Black Powder War

Chapter 17

"I AM SORRY you should have shut yourself into this box with us," General Kalkreuth said, passing to him the bottle of truly excellent port, which Laurence could appreciate sufficiently to tell it was being wasted on his palate after the past month of drinking weak tea and watered rum.
It followed on several hours full of sleep and dinner, and the still-better comfort of seeing Temeraire eat as much as he wished. There was no rationing, at least not yet: the city's warehouses were full, the walls fortified, and the garrison strong and well-trained; they would not easily be starved out or demoralized into surrender. The siege might last a long time; indeed the French seemed in no hurry to begin it properly.
"You see we are a convenient mousetrap," Kalkreuth said, and took Laurence to the southern-facing windows. In the waning daylight, Laurence could see the French encampments arranged in a loose circle around the city, out of artillery-fire range, astride the river and the roads. "Daily I see our men coming in from the south, the remnants of Lestocq's division, and falling into their hands as neatly as you please. They must have taken five thousand prisoners already at least. From the men, they only take their muskets and their parole and send them home, so as not to have the feeding of them; the officers they keep."
"How many men do they have?" Laurence asked, trying to count tents.
"You are thinking of a sortie, and so have I been," Kalkreuth said. "But they are too far away; they would be able to cut the force off from the city. When they decide to start besieging us in earnest and come a little closer, we may have some action; for what good it will do us, now that the Russians have made peace.
"Oh yes," he added, seeing Laurence's surprise, "the Tsar decided he would not throw a good army after bad, in the end, and perhaps that he did not want to spend the rest of his life as a French prisoner; there is an armistice, and they are negotiating a treaty in Warsaw, the two Emperors, as the best of friends." He gave a bark of laughter. "So you see, they may not bother getting us out; by the end of this month I may be a citoyen myself."
He had only just escaped the final destruction of Prince Hohenlohe's corps, having been ordered to Danzig by courier to secure the fortress against just such a siege. "They first appeared on my doorstep less than a week later, without warning," he said, "but since then I have had all the news I could want: that damned Marshal keeps sending me copies of his own dispatches, of all the impudence, and I cannot even throw them in his face because my own couriers cannot get through."
Temeraire himself had barely made it over the walls; most of the French dragons enforcing the blockade were presently on the opposite side of the city, barring it from the sea, and surprise had saved them from the artillery below. However, they were now properly in the soup: several more pepper-guns had made their appearance amid the French guns since that morning, and long-range mortars were being dug into place all around.
The walled citadel itself was some five miles distant from the ocean harbor. From Kalkreuth's windows Laurence could see the last shining curve of the Vistula River, its mouth broadening as it spilled into the sea, and the cold dark blue of the Baltic was dotted over with the white sails of the British Navy. Laurence could even count them through the glass: two sixty-fours, a seventy-four with a broad pennant, a couple of smaller frigates as escort, all of them standing only a little way off the shore; in the harbor itself, protected by the guns of the warships, lay the big lumbering transport hulks which had been waiting to go and fetch Russian reinforcements to the city: reinforcements that now would never come. Five miles distant and as good as a thousand, with the French artillery and aerial corps standing in between.
"And now they must know that we are here and cannot reach them," Laurence said, lowering the glass. "They could hardly have avoided seeing us come in, yesterday, with the fuss the French made."
"It's that Fleur-de-Nuit who chased us here that is the worst trouble," Granby said. "Otherwise I should say let us just wait until the dark of the moon and make a dash for it; but you may be sure that fellow will be waiting for us to try just such a thing; he'd have all the rest of them on us before we clear the walls." Indeed that night they could see the big dark blue dragon as a shadow against the moonlit ocean, sitting up alertly on his haunches in the French covert, his enormous pallid eyes almost unblinking and fixed on the city walls.
"You are a good host," Marshal Lefbvre said cheerfully, accepting without demur another tender pigeon upon his plate, and attacking it and the heap of boiled potatoes with gusto and manners perhaps more suited to a guard-sergeant than a Marshal of France: not surprising, as he had begun his military career as such, and life as the son of a miller. "We've been eating boiled grass and crows with our biscuit these two weeks."
He wore his curly hair grey and unpowdered over a round peasant's face. He had sent emissaries to try and open negotiations, and had accepted sincerely and without hesitation Kalkreuth's caustic reply: an invitation to dine in the city itself to discuss the matter of surrender. He had ridden up to the gates with no more escort than a handful of cavalrymen. "I'd take more risk for a dinner like this," he said with a rolling laugh, when one of the Prussian officers commented ungraciously on his courage. "It's not as though you'd get anything for long by putting me in a dungeon, after all, except to make my poor wife cry; the Emperor has a lot of swords in his basket."
After he had demolished every dish and mopped up the last of the juices from his plate with bread, he promptly let himself doze off in his chair while the port went around, and woke up only as the coffee was set before them. "Ah, that gives life to a man," he said, drinking three cups in quick succession. "Now then," he went on briskly without a pause, "you seem like a sensible fellow and a good soldier; are you going to insist on dragging this all out?"
The mortified Kalkreuth, who had not meant in the least to suggest he would truly entertain a suggestion of surrender, said coolly, "I hope I will maintain my post with honor until I receive orders to the contrary from His Majesty."
"Well, you won't," Lefbvre said prosaically, "because he's shut up in Königsberg just like you are here. I'm sure it's no shame to you. I won't pretend I'm a Napoleon, but I hope I can take a city with two-to-one odds and all the siege guns I need. I'd just as soon save the men, yours and mine both."
"I am not Colonel Ingersleben," Kalkreuth said, referring to the gentleman who had so quickly handed over the fortress of Stettin, "to surrender my garrison without a shot fired; you may find us a tougher nut to digest than you imagine."
"We'll let you out with full honors," Lefbvre said, refusing to rise to the bait, "and you and your officers can go free, so long as you give parole not to fight against France for twelve months. Your men too, of course, though we'll take their muskets. That's the best I can do, but still it'll be a damned sight nicer than getting shot or taken prisoner."
"I thank you for your kind offer," Kalkreuth said, getting up. "My answer is no."
"Too bad," Lefbvre said without dismay, and got up also, putting on the sword he had casually slung over the back of his chair. "I don't say it'll stay open forever, but I hope you'll keep it in mind as we go on." He paused on turning, seeing Laurence, who had been seated some distance down the table, and added, "Though I'd better say now it doesn't apply to any British soldiers you have here. Sorry," he said to Laurence apologetically, "the Emperor has a fixed notion over you English, and anyway we've orders about you in particular, if you're the one with that big China dragon who came sailing over our heads the other day. Ha! You caught us sitting on the pot and no mistake."
