Blood of Tyrants

Page 2

Chapter 2
ANOTHER FULL DAY PASSED in sleep and eating restored Laurence to nearly all the outward semblances of comfort, and robbed him more with every passing minute of the inward: he could not conceive of any course which should have deposited him so unceremoniously on the highways of Japan. He could not even be grateful to find himself equipped, apparently by the hand of deity, with the Chinese language to hand: he would have preferred to have been made mute, and known in the confines of his own mind whence he came, even if he could not have communicated that knowledge to his captors.
And captors they certainly were: his request for transport to Nagasaki remained notably unanswered. He had learnt a little more of his situation from Junichiro, who had despite his earlier flash of resentment continued to wait upon him punctiliously. His host’s name was Kaneko Hiromasa; his exact rank Laurence could not entirely work out, but he was at the least a reasonably wealthy man of some position, if judged by the size of his house and the number of servants, and engaged on important affairs by the quantity of papers in his study. A country-gentleman, managing his own estates, or perhaps even an official of some sort. Regardless of his rank, however, it was increasingly plain he did not view Laurence as a mere subject of charity, to be fed and washed and sent on his way.
Laurence had not been able to marshal his resources to pursue the matter on the previous day. Confusion and illness had overcome him, and he had spent nearly all the day asleep, stretched his full length upon the bare mats of the floor, rousing only for dinner. But in the morning he awakened feeling himself again, in body at least; and when the servants came with breakfast, he made plain he wished to speak with Kaneko once again. The ordinary maids did not speak Chinese, but when he had repeated their master’s name, they went away, and brought Junichiro back with them.
That young man came to the chamber door and stood outside, his face hard and remote. “My master is presently occupied,” he said. “Permit me to address your needs.” His voice was flat, and he did not look Laurence in the face. There was a strange mingling of formality and palpable resentment in his manner: all the outward shows of courtesy, and no evidence of any real feeling which might have motivated it.
Laurence could not make sense of it. If his presence had meant some great burden for the household, he might better have understood, but Kaneko need not have picked him up from the ground if so, and in any case the largesse which had been shown him, so far, scarcely seemed of a kind which would have troubled the finances of such a house.
But a full understanding was not his present concern: the meat of the matter was that they did not mean to aid him to get back to his ship. “I remain grateful for your master’s hospitality,” he said, “but my health is recovered, and I will trespass on it no further: I would ask you for the return of my clothing, and my sword, and to show me the way to the road.”
Junichiro looked at him with an expression briefly startled, as though Laurence had asked him for a pair of wings. “What would you do?” he said, with sincere confusion. “You cannot speak the language; you are a foreigner and a barbarian—”
“And,” Laurence said, cutting him off short; he could not have said how he knew the word had the flavor of an insult, but he did, “if I mean to go to the devil, that is my business, and surely no concern of yours.”
He would indeed have been glad of help, but not of the sort which would keep him penned in a room and plied with food and drink. So far, he seemed to figure at once as an unexpected but welcome guest, and a piece of highly inconvenient baggage: Junichiro plainly wished him gone—or never come at all—but even the servants eyed him with sidelong worried looks that required no translation.
At the very least, Laurence hoped his demand to leave might draw out some response which should illuminate matters, and let him know how better to proceed: and indeed Junichiro hesitated; he left and in a little while returned and said, “My master will see you.”
Laurence hoped to make a better show of himself, at this second meeting; he had asked for a razor, and conquered the disquiet of looking at his strangely unfamiliar face in the glass long enough to clear away the several days’ growth of beard. The servants had brought him to a bathing room, peculiarly divided with a wooden-slatted floor on which they insisted on scrubbing him in the open air, surely unhealthy in the extreme and inviting a chill, before permitting him to step into the large bath, itself excessively hot; at least, he had thought it so, but on emerging he could not deny it had done splendidly to ease his aches.
When ushered into the office this time, he was able to fold himself down in a better imitation of what was evidently the polite kneeling posture; his legs still complained of the position, but he was not so weak he was at every moment in danger of tipping over and having to reach out a hand to steady himself awkwardly against the floor with his fingertips.
