THE NEXT HE knew of the world was a cup of clean water held for him by Emily Roland. Dorset was kneeling on the floor beside him, and bracing him up by the waist. Laurence managed to put a hand around the cup and guide it to his mouth, spilling a little; he was palsied as an old man and trembling. He was lying on his stomach on a thin pallet of gathered straw covered with shirts, bare to the chest himself; and he was desperately hungry.
"A little at a time," Dorset said, giving him small round balls of cooled porridge, one after another. They had eased him onto his side to eat.
"Temeraire?" Laurence said, around an involuntary and desperate gluttony, wondering if he had only dreamed. He could not move his arms freely: his back had scabbed over, but if he reached too far forward the edges split, fresh blood trickling down the skin.
Dorset did not at once answer. "Was he here?" Laurence said sharply.
"Laurence," Harcourt said, kneeling down by him, "Laurence, pray do not get distressed; you have been ill a week. He was here, but I am afraid they ran him off; I am sure he is quite well."
"Enough; you must sleep," Dorset said, and for all the will in the world, Laurence could not resist the command; he was already fading again.
When he woke it was daylight outside, and the cavern nearly empty, except for Roland and Dyer and Tooke. "They take the others to work, sir, in the fields," she said. They gave him a little water, and reluctantly at his insistence the support of their shoulders, so he might stagger to the edge of the cave and look outside.
The cliff face, opposite, was cracked, and the dark stains of dragon blood looked deep burnt orange-red on the striated walls. "It is not his, sir, or not much," Emily said anxiously, looking up at him.
She could tell him nothing more: not how Temeraire had found them, nor if he had been quite alone, nor his condition; there had been no time for conversation. With the number of dragons flying at all hours through the gorges, Temeraire had passed for a few moments as one in the throng, but he was too large and remarkably colored to escape notice, and when he had put his head into the cave to see them, he had at once raised an alarm.
Temeraire had penetrated so far only because their captors evidently did not anticipate an incursion of dragons, so deep into their stronghold; but there was a guard now, newly stationed above their cell: Laurence could see its tail, hanging down from the top of the cliff, if he painfully turned his neck, as far as he could, to look directly upwards. "And I expect that means he got clear away from them," Chenery said comfortingly, when the others had been returned, late in the afternoon. "He can fly rings around half the Corps, Laurence; I am sure he gave them the slip."
Laurence would have liked to believe it, more than he did; three days had gone by since that delirious state had broken, and if Temeraire had been able, Laurence knew very well he would have made another attempt in the teeth of any opposition; perhaps had, and out of their sight had been injured again, or worse.
Laurence was not taken, the next morning, with the others: they had been set along with the other prisoners of war to working in the elephant-fields, spreading the manure, much to the satisfaction of the young women to whom the work ordinarily fell. "Nonsense; I would be perfectly ashamed if I could not manage it," Catherine said, "when all those girls do: a good many of them are further along than I am, and it is not as though I have not been brought up to work. Besides, I am perfectly stout; indeed I am much better than I was. But you have been very sick, Laurence, and you are to listen to Dr. Dorset and stay lying down, when they come."
She was very firm, and Dorset also; but they had been gone a little more than an hour when another dragon came for Laurence: the rider issuing peremptory commands, and beckoning. Roland and Dyer were ready to back him into the depths of the cave, but the dragon was a smallish creature, not much bigger than a courier, and could easily have put himself inside. Laurence struggled to his feet, and for decency's sake took one of the sweat-and blood-stained shirts which had helped make up his pallet to cover himself, if he was not truly fit to be seen.
He was carried back to the great hall: the king was not there, but the iron-works were in full swing under the supervision of Prince Moshueshue; the smiths were engaged in pouring bullets, with the help of another dragon, who nursed their forge regularly with narrow breathed tongues of flame, rousing the coals within to a fever-pitch of heat. They had somehow acquired several bullet-molds, and there were still more muskets stacked upon the floor, if marked here and there with bloody fingerprints. The room was sweltering, even with a couple of smaller dragons fanning away vigorously to make the air move; but the prince looked satisfied.
He took Laurence back towards the map again; it had been already a little improved, and an entirely new addition made to the west: a vague distance allowed for the Atlantic, and then the approximate shapes of the American continents drawn out: the great harbor of Rio most prominently marked, and the islands of the West Indies placed a little tentatively somewhere to the north. There was none of the exactness needed to make it of practical use for navigation, Laurence was glad to see; he was far from that earlier complacency, during their abduction, which had dismissed their captors as a threat against the colony itself: there were too many dragons here.
Mrs. Erasmus had also been brought, and Laurence braced himself for a further interrogation, to which he would not allow himself to feel unequal, but Moshueshue did not repeat the king's demands or his violence; his servants instead gave Laurence a drink, oddly sweet, of pressed fruits and water and cocoanut milk, and his questions were of generalities and trade, wide-ranging. He had a bolt of cloth to show Laurence, calico-patterned and certainly from the mills of England; some bottles of whiskey, unpleasantly harsh and cheap by the smell, also of foreign manufacture. "You sell these things to the Lunda," Moshueshue said, "and those also?" indicating the muskets.
"They have lately fought a war against them," Mrs. Erasmus said, quickly adding her own explanation, at the tail of the translation: there had been a battle won, two-days' flight from the falls. "North-west, I think," she said, and asked Moshueshue permission to show him the territory, on the great map of the continent: north-west, and still deep inland, but in a few days' striking-distance of the ports of Louanda and Benguela.
"Sir," Laurence said, "I have never heard of the Lunda before two weeks ago; I believe they must have these goods from perhaps the Portuguese traders, upon the coast."