With this final laugh at his own expense, he tramped out whistling to collect his escort and ride back out of the walls, leaving all of them thoroughly depressed by his good cheer; and Laurence to spend the night imagining all the most lurid sorts of orders which Lien might have persuaded Bonaparte to make concerning Temeraire's fate.
"I hope I need not tell you, Captain, that I have no thoughts of accepting this offer," Kalkreuth said to him the next morning, having summoned him to breakfast to receive this reassurance.
"Sir," Laurence said quietly, "I think I have good reason to fear being made a French prisoner, but I hope I would not ask to have the lives of fifteen thousand men spent to save me from such a fate, with God only knows how many ordinary citizens killed also. If they establish their batteries of siege guns, and I do not see how you can prevent it forever, the city must be surrendered or reduced to rubble; then we would be killed or taken in any case."
"We have a long road to travel before then," Kalkreuth said. "They will have slow going on their siege works, with the ground frozen, and a cold unhealthy winter sitting outside our gates; you heard what he said about their supplies. They will not make any headway before March, I promise you, and a great deal can happen in so long a time."
His estimate seemed good at first: seen through Laurence's glass, the French soldiers picked and spaded the ground in an unenthusiastic manner, making little headway with their old and rust-bitten tools against the hard-packed earth: saturated through, so near to the river, and frozen hard already in the early winter. The wind brought drifts and flurries of snow off the sea, and frost climbed the window-panes and the sides of his morning washbasin each day before dawn. Lefbvre himself looked to be in no rush: they could see him, on occasion, wandering up and down the shallow beginnings of the trench, trailed by a handful of aides and his lips puckered in a whistle, not dissatisfied.
Others, however, were not so content with the slow progress: Laurence and Temeraire had been in the city scarcely a fortnight before Lien arrived.
She came in the late afternoon, out of the south: rider-less, trailed only by a small escort of two middle-weights and a courier, beating hard away from the leading edge of a winter gale that struck the city and the encampment scarcely half-an-hour after she had landed. She had been sighted by the city lookouts only, and for all the two long days of the storm, with snow obscuring all their sight of the French camp, Laurence entertained some faint hope that a mistake had been made; then he woke heart thundering the next day to a clear sky and the dying echoes of her terrible roar.
He ran outside in nightshirt and dressing gown, despite the cold and the ankle-deep snow not yet swept from the parapet; the sun was pale yellow, and dazzling on the whitened fields and on Lien's marble-pale hide. She was standing at the edge of the French lines, inspecting the ground closely: as he and the appalled guards watched, she once again drew her breath deep, launched aloft, and directed her roar against the frozen earth.
The snow erupted in blizzard-clouds, dark clods of dirt flying, but the real damage was not to be recognized until later, when the French soldiers came warily back to work with their pickaxes and shovels. Her efforts had loosened the earth many feet down, to below the frost-line, so that their work now moved at a far more rapid pace. In a week the French works outstripped all their prior progress, the labor greatly encouraged by the presence of the white dragon, who often came and paced back and forth along the lines, watchful for any sign of slackening, while the men dug frantically.
Almost daily the French dragons now tried some sortie against the city's defenses, mostly to keep the Prussians and their guns occupied while the infantry dug their trenches and set up their batteries. The artillery along the city walls kept the French dragons off, for the most part, but occasionally one of them would try and make a high aerial pass, out of range, to drop a load of bombs upon the city fortifications. Dropped from so great a height, these rarely hit their mark, but more often fell into the streets and houses with much resulting misery; already the townspeople, more Slavic than German and feeling no particular enthusiasm for the war, began to wish them all at Jericho.
Kalkreuth daily served his men a ration of gunnery to return upon the French, though more for their morale than for what effect it would have upon the works, still too far away to reach. Once in a while a lucky shot would hit a gun, or carry away a few of the soldiers digging, and once to their delight struck a posted standard and sent it with its crowning eagle toppling over: that night Kalkreuth ordered an extra ration of spirits sent round to all, and gave the officers dinner.
And when tide and wind permitted, the Navy would creep in closer from their side and try a fusillade against the back of the French encampment; but Lefbvre was no fool, and none of his pickets were in range. Occasionally Laurence and Temeraire could see a small skirmish go forward over the harbor, a company of French dragons running a bombardment against the transports; but the quick barrage of canister- and pepper-shot from the warships as quickly drove them back in turn: neither side able to win a clear advantage against the other. The French might, with time enough, have built artillery emplacements enough to drive off the British ships, but they were not to be so distracted from their real goal: the capture of the city.
Temeraire did his best to fend off the aerial attacks, but he was the only dragon in the city barring a couple of tiny couriers and the hatchling, and his strength and speed had their limits. The French dragons spent their days flying idly around the city, over and over, taking it in shifts; any flagging of Temeraire's attention, any slackening of the guard at the artillery, was an opportunity to pounce and do a little damage before dashing away again, and all the while the trenches slowly widened and grew, the soldiers as busy as an army of moles.
Lien took no part in these skirmishes, save to pause and sit watching them, coiled and unblinking of eye; her own labors were all for the siege works going steadily forward. With the divine wind, she could certainly have perpetrated a great slaughter among the men on the ramparts, but she disdained to venture herself directly on the field.
"She is a great coward, if you ask me," Temeraire said, glad of an excuse to snort in her direction. "I would not let anyone make me hide away like that, when my friends were fighting."
"I am not a coward!" Iskierka threw in, briefly awake enough to notice what was going on around her. No one could have doubted her claim: increasingly massive chains were required to restrain her from leaping into battle against full-grown dragons as yet twenty times her size, though daily that proportion was decreasing. Her growth was a fresh source of anxiety: though prodigious, it was not yet sufficient to enable her either to fight or to fly effectively, but would soon make her a serious burden upon Temeraire should they attempt to make their escape.
Now she rattled her latest chain furiously. "I want to fight too! Let me loose!"
"You can only fight once you are bigger, like she is," Temeraire said hurriedly. "Eat your sheep."
"I am bigger, much," she said resentfully, but having dismantled the sheep, she fell shortly fast asleep again, and was at least temporarily silenced.
Laurence drew no such sanguine conclusions; he knew Lien was lacking neither in physical courage nor in skill, from the example of her duel with Temeraire in the Forbidden City. Perhaps she might yet be governed, to some extent, by the Chinese proscription against Celestials engaging in combat. But Laurence suspected that in her refusal to engage directly they rather saw the cunning restraint appropriate to a commander: the position of the French troops was thoroughly secure, and she was too valuable to risk for only insignificant gain.
The daily exhibition of her natural authority over the other dragons, and her intuitive understanding of how best they could be put to use, soon confirmed Laurence in his sense of the very material advantage to the French of her taking on what seemed so curious a role. Under her direction, the dragons forwent formation drill in favor of light skirmishing maneuvers; when not so engaged, they lent themselves to the digging, further speeding the progress of the trenches. Certainly the soldiers were uneasy at sharing such close quarters with dragons, but Lefbvre managed them with displays of his own unconcern, walking among the laboring dragons and slapping them on their flanks, joking loudly with their crews; though Lien gave him a very astonished look on the one occasion when he used her so, as a stately duchess might to a farmer pinching her on the cheek.
