Empire of Ivory (24 page)

terraces like old rotting stone walls held together by

grass and green moss, and clayey dirt for mortar. They

halted there and rested on the loose scrubby ground in the

shadow of the sheer cliff wall. An extensive scurrying went

on in the underbrush as the small game fled from their

presence, small furry creatures like brown badgers.

"It is a very strange sort of mountain," Temeraire

observed, craning his head to look back and forth along the

long ridge of the peak above them, sheared smooth and flat

as if by a leveling knife.

"Yes; oh, very; and how hot it is," Nitidus said,

meaninglessly and half-asleep, and tucked his head beneath

his wing to nap. They let him sleep in the sun, and

Temeraire yawned, too, and followed his example; Laurence

and Warren stood together looking back down into the deep

bowl of the harbor where it ran down into the ocean, the

Allegiance a toy ship among ants at this distance. The neat

geometric pentagon of the castle was drawn in yellow upon

the dark earth, with the dragons small, still lumps upon

the parade grounds beside it.

Warren took off his glove and rubbed the back of his hand

across his brow to wipe the sweat off; he left a careless

smudge. "I suppose you would go back to the Navy, if it

were you?" he asked.

"If they would have me," Laurence said.

"A fellow might buy a cavalry commission, I suppose,"

Warren said. "There will be no shortage of soldiers needed

if Bonaparte continues to have things his way; but it could

hardly compare."

They were silent a while, considering the unpleasant

options which would be the portion of so many men cast

effectively on shore, by the death of the dragons on which

they served.

"Laurence," Warren went on, after a moment, "this fellow

Riley, what sort of a man is he? Ordinarily, I mean; I know

you were lately both standing on your honor."

Laurence was astonished to be appealed to in such a way,

but answered, "A gentleman and one of the finest officers

of my acquaintance; I cannot say a word against him,

personally."

He wondered very much what should have spurred the inquiry.

With the Allegiance confined by her orders to harbor, until

the dragons should once again be ready to depart, Riley had

of course come to the castle and dined with General Grey on

more than one occasion. Laurence had absented himself, but

Catherine and the other captains had gone more often than

not. Perhaps some quarrel had taken place to give rise to

such a question, and Laurence hoped that perhaps Warren

would elaborate. But he only nodded, and changed the

subject to the likelihood that the wind would change,

before their return, so Laurence's curiosity remained

unsatisfied, and the question had only the effect of making

him sorry afresh for the quarrel, which he now supposed

should never be made up, and the termination of their

friendship.

"Nitidus does seem better, does he not?" Temeraire murmured

to Laurence, in confidential tones audible only to anyone

within twenty feet, while they made ready to return;

Laurence could answer wholeheartedly that he thought so as

well, and when they returned to the parade grounds, the

light-weight ate almost to his healthy standard, putting a

period to two goats before he again fell asleep.

On the morrow Nitidus did not want to repeat the exercise,

and Dulcia would only go half so far before dropping down

to rest. "But she did for a whole one of those oxen, a

yearling calf," Chenery said, doing for a substantial glass

of whiskey and water himself, "and a damned good sign I

call it; she has not eaten so much in a sixmonth."

The next day neither of them would go, but sat down again,

almost as soon as they had been persuaded to get up on

their feet, and begged to be excused. "It is too hot,"

Nitidus complained, and asked for more water; Dulcia said

more plaintively, "I would rather sleep some more, if you

please."

Keynes put a cup to her chest to listen, and straightening

up shook his head. None of the others could be stirred much

beyond their sleeping places. When the tallies over which

the aviators had labored were examined closely together,

the dragons did indeed cough less, but it was not much

less; and this benefit had been exchanged, their anxious

observers soon perceived, for listlessness and lethargy.

The intense heat made the dragons sleepy and disinclined to

move, the interest of their new surroundings having now

palled, and the brief resurgence in their appetites had

evidently been spurred only by the better eating available

on shore, as compared to the late stages of the seajourney.

"I would not have regretted it, not at all," Sutton

muttered, hunched over the table and speaking to himself,

but so violently that it could not but be overheard. "How

could there be any regret, in such circumstances; there

could be none," in anguish as great as though his guilt

over the prospect of a cure for his own Messoria, when so

many others might be left to die, had been the very cause

of failure; and Little was so white and stricken that

Chenery took him into his tent, and plied him with rum

until he slept.

"The rate of progress of the disease has been slowed,"

Keynes said, at the close of their second week. "It is not

an inconsequential benefit," he added, little consolation

for their better hopes.

Laurence took Temeraire away flying, and kept him on the

shore all the night, to spare his fellow captains at least

briefly the contrast between Temeraire's health and that of

their own dragons. He felt keenly his own portion of guilt

and shame, the confused mirror of Sutton's unhappiness and

Little's: he would not have contemplated trading

Temeraire's health for all the rest, and though he knew his

fellow-captains would understand perfectly and feel each of

them the same for their own partner, in as irrational a way

he felt the failure a punishment for this private

selfishness.

In the morning, new sails stood in the harbor: the Fiona, a

quick-sailing frigate, had come in during the night, with

dispatches. Catherine opened them slowly, at the breakfasttable, and read off the names: Auctoritas, Prolixus,

Laudabilis, Repugnatis; gone since the new year.

