Blood of Tyrants

Page 19

Chapter 19
TEMERAIRE JOLTED OUT OF sleep the next morning with a start: the thunder-roll and the low terrible whistling of the field guns. It was just dawn. “Twelve-pounders,” Laurence said, listening: not as great a noise as the enormous sixty-eights which could be carried by a dragon transport like the Potentate, or even the thirty-six-pounders which had made up most of the guns of the Reliant, on which Temeraire had hatched, but they were certainly loud enough for all that. When Temeraire put his head out of the pavilion, he saw many of the other dragons sitting up on their haunches, looking a little uneasily to the west where the noise of the guns came steadily.
“How they go on!” Chu said. The guns were firing in nearly a continuous stream; as soon as the reverberation of one shot had died away, here came another. “At least when dragons roar, we have it over with, and then you can hear yourself think again. But I am ready to bear the noise, if that means we can get started. Come, we had better go and have a look.”
They had encamped at the Russian rear, as they could reach the fighting more easily than might the infantry or the cavalry, and this way refresh themselves during the battle and tend to injured dragons without being exposed to the artillery. As Chu issued his orders, the niru began at once to go aloft; Temeraire flew alongside him swiftly the five minutes to the front, and there halted to hover: the battlefield looked quite different than the previous afternoon. The French had thrown up three rows of fences nearly all about the highest ground, constructed as they had seen of heavy logs and piled stones and dirt. And as a final insult, they had even seized and improved upon the very fortifications which the Russians had built and abandoned, not a week before.
The ranks of infantry stood arrayed now behind the heavy fences, deployed into broad lines, and great batteries of artillery stood upon raised ground behind them, with several redoubts piled up; their felling of trees had removed the few obstacles which remained to their clear prospect in every direction, while the Russians had been obliged to take up positions crowded up against a heavy stand of timber to the north and with marshy ground not distant from their rear. But the French dragons were massed towards the center, in a peculiar concentration, which it seemed to Temeraire should make it possible to encircle them entirely.
He ventured to point this out to Chu, who said, “Yes, so why has he done it?”
“You have forgotten the guns,” Laurence said, pointing: many of the great massed batteries of smaller guns stood behind the infantry ranks, aiming skyward. “Those will surely be firing on us: they are elevated too high to fire on the Russian infantry.”
As the Russian dragons made their own first pass, carrying heavy loads of bombs meant for the French infantry positions, the raised artillery began to roar: canister-shot, filling the air with smoke and the flying balls and scraps of metal, and even though these nearly all fell harmlessly into the field between the armies, the hail barred an approach to the French forces from more than half the sky: only the center, where the French dragons were massed, was open air.
“Hah,” Chu said, “so he is making a mountain pass, out of gunfire. Yes, I see; we will have a hard time coming at him.” The Russian heavy-weights were already being stymied, their approach towards the French falling back before the blistering fire, which would have torn their wings apart if they had continued.
But Chu signaled nevertheless, and Temeraire watched with rising joy as six niru flew forward to make the first sortie, and two other wings of four niru apiece broke away to either side of the battlefield, to probe at the French defenses. They were fighting, at last they were fighting, and then Chu said, “Well, let’s go back and sit down and have a morning drink; is there any tea, Shen Lao?”
“What?” Temeraire said, outraged. “But the battle is joined! Everything has begun!”
“And it will be a long while going, too,” Chu said, unperturbed, “as long as we can’t come at them more than twenty at a time.” He waved towards the engagement: the niru had closed with the front ranks of the French dragons, and were skirmishing with them skillfully though as yet cautiously, all the dragons on both sides working out a sense of their unfamiliar enemies. There was indeed no room for any other Chinese dragons to attack. One of the niru was already falling back a little from the fighting to give the rest more room for maneuvering.
“But then surely we ought do something to open a wider front, on which we might attack,” Temeraire said. “We might—” He paused, and looked upon the field: perhaps they might go around to the west—but there were guns on the heights there covering the French rear, with a forest of sharpened stakes rising up around them. “Well, we ought to do something, anyway,” he finished a little lamely, even if he could not immediately see what that something might be.