The French had the advantage of superior morale, after all their lightning victories, and the excellent motive of getting inside the city walls before the worst of the winter struck. "But the essential point is, it is not only the Chinese, who grow up among them, who can grow accustomed: the French have gotten used to it," Laurence said to Granby amid hasty bites of his bread-and-butter; Temeraire had come down to the courtyard for a brief rest after another early-morning skirmish.
"Yes, and these good Prussian fellows also, who have Temeraire and Iskierka crammed in amongst them," Granby said, patting her side, which rose and fell like a bellows beside him; she opened an eye without waking and made a pleased drowsy murmur at him, accompanied with a few jets of steam from her spines, before closing it again.
"Why shouldn't they?" Temeraire said, crunching several leg bones in his teeth like walnut shells. "They must recognize us by now unless they are very stupid, and know that we are not going to hurt them; except Iskierka might, by mistake," he added, a little doubtfully; she had developed the inconvenient habit of occasionally scorching her meat before she ate it, without much attention to who if anyone might be in her general vicinity at the time.
Kalkreuth no longer spoke of what might happen, or of long waits; his men were drilling daily to make ready for an attack on the advancing French. "Once they are in range of our guns, we will sortie against them at night," he said grimly. "Then, if we accomplish nothing more, we can at least make some distraction that may give you a chance at escaping."
"Thank you, sir; I am deeply obliged to you," Laurence said; such a desperate attempt, with all the attendant risk of injury or death, nevertheless recommended itself greatly when laid against the choice to quietly hand himself and Temeraire over. Laurence did not doubt for an instant that Lien's arrival was owed to their presence: the French might be willing to take their time, more concerned with the capture of the citadel; she had other motives. Whatever Napoleon's plans and hers for the discomfiture of Britain, to witness them as helpless prisoners, under a sure sentence of death for Temeraire, was as terrible a fate as Laurence could conceive, and any end preferable to falling into her power.
But he added, "I hope, sir, that you do not risk more than you ought, helping us so: they may resent it sufficiently to withdraw the offer of honorable surrender, should their victory seem, as I fear it now must, a question merely of time."
Kalkreuth shook his head, not in denial: a refusal. "And so? If we took Lefbvre's offer; even if he let us go, what then? - all the men disarmed and dismissed, my officers bound by parole not to lift a hand for a year. What good will it do us to be released honorably, rather than to make unconditional surrender; either way the corps will be utterly broken up, just like all the rest. They have undone all the Prussian Army. Every battalion dissolved, all the officers swept into the bag - there will be nothing even left to rebuild around."
He looked up from his maps and despondency and gave Laurence a twisted smile. "So, you see, it is not so great a thing that I should offer to hold fast for your sake; we are already looking total destruction in the face."
They began their preparations; none of them spoke of the batteries of artillery which would be directed upon them, or the thirty dragons and more who would try and bar their way: there was after all nothing to be done about them. The date of the sortie was fixed for two days hence on the first night of the new moon, when the gloom should hide them from all but the Fleur-de-Nuit; Pratt was hammering silver platters into armor plates; Calloway was packing flash-powder into bombs. Temeraire, to avoid giving any hint of their intentions, was hovering over the city as was his usual wont; and in one stroke all their planning and work was overthrown: he said abruptly, "Laurence, there are some more dragons coming," and pointed out over the ocean.
Laurence opened up his glass and squinting against the glare of the sun could just make out the approaching forces: a shifting group of perhaps as many as twenty dragons, coming in fast and low over the water. There was nothing more to be said; he took Temeraire down to the courtyard, to alert the garrison to the oncoming attack and to take shelter behind the fortress guns.
Granby was standing anxiously by the sleeping Iskierka in the courtyard, having overheard Laurence's shout. "Well, that has torn it," he said, climbing up to the city walls with Laurence and borrowing his glass for a look. "Not a prayer of getting past two dozen more of - "
He stopped. The handful of French dragons in the air were hurriedly taking up defensive positions against the newcomers. Temeraire rose up on his hind legs and propped himself against the city wall for a better view, much to the dismay of the soldiers stationed on the ramparts, who dived out of the way of his great talons. "Laurence, they are fighting!" he said, in great excitement. "Is it our friends? Is it Maximus and Lily?"
"Lord, what timing!" Granby said, joyfully.
"Surely it cannot be," Laurence said, but he felt a sudden wild hope blazing in his chest, remembering the twenty promised British dragons; though how they should have come now, and here to Danzig of all places - but they had come in from the sea, and they were fighting the French dragons: no formations at all, only a kind of general skirmishing, but they had certainly engaged -
Taken off their guard and surprised, the small guard of French dragons fell back in disarray little by little towards the walls; and before the rest of their force could come to their aid, the newcomers had broken through their line. Hurtling forward, they set up a loud and gleeful yowling as they came tumbling pell-mell into the great courtyard of the fortress, a riot of wings and bright colors, and a preening, smug Arkady landed just before Temeraire and threw his head back full of swagger.
Temeraire exclaimed, "But whatever are you doing here?" before repeating the question to him in the Durzagh tongue. Arkady immediately burst into a long and rambling explanation, interrupted at frequent junctures by the other ferals, all of whom clearly wished to add their own mite to the account. The cacophony was incredible, and the dragons added to it by getting into little squabbles amongst themselves, roaring and hissing and trading knocks, so that even the aviators were quite bewildered with the noise, and the poor Prussian soldiers, who had only just begun to be used to have the well-behaved Temeraire and the sleeping Iskierka in their midst, began to look positively wild around the eyes.
"I hope we are not unwelcome." The quieter voice drew Laurence around, away from the confusion, and he found Tharkay standing before him: thoroughly wind-blown and disarrayed but with his mild sardonic look unchanged, as though he regularly made such an entrance.
"Tharkay? Most certainly you are welcome; are you responsible for this?" Laurence demanded.
"I am, but I assure you, I have been thoroughly punished for my sins," Tharkay said dryly, shaking Laurence's hand and Granby's. "I thought myself remarkably clever for the notion until I found myself crossing two continents with them; after the journey we have had, I am inclined to think it an act of grace that we have arrived."
"I can well imagine," Laurence said. "Is this why you left? You said nothing of it."
"Nothing is what I thought most likely would come of it," Tharkay said with a shrug. "But as the Prussians were demanding twenty British dragons, I thought I might as well try and fetch these to suit them."
"And they came?" Granby said, staring at the ferals. "I never heard of such a thing, grown ferals agreeing to go into harness; how did you persuade them?"
