Throne of Jade

But this time the French offered no resistance: instead the dragons scattered; wildly, Laurence thought at first, then he perceived how well they had distributed themselves around. Four of the smaller dragons darted upwards; the rest dropped perhaps a hundred feet in height, and Accendare was once again hard to tell from the decoys.

No clear target anymore, and with the dragons above the formation itself was dangerously vulnerable: engage the enemy more closely went up the yard on Lily’s back, signalling that they might disperse and fight separately. Temeraire could read the flags as well as any signal-officer: he instantly dived for the decoy with bleeding scratches, a little too eager to complete his own handiwork. ‘No, Temeraire,’ Laurence called, meaning to direct him after Accendare herself, but too late: two of the smaller dragons, both of the common Pêcheur-Rayé breed, were coming at them from either side.

‘Prepare to repel boarders,’ Lieutenant Ferris, captain of the topmen, shouted from behind him. Two of the sturdiest midwingmen took up stations just behind Laurence’s position; he glanced over his shoulder at them, his mouth tightening: it still rankled him to be so shielded, too much like cowardly hiding behind others; but no dragon would fight with a sword laid at its captain’s throat, and so he had to bear it.

Temeraire contented himself with one more slash across the fleeing decoy’s shoulders and writhed away, almost doubling back on himself. The pursuers overshot and had to turn back: a clear gain of a minute, worth more than gold at present. Laurence cast an eye over the field: the quick light-combat dragons were dashing about to fend off the British dragons, but the larger ones were forming back into a cluster and keeping pace with their convoy.

A powder-flash below caught his eye; an instant later came the thin whistling of a pepper-ball, flying up from the French ships. Another of their formation members, Immortalis, had dived just a hair too low in pursuit of one of the other dragons. Fortunately their aim was off: the ball struck his shoulder instead of his face, and the best part of the pepper scattered down harmlessly into the sea; even the remainder was enough to set the poor fellow sneezing, blowing himself ten lengths back at a time.

‘Digby, cast and mark that height,’ Laurence said; it was the starboard forward lookout’s duty to warn when they entered the range of the guns below.

Digby took the small round-shot, bored through and tied to the height-line, and tossed it over Temeraire’s shoulder, the thin silk cord paying out with the knotted marks for every fifty yards flying through his fingers. ‘Six at the mark, seventeen at the water,’ he said, counting from Immortalis’s height, and cut the cord. ‘Range five hundred fifty yards on the pepper guns, sir.’ He was already whipping the cord through another ball, to be ready when the next measure should be called for.

A shorter range than usual; were they holding back, trying to tempt the more dangerous dragons lower, or was the wind checking their shot? ‘Keep to six hundred yards’ elevation, Temeraire,’ Laurence called; best to be cautious for the moment.

‘Sir, lead signal to us, fall in on left flank Maximus,’ Turner said.

No immediate way to get over to him: the two Pêcheurs were back, trying to flank Temeraire and get men aboard, although they were flying somewhat strangely, not in a straight line. ‘What are they about?’ Martin said, and the question answered itself readily in Laurence’s mind.

‘They fear giving him a target for his roar,’ Laurence said, making it loud for Temeraire’s benefit. Temeraire snorted in disdain, abruptly halted in mid-air and whipped himself about, hovering to face the pair with his ruff standing high: the smaller dragons, clearly alarmed by the presentation, backwinged out of instinct, giving them room.

‘Hah!’ Temeraire stopped and hovered, pleased with himself at seeing the others so afraid of his prowess; Laurence had to tug on the harness to draw his attention around to the signal, which he had not yet seen. ‘Oh, I see!’ he said, and dashed forward to take up position to Maximus’s left; Lily was already on his right.

Harcourt’s intention was clear. ‘All hands low,’ Laurence said, and crouched against Temeraire’s neck even as he gave the order. Instantly they were in place, Berkley sent Maximus ahead at the big dragon’s top speed, right at the clustered French dragons.

Temeraire was swelling with breath, his ruff coming up; they were going so quickly the wind was beating tears from Laurence’s eyes, but he could see Lily’s head drawing back in similar preparation. Maximus put his head down and drove straight into the French dragons, simply bulling through their ranks with his enormous advantage in weight: the dragons fell off to his either side, only to meet Temeraire roaring and Lily spraying her corrosive acid.

