Victory of Eagles

The mountains were growing closer, and closer, and as the sun began to set Elsie came over the final sharp ridge and over the broad blood-stained feeding grounds, and the cliffs full of dragon-holes. She landed. The cattle pen was empty, its wide door standing open. There were no lights and no sound. There was not a dragon anywhere to be seen.

Chapter Four (#ufc6c6828-520a-5394-bfaf-98803e721660)

Overnight, icicles had grown upon the overhang of the cave, a row of glittering teeth, and now as the sun struck they steadily dripped themselves away upon the stone, an uneven pattering without rhythm or sense. Temeraire opened his eyes once in a while, dully to watch them shrink; then he closed his eyes and put his head down. No one had proposed his removal, or disturbed him.

A scrabbling of claws made him look up; a small dragon had landed on the ledge, and Lloyd was sliding down from its back. ‘Come now then,’ Lloyd said, tramping in, his boots ringing and smearing field-muck on the clean stone. ‘Come now, old boy, why such a fuss, today? We have a lovely visitor waiting. A nice fat bullock will set you up—’

Temeraire had never wanted to kill anyone, except of course anyone who tried to hurt Laurence; he liked to fight well enough, as it was exciting, but he had never thought that he would like to kill anyone just for himself. Only, in this moment it seemed to him he would much rather that than have Lloyd before him, speaking so, when Laurence was dead.

‘Be silent,’ he said, and when Lloyd continued without a pause.

‘—the very best put aside for you special, tonight—’

Temeraire stretched out his neck and put his head directly before Lloyd and said, low, ‘My captain is dead.’

That at least meant something to Lloyd: he went white, stopped talking and held himself very still; Temeraire watched him closely. It was almost disappointing. If only Lloyd would say something else dreadful, or do something foul as he always did; if only—but Laurence would not like it— Laurence would not have liked it—Temeraire took a long hissing breath, and drew his head back, curling in upon himself again, and Lloyd sagged in relief.

‘Why there's been some mistake,’ he said, after a moment, his voice only a few shades less hearty. ‘I've heard nothing of the sort, old boy, word would've been sent me—’

His words made Temeraire angry all over again, but differently now: the sharp strange feeling was dulled, and he felt quite tired, wishing only for Lloyd to be gone.

‘I dare say you would tell me he was alive, even if he had been hanged at Tyburn,’ he said, bitterly, ‘as long as it made me eat, and mate, and listen to you. Well, I will not. I have borne it; I would have borne anything, only to keep Laurence alive, but I will bear it no longer. I will eat when I like, and not otherwise, and I will not mate with anyone unless I choose to.’ He looked at the little dragon who had brought Lloyd and said, ‘Now take him away, if you please; and tell the others that I do not want him brought again without asking first.’

The little dragon bobbed his head nervously and picked up the startled and protesting Lloyd to carry him down again. Temeraire closed his eyes and coiled himself again; the drip of the icicles his only company.

A few hours later, Perscitia and Moncey landed on the cave ledge with a studied air of insouciance, carrying two fresh-killed cows. They brought them inside, and laid them in front of him. ‘I am not hungry,’ Temeraire said sharply.

‘Oh, we only told Lloyd they was for you so he would let us have extra,’ Moncey said cheerfully. ‘You don't mind if we eat them here?’ and he tore into the first one. Temeraire's tail twitched, entirely without volition, at the hot juicy smell of the blood, and when Perscitia nudged the second cow towards him, he took it in his jaws without really meaning to. In a few swallows it was gone, and what they had left of the first followed swiftly.

He flew down for another, and even a fourth; he did not have to think or feel while he ate. A small flock of the more diminutive dragons clustered together on the edge of the feeding grounds watching him anxiously, and when he looked for yet another cow, a couple of them rose up to herd one towards him. But none of them spoke to Temeraire. When he had finished, he flew for a long distance along the river and settled down to drink only where he might be quite alone again. He felt sore in all his joints, as if he had flown hard in sleeting weather for a long, long time.

He washed, as well as he could manage alone, and went back to his cave to think. Perscitia came up to see him, to present an interesting mathematical problem, but he only glanced at it and said, ‘No. Help me find Moncey; I want to know what has been happening with the war.’

‘Why, I don't know,’ Moncey said, surprised, when they had tracked him down, lazing in a meadow on the mountainside with some of the other Winchesters and small ferals. They had been playing a bit of a game, where they tossed branches upon the ground and tried to pick up as many as they could without dropping any. ‘It's nothing to do with us, you know, not here. The Frenchy dragons and their captains are all kept over in Scotland, further up. There won't be any fighting round here.’

‘It is to do with us, too,’ Temeraire said. ‘This is our territory, all of ours; and the French are trying to take it away. That has as much to do with us as it would if they were trying to take your cave, and more, because they are trying to take everything else along with your cave.’

The little dragons put down their sticks and came closer to listen, with some interest. ‘But what do you want to do?’ Moncey said.

Numerous official couriers were crossing the countryside in every direction, at all speed, and the afternoon was not entirely spent before Moncey and the other Winchesters were able to return, full of as much news as Temeraire could wish for. If the numbers reported were a little inconsistent, it did not matter very much; Napoleon had landed a great many men, all near London, and there had not yet been any great battle to throw him off.

‘He is all over the coast, and the fellows say there is this Marshal Davout fellow poking about in Kent, to the south of London, and another one Lefèbvre, who is already somewhere along this way,’ Moncey said, pointing out the countryside west of the capital, and nearest Wales.