“Certainly,” Chu said. “Go find that Russian general, and tell him we had better arrange supply for another two days.” And then he turned around and flew back towards the campsite, as though there were no fighting going on at all.
The rest of the morning was equally deflating. Even Laurence only said, “We could scarcely give Bonaparte a better gift than to accept the extraordinary losses which it would require on the part of the Chinese legions to seize and overwhelm those artillery positions as they stand: pray notice, if you will, that the French have secondary guns waiting against just such an attempt, and crews of pikemen in support.
“Time is our ally: they cannot hold against us indefinitely. They have sixty dragons here, you five times that number. Even if we allow the French dragons to be the equal of the Chinese, which we ought not, as the day progresses we can send fresh beasts against tired, and by slow tide wear them down; and all the while, the Russians will be executing their own assault upon the French ground positions.”
This was a very sensible and practical explanation and by no means satisfying. Temeraire without much enthusiasm agreed to Laurence’s suggestion that they should indeed go and assure additional supply, for the Chinese legions, largely in hopes that the Russians should protest and insist on some more useful course of action. But Kutuzov was sitting in his own low chair with no more hurry in his manner than Chu; he only nodded to Laurence’s request and said, “I think Colonel Ogevin has already put it in train. Vasya,” he added to one of his aides, “see that it is done.”
So Temeraire, with enthusiasm still more diminished, returned to the campsite, where Chu was now eating a large helping of porridge as placidly as—as a cow, Temeraire thought, meanly; he scornfully refused the bowl which Shen Lao offered him. He had not in the least regretted Iskierka’s absence, all this while, but in the moment he missed her quite acutely. He was certain she would not have tolerated merely sitting about, but would have insisted on their going to join in somehow or other.
He ventured quietly to Laurence that perhaps they might try a pass against the French artillery. “For I am quite sure,” he said, “that I would be able to break some of those earthworks, with the divine wind, and bowl over a great many of the gunners, so the Russians might be able to come at them.”
“Yes,” Chu said, having overheard and demanded to know what Temeraire was saying, “and you could also go and dig some ditches, for latrines; and I dare say if you wanted, you could try and cook our dinner, though it might not taste very well; and also you could go and dance for the troops, which at least would entertain them. None of that is your business: it is your business to stay here, and learn how a battle is managed properly, and then if a moment should arise where you may, through a decisive action, alter the course of the battle, you will be ready to act, and not worn out and too distracted to observe it.”
Temeraire flattened his ruff, but even Laurence did not disagree, saying gently, “My dear, you must see that in the present situation, where the enemy’s positions mean we cannot bring to bear even the better part of the forces which we have, it would be folly to risk you to no purpose. Recall that we are here not merely as soldiers, but as envoys; it would be as wrong for us to go foolhardy into battle now, when our destruction could cast into serious disarray all the cooperation between the Russian army and the legions we have asked to follow us here, as it would be in another situation for us to evade battle out of cowardice.”
So Temeraire had nothing to do but sigh, and put down his head, and wait, while the Jade Dragons darted back and forth, bringing Chu reports of endless tedium, and the sun crawled by overhead.
“What a hideous noise,” Tharkay said. The artillery had not ceased to fire, all this time.
Temeraire went aloft again after noon had passed, only to have a look; although privately he thought perhaps he might see an opportunity, of making a particularly significant attack. The battlefield was so thickly obscured by smoke, by now, that it was nearly impossible to see what any of the soldiers were doing on the ground. One could only guess at it, by listening to the roar of the guns, which went on and on and on. His own ears rang with it, the unpleasant brassy noise: he had never heard anything like, save at the battle of Shoeburyness, during the final great bombardment, which had lasted half-an-hour; here so far it had gone on more than half the day.
“Oh, there,” Temeraire said, when a breath of wind stirred and blew a great rolling cloud of powder away from before the French earthworks on their left flank, “now we will be able to see something, at any rate.” And then he paused, and was silent. The ground was littered thickly with the shattered bodies of horses and of men in both uniforms.