"Vanity and greed," Tharkay said. "Arkady, I fancy, was not unhappy to engage himself to rescue Temeraire, when I had put it to him in those terms; as for the rest - they found the Sultan's fat kine much more to their liking than the lean goats and pigs which are all the fare they can get in the mountains; I promised that in your service they should receive one cow a day apiece. I hope I have not committed you too far."
"For twenty dragons? You might have promised each and every one of them a herd of cows," Laurence said. "But how have you come to find us here? It seems to me we have been wandering halfway across Creation."
"It seemed so to me, also," Tharkay said, "and if I have not lost my sense of hearing in the process it is no fault of my company. We lost your trail around Jena; after a couple of weeks terrorizing the countryside, I found a banker in Berlin who had seen you; he said if you had not been captured yet, you would likely be here or at Königsberg with the remains of the army, and here you behold us."
He waved a hand over the assembled motley of dragon-kind, now jostling one another for the best positions in the courtyard. Iskierka, who had so far miraculously slept through all the bustle, had the comfortable warm place up against the wall of the barracks' kitchens; one of Arkady's lieutenants was bending down to nudge her away. "Oh, no," Granby said in alarm, and dashed for the stairs down to the courtyard: quite unnecessarily, for Iskierka woke just long enough to hiss out a warning lick of flame across the big grey dragon's nose, which sent him hopping back with a bellow of surprise. The rest promptly gave her a wide respectful berth, little as she was, and gradually arranged themselves in other more convenient places, such as upon the roofs, the courtyards, and the open terraces of the city, much to the loud shrieking dismay of the inhabitants.
"Twenty of them?" Kalkreuth said, staring at little Gherni, who was sleeping peacefully on his balcony; her long, narrow tail was poking in through the doors and lying across the floor of the room, occasionally twitching and thumping against the floor. "And they will obey?"
"Well; they will mind Temeraire, more or less, and their own leader," Laurence said doubtfully. "More than that I will not venture to guarantee; in any case they can only understand their own tongue, or a smattering of some Turkish dialect."
Kalkreuth was silent, toying with a letter opener upon his desk, twisting the point into the polished surface of the wood, heedless of damage. "No," he said finally, mostly to himself, "it would only stave off the inevitable."
Laurence nodded quietly; he himself had spent the last few hours contemplating ways and means of assault with their new aerial strength, some kind of attack which might drive the French away from the city. But they were still outnumbered in the air three dragons to two, and the ferals could not be counted on to carry out any sort of strategic maneuver. As individual skirmishers they would do; as disciplined soldiers they were a disaster ready to occur.
Kalkreuth added, "But I hope they will be enough, Captain, to see you and your men safely away: for that alone I am grateful to them. You have done all you could for us; go, and Godspeed."
"Sir, I only regret we cannot do more, and I thank you," Laurence said.
He left Kalkreuth still standing beside his desk, head bowed, and went back down to the courtyard. "Let us get the armor on him, Mr. Fellowes," Laurence said quietly to the ground-crew master, and nodded to Lieutenant Ferris. "We will leave as soon as it is dark."
The crew set about their work silently; they were none of them pleased to be leaving under such circumstances. It was impossible not to look at the twenty dragons disposed about the fortress as a force worth putting to real use in its defense; and the desperate escape they had planned to risk alone felt now selfish, when they meant to take all those dragons with them.
"Laurence," Temeraire said abruptly, "wait; why must we leave them like this?"
"I am sorry to do it also, my dear," Laurence said heavily, "but the position is untenable: the fortress must fall eventually, no matter what we do. It will do them no good in the end for us to stay and be captured with them."
"That is not what I mean," Temeraire said. "There are a great many of us, now; why do we not take the soldiers away with us?"
"Can it be done?" Kalkreuth asked; and they worked out the figures of the desperate scheme with feverish speed. There were just enough transports in the harbor to squeeze the men aboard, Laurence judged, though they should have to be crammed into every nook from the hold to the manger.
"We will give those jack tars a proper start, dropping onto them out of nowhere," Granby said dubiously. "I hope they may not shoot us out of the air."
"So long as they do not lose their heads, they must realize that an attack would never come so low," Laurence said, "and I will take Temeraire to the ships first and give them a little warning. He at least can hover overhead, and let the passengers down by ropes; the others will have to land on deck. Thankfully they are none of them so very large."
Every silk curtain and linen sheet in the elegant patrician homes was being sacrificed to the cause, much against their owners' wishes, and every seamstress of the city had been pressed into service, thrust into the vast ballroom of the general's residence to sew the carrying-harnesses under the improvisational direction of Fellowes. "Sirs, begging your pardon, I won't stand on oath they'll any of them hold," he said. "How these things are rigged in China, ordinary, I'm sure I don't know; and as for what we are doing, it'll be the queerest stuff dragon ever wore or man ever rode on, I can't say plainer than that."
"Do what you can," General Kalkreuth said crisply, "and any man who prefers may stay and be made prisoner."
"We cannot take the horses or the guns, of course," Laurence said.
"Save the men; horses and guns can be replaced," Kalkreuth said. "How many trips will we need?"
"I am sure I could take at least three hundred men, if I were not wearing armor," Temeraire said; they were carrying on their discussion in the courtyard, where he could offer his opinions. "The little ones cannot take so many, though."
The first carrying-harness was brought down to try; Arkady edged back from it a little uneasily until Temeraire made some pointed remarks and turned to adjust a strap of his own harness; at which the feral leader immediately presented himself, chest outthrust, and made no further difficulties: aside from turning himself round several times in an effort to see what was being done, and thus causing a few of the harness-men to fall off. Once rigged out, Arkady promptly began prancing before his comrades; he looked uncommonly silly, as the harness was partly fashioned out of patterned silks that had likely come from a lady's boudoir, but he plainly found himself splendid, and the rest of the ferals murmured enviously.
There was rather more difficulty getting men to volunteer to board him, until Kalkreuth roundly cursed them all for cowards and climbed on himself; his aides promptly followed him up in a rush, even arguing a little over who should go up first, and with this example before them the reluctant men were so shamed they too began clamoring to board; to which Tharkay, observing the whole, remarked a little dryly that men and dragons were not so very different in some respects.
Arkady, not the largest of the ferals, being leader more from force of personality than size, was able to lift off the ground easily with a hundred men dangling, perhaps a few more. "We can fit nearly two thousand, across all of them," Laurence said, the trial complete, and handed the slate to Roland and Dyer to make them do the sums over, to be sure he had the numbers correct: much to their disgruntlement; they felt it unfair to be set back to schoolwork in so remarkable a situation. "We cannot risk overloading them," Laurence added. "They must be able to make their escape if we are caught at it in the middle."
"If we don't take care of that Fleur-de-Nuit, we will be," Granby said. "If we engaged him tonight - ?"