Kaneko was frowning, however: Laurence’s sword lay on the desk before him, unsheathed, and in the sunlight coming through the open window looked even more splendid than Laurence had recalled: jewels gleamed from the dragon’s-head of the hilt, and the blade shone. His fingers itched to hold it again. “Where did you have this from?” Kaneko asked, touching the hilt.
Laurence could not bring himself to make the fantastic if honest answer that he did not recall: in any event, he did not feel himself compelled to answer such a question, personal and unjustified. “Are you proposing, sir,” he said, “that I have stolen it? The sword is mine, as are the coat, the shirt, and the trousers you found upon me; I am sorry to be equally unable to provide you with the bills of sale for any of them, if you should require the same to restore them to me.”
Kaneko hesitated. “This is a very fine blade,” he said, finally.
He seemed to want something more, but Laurence could not provide it. “Yes,” he said, unyielding, as he could not be otherwise. “I am a serving-officer of His Majesty’s Navy, sir; I rely upon my sword.”
He waited; he did not entirely understand what concerned Kaneko so about the blade. Finally, Kaneko said bluntly, “It is of Chinese make,” and Laurence inwardly flinched not with surprise, but with the absence of surprise: he realized he knew as much, and had not even thought it strange, before.
“I have another of Spanish,” Laurence said, swallowing his confusion, “and one of Prussian. Do you mean to keep it?”
Junichiro twitched as if with indignation, but Kaneko did not answer, only looking down still at the sword: Laurence had an impression he was dissatisfied with the answer, but why he should have cared where the sword had come from, Laurence could not say. “If not,” he added, “I would be glad for its return.”
“Ah,” Kaneko said, and tapped his fingers once upon the desk, before stilling his hand. “The bakufu has directed that only a samurai may bear a long sword.”
“If that is, as I suppose, a knight,” Laurence said, “I am the third son of the Earl of Allendale and, as I have already said, a ship’s captain: I must consider both my birth and my rank adequate to my arms by any reasonable standard. I will speak plainly, sir: if you mean to pillage me, I should be hard-put to prevent you under the circumstances, but I will thank you not to dress it up with justifications as ungentlemanly as they are unwarranted.”
“How dare you speak so to my master?” Junichiro flared up, half-rising on his knees. “You should have died, but for his intervention—”
“I did not request your aid,” Laurence said flatly, to Kaneko rather than to his squire, “and should rather have had none of it than a pretense at the same: I consider it no favor to be fed and clothed, and held against my will. If you are making yourself my jailor, sir, I should care to know on what grounds I am to meet with such treatment. So far as I know there is peace between our nations, and a shipwreck has in every civilized society all the claims to human sympathy which any man should care to receive, himself being the victim of such a disaster.”
“One who breaks the law may desire sympathy and yet not deserve it!” Junichiro said, and then subsided: Kaneko had raised his hand a very little.
“If a man may break the laws of your nation merely by being hurled unwillingly upon your shore,” Laurence said dryly, “then they seek to constrain not the will of man, but of God.”
“Enough, Junichiro,” Kaneko said quietly, when the young man would have answered hotly again. “The objection is just: I have not been of true service to you, as I vowed to be.”
He sat in silence a moment, looking down at his desk, while Laurence wondered at vowed: he had done nothing to earn any promise of service himself; was Kaneko under some sort of religious obligation?
“The obligations of honor are many,” Kaneko said at last, “and often contradictory.”
Junichiro made a violent motion of protest, a hand chopped across the air, outstretched as if he meant to catch the words even being spoken. Kaneko glanced at him, and with affection but sternly said, “Enough, Junichiro.”
“Master,” Junichiro said, “not for this. Not—”
Laurence watched them, disturbed: the young man’s voice was breaking, though Kaneko seemed as placid as a lake; he felt abruptly as awkward as though he had wandered into a stranger’s house, and found it full of family quarrels addressed only obliquely, through hints.