“Dear God, what a slaughter,” Laurence said, low. And the soldiers were yet fighting, bitterly, around the fence: the Russians had seized one end now and were striving forward with bayonets and swords and even in some instances bare fists to push back the French further along it.
“Surely we might help them,” Temeraire said, unhappily, but even as he half-stooped towards the struggle, involuntarily, another roaring sounded below, and he backwinged, recoiling instinctively: a hail of canister-shot went whistling by not a hundred feet distant.
“We have already helped them,” Laurence said to Temeraire, as they drew back. “We have put a stop to Napoleon’s aerial attacks: the French would otherwise be enacting a terrible bombardment against the Russian troops. And the guns which he is using to keep the Chinese legions off, he cannot direct against the infantry.”
“But he seems to have enough of them to do both,” Temeraire said: there were hundreds and hundreds of field guns, it seemed, on both sides. “Laurence, whyever is Napoleon insisting on such a battle? Surely he can see, as well as we can, that he is lost: that he is only dragging things out dreadfully, for everyone, and killing so many on all sides.”
“He has little alternative,” Laurence said, “save if he chose to abandon his army, and flee back to France in a state of ignominy: in a pursuit, our aerial advantage would shortly begin to tell ruthlessly against him; we would have been able to overwhelm his rear-guard, and catch him and his army strung out upon the road. Most likely he yet hopes for some mistake upon our part, which would permit him to use his own advantage in artillery and in ground troops.” But the Russians were being quite careful to avoid that: as the fortifications and the heavy woods kept them from coming at the full body of the French Army, General Barclay had positioned his soldiers along the road to Moscow to the south, to guard against any attempt on the part of the French to slip away again during the night, or to sneak some substantial portion out to flank the Russian Army.
Junichiro had unexpectedly begged to be allowed to come aloft with them, on every one of Temeraire’s passes: he had become, to Temeraire’s gratification, quite a reformed character, and in the course of their journey from China to Russia had acquired a great deal not only of English but of French; to-day he had been avidly studying the order of battle of the armies on both sides. He ventured now, from Temeraire’s shoulder, to say, “This seems something between a battle and a siege,” and Laurence nodded in agreement.
As a siege might take months or even years to lift, that was by no means encouraging, and it was only meager consolation when Laurence said, “They cannot have the supply to hold out for more than a few days, Temeraire, even if they eat the cavalry-horses: you can see for yourself they have virtually no cattle amongst their baggage.”
It did not make Temeraire feel much better, either, to see Vosyem and the rest of the Russian heavy-weights sitting disgruntled in their own encampment, sullenly tearing at the ground and snapping at one another, when he came past them: Chu had sent a word to the Russian generals hinting that perhaps it would be easier for the Chinese legions to operate if they were not being fouled and harassed by their own allies. The Russian heavy-weights had several times bulled through the niru formations to engage the enemy directly, with nothing but ill-effect all around.
Temeraire sighed and looked back towards the battlefield: the guns had begun roaring more energetically. The front row of the fences had at last fallen, but the French had got away their guns, and raced back behind the shelter of the second row; the artillery were now pounding away at the Russian troops who had seized the first row, before those men might even have enjoyed a moment’s respite from their victory. The batteries of artillery aimed against the sky were yet sheltered behind a third row of fences, and overlooking them were the massed ranks of Napoleon’s Imperial Guard, as yet withheld from all the fighting. But aloft, the niru were battering steadily and systematically away at the French dragons.
“Ah, there you are,” Chu said, when Temeraire came down in the encampment. “This is Colonel Zhao Lien, commander of the third jalan,” he said, presenting Temeraire to one officer, a heavy-set dragon of pale green, with a bristling spine of tendrils and a mane not unlike Chu’s own, in scarlet; she bowed her head politely before continuing her report.