Laurence shook his head, not in disagreement but in doubt. "They are taking precious good care he is not exposed. To get anywhere near we would have to come in range of their artillery, and get directly into their midst; I have not seen him stir out of the covert since we arrived. He only watches us from that ridge, and keeps well back."
"They would hardly need the Fleur-de-Nuit to tell them we were doing something tomorrow, if we made a great point of singling him out tonight," Tharkay pointed out. "He had much better be dealt with just before we begin."
No one disagreed, but puzzling out the means left them at sixes-and-sevens a while. They could settle on nothing better than staging a diversion, using the littler dragons to bombard the French front ranks: the glare would interfere with the Fleur-de-Nuit's vision, and in the meantime the other dragons would slip out to the south, and make a wider circle out to sea.
"Though it won't do for long," Granby said, "and then we will have all of them to deal with, and Lien, too: Temeraire can't fight her with three hundred men hanging off his sides."
"An attack such as this will rouse up all the camp, and someone will see us going by sooner or late," Kalkreuth agreed. "Still it will gain us more time than if the alarm were raised at once; I would rather save half the corps than none."
"But if we must circle about so far out of the way, it will take a good deal more time, and we will never get so many away," Temeraire objected. "Perhaps if we only went and killed him very quickly and quietly, we might then get away before they know what we are about; or at least thumped him hard enough he could not pay any more attention - "
"What we truly need," Laurence said abruptly, "is only to put him quietly out of the way; what about drugging him?" In the thoughtful pause, he added, "They have been feeding the dragons livestock dosed with opium all through the campaign; if we slip him one more thoroughly saturated, likely he will not notice any queer taste, at least not until it is too late."
"His captain will hardly let him eat a cow if it's still wandering in circles," Granby said.
"If the soldiers are eating boiled grass, the dragons cannot be eating as much as they like, either," Laurence said. "I suspect he will prefer to ask forgiveness than permission, if a cow goes by him in the night."
Tharkay undertook to manage it. "Find me some nan-keen trousers and a loose shirt, and give me a dinner-basket to carry," he said. "I assure you I will be able to walk through the camp quite openly; if anyone stops me I will speak pidgin to them and repeat the name of some senior officer. And if you give me a few bottles of drugged brandy for them to take from me, so much the better; no reason we cannot let the watch dose themselves with laudanum, too."
"But will you be able to get back?" Granby asked.
"I do not mean to try," Tharkay said. "After all, our purpose is to get out; I can certainly walk to the harbor long before you will have finished loading, and find a fisherman to bring me out; they are surely doing a brisk business with those ships."
Kalkreuth's aides were crawling around the courtyard on hands and knees, drawing out a map in chalks, large enough for the feral dragons to make out and, by serendipity, colorful and interesting enough to command their attention. The bright blue stripe of the river would be their guide: it passed through the city walls and then curved down to the harbor, passing through the French camp as it went.
"We will go single-file, keeping over the water," Laurence said, "and pray be sure the other dragons understand," he added anxiously to Temeraire, "they must go very quietly, as if they were trying to creep up on some wary herd of animals."
"I will tell them again," Temeraire promised, and sighed a very little. "It is not that I am not happy to have them here," he confided quietly, "and really they have been minding me quite well, when one considers that they have never been taught, but it would have been so very nice to have Maximus and Lily here, and perhaps Excidium; he would know just what to do, I am sure."
"I cannot quarrel with you," Laurence said; apart from all considerations of management, Maximus alone could likely have taken six hundred men or more, being a particularly large Regal Copper. He paused and asked, tentatively, "Will you tell me now what else has been worrying you? Are you afraid they will lose their heads, in the moment?"
"Oh; no, it is not that," Temeraire said, and looked down, prodding a little at the remains of his dinner. "We are running away, are we not?" he said abruptly.
"I would be sorry to call it so," Laurence said, surprised; he had thought Temeraire wholly satisfied with their plan, now that they meant to carry out the Prussian garrison with them, and for his own part thought it a maneuver to applaud: if they could manage it. "There is no shame in retreating to preserve one's strength for a future battle, with better hope of victory."
"What I mean is, if we are going away, then Napoleon really has won," Temeraire said, "and England will be at war for a long time still; because he means to conquer us. So we cannot ask the Government to change anything, for dragons; we must only do as we are told, until he is beaten." He hunched his shoulders a little and added, "I do understand it, Laurence, and I promise I will do my duty and not always be complaining; I am only sorry."
It was with some awkwardness in the face of this handsome speech that Laurence recognized, and had then to convey to Temeraire, the change in his own sentiments, an awkwardness increased by the bewildered Temeraire's dragging out, one after another, all of Laurence's own earlier protests on the subject.
"I have not, I hope, changed in essentials," Laurence said, struggling for justification in his own eyes as well as his dragon's, "but only in my understanding. Napoleon has made manifest for all the world to see the marked advantages to a modern army of closer cooperation between men and dragons; we return to England not only to take up our post again, but bearing this vital intelligence, which makes it not merely our desire but our duty to promote such change in England."
Temeraire required very little additional persuasion, and all Laurence's embarrassment, at seeming to be fickle, was mitigated by his dragon's jubilant reaction, and the immediate necessity of presenting him with many cautions: every earlier objection remained, of course, and Laurence knew very well they would face the most violent opposition.
"I do not care if anyone else minds," Temeraire said, "or if it takes a long time; Laurence, I am so very happy, I only wish we were at home already."
All that night and the next day they continued to labor over the harnesses; the cavalry-horses' tack was soon seized upon and cannibalized, and the tanners' shops raided. Dusk was falling and Fellowes was still frantically climbing with his men all over the dragons, sewing on more carrying-loops, of anything which was left - leather, rope, braided silk - until they seemed to be festooned with ribbons and bows and flounces. "It is as good as Court dress," Ferris said, to much muffled hilarity, as a ration of spirits was passed around, "we ought to fly straight to London and present them to the Queen."
The Fleur-de-Nuit took up his appointed position at the usual hour, settling back on his haunches for the night's duty; as the night deepened, the edges of his midnight blue hide slowly faded into the general darkness, until all that could be seen of him were his enormous dinner-plate eyes, milky white and illuminated by the reflections of the campfires. Occasionally he stirred, or turned round to have a look towards the ocean, and the eyes would vanish for a moment; but they always came back again.
Tharkay had slipped out a few hours before. They watched, anxiously; for an eternity counting by the heartbeat, for two turns counting by the glass. The dragons were all ranged in lines, the first men aboard and ready to go at once. "If nothing comes of it," Laurence said softly, but then the palely gleaming eyes blinked once, twice; then for a little longer; then again; and then with the lids drooping gradually to cover them, they drifted slowly and languorously to the ground, and the last narrow slits winked out of sight.
