League of Dragons (15 page)

“W
ELL,
L
AURENCE, YOU HAVE
a gift for establishing yourself in the more benighted places of the world,” Tharkay said, his voice rasping with the cold even after they had warmed their hands and throats with a cup of tea. Laurence could hardly quarrel with the remark: they were huddling upon a ledge inside an icy crevasse which plunged away beneath them in rings of blue shading to midnight-dark, even though above their heads the clouds wheeled across a wide and sunny sky.

They were at least not in present danger of a fall to their deaths: Temeraire, crouching, filled the pit beneath them very much like a cork sitting in the neck of a bottle, looking entirely as uncomfortable as this description might suggest despite a thick matting of dried leaves and straw which protected his hide from the walls. But he was very nearly invisible against the dark; two French patrols had flown directly overhead in broad daylight to-day, quite clearly visible from their hiding-hole, but Temeraire had not been spotted even by the sharp eyes of the Pou-de-Ciel dragons.

“I will admit this is an unsurpassed bolt-hole,” Tharkay added. “I imagine I could walk past the opening a dozen times without the least suspicion, even if I had the certain knowledge you were within a hundred yards of me.”

“I cannot think it so splendid as all that,” Temeraire put in, a little plaintively. “It is very strange to feel that there is nothing beneath me: I feel as though I am flying, but I am not; and these walls are quite cold. But pray let us look at the maps again, and see if you can tell a little better, which way they are likely to come?”

These Laurence had just finished tacking to the walls of the crevasse with small nails, and they were more the work of his hands than their original surveyors' by now, with a great many alterations drawn atop the long line of the Alps, and dozens of passes marked for being shut by snow and ice. The ferals had made a great many snickering comments about the quality of the maps when he had first displayed them for their consideration; dragons made considerably better surveyors than men.

The French company might fly over a closed pass, but he thought it unlikely. Great inconvenience would attend such a choice: the dragons required places to rest the night, safe from avalanche and rockfall, and their passengers would have little comfort trying to make camp. Even French couriers going with all speed back and forth to Italy avoided the closed passes, and the company from Istanbul would have no reason to suspect they needed to brave so inhospitable a route: these were the walls around the very heart of France, and Napoleon did not yet suppose his citadel likely to be stormed.

“You do not suppose they will try that crossing Bistorta told us of, where her friend was nearly buried?” Temeraire shuddered. “Oh! If they should let the egg be smashed, or frozen—”

“You may rely they will do no such thing, having brought it so far, so carefully,” Laurence said. Even if Lien would have preferred to see Temeraire and Iskierka's egg destroyed, Napoleon plainly did not mean to discard so priceless a cross-breed, nor hesitate to use it to his best advantage: whether to bring Celestial and Kazilik blood into his own lines, or perhaps even to compel Temeraire and Iskierka to surrender to him, removing them from the field of battle. The egg might remain unhatched and vulnerable for another year, perhaps even as much as two.

“They have alternatives enough, without risking any of the worse passes,” Laurence finished. “Our best chance must be to ask our friends to disperse themselves widely through the passes, and bring us news of any unusual party of dragons seen coming into the mountains. Was there a heavy-weight among them?” he asked Tharkay, who nodded.

“A Fleur-de-Nuit, I am sorry to say.” It was indeed unwelcome news: the party might well travel by night with such a guide, and if caught at such a time would have all the advantage of the night-flying breed's better vision.

“Only find them for me,” Temeraire said, with unwonted savagery, “and I will answer for any number of dragons, if they even have the gall to try and defend
egg-stealing
to my face: I wonder they should not be heartily ashamed of themselves.”

That evening, the Alpine dragons promptly scattered on this mission—they were none loath to accommodate the request, Temeraire having brought two substantial chests packed brim-full of gold plate and handsome jewels—and after devouring the goat which they had brought him, Temeraire fell into a fitful drowse, his head curled awkwardly atop his body, which rose and settled uneasy in the bottle-neck of the chasm with every breath.

The ferals had also brought another load of hay, likely pilfered from some highly perplexed farmer more used to dragons stealing his sheep than their feed. With this, Laurence and Tharkay repaired the gaps which had opened in Temeraire's protective waistcoat; an operation which, requiring them to clamber precariously around the ice-walls secured only with a pickax while they thrust handfuls of straw down Temeraire's sides, left Laurence shaking and weary when it was done. He climbed only slowly back up to the ledge that was their shelter; Tharkay was adding the rest of the straw into the matting that was their own protection from the ice.

“This is a peculiar sort of place for convalescence, Laurence,” Tharkay observed as they huddled back beneath their makeshift heap of oilskins and furs, gnawing the dried meat which was all the supper they could have: fire could not be risked in the night, where the glow would illuminate all the crevasse for any Fleur-de-Nuit within fifty miles to see. “I cannot recall when I have seen either of you look more ragged.”

“There is nothing to be done for it,” Laurence said shortly. He was almost too cold to speak. The bullet-wound pained him deeply—an ache which drew all the chill of the ice into his body, and barred sleep. He dug out his brandy-flask, and swallowing handed it on to Tharkay. “I am sorry if your work in Istanbul was interrupted.”