“The quantity of smoke produced by the guns has made it most difficult to obtain a clear understanding of the organization of the enemy’s forces,” she said, “but their reserves are substantial, and I have determined their supply may be a great deal better than we have supposed to be the case. I sent a small foray against their rear, upon the ground, which was repulsed swiftly by the repositioning of their guns, but one of my dragons was able to seize a packet from their supply-waggons—”
She indicated this, a large square bundle which had been hastily rewrapped; when one of her crewmen opened it up again, Temeraire bending down to sniff found it full of long hard strips of some dark brown stuff that smelt strongly of spice; pieces were handed around, and when Temeraire chewed it, he found that it was meat: quite tough and dry and salty, but perfectly good to eat.
“Hm,” Shen Shi said, inspecting it. “That is very clever: they do not need cattle, then.”
“No,” Zhao Lien said, “and they had fifty pallets of a similar style on hand.”
Chu made a low grunt. “Well, then they can hold out at least a week,” he said, “but why would they have had so much meat, for this number of dragons—” He fell silent, scratching at the ground ruminatively.
“I will say, General,” Zhao Lien said, “that it seems to me the enemy are fighting very conservatively.”
“Hm,” Chu said. “Colonel, I wish you to take four niru and scout—where are those maps? What is to the north of our position?”
Temeraire looked back and forth between them, conscious that he had not quite followed their train of thought, and wondering how he might ask without looking somehow foolish. Chu was bending low over his maps, and then suddenly, very near-by, a blasting of thunder erupted, a cannonball-whistling. Temeraire looked up and around, in surprise, and then recoiled with a cry as something hot and terrible seared along his side. Roars of pain went up on all sides of him—canister-shot was flying down all over the rear of the camp. “Aloft!” Laurence was shouting from his back, through his speaking-trumpet. “All aloft, at once! Get into the air!”
Temeraire flung himself up, blindly, backwinging, and took up the cry himself as he went, roaring it out as loudly as he could; as soon as he was up, and out of the flight path of the balls, he could see the guns firing upon them: a tiny clearing, some four hundred yards to the north, where the French had established a small battery of three-pounders. They were firing at a furious pace: not even pulling their guns back into place after they fired, nor even trying to aim, merely reloading and firing again and again; all they cared for was to hit anything in the Russian rear at all, and even more guns were being dragged out from the trees behind them.
But they had as yet no covering-fire, nor aerial defenders; Temeraire hissed in fury and circled towards them, out of their line of fire. Plunging towards them, he drew in his breath, once and twice and three times, swelling all his chest with air, and roaring fell upon the line of guns, sweeping them and seeing men and horses fall screaming to the ground before the divine wind, while he caught at the hot guns and tipped them over into a clanging, tumbling heap.
Musket-fire spat against his flank, hot stinging bursts of pain, but he was through and pulling up and away, the guns silenced, their crews shattered. Looking back he saw the wreckage they had already made in that brief span of time: the cooking-pits clogged with dirt and smoking metal, many spoilt; a dozen of the Shen Lung moaning upon the ground, bleeding, many of the wounded dragons injured again also; and near the half-collapsed pavilion—
Temeraire flung himself down again next to Chu: the general’s great scarlet side was heaving, and with each breath a gush of blood rose up and spilled black from three gaping wounds, clustered near the top of his back; his wings lay limp against his sides. “No, no,” Temeraire said, wretchedly. Five of the Chinese dragon-surgeons were already at work, digging their arms within to bring out the shot: one was calling for long tongs to be brought. Another managed to draw out one, which had struck upon a rib; the ball had burst like a star, and another torrent of blood followed it when the surgeon pulled it out.
Chu’s eyes were closed; he coughed, rattling, and blood trickled from the sides of his mouth; one of the surgeons was thrown from his back. Temeraire almost nosed at him, but timidly held back; he did not know what to do. Zhao Lien landed beside him and said, “I have ordered five niru to the north, accompanied by couriers, to scout for more of the enemy attempting to flank us, as General Chu directed. What are your commands?”