“I must write to Lady Arikawa,” Kaneko said, “and offer her my apologies. I see now that I have acted wrongly: I did not have the right to undertake an oath which might expose her to charges of disobedience to the bakufu. I regret that you must endure a delay in my answer,” he added to Laurence. “It must be her will, and not mine, whether I am permitted to fulfill my vow with honor by offering you assistance, and then make her my amends.”
“Pray Heaven she commands otherwise,” Junichiro said.
“You will desire no such thing,” Kaneko said, sharply, and after a moment, the young man looked away and muttered, “No.”
Kaneko nodded once, and then dismissed them both silently but pointedly by returning his attention to his writing-work as thoroughly as if he had been alone in the chamber.
Laurence hesitated, but the decision seemed made: he followed Junichiro’s shoulders, hunched forward a little as though he still felt his master’s reproof, back through the corridors to his own chamber. “I should like my own clothing again, at least,” he said abruptly, when they had reached the small room, and he had stepped inside, “if there is no objection to that.”
“If you wish to look like a ragged beggar, I suppose it can be accomplished,” Junichiro said, savagely, and closed the wall-panel behind him. But Laurence for the moment was as glad to be shut in with his own thoughts.
It seemed plain that the law here was inhospitable in the extreme to foreigners, and only some kind of vow—now-regretted—had impelled Kaneko to undertake the forms of charity towards him, evidently at real risk of his own disgrace. This Lady Arikawa, whoever she might be—perhaps his liege, certainly a person of authority—would be under no similar constraint. Kaneko might wish to leave his fate to the will of this lady, and so propitiate her, but Laurence felt not the slightest inclination to accommodate his plans. If return he owed, for hospitality so unwillingly given, then removing himself from the situation was all the return he was prepared to make.
The house was large, but hardly fortified, and he had seen only a few manservants. If the law generally barred the possession of blades, his own lack might not be an insurmountable obstacle if he could not get at the sword; although that, too, might be accomplished. The chief difficulty was not an escape, he thought, but its sequel. He could with an effort summon up the shape of the nation, on a chart, but he had never sailed this way in his life. If he had been asked to find Nagasaki by latitude and longitude, from memory, he might as well have made for Perdition straightaway.
But with any luck he could find his way back to the coast, whence perhaps some fisherman might be prevailed upon to carry him in secret to the port: and if he had not dreamt it in his delirium, the buttons of his coat had been gold. If not, in any case there might be a few coins in a pocket, or slipped through into the lining, if his things had not been pillaged.
They had not. Junichiro returned only a little while later with a servant trailing him, who set down on the floor just inside the room the bundle of clothing. And when the door had closed, and Laurence held the salt-stained and ruined clothes, he found the buttons, still firmly sewn on, were gold; and so, too, were the long narrow bars athwart each shoulder where the epaulettes had ought to be—
—and the coat itself was an aviator’s green.
The first order of business was plainly to get the ship afloat again: a ship sitting on rocks was of no use to anyone. “But shan’t the ocean get in, once those are underwater?” Lily said, her head tilted to examine the gaping holes where the rocks had pierced the hull and yet stood within, keeping the Potentate fixed upon the shoals.
“Oh! by no means,” Temeraire said. “They will patch it, with some timber and oakum, I believe; or perhaps with something else, it makes not a particle of difference. That is not our affair: that is for the sailors to worry about.”
He spoke with impatience, which he was aware Lily did not deserve, but he could not quite help himself. It was so very hard to stay here, especially when he was forced to overhear the officers, who insisted on speaking to one another in the certainty of Laurence’s death; even Granby, of whom Temeraire would have expected better, had only said to Hammond, “For Heaven’s sake, Hammond, let him think as he likes. It will take him dreadfully, when he does believe it.”
“Well, I am not going to believe it, so there,” Temeraire said, to himself; but it certainly did not improve his already-great anxiety to be away, searching for Laurence; and neither did Churki sitting there like a great unhelpful lump and wagging her head seriously and saying, “This is what comes of putting all your heart in just one person! Hammond, I should have mentioned before, I hope you are thinking of marriage, and do not fear that I am inclined to be unreasonable. As long as she is young enough to have a great many children, I will be very pleased, whatever your choice.”