Shrieks of pain in their wake, and the first dead crewmen being cut loose from harness and sent falling into the ocean, rag-doll limp. The French dragons’ forward motion had nearly halted, many of them panicking and scattering, this time with no thought to the pattern. Then Maximus and they were through: the cluster had broken apart and now Accendare was shielded from them only by a Petit Chevalier, slightly larger than Temeraire, and another of Accendare’s decoys.

They slowed; Maximus was heaving for breath, fighting to keep elevation. Harcourt waved wildly at Laurence from Lily’s back, shouting hoarsely through her speaking trumpet, ‘Go after her,’ even while the formal signal was going up on Lily’s back. Laurence touched Temeraire’s side and sent him forward; Lily sprayed another burst of acid, and the two defending dragons recoiled, enough for Temeraire to dodge past them and get through.

Granby’s voice came from below, yelling: ‘’Ware boarders!’ So some Frenchmen had made the leap to Temeraire’s back. Laurence had no time to look: directly before his face Accendare was twisting around, scarcely ten yards distant. Her right eye was milky, the left wicked and glaring, a pale yellow pupil in black sclera; she had long thin horns curving down from her forehead and to the very edge of her jaws, her opening jaws: a heat-shimmer distorted the air as flames came bursting out upon them. Very like looking into the mouth of Hell, he thought for that one narrow instant, staring into the red maw; then Temeraire snapped his wings shut and fell out of the way like a stone.

Laurence’s stomach leaped; behind him he heard clatter and cries of surprise, the boarders and defenders alike losing their footing. It seemed only a moment before Temeraire opened his wings again and began to beat up hard, but they had plummeted some distance, and Accendare was flying rapidly away from them, back to the ships below.

The rearmost merchant ships of the French convoy had come within the accurate range of long guns of the British men-of-war: the steady roar of cannon-fire rose, mingled with sulphur and smoke. The quickest frigates had already moved on ahead, passing by the merchantmen under fire and continuing for the richer prizes at the front. In doing so, however, they had left the shelter of Excidium’s formation, and Accendare now stooped towards them, her crew throwing the fist-sized iron incendiaries over her sides, which she bathed with flame as they fell towards the vulnerable British ships.

More than half the shells fell into the sea, much more; mindful of Temeraire’s pursuit, Accendare had not gone very low, and aim could not be accurate from so high up. But Laurence could see a handful blooming into flame below: the thin metal shells broke as they struck the decks of the ships, and the naphtha within ignited against the hot metal, spreading a pool of fire across the deck.

Temeraire gave a low growl of anger as he saw fire catch the sails of one of the frigates, instantly putting on another burst of speed to go after Accendare; he had been hatched on deck, spent the first three weeks of his life at sea: the affection remained. Laurence urged him on with word and touch, full of the same anger. Intent on the pursuit and watching for other dragons who might be close enough to offer her support, Laurence was startled out of his single-minded focus unpleasantly: Croyn, one of the topmen, fell onto him before rolling away and off Temeraire’s back, mouth round and open, hands reaching; his carabiner straps had been severed.

He missed the harness, his hands slipping over Temeraire’s smooth hide; Laurence snatched at him, uselessly: the boy was falling, arms flailing at the empty air, down a quarter of a mile and gone into the water: only a small splash; he did not resurface. Another man went down just after him, one of the boarders, but already dead even as he tumbled slack-limbed through the air. Laurence loosened his own straps and stood, turning around as he drew his pistols. Seven boarders were still aboard, fighting very hard. One with lieutenant’s bars on his shoulders was only a few paces away, engaged closely with Quarle, the second of the midwingmen who had been set to guard Laurence.

Even as Laurence got to his feet, the lieutenant knocked aside Quarle’s arm with his sword and drove a vicious-looking long knife into his side left-handed. Quarle dropped his own sword and put his hands around the hilt, sinking, coughing blood. Laurence had a wide-open shot, but just behind the lieutenant, one of the boarders had driven Martin to his knees: the midwingman’s neck was bare to the man’s cutlass.

Laurence levelled his pistol and fired: the boarder fell backwards with a hole in his chest spurting, and Martin heaved himself back to his feet. Before Laurence could take fresh aim and set off the other, the lieutenant took the risk of slashing his own straps and leaped over Quarle’s body, catching Laurence’s arm both for support and to push the pistol aside. It was an extraordinary manoeuvre, whether for bravery or recklessness; ‘Bravo,’ Laurence said, involuntarily. The Frenchman looked at him startled and then smiled, incongruously boyish in his blood-streaked face, before he brought his sword up.