"Mark time," Laurence called down to the aides-decamp standing anxiously below, holding their hourglasses ready; then Temeraire leapt away, straining a little under the weight. Laurence found it queer to be conscious of so many men aboard, so many strangers crowding near him: the communal nervous quickening of their breath like a rasp, the muffled curses and low cries silenced at once by their neighbors, their bodies and their warmth muting the biting force of the wind.
Temeraire followed the river out through the city walls: staying over the water so that the living sound of the current running down to the sea should mask the sound of his wings. Boats drawn up along the sides of the river creaked their ropes, murmuring, and the great brooding bulk of the harbor crane protruded vulturelike over the water. The river was smooth and black beneath them, spangled a little with reflections, the fires of the French camp throwing small yellow flickers onto the low swells.
To their either side, the French encampment lay sprawling over the banks of the river, lantern glims showing here and there the slope of a dragon's body, the fold of a wing, the pitted blue iron of a cannon-barrel. Lumps that were soldiers lay sleeping in their rough bivouacs, huddled near one another under blankets of coarse wool, overcoats, or only mats of straw, with their feet poking out towards the fires. If there were any sounds to be heard from the camp, however, Laurence did not know it; his heart was beating too loudly in his ears as they went gliding by, Temeraire's wingbeats almost languidly slow.
And then they were breathing again as the fires and lights fell behind them; they had come safely past the edges of the encampment with one mile of soft marshy ground to the sea, the sound of the surf rising ahead: Temeraire put on eager speed, and the wind began to whistle past the edges of his wings; somewhere hanging off the rigging below, Laurence heard a man vomiting. They were already over the ocean; the ship-lanterns beckoned them on, almost glaring bright with no moon for competition. As they drew near Laurence could see a candelabrum standing in the stern-windows of one of the ships, a seventy-four, illuminating the golden letters upon her stern: she was the Vanguard, and Laurence leaned forward and pointed Temeraire towards her.
Young Turner crept out onto Temeraire's shoulder and held up the night-signal lantern where it could be seen, showing the friendly signal out its front, one long blue light, two short red, with thin squares of cloth laid over the lantern-hole to make the colors, and then the three short white lights to request a silent response; and again, as they drew nearer and nearer. There was a delay; had the lookout not seen? was the signal too old? Laurence had not seen a new signal-book in almost a year.
But then the quick blueCredCblueCred of the answer shone back at them, and there were more lights coming out on deck as they descended. "Ahoy the ship," Laurence called, cupping his hands around his mouth.
"Ahoy the wing," came the baffled reply, from the officer of the watch, faint and hard to hear, "and who the devil are you?"
Temeraire hovered carefully overhead; they flung down long knotted ropes, the ends thumping hollowly upon the deck of the ship, and the men began to struggle loose from the harness with excessive haste to be off. "Temeraire, tell them to go carefully, there," Laurence said sharply. "The harness won't stand hard use, and their fellows will be next aboard."
Temeraire rumbled at them low, in German, and the descent calmed a little; still further when one man, missing his grasp, slipped and went tumbling down with a too-loud cry that broke only with the wet melon-thump sound of his head striking against the deck. Afterwards the others went more warily, and below, their officers began to force them back against the ship's rails and out of the way, using hands and sticks to push them into place instead of shouted orders.
"Is everyone down?" Temeraire asked Laurence; only a handful of the crew were left, up on his back, and at Laurence's nod, Temeraire carefully let himself down and slipped into the water beside the ship, scarcely throwing up a splash. There was a great deal of noise beginning to rise from the deck, the sailors and soldiers talking at one another urgently and uselessly in their different tongues, and the officers having difficulty reaching one another through the crowd of men; the crew were showing lanterns wildly in every direction.
"Hush!" Temeraire said to them all sharply, putting his head over the side, "and put away those lights; can you not see we are trying to keep quiet? And if any of you do not listen to me or begin to scream, like great children, just because I am a dragon, I will pick you up and throw you overboard, see if I do not," he added.
"Where is the captain?" Laurence called up, into a perfect silence, Temeraire's threat having been taken most seriously.
"Will? Is that Will Laurence?" A man in a nightshirt and cap leaned over the side, staring. "The devil, man, did you miss the sea so much you had to turn your dragon into a ship? What is his rating?"
"Gerry," Laurence said, grinning, "you will do me the kindness to send out every last boat you have to carry the message to the other ships; we are bringing out the garrison, and we must get them embarked by morning, or the French will make the country too hot to hold us."
"What, the whole garrison?" Captain Stuart said. "How many of them are there?"
"Fifteen thousand, more or less," Laurence said. "Never mind," he added, as Stuart began to splutter, "you must pack them in somehow, and at least get them over to Sweden; they are damned brave fellows, and we aren't leaving them behind. I must get back to ferrying; God only knows how long we have until they notice us."
Going back to the city they passed over Arkady coming with his own load; the feral leader was nipping at the tails of a couple of the younger members of his flock, keeping them from meandering off the course; he waved his tail-tip at Temeraire as they shot by, Temeraire stretched out full-length and going as fast as he might, as quiet as he might. The courtyard was in controlled havoc, the battalions marching out one after another in parade-ground order to their assigned dragons, boarding them with as little noise as could be managed.
They had marked each dragon's place with paint on the flagstones, already scratched and trampled by claws and boots. Temeraire dropped into his large corner, and the sergeants and officers began herding the men quickly along: each climbed up the side and thrust his head and shoulders through the highest open loop, getting a grip on the harness with his hands or clinging to the man above, trying for footholds on the harness.
Winston, one of the harness-men, flew over gasping, "Anything that needs fixing, sir?" and ran off instantly on hearing a negative, to the next dragon; Fellowes and his handful of other men were dashing about with similar urgency, repairing loose or broken bits of harness.
Temeraire was ready again; "Mark time," Laurence called.
"An hour and a quarter, sir," came back Dyer's treble; worse than Laurence had hoped, and many of the other dragons were only getting away with their second loads alongside them.
"We will get faster as we go along," Temeraire said stoutly, and Laurence answered, "Yes; quickly as we can, now - " and they were airborne again.
Tharkay found them again as they dropped their second load of men down to one of the transports in the harbor; he had somehow gotten on deck, and now he came swarming hand-over-hand up the knotted ropes, in the opposite direction from the descending soldiers. "The Fleur-de-Nuit took the sheep, but he did not eat the whole thing," he said quietly, when he had gotten up to Laurence's side. "He ate only half, and hid the rest; I do not know it will keep him asleep all night."
Laurence nodded; there was nothing to be done for it; they had only to keep going, as long as they could.