‘Oh, I know that one, he was at the siege of Danzig,’ Temeraire said. ‘I do not think he was so very clever, he did not make a big push to have us out, not until Lien came and took charge of everything. Where is our army?’

‘All fallen back about London,’ Minnow said. ‘Everyone says there is going to be a big battle there, in a couple of weeks perhaps.’

‘Then there is not a moment to lose,’ Temeraire said.

They passed the word for a council meeting, and everyone came promptly: the other big dragons considerably more respectful now, even if Ballista still was patronizing, ‘You are upset, of course, and no wonder; but I am sure if you tell them you would like another captain—’

‘No,’ Temeraire said, the resonance making his whole body tremble, and looked away, while everyone fell quiet. After a moment he was able to continue. ‘I am not going to take another captain,’ he said, ‘and a stranger; I do not need a handler as if I were one of Lloyd's cows. I can fight on my own, and so can any of you.’

‘But what is there to fight for?’ Requiescat said. ‘If the French win, they aren't going to give us any bother, it will only mean someone else taking eggs; they'll be just as careful.’

There was a murmur of agreement, and Moncey added, a little plaintively, ‘And I thought you were always on about how unfair the Admiralty are, not letting us have any liberty.’

‘I do not mean to speak for the Government,’ Temeraire said. ‘But this country is our territory as much as it is any man's; it belongs to us all together, and if we simply sit here eating cows while Napoleon tries to take it away, we have no right to complain of anything.’

‘Well, what is there to complain of, then?’ Requiescat said. ‘We have everything as we like it.’

‘So you will quarrel over a wet unpleasant cave, but you will not fight to sleep in a pavilion, which is never wet or cold, even in winter?’ Temeraire said, scornfully. ‘You only think you have things as you like them to be, because you have never seen anything better, and that is because you have spent all of your lives penned up here or in coverts.’

When he had described pavilions for them a little more, and the dragon-city in Africa, he added, ‘And in Yutien, there were dragons who were employed as merchants. All of them had heaps of jewels – only tin and glass, Laurence said, but they were very pretty anyway; and in Africa they had gold enough to put it on all of their crew members.’ There were not many dragons present who did not sigh at least a little; those who wore their small treasures looked at them, and many of the unadorned looked at them, wistfully.

‘It all sounds a lot of gimcrackery to me,’ Requiescat said.

‘Then you may stay here and have my cave, which is not a quarter as nice as a pavilion,’ Temeraire said coolly, ‘and when we have beaten Napoleon and taken many prizes, you shan't have a share; Moncey will have more gold than you.’

‘Prizes!’ Gentius said, rousing unexpectedly. ‘I helped in taking a prize once. My captain had a fourteenth share. That is how she bought the picture.’

Everyone knew of Gentius's painting, and an impressed murmur went around: this example proved better than hypothetical jewels in a country which none of them had seen.

‘Now, now, settle down,’ Ballista said, thumping her tail, but with a considerably more lenient air. ‘Look here, I suppose no one much wants the French to beat us, we have all had a go with them before, if we were ever in service. But the corps don't want us unless we take harness and captains, and we cannot just wander into battles: we will get circled and shot up. That is no joke, even for us big ones.’

‘If we fight thoughtlessly and singularly, we will,’ Temeraire said, ‘but there is no reason we must do that, and we cannot be boarded if we have no harness, or—or anyone to capture. We will form our own army, and we will work out tactics for ourselves, not stuff men have invented without bothering to ask us even though they cannot fly themselves. It stands to reason that we can do better than them, if we try.’

‘Hm, well,’ Ballista said to his convincing argument, and the general murmur of agreement found it so too.

‘All right, all right,’ Requiescat said. ‘Very nice storytelling, but it is all a hum. Treasure and battles are well and good, but what d'you mean to do for dinner?’

The next morning, they landed together on the grounds at the feeding time. The cows in their pen were bellowing invitingly, and their delicious grassy scent made Temeraire's tongue want to lick the air. But the other dragons all kept the line with him: no one even turned their nose toward the running cattle. The herdsmen prodded the cows forward with no results, and then looked at each other and back at Lloyd, in confusion.

Lloyd began pacing up and down the line of dragons looking up at them all in bafflement, saying entreatingly to one after another in turn, ‘Go on, then, eat something.’ Temeraire waited until Lloyd came up to him, then bent his head down and said, ‘Lloyd, where do the cows come from?’

Lloyd stared at him. ‘Go on, eat something, old boy,’ he repeated feebly, so it came out as a question more than a command.

‘Stop that; my name is Temeraire, or you may call me sir,’ Temeraire said, ‘since that is how to speak to someone politely.’

‘Oh, ah,’ Lloyd said, not very sensibly.

‘You have heard that the French have invaded?’ Temeraire enquired.

‘Oh!’ Lloyd said, in tones of relief. ‘None of you need worry anything about that. Why, they shan't come anywhere near here, or interfere with your cows. You shall all be fed, the cows will come here every day, there's no call to save them, old boy—’

Temeraire raised his head and gave a small roar, only to quiet him; snow tumbled down the slope on the other side of the feeding grounds, but it was not very much, a foot perhaps, scarcely deep enough to dust his talons. ‘You will say sir,’ he told Lloyd, lowering his head to fix the groundsman securely with one eye.

‘Sir,’ Lloyd said, faintly.