the

dragons transferred off the deck. The long cramped journey

had stiffened them all badly, and though the Allegiance had

made good time, still every day of the two months and more

had eaten steadily away at their strength. The castle was

established only steps from the sandy beach, the parade

grounds beside it, but even this short flight wearied them

now.

Nitidus and Dulcia, the smallest, came across first, to

give the others more room; they drew deep breaths and

lunged valiantly off the deck, their short wings beating

sluggish and slow, and giving them very little lift, so

that their bellies nearly scraped the top of the low fence

around the parade grounds; they landed heavily and sank

down into a heap on the warm ground without even folding

their wings back. Messoria and Immortalis then dragged

themselves up so wearily to their feet that Temeraire, who

was watching anxiously from the grounds, called out, "Pray

wait, and I will come and carry you in," and ferried them

one after another upon his back, heedless of the small

scrapes and scratches which he took from their claws, as

they clutched at him for balance.

Lily nosed Maximus gently, on the deck. "Yes, go on, I will

be there in a moment," he said sleepily, without opening

his eyes; she gave a dissatisfied rumble of concern.

"We will get him across, never fear," Harcourt said

coaxingly; and at last Lily was persuaded to submit to

their precautionary arrangements for her own transfer: a

muzzle had to be fitted over her head, from which a large

metal platter was suspended beneath her jaws, and this

covered with more of the oiled sand.

Riley had come to see them off; Harcourt turned to him and

held out her hand, saying, "Thank you, Tom; I hope we will

be coming back across soon, and you will visit us on land."

He took her hand in an awkward sideways grip and bowed over

it, somewhere between saluting her and shaking her hand,

and backed away stiffly; he still avoided looking at

Laurence at all.

Harcourt put her boot on the railing and jumped up to

Lily's back; she took hold of the harness to steady it, and

Lily unfurled her great wings, the feature from which the

breed took its name: rippled along the edges in narrow

bands of black and white with the dark blue of her body

shading across their length to a brilliant deep orange the

color of old marmalade; they shone iridescent in the sun.

Fully extended, they made double the length of her entire

body, and once she had fairly launched herself aloft, she

scarcely needed to beat them, but glided stately along

without great exertion.

They managed the flight across without spilling too much of

the sand, or dripping acid upon the castle battlements or

the dock; and then there was only Maximus left upon the

deck. Berkley spoke to him quietly, and with a great

heaving sigh the enormous Regal Copper pushed himself up to

his feet, the Allegiance herself rocking a little in the

water. He took two slow gouty steps to the edge of the

dragondeck and sighed again; his shoulder-muscles creaked

as he tried his wings, and then let them sink against his

back again; his head drooped.

"I could try," Temeraire offered, calling from shore; quite

impractically: Maximus still made almost two of him by

weight.

"I am sure I can manage it," Maximus said hoarsely, then

bent his head and coughed a while, and spat more greenish

phlegm out over the side. He did not move.

Temeraire's tail was lashing at the air, and then with an

air of decision he plunged into the surf and came swimming

out to them instead. He reared up with his forelegs on the

edge of the ship and thrust his head up over the railing to

say, "It is not very far: pray come in the water. I am sure

together we can swim to the shore."

Berkley looked at Keynes, who said, "A little sea-bathing

can do no harm, I expect; and perhaps even some good. It is

warm enough in all conscience, and we will have sun another

four hours at this time of year, to dry him off."

"Well, then, into the water with you," Berkley said,

gruffly, patting Maximus's side, and stepping back.

Crouching down awkwardly, Maximus plunged forequartersfirst into the ocean; the massive anchor-cables complained

with deep voices as the Allegiance recoiled from the force

of his leap, and ten-foot ripples swelled up and went

shuddering away from him to nearly overturn some of the

unsuspecting slighter vessels riding at anchor in the bay.

Maximus shook water from his head, bobbing up and down, and

paddled a few strokes along before stopping, sagging in the

water; the buoyancy of the air-sacs kept him afloat, but he

listed alarmingly.

"Lean against me, and we shall go together," Temeraire

said, swimming up to his side to brace him up; and little

by little they progressed towards the shore until the ocean

floor came up abruptly to meet them, clouds of white sand

stirring up like smoke, and Maximus could stop to rest,

half-submerged yet, with the waves lapping against his

sides.

"It is pleasant in the water," he said, despite another fit

of coughing. "I do not feel so tired here," but he had

still to be got out and onto the shore: no little task, and

he managed it only in slow easy stages, with all the

assistance which Temeraire and the oncoming tide could

offer, crawling the final dozen yards nearly on his belly.

Here they let him rest, and brought him the choicest cuts

from the dinner which Gong Su had spent the day preparing

to tempt the dragons' appetites after their exertion: local

cattle, fat and tender, spit-roasted with a crust of pepper

and salt pressed into their flesh, as a flavoring strong

enough to overcome the dulling effect of the illness on the

dragons' senses, and stuffed with their own stewed tripes.