She was speaking to him, Temeraire realized; she was asking him for orders. Abruptly, Temeraire felt rage swelling hot in his breast; he imagined with burning satisfaction throwing himself to the front, commanding all the legions to fall in behind him and overturn the French defenses, smash their artillery and then slaughter all their ranks, no matter what the cost. He would drive them forth with the divine wind, and avenge—
“Temeraire,” Laurence said softly, a hand on his neck, and Temeraire dragged in a breath; he looked at Zhao Lien, and saw her regarding him narrowly, warily, as though she feared what he might do. He swallowed and said to Laurence, in English, “Laurence, what ought I do, now?”
“If you will be counseled by me,” Laurence said, “we will determine which of the three jalan commanders is senior, and appoint them to the command.”
Temeraire took another breath, and nodded; he said to Zhao Lien, “Who is the senior commander, of the three jalan?”
She sat back upon her haunches, relaxing a little. “I am,” she said.
“Then—then you shall take command, until General Chu is quite recovered,” he said, though he could not help but think longingly, one more time, of the glorious vision of his charge. “And I am quite sure,” he added savagely, “that there are more soldiers coming; it is just the sort of thing Napoleon likes to do, so you had better plan as though there were.”
Zhao Lien turned to a limping Shen Shi, who had one badly torn wing, and conferred with her about supply; then she turned and said, “If the soldiers who approach are a substantial force, our situation will be extremely precarious.”
“But we still outnumber them so heavily in the air!” Temeraire said, uncertainly. “Of course we must still beat them, surely.”
“We cannot be assured of doing so in the present position,” Zhao Lien said. “An immediate assault upon the artillery must lose us half our fighting troops. This, having diminished our aerial advantage, may permit the enemy to hold their well-fortified positions against us. If they have sufficient ground forces to strike against the flank of our allies’ ground soldiers—”
Interrupting her explanation, Lung Yu Fei came blazing into the camp as swiftly as a rocket, skidding in the dirt as she pulled up: Temeraire regarded her with dismay even before she opened her mouth and said, “There is a whole army coming, from the north-east: they are coming through the trees on foot.”
Once again now the advantage changed hands, as abruptly as before; but Kutuzov’s caution had not deserted him even in an apparent moment of triumph: he had placed his rear-guard to cover the road to Moscow, and had kept a great many of his forces uncommitted to the battle. Even before the French reinforcements had completed half their advance, the Russian Army was melting away again eastward, escaping the trap.
Laurence and Temeraire scarcely touched ground the next four hours, trying as best they might to create a unified action with the Russian forces: a coordination almost impossible to achieve when the two of them were nearly the sole interlocutors between the two bodies of troops. The battle had lent itself to a sharp separation between commands; the retreat by no means did so, for the Russians badly needed air cover, and the French had been reinforced by some forty dragons more, under the command of the very dragon Laurence had noted at the false negotiations: Marshal Ombreux.
“We cannot keep flying about in this manner,” Laurence said, when they had made the fourth frantic pass back to Kutuzov’s headquarters, trying for some clarification in orders which had already seemed inapplicable. “Temeraire, see if you can find Grig, and persuade him and the rest of those Russian light-weights to go-between for us.”
What the officers of those dragons should think, of his summarily appropriating their beasts, Laurence cared little; he had already privately resolved that if their conditions were not ameliorated, he should ask Temeraire to offer the poor creatures safe passage back to China, with the jalan, on the conclusion of the hostilities. “And if the officers at headquarters do not care to listen to them,” he added, “I dare say they will be persuaded, at the next moment when they wish to send us orders.”
Grig was easy to find: he had been trailing them, and he and several of his companions were by no means unwilling to help once Temeraire had assured them of sharing the dinner of the Chinese dragons that night; they soon worked out for themselves an effective rotation whereby each dragon went in turn to the high command. To the credit of Kutuzov’s staff, whatever dismay they might have felt at seeing their old order overturned, they did not allow it to deter them: Grig returned from his flight carrying a Russian officer with him, a young man of noble family from Kutuzov’s staff, who had with real courage tied himself onto the smaller dragon’s harness-rings with nothing but his belt, the better to convey the orders.