Temeraire snorted: Churki might be considerably older, and very experienced from her service with the Incan army, but what did she know of it, anyway. He was quite done considering her opinion as particularly worthwhile; at least, on this subject.
But he very badly wished to go look for Laurence, anyway: and after all, there was no egg yet; there might not be an egg for days, and until there was an egg, it was none of his business but Iskierka’s, whatever she might say. And he would have gone, indeed—if only he could have persuaded himself that this explanation would hold the least weight with Laurence.
But Temeraire could just see himself trying to tell Laurence that he had left an egg on a ship swinging about on some rocks, with no-one to look after it but Iskierka. And not just any egg, but his very own egg and Iskierka’s: a Celestial and Kazilik cross, which Granby had said that very afternoon, to Captain Blaise, was likely worth more than the crown jewels of Britain—Temeraire had never seen these, but he was sure they must be impressive—and they must have a great deal of straw and a warm room set aside for it, if he pleased.
“But the ship is not in any real danger, at present,” Temeraire argued, to an imagined Laurence, “and after all if it did sink, we are close enough to fly to shore. And it is not only Iskierka to watch over it: there are Maximus and Lily, too, who would not let anything happen to the egg; and the rest of our formation, and Kulingile and Churki, besides. Really it would be extraordinary if anything should go wrong—”
But the vision of Laurence was unpersuaded, and only looked at him with gentle reproof: it was not their responsibility; it was his, and not to be pushed off onto someone else. Temeraire’s ruff drooped as he lost the argument with himself once again.
“Anyway,” he said to Lily now, out loud, with apology in his tone, “I am sure they will manage that part of the business perfectly well: so pray let us think how we are to get her off the rocks, instead.”
He had hoped, at first, that they might simply be able to lift the ship with all of them working together, but the ship’s master Mr. Ness had categorically made this impossible as a matter of weight. When he had worked the figures large enough to see clearly, Temeraire had been forced to admit as much: why on earth anyone had put five hundred tons of pig iron and another four hundred of shingle at the very bottom of the Potentate’s hold was quite a mystery to him, and he could not in the least work out how she stayed afloat ordinarily, but lifting her straight up by even an inch would certainly be beyond their power.
“If only we might rig a pulley!” he added again, but his best ingenuity had failed at contriving any way to establish a pulley in mid-air, above the ship, out in the middle of the ocean. “Or a lever—”
“Well, what about a lever?” Maximus said, gingerly sitting back on his haunches on the shoals, giving over his own attempts to inspect the holes: the ocean was too rough to see them from any distance. “That is only a stick, put underneath and pushed, ain’t it?” and Temeraire paused. He had been stopped, by the size of the ship, but perhaps—
“Where the devil are we to get a lever big enough to move her?” Mr. Ness called down at them, in exasperation. “Why, it should have to be taller than Babel.”
“We do not want one lever,” Temeraire said, with a sudden burst of inspiration. “We want three: one for me, and Maximus, and Kulingile, all to push on at once; and we will get trees from the shore to make them.”
Laurence would have given a great deal for a pair of boots. He contented himself, in the meantime, by working out a way of lacing the sandals more closely to his feet with the unraveled remnants of his woolen stockings, braided to make thin ropes. The coat he made into a bundle with his trousers: at least in the native clothing, he hoped he would not be utterly conspicuous at a glance, when he had tied a rag over his hair.
The bundle he left in the corner of the room when the servants came with the evening meal, and despite the reawakening of his sense of taste, he forced himself to eat even the fermented fish with its sour, vinegared rice; he could not anticipate another meal, any time soon. When it was cleared away, and the noises of the house began to die away along with the light filtering in through the rice-paper walls, Laurence debated with himself the merits of going after the sword. All practicality argued against it. He could not be sure the sword would yet be in Kaneko’s office, nor that the chamber would be unguarded; if he did retrieve it, the blade should then have to be concealed somehow, or draw unwanted attention. A sword wrapped in a bundle of clothing would be of little use if he were confronted unexpectedly by a few pursuers; and only if he were taken so might he hope to escape.