Laurence had an unfair advantage, of course; he was useless dead, for a dragon whose captain had been killed would turn with utmost savagery on the enemy: uncontrolled but very dangerous nonetheless. The Frenchman needed him prisoner, not killed, and that made him overly cautious, while Laurence could freely aim for a killing blow and strike as best as ever he could.

But that was not very well, currently. It was an odd battle; they were upon the narrow base of Temeraire’s neck, so closely engaged that Laurence was not at a disadvantage from the tall lieutenant’s greater reach, but that same condition let the Frenchman keep his grip on Laurence, without which he would certainly have slipped off. They were more pushing at one another than truly sword-fighting; their blades hardly ever parted more than an inch or two before coming together again, and Laurence began to think the contest would only be ended if one or the other of them fell.

Laurence risked a step; it let him turn them both slightly, so he could see the rest of the struggle over the lieutenant’s shoulder. Martin and Ferris were both still standing, and several of the riflemen, but they were outnumbered, and if even a couple more of the boarders managed to get past, it would be very awkward for Laurence indeed. Several of the bellmen were trying to come up from below, but the boarders had detached a couple of men to fend them off: as Laurence watched, Johnson was stabbed through and fell.

‘Vive l’Empereur,’ the lieutenant shouted to his men encouragingly, looking also; he took heart from the favourable position and struck again, aiming for Laurence’s leg. Laurence deflected the blow: his sword rang oddly with the impact, though, and he realized with an unpleasant shock that he was fighting with his dress sword, worn to the Admiralty the day before: he had never had a chance to exchange it.

He began to fight more narrowly, trying not to meet the Frenchman’s sword anywhere below the midpoint of his sword: he did not want to lose his entire blade if it were going to snap. Another sharp blow, at his right arm: he blocked it as well, but this time five inches of steel did indeed snap off, scoring a thin line across his jaw before it tumbled away, red-gold in the reflected firelight.

The Frenchman had seen the weakness of the blade now, and was trying to batter it into pieces. Another crack and more of the blade went: Laurence was fighting with only six inches of steel now, with the paste brilliants on the silver-plated hilt sparkling at him mockingly, ridiculous. He clenched his jaw; he was not going to surrender and see Temeraire ordered to France: he would be damned first. If he jumped over the side, calling, there was some hope Temeraire might catch him; if not, then at least he would not be responsible for delivering Temeraire into Napoleon’s hands after all.

Then a shout: Granby came swarming up the rear tail strap without benefit of carabiners, locked himself back on and lunged for the man guarding the left side of the belly strap. The man fell dead, and six bellmen almost at once burst into the tops: the remaining boarders drew into a tight knot, but in a moment they would have to surrender or be killed. Martin had turned and was already clambering over Quarle’s body, freed by the relief from below, and his sword was ready.

‘Ah, voici un joli gâchis,’ the lieutenant said in tones of despair, looking also, and he made a last gallant attempt, binding Laurence’s hilt with his own blade, and using the length as a lever: he managed to pry it out of Laurence’s hand with a great heave, but just as he did he staggered, surprised, and blood came out of his nose. He fell forward into Laurence’s arms, senseless: young Digby was standing rather wobblingly behind him, holding the round-shot on the measuring cord; he had crept along from his lookout’s post on Temeraire’s shoulder, and struck the Frenchman on the head.

‘Well done,’ Laurence said, after he had worked out what had happened; the boy flushed up proudly. ‘Mr. Martin, heave this fellow below to the infirmary, will you?’ Laurence handed the Frenchman’s limp form over. ‘He fought quite like a lion.’

‘Very good, sir.’ Martin’s mouth kept moving, he was saying something more, but a roar from above was drowning out his voice: it was the last thing Laurence heard.

The low and dangerous rumble of Temeraire’s growl, just above him, penetrated the smothering unconsciousness. Laurence tried to move, to look around him, but the light stabbed painfully at his eyes, and his leg did not want to answer at all; groping blindly down along his thigh, he found it entangled with the leather straps of his harness, and felt a wet trickle of blood where one of the buckles had torn through his breeches and into his skin.