"And do you only want captives, or will you take other things in trade? The medicines you stole, or - " and one of the women carried over at Moshueshue's beckoning a box of jewels, absurdly magnificent, which would have made the Nizam stare: polished emeralds tumbled like marbles with diamonds, and the box itself of gold and silver. Another carried over carefully a tall curious vase, made of woven wire strung occasionally with beads, in an elaborate pattern without figures, and another an enormous mask, nearly tall as she herself was, carved of dark wood inlaid with ivory and jewels.
Laurence wondered a little if this were meant for another sort of inducement. "A trader would oblige you, sir, I am sure. I am not a merchant myself. We would be glad - would have been glad - to pay you for the medicines, in what barter you desired."
Moshueshue nodded, and the treasure was taken away. "And the - cannon?" He used the English word, himself, with tolerable pronunciation. "Or your boats which cross the ocean?"
There were enough jewels in the box to have tolerably purchased and outfitted a fleet of merchantmen, Laurence would have guessed, but he did not think the Government would be very pleased to see such a project go forward; he answered cautiously, "These are dearer, sir, for the difficulty in their construction; and would do you very little good without the men who understand their operation. But some men might be found, willing to take service with you, and such an arrangement made possible; if there were peace between our countries."
Laurence thought this was not further than he could in justice go, and as much attempt at diplomacy as he knew how to make; he hoped as a hint, it would not be badly received. Moshueshue's intentions were not disguised; it was not wonderful that he, more than the king, should have taken to heart the advantages of modern weaponry, more easily grasped at musket-scale by men than by dragons, and should have cared to establish access to them.
Moshueshue put his hand on the map-table and gazed thoughtfully down upon it. At last he said, "You are not engaged in this trade, you say, but others of your tribe are. Can you tell me who they are, and where they may be found?"
"Sir, I am sorry to say, that there are too many engaged in the trade for me to know their names, or particulars," Laurence said awkwardly, and wished bitterly that he might have been able to say with honesty it had been lately banned. Instead he could only add, that he believed it soon would be; which was received with as much satisfaction as he had expected.
"We will ban it ourselves," the prince said, the more ominously for the lack of any deliberately threatening tone. "But that will not satisfy our ancestors." He paused. "You are Kefentse's captives. He wants to trade you for more of his tribe. Can you arrange such an exchange? Lethabo says you cannot."
"I have told them that most of the others cannot be found," Mrs. Erasmus added quietly. " - it was nearly twenty years ago."
"Perhaps some investigation could locate the survivors," Laurence said to her doubtfully. "There would be bills of sale, and I suppose some of them must yet be on the same estates, where they first were sold - you do not think it so?"
She said after a moment, "I was taken into the house when I was sold. Those in the fields did not live long, most of them. A few years; maybe ten. There were not many old slaves."
Laurence did not quarrel with her finality, and he thought she did not translate her own words, either; likely to shield him from the rage which they could provoke. She said enough to convince Moshueshue of the impossibility, however, and he shook his head. "However," Laurence said, trying, "we would be glad to ransom ourselves, if you would arrange a communication with our fellows at the Cape, and to carry an envoy with us, to England, to establish peaceful relations. I would give my own word, to do whatever could be done to restore his kin - "
"No," Moshueshue said. "There is nothing I can do with this, not now. The ancestors are too roused up; it is not Kefentse only who has been bereft, and even those who have not lost children of their own are angry. My father's temper was not long when he was a man, and it is shorter since his change of life. Perhaps after." He did not say, after what, but issued orders to the attending dragons: without a chance to speak, Laurence was snatched up, and carried out at once.
The dragon did not turn back for the prison-cave, however, but turned instead for the falls, rising up out of the gorge and to the level of the plateau across which the great river flowed. Laurence clung to the basketing talons as they flew along its banks and over another of the great elephant-herds, too quickly for him to recognize if any of his compatriots were among the followers tending the ground; and to a distance at which the sound of the falls was muted, although the fine cloud of smoke yet remained visible, hovering perpetual in place to mark their location. There were no roads below at all, but at regular intervals Laurence began to notice cairns of stones, in circles of cleared ground, which might have served as signposts; and they had flown ten minutes when there came rearing up before them a vast amphitheater.
It was near to nothing, in his own experience, but the Colosseum in Rome; built entirely of blocks of stone fitted so snugly that no mortar, visibly, held them together, the outer enclosure was built in an oval shape, with no entrances but a few, at the base, formed with great overlapping slabs of stone laid one against another like the old stone circles in England. It stood in the middle of a grassy field, undisturbed, as he would have expected from some ancient unused ruin; only a few faintly worn tracks showed where men had come into the entries on foot, mostly from the river, where stakes had been driven in the ground, and a few simple boats were tied up.
But they flew in directly over the walls, and there were no signs of disuse within. The same drymortar method of construction had raised a series of terraces, topped and leveled out with more stone slabs, laid flat, and irregularly arranged; instead of even tiers, narrow stairways divided the theater into sections, each a haphazard arrangement of boxes intended for human use and filled with wooden benches and stools, some beautifully carved, and large stalls surrounding them for dragons. The higher levels simplified further, into wide-open stands with sections marked off only with rope; at the center of it all, a large grassy oval stood bare, broken up with three large stone platforms, and on the last of these, a prisoner with drooping head, was Temeraire.
Laurence was set down a few lengths away, with the usual carelessness, jarring his back sorely; at his repressed gasp, Temeraire growled, a deep and queerly stifled noise. He had been muzzled, with a piece of dreadful iron basketry, secured upon his head with many thick leather straps, which allowed his jaws a scant range of motion: not enough to roar. A thick iron collar around his throat, at the top of his neck, was leashed with three of the massive grey hawsers, which Laurence could now see were made of braided wire, rather than rope; these were fixed to iron rings set in the ground, equidistant from one another, and preventing Temeraire from throwing his weight against any one of them more than the others.