“No,” Tharkay said, permitting the change of subject. “My work was finished, some days before the French dragons came through. It was just as well to have an excuse to leave. It is a very damnable thing, Laurence, to be forever reminded that one is too much betwixt and between to belong to any settled place.” He drank deeply, and handed the flask on. In the dark, his face could not be seen, and his voice had kept light, but Laurence was sorry. He thought he knew what had sparked that rare flash of bitterness: Tharkay had gone to Istanbul to see Avraam Maden, whose daughter had married another man.

“How did you manage to hire a dragon, for your passage?” Laurence asked quietly.

“An hour's ride east from the city, I found an isolated place and staked out a handsome cow, and waited; a couple of ferals landed at twilight. They were inclined to be suspicious, but they understood Durzagh well enough for me to make myself understood, and bribery did the rest. They flew me over the Black Sea, nearabouts to the outskirts of Odessa, and made my desire to be carried onward known to the dragons there with whom they could speak, and handed me over to them like a piece of peculiar baggage. In this fashion I arranged to have myself bundled along. I cannot call it a comfortable way to travel, but for speed it was remarkable.”

They exchanged the flask a few more times, choked down the rest of the meat, and eventually slept, curled almost as awkward as Temeraire over their own knees, pulled in tight to make small warm knots of their bodies. Laurence jerked awake at uncertain intervals from discomfort and shrieks of wind, in pitch darkness, only Tharkay's presence at his side and the steady low hissing of Temeraire's breath to orient him. The sky above turned, stars in their paces, and the night crept onward; he woke again with the first brightness creeping into the sky, and dozed fitfully until the dawn was fully advanced. No word had come.

They built their small fire, and Tharkay made the climb to the top of the crevasse to pack a pailful of snow to be melted. They brewed tea, and soaked their hard bread and dried meat until it became a little more edible. Temeraire stirred, and looked longingly up at the open sky, but did not propose risking even a short flight. The day crept even more slowly than the night, and when Bistorta dropped into the crevasse at dusk, Laurence was not more startled than he was glad. She had brought Temeraire a small sheep, but no news: no party of dragons had been seen coming into the mountain, nor even a single heavy-weight.

“But Tharkay did say they were visiting at the Sultan's palace,” Temeraire argued with his own disappointment, “and I dare say meant to stay in Istanbul a little while, so we ought not have expected them yesterday: to-night, perhaps, or tomorrow.”

“Or the day after, if I misjudged their haste,” Tharkay said.

Laurence did not say, that it had taken Tharkay three days to find Temeraire, and more than a week to reach their present camp, where the search had consumed another; that the egg might already be gone into France, and beyond their reach.

“Well, perhaps it will be to-night,” Temeraire said, low, half to himself.

But there was no sighting that night or the following, and by the third Temeraire was in a fever of anxiety: the possibility that the egg was near acted upon him as a goad. Only the strongest persuasion kept him from struggling out of their bolt-hole and attempting his own search, and Laurence had no confidence that even this would restrain him when the next dawn came.

But in the late dark hours, the moon having set, he jerked awake as Temeraire moved, scrabbling against the ice walls: he looked up and saw the outline of a small dragon against the stars, peering in: Bistorta. “Laurence,” Temeraire was saying, urgently, “Laurence, quickly, at once.”

Temeraire put them up out of the crevasse, small showers of snow and ice drifting down as the ice walls shivered and groaned around him. He had barely put them down before he came scrabbling out himself, emerging like some unexpected monstrous beast from the depths of the earth. Great chunks of ice crashed away beneath him with a shattering noise as he heaved himself onto the slope, back legs clawing for purchase at the mouth of the crevasse. Then he shook himself, put out a taloned forehand, and caught Laurence and Tharkay up and put them on his back: barely a moment for them to clip their carabiners onto his abbreviated harness and he was launching aloft, his still-ragged wings churning furiously, and circling up into the air.

He could fly no quicker than his guide, for which Laurence was grateful, as otherwise he feared Temeraire would have pressed past his strength. Even keeping Bistorta's pace, his whole body was laboring, his breath coming with some difficulty; they were neither of them, as Tharkay had said, having a healthy convalescence. Thin blades of mountain air drove through the gaps in Laurence's own huddled-on wraps, the corners of his oilskins escaping often to flap noisily in the wind until he could catch them back around himself.

The mountains were shadows, black shapes jagged against the sky. Bistorta and Temeraire did not talk; they flew and flew southward, and after perhaps an hour's travel Bistorta landed and made a small sharp whistling noise, piercing, and then stood with her head cocked, listening. No reply came; she came back aloft and said, “Further!”

After perhaps another ten minutes, she tried again; this time in the distance a similar whistle answered her, and she altered their course slightly. Another brief span, and the whistle was very close: then another of the small dragons was leaping up to meet them, chirping to Bistorta and to Temeraire: Laurence could not follow much of the conversation, but they wheeled after this newcomer and plunged into a valley between two of the tall sharp peaks. The new guide led them to a narrow ledge—narrow by Temeraire's standards, at least; he had to stand on his hind legs almost embracing the cliff face to keep himself upon it. “They are coming,” he said to Laurence, his voice trembling with urgency. “A heavy-weight dragon, but not a Fleur-de-Nuit; they do not know what she is, he says.”