As the withdrawal advanced, the jalan were pressed into service to carry away the guns and thereby speed the pace of the retreat. The Cossacks carried out a whirling and ferocious defense in their rear; but the heavier French dragons massed for a sortie now and again, and in such occasions, Temeraire would quickly call out and send back a few niru to engage and drive them away.
But Laurence was well aware of the dangerous falseness of their position: if the French surged forth from their defenses, and flung all their strength upon the Russian ground troops, success might well be theirs: a quick shattering blow could give them the complete mastery in artillery which should make them impervious even to the continuing disadvantage in the air.
He half-waited for Bonaparte to act, to move; waited at every moment for the French to come pouring forward over their fences; but the moment did not come, and then the ground had opened wide between the armies, and at last the guns fell silent.
The army was yet moving, all that night. Laurence came to ground with Temeraire in Mozhaisk. “Remain here,” he said quietly, laying a hand on Temeraire’s muzzle. Temeraire had been aloft, flying and maneuvering vigorously, without a halt for seven hours; they had come fifty miles. Temeraire did not answer aloud, but let his eyelids sink shut; Forthing slid down from his back and said, “I’ll see about his dinner, sir; will we encamp here?”
“Assume a short halt only, for the moment,” Laurence said. “Roland,” he added, beckoning to her; her command of Chinese, having unwillingly suffered Temeraire’s tutelage in that language for several years, was by far superior to Forthing’s. “Have a word with the supply-officers, and see what they can tell you about our circumstances.”
Tharkay fell in with him, as they walked towards the headquarters established in a large farmhouse, some half-a-mile distant; the night was still hot, and the air thick with dust. All around, Laurence heard soldiers coughing, heavily, and long lines stood at all the wells, of men desperately thirsty from dust and gunpowder in their mouths. But the lines were patient, well-ordered; the ranks had not disintegrated, though the circumstances might have been discouraging enough to depress the spirits and morale of any army.
“I can only wonder,” Laurence said, “why Bonaparte did not come forth. Even if he were ever to have another chance at smashing their army, he could scarcely hope to find himself at better relative strength. Can he be seriously ill, perhaps?”
“As pleasant a possibility as that might be to contemplate,” Tharkay said, “I hope you will forgive me for discouraging it. A man who has seen three hundred enemy dragons appear without warning does not need to be on his death-bed to discover a little caution, even if he is a Napoleon.”
The farmhouse was the scene of enormous activity: officers rushing in with reports on the number of troops, the losses; the activity observed among the French by the Cossacks on their light dragons and horses. Bonaparte’s army had certainly been reinforced by more than twenty thousand men: now identified as the Sixth Corps, which had last been sighted in Petersburg not a week before. General Saint-Cyr had managed to bring them south so quickly they had outdistanced even the reports of their travel, which uselessly had trickled in that very day. Three separate witnesses had glimpsed him upon the field, that evening, as Napoleon had embraced him and bestowed on him a Marshal’s baton, which he had won by the enterprise.
The initial goal of those troops had likely been Moscow itself: a neat pincer-trap for the Russian Army, which would have cut off their supply and likely secured for the French the great magazines of the city, full of food and munitions, which they themselves so desperately required. Napoleon had sacrificed that ambition for the rescue of his army.
In the dining chamber of the house, Kutuzov and his senior generals had gathered about the table; Barclay was speaking impassionedly of the necessity of retreating, and therefore of sacrificing Moscow. “We cannot take the wholly unjustified risk of the destruction of the army—the only way in which this war can now be lost. We know Bonaparte’s numbers have already been diminished by half during this campaign; he has lost more cavalry even than that. He can take Moscow, but he cannot hold it; he cannot hold St. Petersburg. He has overreached—”
“Overreached!” Another general, Bennigsen, was already roaring at him, before he had finished. “You would let him walk through the gates of Moscow without giving battle, without challenge—” He broke here into a torrent of Russian, savage, which made Barclay’s cheeks flush hot with color, before he returned to French. “Listen to me, General,” Bennigsen said, turning towards Kutuzov, “it will not be so simple a matter to get Bonaparte out again, once we have let him in. He may be diminished in numbers, but those who remain to him are the best of his army, seasoned men. If we give him so splendid a resting place as Moscow, his stragglers will gather in to him, he will secure his supply with all the stores laid up for the use of our own army—dear God! If any of us had ever thought there should be danger of them falling into the enemy’s hands!”