"Laurence, Laurence," Temeraire said, straining his head towards him with all the inches the cables would yield; Laurence would have gone to him at once, but the dragon which had brought him set its foreleg down between them: he was not permitted.
"Pray do not hurt yourself, my dear; I am perfectly well," Laurence called, forcing himself to straighten; he was anxious lest Temeraire should have done himself some mischief, flinging himself against the collar: it looked to be digging into the flesh. "You are not very uncomfortable, I hope?"
"Oh, it is nothing," Temeraire said, panting with a distress which belied his words, "nothing, now I see you again; only I could not move very much, and no-one comes to talk to me, so I did not know anything: if you were well or hurt; and you were so strange, when I saw you last."
He backed slowly and cautiously one pace and let himself down again, still breathing heavily, and gave his head a little shake, as much as the chains would allow, so they rang around him; like a horse in traces. "And it makes eating a little difficult," he added bravely, "and water taste of rust, but it does not signify: are you sure you are well? You do not look well."
"I am, and very glad to see you," Laurence said, business-like, though in truth he was at some pains to keep his feet, "if beyond words with surprise; we were mortally certain we should never be found."
"Sutton said we would never find you, by roaming wild about the continent," Temeraire said, low and angry, "and that we ought to go back to Capetown. But I told him that was a very great piece of nonsense, for however unlikely we should find you looking in the interior, it was very much less likely we should find you back at the Cape. So we asked directions - "
"Directions?" Laurence said, baffled.
He had consulted with some of the local dragons, who, living farther to the south, had not been subject yet to the slave-raiding, and were not so disposed to be hostile. "At least, not once we had made them a few presents of some particularly nice cows - which, I am sorry, Laurence, we took quite without permission, from some of the settlers, so I suppose we must pay them when we have got back to Capetown," Temeraire added, as confidently as if nothing stood in the way of their return. "It was a little difficult to make them understand what we wanted, at first, but some of them understood the Xhosa language, which I had got a little of from Demane and Sipho, and I have learnt a little of theirs as we came closer: it is not very difficult, and there are many bits which are like Durzagh."
"But, forgive me; I do not mean to be ungrateful," Laurence said, " - the mushrooms? What of the cure? Were there any left?"
"We had already given all those we collected to the Fiona," Temeraire said, "and if those were not enough, then Messoria and Immortalis could do very well taking back the rest, without us," he finished defiantly, "so Sutton had no right to complain, if we liked to go; and hang orders anyway."
Laurence did not argue with him; he had no wish of giving any further distress, and in any case, Temeraire's insubordination having been answered by a success so improbable, he would certainly not be inclined to listen to any criticism on the subject: the sort of break-neck reckless venture crowned inevitably, Laurence supposed, by either triumph or disaster; speed and impudence having their own virtue. "Where are Lily and Dulcia, then?"
"They are hiding, out upon the plains," Temeraire said. "We agreed that first I should try, as I am big enough to carry you all; and then if anything should go wrong, they would still be loose." He switched his tail with something halfway between irritation and unease. "It made very good sense at the time, but I did not quite realize, that anything would go wrong, and then I would not be able to help them plan," he added plaintively, "and now I do not know what they mean to do; although I am sure they will think of something" - but he sounded a little dubious.
As well he might; while they had been speaking, dragons had been coming in a steady stream, carrying in large woven baskets or upon their backs men and women and even children, and settling all down within the stands: a vast company, larger than Laurence had yet suspected. The people arranged themselves in a hierarchy of wealth, those sitting on the lowest levels dressed in the most elaborate finery, panoply of furs and jewellery in a splendid vulgar display. There was a great variety among the beasts, in size and shape, and no sign of recognizable breeds, save perhaps a tendency towards similar coloring, in those who sat near-by one another, or in their pattern of markings. There was one constant, or nearly, however: the hostile looks which were bent upon Laurence and Temeraire, from all sides. Temeraire flared his ruff, as best he could with the constricting straps, and muttered, "They needn't all stare so; and I think they are great cowards for keeping me chained."
Soldiers were being brought in, now, by dragons more armored than ornamented, and many of them in bloodstained gear: no mark of slovenly habits but deliberate, worn proudly; many of the stains were fresh as though they had come straight from the recent battle which Mrs. Erasmus had mentioned. These took up places around the floor of the great stadium, in even ranks, while servants began to cover the large central stage with furs, lion-skins and leopard, and similarly draped a wooden throne; drums had been carried in, and Laurence was thankful when they set up a great thunder, and drew all eyes away: the king and the prince had arrived.
The soldiers beat their short-hafted spears against the shields, and the dragons roaring their own salute set up a wave of rattling noise, on and on, while the royalty seated themselves upon the central dais. When they were settled, a small dragon, wearing an odd sort of necklace of fur tails around his neck, leapt up on his haunches, beside the dais, and clearing his throat hushed the crowd with startling speed; his next deep breath was audible in the sudden silence. And then he launched himself into something between story and song: chanted, and without rhyme, to the beat of only one soft drum which kept time for him.
Temeraire tilted his head, to try and make it out; but when he looked at Laurence, and would have spoken, the dragon guarding them gave him a shocked glare even before a word had issued, which quelled him in embarrassment; until with sunset, the chant finished, and the raucous applause burst out again as torches were lit all around the dais. It had evidently been, from what Temeraire could gather, a kind of history of the deeds of the king and his ancestors, and more generally of the many assembled tribes, delivered entirely from memory, and covering some seven generations.
Laurence could not help but feel the liveliest anxiety for the purpose of the convocation; the opening ceremonies thus completed, it proceeded swiftly to angry speeches, greeted with roaring approval and again that thunder of spears against shields. "That is not true at all," Temeraire said indignantly, during one of these, having picked out a few of the words. One highly decorated dragon, a grey-black fellow of middle-weight size, wearing a thick neck-collar of tiger furs banded with gold, had come and ranged himself opposite Temeraire, and was gesturing at him pointedly. "I would not want your crew anyway; I have my own." He and Laurence were evidently figuring, in most of these exhortations, as material evidence, to prove the existence of the threat and of its magnitude.