A suggestion of color was showing in the east, now, and too many men still crowded the lanes of the city, waiting to get aboard. Arkady was showing himself not useless in a time of crisis; he chivvied along his ferals to go quicker, and himself had already managed eight circuits. He came sailing in for his next load even as Temeraire finally lifted away with his seventh: his larger loads took more time to get aboard and disembark. The other ferals too were holding up bravely: the little motley-colored one whom Keynes had patched up, after the avalanche, was showing himself particularly devoted, and ferrying his tiny loads of twenty men with great determination and speed.
There were ten dragons on the decks of the ships, unloading, as Temeraire landed, mostly the larger of the ferals; the next pass would see the city close to empty, Laurence thought, and looked at the sun: it would be a close-run race.
And then abruptly from the French covert rose a small, smoking blue light; Laurence looked in horror as the flare burst over the river: the three dragons who were in transit at the moment squawked in alarm, jerking from the sudden flash of light, and a couple of men fell from their carrying-harnesses screaming to plunge into the river.
"Jump off! Jump, damn you," Laurence bellowed at the men still climbing down from Temeraire's harness. "Temeraire!"
Temeraire called it out in German, almost unnecessarily; the men were leaping free from all the dragons, many falling into the water where the ships' crews began frantically to fish them out. A handful were stuck still on the carrying-harnesses, or clinging to the ropes, but Temeraire waited no longer; the other dragons came leaping into the air behind him, and as a pack they stormed back to the city, past the shouts and now-blazing lanterns of the French encampment.
"Ground crew aboard," Laurence shouted through his speaking-trumpet as Temeraire came down into the courtyard for the last time, and outside the French guns sounded their first tentative coughing roars. Pratt came running with the last dragon egg in his arms, wrapped and bundled around with padding and oilskin, to be thrust into Temeraire's belly-rigging; and Fellowes and his men abandoned their makeshift harness-repairs. All the ground crew came swarming aboard with the ease of long practice on the ropes, getting quickly latched to the harness proper.
"All accounted for, sir," Ferris yelled from farther along Temeraire's back; he had to use his speaking-trumpet to be audible. Above their heads, the artillery was sounding from the walls, the shorter hollow coughs of howitzers, the whistling whine and fall of mortar shells; in the courtyard, shouting now, Kalkreuth and his aides were directing the last battalions aboard.
Temeraire picked Iskierka up in his mouth and slung her around onto his shoulders. She yawned and picked up her head drowsily. "Where is my captain? Oh! Are we fighting now?" Her eyes opened all the way at the rolling thunder of the guns going off one after another over their heads.
"Here I am, don't fret," Granby called, clambering up the rest of the way to catch her by the harness, just in time to keep her from leaping off again.
"General!" Laurence shouted; Kalkreuth waved them on, refusing, but his aides snatched him bodily and heaved him up: the men let go their own grips on the harness to take hold of him and hand him up along, until he was deposited next to Laurence, breathing hard and with his thin hair disarrayed: his wig had vanished in the ascent. The drummer was beating the final retreat; men were running down from the walls, abandoning the guns, some even leaping from the turrets and ledges straight onto the dragons' backs, grabbing blindly for some purchase.
The sun was coming up over the eastern ramparts, the night breaking up into long, narrow ranked clouds like rolled cigars, blue and touched all along their sides with orange fire; there was no more time. "Go aloft," Laurence shouted, and Temeraire gave a shattering roar and leapt away with a great thrust of his hindquarters, men dangling from his harness; some slipped away grasping vainly at the air, and fell down to the stones of the courtyard below, crying out. All the dragons came rising into the air behind him, roaring with many voices, with many wings.
The French dragons were coming out of their covert and going to the pursuit, their crews still scrambling to get into battle-order; abruptly Temeraire slowed, to let the ferals pass him, and then he put his head around and said, "There, now you may breathe fire at them!" and with a squeak of delight, Iskierka whipped her head around and let loose a great torrent of flame over Temeraire's back and into their pursuers' faces, sending them recoiling back.
"Go, now, quickly!" Laurence was shouting; they had won a little space, but Lien was coming: rising from the French camp bellowing orders; the French dragons, milling about in their riders' confusion, fell instantly in line with her. There was no sign of her earlier self-restraint: seeing them now on the verge of escape, she was beating after them with furious speed, outdistancing all the French dragons but the littlest couriers, who desperately fought to keep pace with her.
Temeraire stretched long and went flat-out, legs gathered close, ruff plastered against his neck, wings scooping the air like oars; they devoured the miles of ground as Lien did the distance between them, the thunder-coughing of the long guns of the warships beckoning them to the safety of their sheltering broadside. The first acrid wisps were in their faces; Lien was stretching out her talons, not yet in reach, and the little couriers were making wild attempts on their sides, snatching away a few men in their talons; Iskierka was gleefully firing off at them in answer.
Abruptly they were blind, plunging into a thick black-powder cloud; Laurence's eyes were streaming as they came out again, clear and away past the encampment and still going fast. The city and its fading lights was dwindling behind them with every wing-stroke; they shot out low over the harbor, the last of the men being hauled up out of the water and into the transports, and here came the great rolling drum-beat of the cannon: canister-shot whistling by thick as hailstones behind them, to halt the French dragons.
Lien burst through the cloud and tried to come after them, even through the rain of hot iron, but the little French couriers shrilled, protesting; some threw themselves on her back, clinging, to try and drag her out of range. She shook them all off with a great heave, and would have pressed on, but one more, crying out, flung himself before her with desperate courage: his hot black blood was flung spattering upon her breast as the shot which would have struck her tore instead through his shoulder, and she halted at last, her battle-fury broken, to catch him up when he would have fallen from the sky.
She withdrew then with the rest of her anxious escort of couriers; but hovering out of range over the snow-driven shore, she voiced one final longing and savage cry of disappointment, as loud as if she might crack the sky. It chased Temeraire out of the harbor and beyond, leaving a ghost of itself still ringing in their ears, but the sky ahead was opening up to a fierce deep cloudless blue, an endless road of wind and water before them.
A signal was flying from the mast of the Vanguard. "Fair wind, sir," Turner said, as they passed the ships by. Laurence leaned into the cold sea-wind, bright and biting; it scrubbed into the hollows of Temeraire's sides to clean away the last of the pooled eddies of smoke, spilling away in grey trailers behind them. Riggs had given the riflemen the order to hold their fire, and Dunne and Hackley were already calling habitual insults to each other as they sponged out their barrels and put their powder-horns away.
It would be a long road still; as much as a week's flying, with this contrary wind in their faces and so many smaller dragons to keep in company; but to Laurence it seemed he already beheld the rough stone coast of Scotland, heather gone brown and purplish-sere and the mountains mottled with white, past the green hills. A great hunger filled him for those hills, those mountains, thrusting up sharp and imperious, the broad yellowing squares of harvested farmland and the sheep grown fat and woolly for winter; the thickets of pine and ash in the coverts, standing close around Temeraire's clearing.