He thought for a moment perhaps they had been captured; but the voices he heard were English, and then he recognized Barham, shouting, and Granby saying fiercely, ‘No, sir, no farther, not one damned step. Temeraire, if those men make ready, you may knock them down.’

Laurence struggled to sit up, and then suddenly there were anxious hands supporting him. ‘Steady, sir, are you all right?’ It was young Digby, pressing a dripping waterbag into his hands. Laurence wetted his lips, but he did not dare to swallow; his stomach was roiling. ‘Help me stand,’ he said, hoarsely, trying to squint his eyes open a little.

‘No, sir, you mustn’t,’ Digby whispered urgently. ‘You have had a nasty knock on the head, and those fellows, they have come to arrest you. Granby said we had to keep you out of sight and wait for the admiral.’

He was lying behind the protective curl of Temeraire’s foreleg, with the hard-packed dirt of the clearing underneath him; Digby and Allen, the forward lookouts, were crouched down on either side of him. Small rivulets of dark blood were running down Temeraire’s leg to stain the ground black, not far away. ‘He is wounded,’ Laurence said sharply, trying to get up again.

‘Mr. Keynes is gone for bandages, sir; a Pêcheur hit us across the shoulders, but it is only a few scratches,’ Digby said, holding him back; which attempt was successful, because Laurence could not make his wrenched leg even bend, much less carry any weight. ‘You are not to get up, sir, Baylesworth is getting a stretcher.’

‘Enough of this, help me rise,’ Laurence said, sharply; Lenton could not possibly come quickly, so soon after a battle, and he did not mean to lie about letting matters get worse. He made Digby and Allen help him rise and limp out from the concealment, the two ensigns struggling under his weight.

Barham was there with a dozen Marines, these not the inexperienced boys of his escort in London but hard-bitten soldiers, older men, and they had brought with them a pepper gun: only a small, short-barrelled one, but at this range they hardly needed better. Barham was almost purple in the face, quarrelling with Granby at the side of the clearing; when he caught sight of Laurence his eyes went narrow. ‘There you are; did you think you could hide here, like a coward? Stand down that animal, at once; Sergeant, go there and take him.’

‘You are not to come anywhere near Laurence, at all,’ Temeraire snarled at the soldiers, before Laurence could make any reply, and raised one deadly clawed foreleg, ready to strike. The blood streaking his shoulders and neck made him look truly savage, and his great ruff was standing up stiffly around his head.

The men flinched a little, but the sergeant said, stolidly, ‘Run out that gun, Corporal,’ and gestured to the rest of them to raise up their muskets.

In alarm, Laurence called out to him hoarsely, ‘Temeraire, stop; for God’s sake settle,’ but it was useless; Temeraire was in a red-eyed rage, and did not take any notice. Even if the musketry did not cause him serious injury, the pepper gun would surely blind and madden him even further, and he could easily be driven into a truly uncontrolled frenzy, terrible both to himself and to others.

The trees to the west of them shook suddenly, and abruptly Maximus’s enormous head and shoulders came rising up out of the growth; he flung his head back yawning tremendously, exposing rows of serrated teeth, and shook himself all over. ‘Is the battle not over? What is all the noise?’

‘You there!’ Barham shouted at the big Regal Copper, pointing at Temeraire. ‘Hold down that dragon!’

Like all Regal Coppers, Maximus was badly farsighted; to see into the clearing, he was forced to rear up onto his haunches to gain enough distance. He was twice Temeraire’s size by weight and twenty feet more in length now; his wings, half-outspread for balance, threw a long shadow ahead of him, and with the sun behind him they glowed redly, veins standing out in the translucent skin.

Looming over them all, he drew his head back on his neck and peered into the clearing. ‘Why do you need to be held down?’ he asked Temeraire, interestedly.

‘I do not need to be held down!’ Temeraire said, almost spitting in his anger, ruff quivering; the blood was running more freely down his shoulders. ‘Those men want to take Laurence from me, and put him in prison, and execute him, and I will not let them, ever, and I do not care if Laurence tells me not to squash you,’ he added, fiercely, to Lord Barham.

‘Good God,’ Laurence said, low and appalled; it had not occurred to him the real nature of Temeraire’s fear. But the only time Temeraire had ever seen an arrest, the man taken had been a traitor, executed shortly thereafter before the eyes of the man’s own dragon. The experience had left Temeraire and all the young dragons of the covert crushed with sympathetic misery for days; it was no wonder if he was panicked now.