Another dragon, very old, whose wing-spurs dragged upon the ground, and whose eyes were milky with cataracts, was led out into the field by a small escort of hard-faced men whose box, upon the lowest level, was left empty by their departure: they had no family with them. No-one spoke as the dragon crept to the dais, and heaved himself upon it; he raised his trembling head, his speech a thin and fragile lament which silenced all the crowd, and made the women draw to them their children, the dragons curl anxious tails around the clustered knots of their nearest tribesmen; one of the escort wept silently, with his hand over his face, his fellows giving him the courtesy of pretending they did not see.
When he had done, and returned slowly to his place, several of the soldiers began to stand forward to make their remarks: one general, a heavy barrel-chested gentleman, discarded his leopard-skin drape impatiently as he paced, with so much energy his skin gleamed in the torchlight with sweat, arguing vehemently in a voice projected to reach the highest tiers, gesturing at them at regular intervals, striking his fist into his hand, and pointing occasionally at Temeraire. His speech roused them all not only to cheering, but to agreement, grim nodding; he was warning them, that many more such dragons would come, if they did not take action now.
The night dragged on, grim and long; when the children had all fallen into exhausted sleep, some of the dragons and the women carried them away; those left kept speaking, climbing lower down in the stands as room opened, and voices grew more hoarse. Fatigue at last freed Laurence from dread; they had not been stoned yet, nor offered any other violence but words, and his back throbbed and itched and burned, sapping the energy even to be afraid. It was still not easy to stand and be pilloried, even if Laurence thankfully could escape the understanding of the better part of the accusations leveled against them; he solaced himself by keeping as straight as he could make himself, and fixing his gaze beyond the top ranks of the audience. But he was looking not to see, unfocused, so he did not immediately notice, until a vigorous waving made him realize, with a start, that Dulcia was perched on the top rank of seats, now empty.
She was small enough, and her green-and-mottled coloring sufficiently common, to pass for one of the company, whose attention was in any case fixed upon the speakers; when she saw she had Laurence's eyes, she sat up and held up in her forehands a ragged grey sheet. Laurence had no notion what it was, at first; and then realized it was an elephant-hide, with three holes painstakingly sawed out of it, in the shape of signal-flags: tomorrow, was all the message, and when he had seen it, and nodded to her, she as quickly vanished away again into the dark.
"Oh; I hope they will come and let me loose, first," Temeraire murmured, fretful at the prospect of a rescue in which he had no say. "There are so many dragons; I hope they will not do anything rash."
"Oh! I do too," Harcourt said anxiously, when Laurence had been returned to them, well-roasted and spat-upon, after the conclusion of the ceremonies; she went to the mouth of the cave at once to peer up at their sentinel. The dragon was slumped rather unhappily upon his ledge, with his head drooping down; in the distance the drums were still going, in a celebration which bid fair to continue deep into the night.
They could not prepare, save in the most general way, by drinking as much as they could hold, and washing up; but they all applied themselves to these tasks with more energy than they deserved. "Bother; it is moving again," Harcourt said, as she squeezed out her wet hair, and she put her hand to the small of her back and rubbed. Inconveniently she had just begun to show; her breeches were now obliged to be left open, and the sides held together over her middle with a bit of bark-string left from their bindings; her shirt was loose, to cover the arrangement. "Oh, if only it is a girl! I will never, never be so careless again."
By grace they slept well: the masons did not return to their work, perhaps given holiday, and so for once they were not woken with the dawn. No dragon came to carry any of them to the fields; although for an unpleasant balance, no dragon came to bring them any porridge, either, so they would have to make their attempt empty-stomached. There were still a good many dragons flying back and forth through the gorges, all day, but as evening fell their activity reduced, and the women went back early to their cavern-halls, singing, with the baskets full of washing balanced upon their heads.
Of course they had all expected the rescue to be made at night, rationally; but without certain knowledge, the day was full of tension and constant anxiety, and the urge to be always looking out of the cavern-mouth, in a way which could only have roused suspicion. Sunset roused them all to feverish attention; no-one spoke, all of them straining, until a little while after dark the heavy sailcloth-flapping of Lily's enormous wings could be heard, distantly, on the quiet air.
They all waited for the sound to approach more closely, to see her head in the cavern-entrance; but it did not come. There was only a sneeze, and then another, and a third; concluded shortly with a sort of grumbling cough, and then the retreat of her wings. Laurence looked at Catherine, perplexed, but she was edging towards the cave-mouth, beckoning him and Chenery over; a faint sizzling noise, like bacon on a too-hot frying-pan, a pinched sharp vinegared stink: there were a few pockmarks bubbling on the floor near the cavern-mouth.
"Look," Catherine said softly, "she has made us handholds," and she pointed where thin smoky trails rose, barely visible, from the cliff face.
"Well, I dare say we can manage the climb, but what do we do when we are down?" Chenery said, with more optimism than Laurence felt. He had been made to go rock-climbing at Loch Laggan, by the training master Celeritas, some twenty years past the time most aviators began the habit, and had learned thereby to manage upon a dragon's back without too much discredit to himself; but he remembered the experience, cramped beetle-like creeping one hand or foot at a time, without anything like pleasure, and there he had been wearing carabiners.
"If we walk along the line of the gorge, away from the falls, we are sure to get past the borders of their territory," Catherine said. "The dragons will have to find us, from there, I suppose."