The argument could not fail but be impassioned, in such circumstances as these: the Chinese legions were still enough advantage to make the Russian Army seem the superior, though on the ground they were as yet perilously outnumbered, and the losses on the previous day had been immense. The French had known they fought a holding action; Bonaparte at every turn had conserved his men, and yielded ground judiciously to preserve them: ground which the Russians had bought dearly in blood while exposing themselves to the withering French artillery.
But no man could easily have borne sacrificing, even in worse circumstances, the very heart of the nation; though the government had been seated in St. Petersburg some years now, Moscow remained to nearly all of them its foremost city. “To have lost Petersburg was bad enough; if we lose Moscow as well, without a shot fired, you may as well send a courier to ask Napoleon which of his brothers we shall see upon the throne, by the New Year!” General Docturov said bitterly: his infantry had borne the brunt of the day’s hot work; his own arm was bandaged, and his face spattered with powder-burns.
Another officer, a younger man named Raevsky who had led the assault upon the French fences, said quietly to Kutuzov directly, “We must cover the southern provinces to permit General Chichagov and General Tormassov to unite their forces. Without Saint-Cyr’s forces at Petersburg, Wittgenstein has sufficient numbers to drive back the French there—”
“Before we are subjected to more of these counsels of—let us say retreat, instead of surrender,” Bennigsen said to him, with acid bite, “perhaps we might first ascertain if the retreat can be accomplished. If Bonaparte were to overwhelm the rear-guard—”
Kutuzov sat impassively while they argued it out, his heavy-lidded bad eye giving him an appearance almost half-slumbering and his face resting upon his fist, elbow propped against the arm of his chair; the fingers of his other hand touched gently the many reports which had gathered up before him, and now and again he lifted one of these to his eyes. But Laurence did not think he read them; and when at last the voices fell silent, he did not answer them, but looked to Laurence. “What is the state of your legions?” he said.
“Sir,” Laurence said, “we remain at your service, constrained only by supply. General Chu’s injuries are grievous, but I have every confidence in Colonel Zhao Lien, and our losses otherwise were slight: ten fighting-beasts and seven supply wounded past flying.”
“Will they carry infantry?” Kutuzov asked; Bennigsen made a small jerk, a half-abortive movement.
“Certainly, for a short distance,” Laurence said. “For any longer march, sir, that may materially alter the requirements of supply.”
Kutuzov nodded, a little. “We must be in Moscow by tomorrow,” he said, “and we will take the road to Riazan,” he held up a hand, to forestall argument, “and then cross to the Old Kaluga Road, and make for Tarutino.”
Bennigsen checked his first reply without speaking; Raevsky nodded. Laurence looking at the map upon the table picked out the roads, the cities, and understood: Kutuzov would make it seem as though he were retreating eastward, deeper into the Russian steppes, the safest course; and then would turn south again sharply while the French were busy with their occupation of Moscow—and surely its looting as well—and seize a strong position to the south, protecting the supply of food and munitions coming to his army from the rich southern provinces, and ensuring his communications with the large portion of the Russian Army which yet remained in the Empire’s south.
There was much to like, in the strategy, and nothing better recommended itself; only sentiment stood in its way—only sentiment. Barclay’s own expression was of relief and weariness combined; the other officers remained silent, giving a dull and unhappy consent.
Kutuzov looked around at them and nodded. “To yield Moscow is not to lose Russia,” he said. “And if Bonaparte should think otherwise, so much the better.”
But if Bonaparte did, he was not alone: so, too, plainly did the soldiers as they marched through the streets of Moscow, sharing the roads at every turn with a terrified and appalled peasantry and merchants all desperately trying to evacuate themselves and their goods before the French arrival. The great square before the red walls of the Kremlin was a solid mass of people, the glorious twisting domes of the splendid cathedral rising like an island out from among lowing cattle, struggling horses, waggon-carts loaded with goods.
