‘Laurence,’ Temeraire said, looking round, ‘where is everyone? Victoriatus is in Edinburgh; he at least ought to have come. After all, we helped him, when he was hurt; not that I need help, precisely, against these little dragons,’ he added, straightening his neck with a crackle of popping joints, ‘but it is not very convenient to try and fight while we are carrying so many people.’
This was putting a braver face on the situation than it deserved: they could not very well defend themselves at all, and Temeraire was taking the worst of it, bleeding already from many small gashes along his side and flanks, which the crew could not bandage up, so cramped were they aboard.
‘Only keep everyone moving towards the shore,’ Laurence said; he had no better answer to give. ‘I cannot imagine the patrol will pursue us over land,’ he added, but doubtfully. He would never have imagined a French patrol could come so near to shore as this, either, without challenge; and how he should manage to disembark a thousand frightened and exhausted men under bombardment he did not like to contemplate.
‘I am trying; only they will keep stopping to fight,’ Temeraire said, wearily, and turned back to his work. Arkady and his rough band of mountain ferals found the small, stinging attacks maddening, and they kept trying to turn around mid-air and go after the French patrol-dragons; in their contortions they were flinging off more of the hapless Prussian soldiers than the enemy could ever have accounted for. There was no malice in their carelessness: the wild dragons were unused to men except as the jealous guardians of flocks and herds, and they did not think of their passengers as anything more than an unusual burden; but with malice or none, the men were dying all the same. Temeraire could only prevent them by constant vigilance, and now he was hovering in place over the line of flight, cajoling and hissing by turns, encouraging the others to hurry onwards.
‘No, no, Gherni,’ Temeraire called out, and dashed forward to swat at the little blue and white feral: she had dropped onto the very back of a startled French Chasseur-Vocifère: a courier beast of scarcely four tons, who could not bear up under even her slight weight and was sinking in the air despite the frantic beating of its wings. Gherni had already fixed her teeth in the French dragon’s neck and was now worrying it back and forth with savage vigour; meanwhile the Prussians clinging to her harness were all but drumming their heels on the heads of the French crew, crammed so tightly not a shot from the French side could fail of killing one of them.
In his efforts to dislodge her, Temeraire was left open, and the Pou-de-Ciel seized the fresh opportunity; this time daring enough to make an attempt at Temeraire’s back. His claws struck so near that Laurence saw the traces of Temeraire’s blood shining black on the curved edges as the French dragon lifted away again; his hand tightened on his pistol, uselessly.
‘Oh, let me, let me!’ Iskierka was straining furiously against the restraints keeping her lashed to Temeraire’s back. The infant Kazilik would soon be a force to reckon with; as yet, however, scarcely a month out of the shell, she was too young and unpracticed to be a serious danger to anyone beside herself. They had tried as best they could to secure her, with straps and chains and lecturing, but the last she roundly ignored, and though she had been but irregularly fed these last few days, she had added another five feet of length overnight: neither straps nor chains were proving of much use in restraining her.
‘Will you hold still, for all love?’ Granby said despairingly; he was throwing his own weight against the straps to try and pull her head down. Allen and Harley, the young lookouts stationed on Temeraire’s shoulders, had to go scrambling out of the way to avoid being kicked as Granby was dragged stumbling from side to side by her efforts. Laurence loosened his buckles and climbed to his feet, bracing his heels against the strong ridge of muscle at the base of Temeraire’s neck. He caught Granby by the harness-belt when Iskierka’s thrashing swung him by again, and managed to hold him steady, but all the leather was strung tight as violin-strings, trembling with the strain.
‘But I can stop him!’ she insisted, twisting her head sidelong as she tried to work free. Eager jets of flame were licking out from the sides of her jaws as she tried once again to lunge at the enemy dragon, but their Pou-de-Ciel attacker, small as he was, was still many times her size and too experienced to be frightened off by a little show of fire; he only jeered, backwinging to expose all of his speckled brown belly to her as a target in a gesture of insulting unconcern.
‘Oh!’ Iskierka coiled herself tightly with rage, the thin spiky protrusions all over her sinuous body jetting steam, and with a mighty heave reared up on her hindquarters. The straps jerked painfully out of Laurence’s grasp, and involuntarily he caught his hand back to his chest, numb fingers curling over instinctively. Granby had been dragged into mid-air and was dangling vainly from her thick neck band, while she let loose a torrent of flame: thin and yellow-white, so hot that the air about it seemed to twist and shrivel away. It made a fierce banner against the night sky.
But the French dragon had cleverly put himself before the wind, coming strong and from the east; now he folded his wings and dropped away, and the blistering flames were blown back against Temeraire’s flank. Temeraire, still scolding Gherni back into the line of flight, uttered a startled cry and jerked away while sparks scattered over the glossy blackness of his hide, perilously close to the carrying-harness of silk and linen and rope.
‘Verfluchtes Untier! Wir werden noch alle verbrennen,’ one of the Prussian officers yelled hoarsely, pointing at Iskierka, and fumbled with a shaking hand in his bandoleer for a cartridge.
‘Enough there; put up that pistol,’ Laurence roared at him through the speaking-trumpet. Lieutenant Ferris and a couple of the topmen hurriedly unlatched their harness-straps and let themselves down to wrestle it out of the officer’s hands. They could only reach the fellow by clambering over the other Prussian soldiers, however, and though too afraid to let go of the harness, the men were obstructing their passage in every other way, thrusting out elbows and hips with abrupt jerks, full of resentment and hostility.
Lieutenant Riggs was giving orders, distantly, towards the rear; ‘Fire!’ he shouted, clear over the increasing rumble among the Prussians; the handful of rifles spoke with bright powder-bursts, sulphurous and bitter. The French dragon made a little shriek and wheeled away, flying a little awkwardly: blood streaked in rivulets from a rent in its wing, where a bullet had by lucky chance struck one of the thinner patches around the joint and penetrated the hide.
The respite came a little late; some of the men were already clawing their way up towards Temeraire’s back, snatching at the greater security of the leather harness to which the aviators were hooked by their carabiner straps. But the harness could not take all their weight too, not so many of them; if the buckles stretched open, or some straps gave way, and the whole began to slide, it would entangle Temeraire’s wings and send them all plummeting into the ocean together.
Laurence loaded his pistols fresh and thrust them into his waistband, loosened his sword, and stood up again. He had willingly risked all their lives to rescue these men from a trap, and he meant to see them safely ashore if he could; but he would not see Temeraire endangered by their hysteric fear.
‘Allen, Harley,’ he said to the boys, ‘run across to the riflemen and tell Mr. Riggs: if we cannot stop them, they are to cut the carrying-harness loose, all of it; and be sure you keep latched on as you go. Perhaps you had better stay here with her, John,’ he added, when Granby made to come away with him. Iskierka was quiet for the moment, her enemy having quit the field, but she still coiled and recoiled herself in sulky restlessness, muttering in disappointment.
‘Oh, certainly! I should like to see myself do any such thing,’ Granby said, taking out his sword; he had foregone pistols since becoming Iskierka’s captain, to avoid the risk of handling open powder around her.
Laurence was too unsure of his ground to pursue an argument; Granby was not properly his subordinate any longer, and the more experienced aviator of the two of