The waiting now graduated into sheer agony: they could not begin to climb down, until the acid had eaten itself away into the rock. The salvaged quarter-glass alone kept them on any real sense of time, and the wheeling Southern Cross in the sky above. Twice Laurence looked, to be sure Turner had not missed the glass running out, only to find it nearly full; then by an exercise of will he forced himself not to watch, but rather to close his eyes, and press his hands against his sides, beneath his arms, for warmth. It was the first week of June, and the night was grown sharply and unexpectedly chill.
"Sir, that's nine," Turner said softly, at last, and the hissing of the acid had faded. They poked a twig into one of the pitted depressions by the entrance: a good two inches deep, and the stick came out unmarked, except for the very end, which smoked a little.
"And his tail hasn't moved, sir," Dyer reported in a whisper, meaning the guard-dragon, up above, after he had put his head out to peer quickly.
"Well, I think it may do," Catherine said, when she had cautiously felt around with a rag. "Mr. Ferris, you may begin. Gentlemen: no more conversation; no calls, no whispers."
Ferris had tied his boots together by their laces and slung them backwards around his neck, to keep them out of his way. He tucked a few twists of straw from the floor of the cavern into his waist, then put his head over the side, first, and reached down to feel cautiously around. He looked up and nodded, then swung his leg over; in a moment he vanished, and when Laurence risked a quick look over the edge, he was already only a darker blot on the surface of the wall, fifteen feet down, moving with the limber quickness of youth.
There was no waving, no calling from below; but their ears were stretched, and Turner had the glass still before him: fifteen minutes went, then twenty, and no sound of disaster. Chenery's first, Libbley, went to the edge and let himself over, in similar array; and after him the ensigns and midwingmen began to go, quicker: two and three at a time; Lily had sprayed the wall thoroughly, and there were hand-holds broadly scattered.
Chenery went, and a little after him, Catherine with her midwingman Drew. Most of the younger aviators had already gone. "I'll go below you, sir, and guide your feet," Martin said very softly, his yellow hair darkened with rubbed-in dirt and water. "Let me have your boots." Laurence nodded silently, and handed them over, and Martin tied them up with his own.
Martin's hand on his ankle guided his foot to one of the narrow holds: a rough shallow scrape in the face of the rock, which just admitted the grip of his toes; another, to the right. Laurence eased himself over the edge, groping for hand-holds beneath the lip; he could not see the face of the cliff beneath him, his own body blocking what little glimmer the stars gave, and could only rely on the sense of touch: the stone cold, beneath his cheek, and his breathing very loud in his own ears, with the strange amplified quality of being underwater; blind, deaf, he pressed his body flat as he could against the rock.
There was a dreadful moment when Martin touched his ankle again, and waited for him to lift it from the cliff; Laurence thought he would not be able to make himself yield the support. He willed the movement; nothing happened, then he took another breath and at last his foot moved; Martin drawing him gently downward, toes brushing lightly over the rock, to another hold.
The second foot, then one hand, then the next, mindlessly. It was easier to continue, once he had gone into motion, so long as he did not again allow himself to settle into a fixed position. A slow deep bruising ache began between his shoulders, and in his thighs. The tips of his fingers burned a little, as he went; he did not wonder if it was some trace of the acidic fluids left, or tried not to; he did not trust his grip well enough to wipe them against the rag hanging uselessly from his waistband.
Bailes, Dulcia's harness-man, was near beside him, a little way farther down; a heavy-set man, going cautiously; ground crewmen did not ordinarily go into combat, and had less practice of climbing. He gave suddenly a queer, deep grunt, and jerked his hand; Laurence looked down and saw his face pressed open-mouthed into the rock, making a horrible, low, stifled sound, his hand clawing madly at the stone: clawing, and coming to shreds, there was white bone gleaming at the fingertips, and abruptly Bailes flung out his arm and fell away, his bared teeth clenched and visible, for a brief moment.
Branches cracked, below. Martin's hand was on his ankle, but not moving, a faint tremor. Laurence did not try to look up, only held to the rock face and breathed, softly, softly; if they were lost, there was nothing to be done: one sweep of a dragon's foreleg would scrape them off the wall.
At last they resumed. Down again; and to the side, Laurence caught the gleam of translucent rock at the surface: a vein of quartz, perhaps, on which the venom might have pooled, unabsorbed.
Some time later, some ages later, a dragon flew by, going quickly through the night. It was well overhead: Laurence felt its passing only as wind and the sound of wings. His hands were numb with cold and raw. There were pockets of grass beneath his seeking fingers; in a few more steps a slope, scarcely less than vertical; then a tree-root beneath his heel, and they were nearly down: their feet were in dirt, and the bushes were catching at them. Martin tapped his ankle, and they turned and slithered down on their rumps, until they could stand up to put back on their boots. The water could be heard somewhere below, rushing; the jungle a tangle of palm leaves and tough-skinned vines hanging across their path. A clean, damp smell of moving water, fresh earth, and dew trembling and thick upon the leaves; their shirts were soon wet through and chill against their skin. A different world entirely than the dusty brown and ochre of the cliffs above.
They had all agreed none should wait for long, but go on ahead in small parties, hoping if they were discovered at this stage, at least some might yet escape. Winston, one of his harness-men, was waiting a little way on, squatting and rising to stretch out his legs; also young Allen, nervous and gnawing on the side of his thumb, and his fellow ensign Harley. The five of them went on together, following the course of the cliff wall: the earth was soft, and the vegetation full of juice, compliant; easier by far to work through than the dry underbrush, if the vines reached up to trip them from time to time. Allen stumbling almost continuously, his latest growth making him gangly and awkward, all long coltish limbs. They could not avoid some degree of noise; they could not cut their way through, but from time to time were forced to haul upon the vines to make enough slack to get through them, with corresponding groans of protest from the branches on which they hung.
"Oh," Harley breathed out very softly, frozen; they looked, and eyes looked back: cat-pupiled, bright green. They regarded the leopard; it regarded them; no one moved. Then it turned its head and melted away, solitary and unconcerned.