Temeraire had insisted on taking a carrying-harness himself with all the rest of the dragons; he bore nearly two hundred Russian soldiers over the city, and Laurence saw many of the young officers openly weeping with rage as they looked down and saw the thronged streets, the masses of men and horses and carts pouring out of the city, the River Moskva crammed with barges and smaller boats. To the west behind them, guns yet spoke sporadically, all the day, and the French advance guard under Murat continued harassing the rear.
They left their load of soldiers on the far side of the city, the niru behind them descending each in turn and practicing a maneuver Laurence had never before seen. As they came close to the ground, the dragons’ crews went below and detached the lower straps of the carrying-harness; much to the alarm of the soldiers craning their heads to look. Each dragon then made a quick expert hop just before landing, flinging the sides wide—the soldiers shouting wildly as they swung out—then immediately flattening themselves low upon the ground, so the startled men at the ends found themselves already down, and even the soldiers higher up on the dragons’ backs might the more easily clamber off.
“How clumsy they are,” Laurence overheard one of the dragons murmuring to another, not unjustly: the Russian infantry were not even skillful at mounting their own dragons, plainly as yet uneasy with the entire business, and often tripped over one another in their haste to disembark even without the addition of acrobatics.
The morale of the Chinese forces was as yet untarnished: they did not suffer those same pangs as did the Russians, on seeing the city fall, and they had come off the better in their skirmishing against the French dragons. They plainly were confident in Zhao Lien, although Laurence overheard a little soft grumbling by the first jalan that their own commander Shao Ri ought have been the choice: there was a little rivalry, it seemed, between the scarlet dragons who made the bulk of the southern troops, and the green ones who preferred the northern climes.
The attack upon their rear had not disheartened but inspired all the legions with the desire for revenge. General Chu had been gently and tenderly borne to the new camp on a litter by four dragons: he had not yet roused, save to ask for a little water, now and again, and his body was hot with fever; his loud labored breathing was a constant reminder to them all of the treachery which had struck them. But for all that, when they encamped at last for the night, Laurence heard many of the dragons and their crewmen murmuring softly, doubtfully, about the retreat and their allies.
“I cannot like it at all,” Temeraire said, unhappily. “It seems to me nearly wicked, Laurence: do you know, Grig has told me his captain was saying the French will take a hundred million rubles in treasure out of the city—which I suppose are like pounds—”
“Nothing like,” Laurence said, “—not in the least; five in one, my dear.”
“Well, I am very glad to hear it,” Temeraire said, only a little mollified, “but even so that is more money than I have ever heard of, and they can settle in very comfortably, and eat well there all winter if they like as well: it certainly looked a very splendid city, from above.”
The retreat continued, the next day, although a temporary armistice held off the French advance behind them. It was tiring work, and sorrowful; as the day went on the dragons began to be loaded with the wounded, and had to witness their agony at being put aboard. And yet they were the fortunate, not to be dragged over the dreadful roads in horse-carts. Temeraire was drooping before the last flight, as the bloodied and weary men dragged themselves aboard, or were heaved up by their few able-bodied comrades; night was coming on, and the sun had sunk low. He gathered himself and heaved aloft, wings beating, and slowly began to fly. A deep red-orange glow rose against the sky ahead of them; the wind had grown stronger yet again. The riot of color did not diminish as they went, though the sky was sweeping to black above, the stars emerging, and as they drew near the city they heard a great crackling noise, punctuated by sharp explosions like shattering glass.
“Boze Moje,” one of the men said, low. “Onii goryat Moskvye.”
Laurence put the glass to his eye as they came overhead, a rolling wave of baking heat rising, lifting Temeraire soaring high: a handful of Russian soldiers were dashing through the city streets ahead of the line of leaping, hungry flames, carrying torches; there were heaped piles of hay and tinder at corners, and they were firing them as they went. They were burning their own city. Napoleon would find no shelter in Moscow, after all.