Maximus ate a little, drank a few swallows of the water

which they carried out to him in a large tub, and

afterwards fell back into sluggish torpor, coughing, and

slept the night through on shore, with the ocean still

coming in and his tail riding up on the waves like a

tethered boat. Only in the cool early hours of the morning

did they get him the rest of the way to the parade grounds,

and there settled him in the best place at its edge beneath

the young stand of camphor trees, where he might have a

little shade as well as sun, and very near the well which

had been sunk to easily bring them water.

Berkley saw him established, and then took off his hat and

went to the water trough, to duck his head and bring a

couple of cupped handfuls to his mouth to drink, and wipe

his red and sweating face. "It is a good place," he said,

his head bent, "a good place; he will be comfortable here-"

and ending abruptly went inside the castle, where they

breakfasted together in silence. They did not discuss the

matter, but no discussion was required; they all knew

Maximus would not leave again, without a cure, and they had

brought him otherwise to his grave.

Chapter 7

ABOARD, THEY HAD counted every day; they had hurried, they

had fretted; now they were arrived and could only sit and

wait, while the surgeons went through their fastidious

experiments, and refused to give any opinion whatsoever.

More outrageous local supplies were brought to them in

succession, presented to Temeraire, occasionally tried on

one of the sick dragons, and discarded again. This

proceeded without any sign of useful effect, and on one

unfortunate occasion again distressed Temeraire's digestive

system, so that the shared dragon-midden took on a very

unpleasant quality, and had at once to be filled in and a

new one dug. The old one promptly sprang up a thick carpet

of grass and a bright pink weedy flower, which to their

great exasperation could not be rooted out, and attracted a

species of wasps viciously jealous of their territory.

Laurence did not say so, but it was his private opinion

that all this experimentation was only half-hearted, and

meant to occupy their attention while Keynes waited for the

climate to do its work; though Dorset made careful notes of

each trial in his regular hand, going from one dragon to

the next in rounds thrice daily, and inquiring with

heartless indifference how much the patient had coughed

since the last inquiry, what pains he suffered, how he ate;

this last was never much.

At the close of the first week, Dorset finished his latest

interrogation of Captain Warren, on the condition of

Nitidus, and shut his book and went and spoke quietly with

Keynes and the other surgeons. "I suppose they are all

prodigious clever, but if they keep on with these secret

councils, and telling us nothing, I will begin to want to

push their noses in for them," Warren said, coming to join

the rest of them at the card-table, which had been set up

under a pavilion in the middle of the grounds. The game was

mostly a polite fiction to occupy the days: they did not

have much attention to the cards at any time, and now had

none, all of them instead watching the surgeons as they

huddled together in deep discussion.

Keynes evaded them skillfully for two more days, and

finally cornered into giving some report said crabbily, "It

is too soon to tell," but admitted that they had seen some

improvement, so far as they could determine merely from the

climate: the dragons had shown some resurrection of

appetite and energy, and they coughed less.

"It will be no joke, ferrying all the Corps down here,"

Little said quietly, after their first early jubilation.

"How many transports have we, in all?"

"Seven, I think, if the Lyonesse is out of dry-dock,"

Laurence said.

There was a pause; then he added strongly, "But consider,

we scarcely need a ship of a hundred guns only to move

dragons; transports are meant foremost to deliver them to

the front," this being not entirely a misrepresentation,

but only because there was little cause other than war to

go to the difficulty and expense of shifting dragons about.

"We can put them on barges at Gibraltar instead, and send

them along the coast, with an escort of frigates to keep

the French off them."

It sounded well enough, but they all knew that even if not

inherently impractical, still such an operation was wholly

unlikely to be carried out on the scale of the entire

Corps. They might return with the dragons of their own

formation preserved, but such a cure was likely to be

denied half their comrades or more. "It is better than

nothing," Chenery said a little defiantly, "and more than

we had; there is not a man of the Corps who would not have

taken such odds, if offered him," but the odds would be

unequal ones.

Longwings and Regal Coppers, heavy-combat dragons and the

rarer breeds, no expense or difficulty would be spared to

preserve; but for the rest-common Yellow Reapers or quickbreeding Winchesters; older dragons likely to be difficult

when their captains died; the weaker or less-skilled

flyers; these, a brutal political calculus would not count

worth the saving, and leave to die in neglect and misery,

isolated undoubtedly in the most distant quarantines which

could be arranged. Their cautious satisfaction was dimmed

by this shadow, and Sutton and Little took it worst; their

dragons were both Yellow Reapers, and Messoria was forty.

But even guilt could not extinguish all their eager hope;

they slept very little that night, counting coughs instead,

tallies to go into Dorset's book; and in the morning, with

only a little coaxing, Nitidus was persuaded to try his

wings. Laurence and Temeraire went with him and Warren, for

company and in case the little Pascal's Blue should exhaust

his strength; Nitidus was panting hoarsely from his mouth

and coughing, now and again, as they flew.

They did not go far. The local hunger for grazing land and

timber had scraped the fields and hillsides down to scrubby

low grass, all the way to the base of Table Mountain and

its satellite peaks, where the slopes grew prohibitive:

loose conglomerations of grey and yellow rock in stepped