They went on a little faster, still following the channel of the gorge, until at last the jungle thinned out and dredged up to a point where the river's course had divided, and two channels followed separate paths: and he could see through the last stretch of jungle Lily and Temeraire waiting there anxiously, astride the narrow banks, and squabbling a little.
"But what if you had missed?" Temeraire was muttering, a little disconsolate and critical, while he stretched his neck to try and peer into the jungle. "You might have hit the cave-mouth, or some of our crew."
Lily mantled at this suggestion, her eyes very orange. "I hope I do not need to be near-by to hit a wall," she replied quellingly, and then leaned eagerly forward, as Harcourt came stumbling down the wet slope towards her. "Catherine, Catherine; oh, are you well? Is the egg all right?"
"Hang the egg," Catherine said, putting her head against Lily's muzzle. "No, there, dearest; it has only been a nuisance, but I am so very glad to see you. How clever you were!"
"Yes," Lily said complacently, "and indeed it was much easier than I thought it would be; there was no-one about to pay any mind, except that fellow on the hill, and he was asleep."
Temeraire nuzzled Laurence gratefully, too, all his quibbling silenced: he still wore the thick iron collar, much to his disgust, and a few clubbed lengths of cable dangling off it, blackened and brittle at the ends where Lily's acid had weakened the metal enough for the two of them to break it. "But we cannot leave without Mrs. Erasmus," Laurence said to him, low; but Dulcia was landing among them, and Mrs. Erasmus was clutching to the harness on her back.
They fled cautiously but quickly homeward, the rich husbanded countryside providing: Temeraire savage and quick, cutting out elephants from a herd, while the smaller herd-dragons yelled angry imprecations but did not dare give pursuit when he had roared them down; Lily doubling back sharp on herself, when a heavy-weight roused up in a village on their course and bellowed challenge, to spit with unerring precision at a branch of the great sprawling bao-bab tree beside him. Her acid sent it crashing down upon his shoulders: he jumped and thought better of giving chase; looking back he might be seen gingerly nosing the thick branch, large as an entire tree, away from the clearing.
The aviators wove grasses into makeshift cords, to tie themselves on with, and pinned their limbs under straps of harness so that whenever they paused for water, they all went down in staggering heaps, pounding on their thighs to drown out the prickling of returning blood. The desert they flew across almost without a pause, pale rock and yellow dust, the curious heads of small animals popping up from holes in the ground in hopes of rain as the dragon-shadows passed by like racing clouds. Temeraire had taken all of Dulcia's crew but Chenery himself; and also some of Lily's; the three of them made all the haste which could be imagined, and they broke over the mountains into the narrow coastal province of the settlements in the hour before dawn on the sixth day of flight, and saw the tongues of flame, where the cannon at the Cape were speaking.
Narrow pillars of smoke were lying back against the face of Table Mountain as they came across the bay driving into the city, drifting before a hard wind blowing into the bay, and fires all through the city: ships beating desperately out of the harbor into the wind, close-hauled as they could go. The cannon of the castle were speaking without cease, thunder-roll of broadsides from the Allegiance in the harbor also, her deck swathed deeply in grey powder-gusts spilling down her sides and rolling away on the water.
Maximus was fighting in mid-air, above the ship: his sides still gaunt, but the enemy dragons gave him still a wide and respectful berth, and fled from his charges; Messoria and Immortalis flanked him, and Nitidus was darting beneath their cover to harry the enemy in their retreat. So far they had preserved the ship, but the position was untenable; they were only trying to hold long enough to carry away those who could be saved: the harbor full of boats, crammed and wallowing boats, trying to get to her shelter.
Berkley signaled, from Maximus's back, as they came on: holding well, retrieve company; so they flashed on past and towards the shore, where the castle lay under full siege: a vast body of spearmen, crouched beneath great shields of oxhide and iron. Many of their fellows lay dead in the fields just before the walls, cut dreadfully apart by canister shot, and musketry; other corpses floated in the moat. They had failed to carry the walls by climbing, but the survivors had withdrawn past the substantial rubble that had been made of the nearby houses by the cannon-fire, and now sheltered there from the guns, waiting with terrible patience for a breach in the walls.
Another corpse lay dreadfully stretched, upon the parade grounds: a yellow-and-brown dragon, its eyes cloudy and its body half-burst upon the ground by impact, a gaping hole torn into its side by the round-shot which had brought it down; scraps of bloody hide stood on the grass even a hundred yards distant. Some thirty dragons more were in the air, now making their passes from very high, dropping not bombs but sacks of narrow iron blades, flat and triangular and sharpened along every edge, which drove even into stone: as Temeraire dropped into the courtyard, Laurence could see them bristling from the earth as if it had been sowed with teeth; there were many dead soldiers upon the heights.
King Mokhachane was standing on the lower slopes of Table Mountain clear of cannon-shot, observing grimly, and occasionally mantling her wings in yearning when one of the men or dragons were struck; of course she was a dragon of no great age, and all instinct would have driven her to the battlefield. There were men hovering around her flanks, and others running back and forth to the company gathered before the fortress walls, with orders. Laurence could not see if the prince was by her side.
The city itself had been left untouched: the castle alone bore the attack, although the streets had nevertheless been deserted. Some large boulders lay also strewn in the corners, bloodstained, and others trailing behind them a line of smashed bricks, red under their yellow paint. The soldiers were mostly on the walls, sweating as they worked the guns, and a great crowd of settlers, men and women and children together, huddled in the shelter of the barracks waiting for the boats to return.
Mrs. Erasmus sprang almost at once from Temeraire's back when they had landed, scarcely a hand to the harness; General Grey, hurrying to greet them, looked with astonishment as she went past him without a word.