“Well,” Laurence said, standing, “I may as well have a look: if it does not come easy to hand, I may always withdraw.” He felt awkward, uneasy in the decision: irrational, when so many sensible arguments stood against it. He could not have said why; some inarticulate feeling only revolted. He did not want to leave the sword.
He mentally told himself to wake at four bells of the middle watch, and slept until the deep of the night, rousing from another strange and unpleasant dream: great chains tangled around his wrists, dragging him through deep water. He took his bundle, slung over a shoulder by his belt, and stepped cautiously out into the hallway: the soft matting did not betray him as he walked, barefoot to keep the slap of the sandals from making any noise.
The walls were a faint luminescent grey, paler than their frames. He kept the very tips of his fingers lightly against the surface of the paper, guiding his steps through the dark. There was a yellow glow of lantern-light somewhere on his right—outside the house, he thought; within, all the rooms were dark. He came to Kaneko’s office, and the door slid soundlessly open on its track. He thought at first he had mistaken the room: the desk was gone, and the room entirely bare at first glance. Then Laurence saw the furniture had all been tidied away against the walls, and the writing-desk stood atop a low chest.
He carefully lifted down the desk, and opening the lid found the blade wrapped in a soft silk cloth, which he left behind. He put the sword inside his bundle of clothing, pulling out folds to conceal it from hilt to tip, and restored the chest and desk to their places. He was comforted to have the sword again, and yet distressed for being so: too much as though he could not trust himself, his own feelings, to be as they ought.
Slipping back into the hallway, he looked for a way out, and followed a breath of air to the entryway: a very indifferent sentry drowsed in a corner, and Laurence was past him and had a foot in the gardens when a great roaring came from above, a sound at once familiar and bone-rattling, though he had not heard it since the battle of the Nile: a dragon, overhead, and the lights of all the house flared at his back.
“Buggering mad, the lot of you,” Mr. Ness had said, rudely, but Temeraire had with some exasperation demanded a better suggestion of him and, failing to receive any, had nodded firmly.
“Then we shall at least try,” he said, “and if it does not work, then I suppose you must begin to take out all that ballast and throw it into the ocean, along with the cannon, until we can lift the ship; and while you do that, Iskierka will go to the shore to be safe, and the other dragons will stay with her and the egg, and I will go and find Laurence. You will stay with the egg?” he appealed, turning his head.
“Of course we will,” Maximus said stoutly, and Lily added, “All of us: except Nitidus will go with you, to carry messages back and forth,” an excellent notion. Temeraire was quite sure no-one would give any trouble to Iskierka and Lily and Maximus.
“Anyway,” Lily said, “perhaps it needn’t come to that, and I am quite ready to be off these rocks: let us go by all means and fetch some trees.”
But they were unable to leave immediately: “I want to come, too!” Kulingile called down, in protest. Certainly Temeraire could not stay, but Maximus stood on seniority and refused to stay behind, either, which bode fair to make a quarrel; and meanwhile Hammond began bleating of the necessity to avoid being seen. Well, Temeraire did not mean to go in blowing on trumpets, but after all, they did need to take away several large trees, and he supposed someone might notice: that would not be his fault.
“We had better come along, then, Hammond; and all your crews, also,” Churki said.
Hammond, taken aback, said, “Certainly not—a martial presence, nothing more undesirable—”
But Churki shook her head censoriously at him. “If there are dragons here, they will certainly assume we are here to take their people away if they do not see we have any of our own. And if there are men, they will want men to talk to: that is only the natural order of things, and all the more so if they are like these peculiar sailors you have here on this vessel, who are afraid of dragons.”
Hammond paused, doubtful; Temeraire could see the sense in what Churki said, but he did not mean to countenance the delay involved in getting all the crews aboard. He only had a scant few officers himself, but Lily and her formation-dragons had their full crews, and even the aviators could not easily go clambering aboard from the precarious surface which the ship presently offered.
“The captains shall come with us,” Temeraire said, “and Ferris shall come with me, which will make a sensible number of men, and not any sort of threatening number; and,” to Kulingile, “this time Maximus shall go, and if we cannot get the boat off, then next time, you shall: that is surely only fair. And,” he added, very handsomely in his opinion, “I will take the lines when we come back to give you a rest before we lever her off, even though it will not be my turn yet.”