Granby took advantage of the unwitting distraction Maximus had provided, and made a quick, impulsive gesture to the other officers of Temeraire’s crew: Ferris and Evans jumped to follow him, Riggs and his riflemen scrambling after, and in a moment they were all ranged defensively in front of Temeraire, raising pistols and rifles. It was all bravado, their guns spent from the battle, but that did not in any way reduce the significance. Laurence shut his eyes in dismay. Granby and all his men had just flung themselves into the stew-pot with him, by such direct disobedience; indeed there was increasingly every justification to call this a mutiny.

The muskets facing them did not waver, though; the Marines were still hurrying to finish loading the gun, tamping down one of the big round pepper-balls with a small wad. ‘Make ready!’ the corporal said. Laurence could not think what to do; if he ordered Temeraire to knock down the gun, they would be attacking fellow soldiers, men only doing their duty: unforgivable, even to his own mind, and only a little less unthinkable than standing by while they injured Temeraire, or his own men.

‘What the devil do you all mean here?’ Keynes, the dragon-surgeon assigned to Temeraire’s care, had just come back into the clearing, two staggering assistants behind him laden down with fresh white bandages and thin silk thread for stitching. He shoved his way through the startled Marines, his well-salted hair and blood-spattered coat giving him a badge of authority they did not choose to defy, and snatched the slow-match out of the hands of the man standing by the pepper gun.

He flung it to the ground and stamped it out, and glared all around, sparing neither Barham and the Marines nor Granby and his men, impartially furious. ‘He is fresh from the field; have you all taken leave of your senses? You cannot be stirring up dragons like this after a battle; in half a minute we will have the rest of the covert looking in, and not just that great busybody there,’ he added, pointing at Maximus.

Indeed more dragons had already lifted their heads up above the tree cover, trying to crane their heads over to see what was going on, making a great noise of cracking branches; the ground even trembled underfoot when the abashed Maximus dropped lower, back down to his haunches, in an attempt to make his curiosity less obvious. Barham uneasily looked around at the many inquisitive spectators: dragons ordinarily ate directly after a battle, and many of them had gore dripping from their jaws, bones cracking audibly as they chewed.

Keynes did not give him time to recover. ‘Out, out at once, the lot of you; I cannot be operating in the middle of this circus, and as for you,’ he snapped at Laurence, ‘lie down again at once; I gave orders you were to be taken straight to the surgeons. Christ only knows what you are doing to that leg, hopping about on it. Where is Baylesworth with that stretcher?’

Barham, wavering, was caught by this. ‘Laurence is damned well under arrest, and I have a mind to clap the rest of you mutinous dogs into irons also,’ he began, only to have Keynes wheel on him in turn.

‘You can arrest him in the morning, after that leg has been seen to, and his dragon. Of all the blackguardly, unchristian notions; storming in on wounded men and beasts—’ Keynes was literally shaking his fist in Barham’s face; an alarming prospect, thanks to the wickedly-hooked ten-inch tenaculum clenched in his fingers, and the moral force of his argument was very great: Barham stepped back, involuntarily. The Marines gratefully took it as a signal, beginning to drag the gun back out of the clearing with them, and Barham, baffled and deserted, was forced to give way.

The delay thus won lasted only a short while. The surgeons scratched their heads over Laurence’s leg; the bone was not broken, despite the breathtaking pain when they roughly palpated the limb, and there was no visible wound, save the great mottled bruises covering nearly every scrap of skin. His head ached fiercely also, but there was little they could do but offer him laudanum for the pain, which he refused, and order him to keep his weight off the leg: advice as practical as it was unnecessary, since he could not stand for any length of time without suffering a collapse.

Meanwhile, Temeraire’s own wounds, thankfully minor, were sewed up, and with much coaxing Laurence persuaded him to eat a little, despite his agitation. By morning, it was plain Temeraire was healing well, with no sign of wound-fever, and there was no excuse for further delay; a formal summons had come from Admiral Lenton, ordering Laurence to report to the covert headquarters. He had to be carried in an elbow chair, leaving behind him an uneasy and restive Temeraire. ‘If you do not come back by tomorrow morning, I will come and find you,’ he vowed, and would not be dissuaded.