"She has gone for her children," Laurence said, sliding down himself. "Sir, we must bring you off, at once; the Allegiance cannot hold the harbor long."
"But who the devil is she?" Grey said, and Laurence realized she must have been quite unrecognizable to him, still in her native dress. "And damn the bloody savages, yes; we cannot hit a one of those beasts, as high as they are keeping, even with pepper-shot; they will have the walls down soon if the place does not catch, first. This has not been built to hold against three companies of dragons. Where have they all come from?"
He was already turning, giving orders, his aides running to organize the withdrawal: an orderly, formal retreat, the men spiking their own guns before abandoning them, only a few gun-crews at a time, and hurling into the moat the barrels of powder. Mr. Fellowes had already gone, with the ground crew, for the dragons' battle-gear: still where it had been stowed, fortunately, in the smithy. They came running with the belly-netting, and all the spare carabiner straps which they had. "The armor, sir, we can't manage, without he come and lift it himself," he said, panting, as they began in haste to rig Temeraire's belly-netting again, and Lily's; Dulcia had gone aloft again, her riflemen armed now with pepper-shot, to keep the enemy off their heads at least a little while.
"Leave it," Laurence said; this would be no prolonged struggle, but a quick dash for safety, and back again for more of the men; they needed speed more than the protection of the armor, when the enemy had no guns.
Temeraire crouched for the first group of soldiers to climb into the netting: the men stumbling, some pale and sweating with fear, driven by their officers, and others dazed with the noise and smoke. Laurence now bitterly regretted he had not asked Fellowes, back in England, to rig up some of the Chinese silk carrying-harnesses which would now have allowed them to take many more than the normally allotted number for retreat; thirty for a heavy-weight, when by weight Temeraire could have managed two hundred or more at a run.
They crammed some fifty men in, regardless, and hoped the netting would hold for the short flight. "We will - " Laurence began, meaning to say they would return; he was cut short by a shrieked warning from Dulcia, and Temeraire sprang aloft only in time: three of the enemy, using a netting made of the metal hawsers, had brought overhead an enormous boulder roughly the size of an elephant and let fly. It smashed the delicate cup of the bell-tower with a sour, ringing clang, and came down through the short passage of the entryway, brick and mortared stone crumbling everywhere, and the portcullis moaned and sagged open to the ground.
Temeraire sped to the Allegiance, to let the men down onto the dragondeck, and as quick hastened back to the shore. The spearmen were coming in through the rubble of the narrow passageway, charging with yells into the teeth of the musket-fire Grey had mustered, flooding by and up towards the guns. In parties they were encircling the emplacements yet manned and stabbing the gun-crews to death with quick, short, jerking motions, their spearheads wet and red with blood; one after another the cannon-roars silenced, and the dragons overhead began circling like ominous crows, waiting for the last to be stifled so they might descend.
Temeraire reared up onto the roof and knocked flat a dozen of the attackers with a swipe of his foreleg, snarling. "Temeraire, the guns," Laurence called. "Smash the guns they have taken - "
The attackers had seized now three cannon not yet spiked, and were trying to turn the first to bring it to bear on the courtyard, where they could fire at Temeraire and Lily. Temeraire simply put his forehand on the housing and thrust the cannon and the six men clinging onto it through the notched brick battlements; it plunged down and into the moat with a terrific splash, the men undaunted letting go and swimming up through the water.
Lily, landing behind them to take on more of the retreat, spat: the second cannon began to hiss and smoke, the barrel thumping to the ground as the wooden housing dissolved quicker than the metal, and went rolling free like a deadly ninepin, knocking men down and spreading the acid everywhere, so splatters hissed upon the brick and dirt.
The earth beneath them shook so violently Temeraire stumbled and dropped back to all four legs in the courtyard: another massive boulder had dropped, and smashed a section of the outer walls, at the far and undefended end of the courtyard. A fresh wave of men came surging through, quicker than Grey's men could turn to meet them, and charged those still defending the ruined entryway of the castle. The riflemen ranged across Temeraire's back set up a quick irregular fire into the onrushing mass; then the spearmen were in and grappling furiously with the soldiers and their bayonets, and a strange quiet descended. The guns were scarcely firing anymore, and only a scattering of occasional musket-and pistol-shot broke the soft grunting noise of panting, struggling men, the groans of the wounded and the dying.
All the yard was a great confusion; with no clear avenue of retreat or line of battle, men ran in all directions, now trying to evade, now trying to seek combat, crowded by frightened and bellowing livestock, horses and cows and sheep. These had been brought into the castle, against a siege expected to last longer, and penned in the smaller second courtyard: maddened by the noise of battle and the dragons wild overhead, they had got loose and now went careening indiscriminately through the grounds, a flock of hens crying around their feet, until they broke their legs or necks in flight, or found their way by chance outside the castle grounds.
In the crowd, Laurence caught sight to his surprise of Demane, clinging with grim desperation to the collar of the heifer he had been promised, which plunged and bellowed madly against his slight weight; she was dragging him out into the melee, while the calf tried to follow moaning. Sipho hung back in the archway which allowed communication between the two courtyards of the castle, gnawing upon his small bunched fist, his face wrenched with terror, and then with sudden decision dashed out after his brother, his hand reaching for the lead-rope which straggled out behind the cow.
A pair of soldiers were bayoneting one of the enemy to death savagely, as the cow went dragging by; one straightened and wiped blood across his mouth, panting, and shouted, "Fucking little thief, couldn't wait till we're cold - "
Demane saw, let go the cow and lunged; Sipho went down beneath his protective weight; the bayonet flashed down towards them. There was not even time to call out a protest: the tide of the battle drew the soldiers away in another moment, and left the two small bodies huddled on the ground, bloody. The cow stumbled away over the rubble, picking her way out of the courtyard through the open gap in the walls, the calf trotting after her.