“I do not need a rest,” Kulingile said disconsolately. “This is not very difficult: it is only tiresome, and I want something better to eat, which you are sure to get when you are on land.”
“Oh!” Iskierka said, raising up her head from the dragondeck, where she had lain down again, ignoring Granby and Maximus’s surgeon Gaiters clambering about her hindquarters, consulting in low voices, “a cow! You shall bring me back a cow, Temeraire; do not forget it.”
“Wherever am I to find a cow, which is not someone’s property?” Temeraire said in exasperation, and Hammond at once began to speak again—likely the discussion should have been another hour, but Temeraire realized his mistake and said quickly, “but we will bring you both back something good to eat, if we should find anything without anyone seeing us, or objecting: we will save you the very best of what we find, you have my promise.”
“Well, that is fair,” Kulingile said, mollified, and Temeraire put out a foreleg on the dragondeck for Ferris, who hesitated only a moment before climbing into his grasp, and then launched them before anyone else could object further, or make any more unreasonable demands.
Ferris was very quiet, when he had got astride Temeraire’s neck and buckled himself on, while they hovered waiting for the other dragons to take up their captains and come aloft—Temeraire was careful to keep out of ear-shot of the deck. “Are you quite well, Ferris?” Temeraire said, craning about his head.
Ferris hesitated; he looked a great deal better lately, Temeraire had even before now noticed and approved: he could not help but congratulate himself for it, and see in it evidence that he was not a careless guardian of his crew, despite all their trials amongst the Inca and since.
Certainly Ferris was happier than when he had first come back to them in New South Wales; he was not so weary-looking, and the ruddy blotches which had marred his face then had cleared. He looked nearer his four-and-twenty than he had, and if he did not wear a green coat—Temeraire did not understand why Hammond had not straightened out that matter yet—at least the coat which he did wear, brown, was neat and trim and with silver buttons; and he took excellent care of his linen, which was properly white.
“You ought have taken Forthing,” Ferris said abruptly.
“Oh, Forthing,” Temeraire said, with a flick of his ruff. “Whyever for? I do not see why I ought to be giving Forthing any special notice: he is very well, I suppose, for ordinary work.”
“He is an officer of the Corps,” Ferris said, “and I—I am not; he is your first lieutenant.”
“You were, before him,” Temeraire said, “except for Granby; whom I cannot ask to come away from Iskierka under the circumstances. I do not take any notice of what some silly court-martial may have said, Ferris: I hope you do not think I do, and you ought not, either. Why, they declared Laurence should be put to death; you cannot imagine their judgment holds any water with me, or anyone of sense.”
Ferris was silent, and then he said, “You wouldn’t be taking Forthing up, no matter what, I suppose.”
“Taking him up?” Temeraire said. “I am perfectly happy for him to ride, when the rest of the crew do,” although this was not entirely true: with as much opportunity as Ferris had been given, during their brief stay in Brazil, Forthing had not bothered to repair any of his wardrobe but what had outright holes in it; his green coat was faded almost to grey, his neckcloth a disgrace, and his trousers frayed at hem and seams. It was an embarrassment, and all Temeraire’s hinting had gone unheeded entirely.
“No, I mean,” Ferris said, hesitated, and said, “if Captain Laurence—if we should not—”
Temeraire was still quite puzzled a moment; then he understood, and indignation swelled his breast. “I should not take that slovenly third-rate—piker for my captain if he were the last person to be had on the earth,” he said, heatedly. “Oh! Him, to succeed Laurence: I should like to see it! If the Admiralty should dare to propose it, I should go to Whitehall and bring the Navy Offices down about their ears.
“Anyway,” he added, in the teeth of his own anxiety, “I am sure Laurence will look after himself very well, until we can come get him: oh! Why are they taking so very long about getting aloft?”