Out ahead of them, Arkady began something very like a marching-song, chanting lines answered by the other ferals, their voices ringing out across the sky each to each; Temeraire added his own to the chorus, and little Iskierka began to scrabble at his neck, demanding, "What are they saying? What does it mean?"
"We are flying home," Temeraire said, translating. "We are all flying home."
Extracts from a letter published in the
Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society,
April 1806
March 3, 1806
Gentlemen of the Royal Society:
It is with trepidation that I take up my pen to address this august body regarding Sir Edward Howe's recent discourse upon the subject of draconic aptitude for mathematics. For an amateur of so little distinction as myself to make reply to so illustrious an authority must smack of vainglory, and I tremble at the notion of offering offense to that gentleman or his many and justly deserved supporters. Only the sincerest belief in the merits of my case, and, beyond this, a grave concern for the deeply flawed course upon which the study of dragons seems bent, would suffice to overcome the natural scruple I must feel at setting myself in opposition to the judgment of one whose experience so greatly outstrips my own, and to whom I would show unhesitating deference, if not for evidence I must consider irrefutable; which, after much anxiety, I herein submit to the consideration of this body. My qualifications for this work are by no means substantial, my time for the pursuit of natural history being sadly curtailed by the demands of my parish, so if I am to persuade it must be with the force of my argument alone, and not through influence or impressive references....
By no means do I intend any disparagement of those noble creatures under discussion, nor to quarrel with any man who would call them admirable; their virtues are manifest, and among the highest of these the essential good-humour of their nature, evident in their submitting to the guidance of mankind for the sake of affection, rather than through a compulsion it were quite impossible for any man to bring to bear upon them. In this they have shown themselves very like that more familiar and most amiable creature the dog, who will shun the company of his own kind and cleave in preference unto his master, thus displaying almost alone among the beasts a discrimination for the society of his betters. This same discrimination dragons show, greatly to their credit, and certainly no one can deny that with it is matched an understanding superior to virtually all of the animal world that renders them arguably the most valuable and useful of all our domestic beasts....
And yet it has been some years now since many eminent gentlemen, unsatisfied with these considerable encomiums, have begun to put before the world, cautiously and in measured stages, a body of work which in its sum total, almost as if by joint intention, leads the thinking man to the inevitable and seductive conclusion that dragons rise beyond the animal sphere entirely: that they possess, in full measure equal to man, the faculty of reason and intellect. The implications of such an idea I scarcely need enumerate....
The foremost argument of these scholars to date has been that dragons alone among the beasts possess language, and show in their speech to the observer all the attributes of feeling and free will. Yet this argument I cannot allow even to be persuasive, much the less conclusive. The parrot, too, has mastered all the tongues of men; dogs and horses may be trained to comprehend some scattered words: if the latter possessed the facile throats of the former, would they not speak to us also, and solicit of us greater attentions? And as for these other arguments, who that has heard a dog whine, left behind by his master, would deny that animals know affection, and who that has set a horse at a fence and had it refused would deny that beasts possess their own - and often lamentably contrary! - will. Apart from these examples drawn from the animal kingdom, we have further seen in the famous work of Baron von Kempelen and M. de Vaucanson that the most astonishing automata may be produced, from a little tin and copper, which may produce speech through the operation of a few levers, or even mimic intelligent motion and persuade the uninformed observer of a lifelike animation, though they are nothing but clockwork and gears. Let us not mistake these simulacra of intelligence in brutish or mechanical behavior for true reason, the province only of man....
Once we have set these aside as insufficient proofs of draconic intelligence, we come to Sir Edward Howe's most recent essay, which puts forth an argument not so easily dismissed: the ability of dragons to perform advanced mathematical calculations, an achievement which eludes many an otherwise educated man and is not to be found anywhere in the animal world, nor imitated by machinery. However, upon closer examination, we discover that...these feats we are to accept, upon the scantiest of evidence - the testimony of the dragon's captain and his officers, his fond and affectionate companions, affirmed by Sir Edward Howe only through one examination made personally, over the course of a few hours. This may seem sufficient to some number of my readers, the essay made more plausible by its less-ambitious forerunners in the field. However, permit me to point out that a similarly fragile body of evidence serves as the foundation of many of these earlier works as well....
My audience may justly demand to know why such a claim might be pressed, intentionally or no; without making any accusation, I will for the satisfaction of this demand speculate not upon the actual, but upon plausible motives, though only considering those which may be called disinterested. I trust that these are sufficient to allay any suspicion that I mean to suggest any sordid conspiracy, for nothing could be further from my mind. It is natural that the huntsman should love his hounds and see in their brute devotions a human affection, that he should read into the tenor of their barks and the gleam of their eyes a deeper communication; it is the huntsman's own sensitivity which makes truth of this illusion, and makes him all the better a custodian of his flock. That the officers of the Aerial Corps have a communication of this sort with their dragons I do not doubt; but this must be laid to the credit of the men and not the beasts, even if the men deny the credit of it in all sincerity.... Furthermore, all those who have affection for these noble creatures must desire the improvement of their condition, and an acknowledgment of, as it were, the humanity of these beasts, must surely oblige us to deal with them more kindly than heretofore, which cannot be called anything but a generous motive....
So far I have only endeavored to cast doubt upon the work of others. If positive evidence to the contrary be desired, however, we need only to contemplate the condition of feral dragons to have this truth at once illustrated before us. I have spoken at length with those good herdsmen who tend the breeding-grounds at Pen Y Fan, whose work daily brings them into the circles of the wild dragons, and who, rough as they themselves are, view these beasts with an unromantic disposition. Left to their own devices, unharnessed and free, these feral dragons display native cunning and an animal intelligence, but no more. They make no use of language, save the grunting and hissing common among animals; they form no society nor civilized relations; they have no art and no industry; they manufacture nothing, neither shelter nor tools. The same cannot be said of the meanest savage in the most barren part of the earth; what dragons know of higher things, they have learned only from men, and the impulse is not native to the species. Surely this is sufficient evidence of distinction between man and dragon, if such evidence be necessary....
If with these arguments I have failed to convince, I will close with the final assertion that a conclusion so extravagant, flying in the face of all recorded and Scriptural authority and much observation to the contrary, must rather be proven true than false, and if even eligible for consideration ought to endure challenge greater than what my own small powers have enabled me to offer herein, with however good a will upon my part, and requires a far more substantial body of evidence, obtained and affirmed by impartial observers. It is in hopes of provoking wiser men than myself to doubt and to fresh investigations that I have ventured to make this attempt at refutation, and I most sincerely beg pardon of any man whom I may have herein offended, whether through my opinions or my lack of skill in expounding upon them.
Pray permit me to style myself, with the highest respect, your most humble obedient servant,
D. Salcombe
Brecon, Wales