"Mr. Martin," Laurence said, very low. Martin nodded, and tapped Harley on the shoulder; they let themselves down the harness and dashed out across the field. They carried the boys back to be lifted into the netting; Demane limp, Sipho weeping softly against Harley's shoulder, sticky with his brother's blood.
A handful of the spearmen had got in among the settlers congregated in the barracks, and a terrible confused slaughter was under way: the women and children were pushed aside, the attackers sometimes bodily setting them against the walls to put them out of the way, but with no compunction went on laying the men out at their feet, while the settlers fired their muskets and rifles wildly, striking friend and foe alike. The emptied boats were coming back for more passengers, but the sailors at the oars hesitated to pull in, despite the furious swearing of the coxs'n, his profanities carrying across the water.
"Mr. Ferris," Laurence shouted, "Mr. Riggs, clear them some space there, if you please," and himself slid down, to take charge of the loading of the retreating soldiers in Ferris's place. Someone handed him a pistol and a cartridge box, still sticky with the blood of the corpse from which they had come; Laurence slung it quickly over his shoulder, and tore open the paper cartridge with his teeth. He had the pistol loaded, and drew out his sword; a spearman came running at him, but he had no opportunity to shoot. Temeraire, catching sight of the threat, cried out his name and lunged to slash the man violently down, dislodging as he did so three of the wavering soldiers trying to get into his netting.
Laurence clenched his jaw, and permitted himself to be concealed behind the closed ranks of his ground crew; he handed the pistol forward to Mr. Fellowes, and instead went to speed aboard the now-desperate men, harried on all sides, into the stretching leather of the netting.
Lily, who could not take as many, had been loaded already; she lifted away and spat at the flood of men coming in through the ruined wall, filling the empty space with smoking, hideously twisted corpses. But she had to go towards the ship, and the survivors behind at once began to knock down more of the rubble from the walls to bury the remnants of acid.
"Sir," Ferris said, panting as he came back; his hand was tucked into his belt, and a gash brilliant cerise through his shirt, running the length of his arm, "we have embarked them all, I think; the settlers, I mean, those left."
They had cleared the courtyard, and Temeraire with more savage work had killed those manning the guns; although only a few gun-crews still labored, their irregular fire all that still kept off the dragons. The ship's boats were dashing away over the sea, the sailors pulling on the oars with frantic back-straining haste; the barracks were awash with blood, bodies of black men and white rising and lowering together in the pink-stained froth where the waves were coming in upon the strand.
"Get the general aboard," Laurence said, "and signal all retreat, if you please, Mr. Turner." Turning he offered Mrs. Erasmus his hand to climb aboard; Ferris had escorted her back, and her daughters in their pinafores, dirty and marked with soot, were clinging to her skirts.
"No, Captain, thank you," she said. He did not understand, at first, and wondered if she were injured; if she did not realize the boats had left. She shook her head. "Kefentse is coming. I told him that I would find my daughters, and wait for him here in the castle: that is why he let me go."
He stared, bewildered. "Ma'am," he said, "he cannot pursue us, not long, not from shore; if you fear his capturing you again - "
"No," she said again, simply. "We are staying. Do not be afraid for us," she added. "The men will not hurt us. It is dishonor to stain their spears with a woman's blood, and anyway I am sure Kefentse will be here soon."
The Allegiance was already weighing anchor, her guns roaring in fresh vigor to clear her skies to make sail. On the battlements, the last working gun-crews had abandoned their posts, and were running madly for escape: to Temeraire, to the last boats waiting.
"Laurence, we must go," Temeraire said, very low and resonant, his head craning from side to side: his ruff was stretched to its full extent, and even on the ground he was instinctively breathing in long, deep draughts, his chest expanding. "Lily cannot hold so many of them, all alone; I must go help her." She was all their shelter from the enemy beasts, who were cautious of her acid having seen its effects now at close range, but they would encircle her and have her down in a moment; or draw her too far aloft, so that some of their number could plunge down upon Temeraire while he remained vulnerable upon the ground.
More of the men had come pouring into the courtyard through the yielded ground; they were keeping beyond Temeraire's reach, but spreading out along the far wall in a half-circle. Individually they could do no great harm, but by rushing together with their spears might drive Temeraire aloft; and above Laurence could see some of the dragons skillfully maneuvering around Lily and into lower positions, ready to receive him onto their claws. There was no time to persuade her; in any case Laurence did not think, looking at her face, that she would be easily persuaded. "Ma'am," he said, "your husband - "
"My husband is dead," she said, with finality, "and my daughters will be raised proud children of the Tswana here, not as beggars in England."
He could not answer: she was a widow, and beholden to no one but herself; he had not the right to compel her. He looked at the children holding on to her, their faces gaunt and hollow, too exhausted by extremity even to be afraid any longer. "Sir, that's everyone," Ferris said at his shoulder, looking anxiously between them.
She nodded her farewell to Laurence's silence, and then bending lifted up the little girl onto her hip; with a hand on the older girl's shoulder, she guided them towards the shelter of the raised covered porch of the governor's residence, oddly decorous where it rose out of the bloody wreckage of the battle scattered all around it, and picked her way over the corpses sprawled upon the curving steps.
Laurence said, "Very well," and turning pulled himself aboard; there was no more time. Temeraire reared up onto his haunches, and roaring sprang aloft: the dragons scattered in alarm before the divine wind, the nearest crying out shrilly in pain as they fell away, and Lily and Dulcia fell in with him as together they bent away towards the Allegiance, a broad spread of sail white against the ocean, already carrying out of the harbor into the Atlantic.
In the courtyard, the dragons began to land in the ruins to pillage among the cattle running free; Mrs. Erasmus was standing straight-backed at the top of the steps, the little girl clasped in her arms, their faces turned up, and Kefentse was arrowing already across the water towards them, calling loud in a joyful voice.