The flight was not a long one, the coast rising ahead of them as they flew, the waters still depthless blue-black beneath. Dulcia and Nitidus sped on ahead in spite of Hammond’s cries of protest, but they circled back to meet the rest of them shortly before they all came over the coast: they had seen a few small fishing-boats, they reported, and a great many large half-drowned rice fields, with the beginnings of green shoots.
“But nothing very nice to eat,” Nitidus said sadly. “Why, I did not even see a sheep, or a goat.”
“Thank Heaven,” Temeraire could overhear Hammond say, foolishly: it would have been nice to know sheep might be had, even if they could not easily be got.
Captain Warren fetched Nitidus a buffet to the shoulder, and raised his speaking-trumpet to call over from his back, as they fell back into formation, “More to the point, there’s a bay straightaway three points to the north, with pine-trees as handsome as you could like.”
The bay was isolate, the glossy black water’s surface broken with a great many lumpy protruding rocks which likely made it inconvenient for fishing-boats, and showed no signs of use except a low stone wall which did not seem to have any purpose at all; it only ran along the shore in either direction. Hammond let himself down from Churki’s back clumsily but with haste the instant they had landed, and hurried to inspect: it was overgrown with a carpet of pale short green grass. “I see no sign of any other sort of traffic,” he said, with great relief, when he had straightened up, “so now pray let us get the trees and be away: at once, at once. I shall account all arrears of Fortune paid off, if only we should escape without notice.”
Lily cocked her head, considering, and said, “I suppose we should like them to fall inwards: stand back, all of you, if you please.”
“And to the north,” Captain Harcourt added, from her back, looking at the narrow wind-socks which stood up from Lily’s harness at various points. “Sing out when you are all safe away.”
Temeraire waited until Hammond with the rest of the company was moving, hastily, out of any chance of Lily’s acid spattering, and then announced, “I will go aloft, and see if I can make out anything more of the countryside: I should not like to disappoint Iskierka.”
In point of fact, he was quite willing to disappoint Iskierka if there were no cows to be had; but so long as they were here on land, Temeraire did not see any reason not to have a look around for Laurence. “Of course we are not likely to see him,” he added to Ferris, over his shoulder, as he flew quickly away before he might have to hear Hammond shouting protests after him, “but if only we should happen to, how convenient that would be: even Hammond could not complain, then. And even if we do not, we will have saved some time, later; we will not have to search here again. We will not go far, we will only go along the coast—”
Indeed, he did not go so far that he did not hear the thundering crash of the first pine, coming down; he did not wish to risk overlooking any sign. The coast was mostly rocky, save for a few other inlets and narrow streams coming down, but not very high. “I do not think it would be excessively difficult to get safely ashore, for a man swimming,” Temeraire said to Ferris.
Ferris said, “There aren’t cliffs, at least,” in a consoling way. “Shan’t we turn back, now? Those fishermen there are sure to see us if only they look up, and I think that must be a harbor over there—”
“But there are a few more beaches in this direction,” Temeraire said. “We shall go and have a look at those, from the air: I am sure they are too busy fishing to pay any attention to—”
He was interrupted in this optimistic speech by a sudden bellowing roar, loud and strangely gargled: he turned back hurriedly. “I do not see anyone in the air,” Temeraire said, uncertainly, peering in every direction: the day was clear, and he could not imagine where the roar had come from. “Perhaps it was only another pine coming down—”
“That noise was no tree-fall,” Ferris said, urgently, and Temeraire could not disagree however much he wished to do; he turned back towards the bay and crested the trees just in time to find, to his appalled surprise, Maximus and Lily and the others all mantling towards a monstrous sea-serpent rearing itself up out of the bay. The rocks were not rocks at all; they were a part of its body, and it was twice as big as Maximus even only in the parts which Temeraire could see.
And then Temeraire realized he was wrong: it was not a serpent; it was a dragon, with forelegs out upon the sand: only it was very long, and with stubby wings. It opened its mouth and made another roaring noise, a deep angry growling demand at the formation, which carried over the water clear enough, but in some language which Temeraire did not recognize.
They stood all amazed a moment, regarding one another, very much like figures upon a war-table from Temeraire’s distant view. When none of them answered, the serpent-dragon reached for the second tree, which had struck partway into the water. Lily sprang forward and put her talons upon it; the great dragon made a dismissive snort in her direction, which needed no translation.
