struggled upon the ground until the other man managed to drag the edge of the canvas off their heads and heave them into the open air. It was Granby.
‘Oh, Lord,’ Granby said. Laurence turned and saw that half the tent had crumpled in on the heaving mass beneath. Those sober enough to have avoided the fighting were carrying out the lanterns from the other side. Others doused the collapsed canvas with water; smoke trickled out from beneath.
‘You'll do a damned sight better out of the way,’ Granby said, when Laurence would have gone to help, and drew him along one of the camp paths, narrow and stumbling-dark, towards the dragon clearings.
They walked in silence over the uneven ground. Laurence tried to slow his short, clenched breathing without success. He felt inexpressibly naïve. He had not even thought to fear such a possibility, until he heard it in the mouth of a drunkard. But when they did hang him, knowing it would lose them Temeraire's use,—what might those men do, those men who had meant to infect all the world's dragons with consumption and condemn them to an agonizing death. They would see Temeraire dead, rather than of use to anyone they were disposed to see as an enemy: France, or China, or any other nation. They would not scruple at any sort of treachery necessary to achieve his destruction. To them Temeraire was only an inconvenient animal.
‘I suppose,’ Granby said, abruptly, out of the dark, ‘that he insisted on it? Your carrying the stuff to France, I mean.’
‘He did,’ Laurence said, after a moment, but he did not mean to hide behind Temeraire's wings. ‘I am ashamed to say, he was forced to, but only at first. I would not have you believe I was taken against my will.’
‘No,’ Granby said, ‘no, I only meant, you shouldn't have thought of it at all, on your own.’
The observation felt true, and uncomfortably so, though Laurence supposed Granby had meant it as consolation. He felt a sharp sudden stab of loneliness. He wanted very badly to see Temeraire. Laurence had slept his last night beneath his sheltering wing nearly four months ago, in the northern mountains. Their treason committed, they had snatched a few hours of freedom before they made the fatal flight across the Channel. Since then there had been only a succession of prisons, more or less brutal, for them both. Temeraire had spent months alone, friendless and unhappy, in breeding grounds full of feral beasts and veterans, with no order or discipline to keep them from fighting.
They passed the clearings one by one, the millhouse rumble of sleeping dragons to either side, their dinners finished and their crews toiling on the harnesses by lantern-light, the faint clanking of hammers tapped away and the acrid smoky stink of harness oil carried on the breeze. They had a long walk out in the dark after the last clearing, up a steep slope to the crown of a hill overlooking all the camp, where Iskierka lay sleeping in a thick spiny coil, steam issuing with her every breath, and the feral dragons scattered around her.
She cracked an eye open as they came in and inquired drowsily, ‘Is it a battle time yet?’
‘No, love, back to sleep,’ Granby said, and she sighed and shut her eye. But she had drawn the attention of the men, they looked from Laurence to Granby, and then they looked back down again, saying nothing.
‘Perhaps I had best not stay,’ Laurence said. He knew some of the faces, men from his own crew, even some of his former officers. He was glad they had found places here.
‘Stuff,’ Granby said. ‘I am not so damned craven, and anyway,’ he added, more despondently, when he had led Laurence into his own tent, pitched in the comfortable current of heat which Iskierka gave off, ‘I cannot be much farther in the soup than I am already, after yesterday. She's spoilt, there is no other word for it. Wouldn't keep in formation, wouldn't obey signals, took the ferals with her—’ He shrugged, and taking a bottle from the floor poured them each a glass, which he drank with an unaccustomed enthusiasm.
‘It's not so bad, on patrol,’ Granby said, after wiping his mouth. ‘She doesn't need any coaxing to look out the enemy, and she'll take directions to make it easier. But in a fleet action—I don't mean she was useless,’ he added, with a defensive note. ‘They did for a first-rate and three frigates, and chased off a dozen French beasts. But she hasn't a shred of discipline. Pretended not to hear me, left the right wing of the Corps wide open, and two beasts badly hurt for it. I would be broken for it, if they could afford to give her up.’
He was pacing the small confines of his tent, still holding the empty glass, and talking swiftly, almost nervously. More to be saying something, to fill the air between them, than to impart these particular words. ‘This is the sort of thing that rots the Corps,’ he said. ‘I never thought I would be a bad officer, someone who ruins his dragon, the kind of fool, kept on only because his beast won't serve otherwise. The Army— the Navy—they sneer at us for that, as much as for anything else we do, but there at least they are right to sneer. So our admirals have to dance to the Navy's tune, and meanwhile the youngsters see it, too, and you can't ask them to be better, when they see a fellow let off anything, anything at all—’
He pulled himself up abruptly, realizing too late that his words were applicable to more of his audience than himself, and looked at Laurence miserably.
‘You are not wrong,’ Laurence said. He had assumed the same himself, in his Navy days. He had thought the Corps full of wild, devil-may-care libertines, who delighted in disregarding law and authority as far as they dared, barely kept in check. To be used for their control over the beasts, but not respected.
‘But if we have more liberty than we ought,’ Laurence said, after a moment, struggling through, ‘it is because our dragons haven't enough. They have no stake in victory other than our happiness. Any nation would give them their daily bread just to have peace and quiet. We are granted our license for as long as we do what we should not. So long as we use their affections to keep them obedient.’
‘How else do you make them care?’ Granby said. ‘If we did not, the French would run right over us, and take our eggs themselves.’
‘They care in China,’ Laurence said, ‘and in Africa. They care that their rational sense is not imposed on, nor their hearts put into opposition with their minds. If they cannot be woken to a natural affection for their country, such as we feel, it is our fault and not theirs.’
Laurence slept the night in Granby's tent, on top of a blanket. He would not take Granby's cot. It was odd to sleep warmly and wake in a sweat, then step out and see the camp below dusted overnight with snow, soiled grey tents for the moment clean white, and the ground already churning into muddy slush.
‘You are back,’ Iskierka said, looking at Laurence. She was wide awake, picking over the charred remnants of her breakfast, and watching the sluggish camp with a disgruntled eye. ‘Where is Temeraire? He has let you get into a wretched state,’ she added, with rather a smug air. Laurence could not argue, he was a pitiful sight indeed. He coat was ragged and his shoes were starting to open at the seams. The less said of his stockings the better. ‘Granby,’ she said, looking over his shoulder, ‘you may lend Laurence your fourth-best coat, and then you may tell Temeraire,’ she added to Laurence, ‘that I am very sorry he cannot give you nicer things.’
However, Granby was wearing his fourth-best coat, as the other three were wholly unsuitable for actual fighting. They were ostentatiously adorned with the fruits of Iskierka's determined prize-hunting. It would not in any case have been a very successful loan, as Laurence had some four inches in the shoulders, which Granby had instead in height. But Granby sent word out, and shortly a young runner returned carrying a folded coat, and a spare pair of boots.
‘Why, Sipho,’ Laurence said. ‘I am glad to find you well; and your brother, also, I hope?’ He had worried what might have become of the two boys, brought from Africa, who had helped them there. He had made them his own runners by way of providing for them, but had then found himself unable to be of further assistance.
‘Yes, sir,’ Sipho said in perfect English, though less than a year before the child had never heard a word of it. ‘He is with Arkady, and Captain Berkley says, you are welcome to these, and to come and say hello to Maximus would you, if you are not too damned stiff-necked.