Laurence, too, had a letter, from his mother:

All is desolation; we are done, for at least another year,

and likely more, if the Government should fall again. The

Motion was carried in the Commons; the Lords again defeated

it, despite everything which could be done, and a most

extraordinary Speech, by Mr. Wilberforce, which should have

moved the Possessor of any Soul deserving of the name. The

Newspapers at least are with us, and speak with all the

Outrage merited by so disgusting an Event: the Times

writes, "Those Nay-sayers who give no Thought to the Future

may sleep easy this Night; the others must try if they can

to find Rest, in the sure Knowledge that they have laid up

a Store of Misery and Sorrow, which they shall be asked to

repay, if not in this World, then in that To Come," only a

just Reproach...

He folded it and put it aside in his coat pocket; he had no

heart to read further, and they left the dining room a

silent party.

The castle barracks were large enough to house a larger

party than they made, but with the disease marching

implacable along, the captains by silent agreement

preferred to stay closer by their sick beasts. The other

officers and men not wishing to be outdone, a small

battalion of tents and pavilions sprang up about the

grounds, where they most of them spent their days and

nights, barring the infrequent rain. All the better to

discourage the occasional invasion of the local children,

who remembered Temeraire's last visit of a year ago enough

to have lost some of their fear; they had now formed the

game of working one another up, until one, challenged past

the point of endurance, would make a mad flurrying dash

through the parade grounds among the sleeping dragons,

before fleeing back out again to receive the

congratulations of his peers.

These escalating adventures Sutton quelled for good one

afternoon, when a boy dashing in slapped his hand against

Messoria's side, and startled her out of a rare sound

sleep. She reared up her head into snorting wakefulness,

and the guilty culprit fell over into the dust, scuttling

crab-like backwards on hands and feet and rump in his

alarm, much greater than hers.

Sutton rose from the card-table and went over to take the

boy by the arm, heaving him up to his feet. "Bring me a

switch, Alden," he said to his runner, and leading the

intruder stumbling out of the grounds, applied himself with

vigor, while the other children scattered and ran a little

distance away, peeking out from behind the bushes. At

length the unlucky boy's howls faded to whimpering sobs,

and Sutton returned to the table. "I beg your pardon,

gentlemen," he said, and they resumed their desultory play;

there were no more incursions that day.

But Laurence woke shortly after dawn, the subsequent

morning, and went out of his own tent to find a loud

squabbling at their gates, two knots of older children

wrestling and kicking at each other with a polyglot

confusion of yelling: a handful of Malay and scruffy Dutch

boys together, and against them a smaller band of the black

natives of the Cape, the Khoi, although previously the two

groups had all been equal offenders together. Unhappily

their quarrel had roused the dragons, who thus began an

hour early their morning bouts of coughing; Maximus, who

had suffered badly during the night, gave a heavy sighing

groan. Sutton came rushing out of his tent in a mottled

rage, and Berkley would have set among the lot of them with

the flat of his sword, if Lieutenant Ferris had not thrown

himself in the way, his arms outspread, as Emily and Dyer

scrambled out from the dusty melee.

"We did not mean to", she said, muffled by the hand with

which she tried to stanch her bloodied nose, "only they

both brought some" by some evil genius, the two parties had

at the same time after weeks of searching finally uncovered

some of the mushroom. Now the rival bands were squabbling

over their claim to be the first to present the enormous

mushroom caps, two feet and more across, and stinking even

in their natural state to high Heaven.

"Lieutenant Ferris, let us have a little order, if you

please," Laurence said, raising his voice, "and let them

know they will all of them be paid: there is not the least

need for this fuss."

Despite attempts to convey this reassurance, it took some

time to drag apart the angry combatants, who if they did

not speak one another's language certainly understood the

salient phrases which were being exchanged, at least well

enough to keep their tempers fired up, and who kicked and

swung their arms at each other even when hauled apart by

main force. They stopped abruptly, however: Temeraire,

having woken up also, put his head over the low fence to

snuffle with appreciation at the caps, left abandoned by

both sides in the grass while they attempted to settle

their quarrel by might at arms.

"Ah, mm," said Temeraire, and licked his chops; in spite of

their earlier bravado, the boys did not quite dare to run

at him and snatch them away from his jaws, but they all

joined into a general cry of protest, seeing themselves on

the verge of being robbed, and as a consequence were at

last convinced to settle down and accept their payment,

counted out in gold coins with precisely equal amounts on

both sides.

The Dutch-and-Malay contingent were inclined to grumble, as

theirs had been the larger specimen, with three separate

caps arranged upon a single stem, as compared to the two

upon the mushroom brought by the Khoi, but a speaking glare

from Sutton silenced them all. "Bring us some more, and you

shall be paid again," Laurence said, but this produced

discouraged looks rather than hope, and they looked at his

closed-up purse a little resentfully before they scattered

away, to quarrel now amongst themselves over the division

of spoils.

"They cannot be edible?" Catherine said doubtfully, in a

stifled voice, her handkerchief pressed over her mouth as

she examined the things: growths more than proper

mushrooms, lopsided and bulging oddly, a pallid fish-belly

white irregularly spotted with brown.

But Temeraire said, "Certainly I remember these; they were

very tasty," and only regretfully let Gong Su carry the

mushrooms away, which he did by holding them at arm'slength, gingerly, with two very long sticks.

Having learnt from their earlier experience, they set up