Temeraire beat urgently towards them as Lily raised her wings and flared them out a little: the brilliant orange and purple would have warned any European beast, and their immense wingspan, but it was no surprise if the Japanese dragon did not recognize her as a Longwing, or did not know what that meant; and she was not a third his size. Temeraire saw Captain Harcourt, a tiny figure, lean forward on Lily’s neck and point to the sand; Lily turned her head and spat a thin demonstrative stream of acid, to make her point.
The serpentine dragon drew back from the hissing black stench and the thin trails of smoke, its own small wings flattening against its back, and then it plunged its head into the water and opened its jaw wide. The dragon, already so massive but slender, began now to rapidly swell up and out to the sides: Temeraire could not understand in the least how he was managing it, and then the dragon reared itself back out and up, and up, and up, and it blasted Lily and all the others with a torrent of water.
“Oh!” Temeraire cried, “Oh, it is a Sui-Riu!” that variety of dragon being known to him from Sir Edward Howe’s work on the Oriental breeds, but as he flew towards them as quickly as ever he could, he thought with some strong indignation that Sir Edward might have mentioned the immense—the truly immense—scale; and the book had not in the least conveyed the true impact of the water-spouting.
Even Maximus had been swept off his feet, and was now tangled and struggling up against the tree-line; Lily was coughing and sputtering, having taken the brunt of the torrent, jerking her head, and Nitidus and Dulcia had been carried into the bay itself and were floundering in the waves. Immortalis and Churki were a tumbled sand-clogged mess flung into the woods, trying to get their footing again; Sutton and Messoria, having stationed themselves back and apart, were a little better off and getting into the air.
But the Sui-Riu evidently had no intention of letting them get their bearings back: he had plunged his head back into the water and was inhaling again. He might blast them on the far side, and so sweep more of them into the water, where he would certainly have an advantage, since he could breathe through it: unsporting, except that to be fair he was one against eight.
However, Temeraire could not give him much credit for that: no-one had asked the Sui-Riu to be so unfriendly. Lily had given the most polite warning one could ask for—if she had liked to be similarly nasty, she might have taken the Sui-Riu directly in the eye with her shot. Temeraire worked his lungs as he flew, gathering breath, and even as the Sui-Riu drew himself up out of the water again, Temeraire dived towards him, roaring in full and terrible voice.
The waters of the bay shuddered from the divine wind, the surface going for a moment bowl-like and concave; the Sui-Riu was bowled over onto his side with an immense splash, and his torrent erupted involuntarily and spilled harmless over the water, merely adding more turbulence. But the distance was too great, or else perhaps the water somehow absorbed some of the impact; the Sui-Riu managed to right himself in the water, and did not look so dreadfully injured as did most dragons who had borne the direct brunt of the divine wind. Only a little blood trickled black from his right ear, over scales that were a deep greenish black the color of dry seaweed, and his eye on that side was bloodshot: otherwise he seemed quite all right, and great sharp fins were rising up angrily all over his back, like blades.
But Temeraire was hovering off the shore, now, closer; and Maximus and Lily were righting themselves. The others fell into line behind Lily, taking up their formation-positions. Temeraire did not much like formation-fighting, but one could not deny its tactical usefulness, and the Sui-Riu evidently did not have any difficulty recognizing his increasing disadvantage. Shaking away the last of the effects, he looked up at Temeraire, and his eyes—a great slitted pale grey that looked nearly white—drew thin and narrow.
The Sui-Riu rumbled some remarks in a most angry tone, sounding more like a distant thundercloud than anything else. “I do not have any notion what you are saying,” Temeraire informed him loudly, in Chinese, “but you needn’t complain of us, when you attack people out of nowhere—if you should—”
But as abruptly as he had emerged before, the Sui-Riu was gone: in one smooth motion he plunged beneath the dark murky waters of the bay, clouded even further now by silt and sand raised in their exchange. One long barnacled curve of tail breached the water, and was gone: though Temeraire held position a long time, he did not break the surface again.