‘Laurence read it to me,’ Temeraire said. ‘Where did you learn any of it, if not out of books?’
‘I worked it out myself,’ the dragon said. ‘There is nothing much else to do, here.’
Her name was Perscitia. She was an experimental crossbreed from a Malachite Reaper and a lightweight Pascal's Blue, who had come out rather larger, slower, and more nervous than the breeders had hoped for. Nor was her colouring ideal for any sort of camouflage. Her body and wings were bright blue and streaked with shades of pale green, with widely scattered spines along her back. Perscitia was not very old, either, unlike most of the once-harnessed dragons in the breeding grounds. She had given up her captain. ‘Well,’ Perscitia said, ‘I did not mind him. He showed me how to do equations, but I do not see any use in going to war and getting oneself shot at or clawed up, for no good reason. And, when I would not fight, he did not much want me anymore,’ a statement airily delivered, but Perscitia avoided Temeraire's eyes, making it.
‘Well, if you mean formation fighting, I do not blame you; it is very tiresome, Temeraire said. 'They do not approve of me in China,’ he added, to be sympathetic, ‘because I do fight. Celestials are not supposed to.’
‘China must be a very fine place,’ Perscitia said, wistfully, and Temeraire was by no means inclined to disagree. Sadly he thought, that if only Laurence had been willing, they might now be together in Peking, strolling in the gardens of the Summer Palace again. He had not had the chance to see it during autumn.
And then he paused, raised his head and said, ‘You made inquiries? What do you mean by that? You cannot have gone out?’
‘Of course not,’ Perscitia said. ‘I gave Moncey half my dinner, and he went to Brecon for me and put the question out on the courier circuit. This morning he went again, and received word that no one had ever heard of those names.’
‘Oh—’ Temeraire said, his ruff rising, ‘Pray; who is Moncey? I will give him anything he likes, if he can find out where Laurence is. He may have all my dinner, for a week.’
Moncey was a Winchester, who had slipped the leash at his hatching and eeled right out of the barn door, straight past a candidate he did not care for; and so made his escape from the Corps. Being a gregarious creature, he had been coaxed eventually into the breeding grounds more by the promise of company than anything else. Small and dark purple, he looked like any other Winchester at a distance, and excited no comment if seen abroad, or was absent from the daily feeding. As long as his missed meals were properly compensated for, he was very willing to oblige.
‘Hm, how about you give me one of those cows, the nice fat sort they save for you special, when you are mating,’ Moncey said. ‘I would like to give Laculla a proper treat,’ he added, exultingly.
‘Highway robbery,’ Perscitia said indignantly, but Temeraire did not care at all; he was learning to hate the taste of the cows, particularly when it meant yet another miserably awkward evening session, and he nodded on the bargain.
‘But no promises, mind,’ Moncey cautioned. ‘I'll put it about, have no fear, but it'll take many a week to hear back if you want it sorted out proper to all the coverts, and to Ireland, and even so maybe no-one will have heard anything.’
‘There is sure to have been word,’ Temeraire said quietly, ‘if he is dead.’
* * *
The ball came in down through the ship's bow and crashed recklessly the length of the lower deck, the drum-roll of its passage heralding its progression with castanets of splinters raining against the walls for accompaniment. The young Marine guarding the brig had been trembling since the call to go to quarters had sounded above; a mingling, Laurence thought, of anxiety, the desire to be doing something and the frustration at being kept at so miserable a post. A sentiment he shared from his still more miserable place within the cell. The ball seemed to be roll at a leisurely pace as it approached the brig. The Marine put out his foot to stop it before Laurence could protest.
He had seen the same impulse have much the same result during other battles. The ball took off the better part of the young man's foot and continued unperturbed into and through the metal grating, skewing the door off its top hinge before finally embedding itself, two inches deep into the solid oak wall of the ship. Laurence pushed the swinging door open and climbed out of the brig, taking off his neckcloth to tie up the Marine's foot. The young man was staring mutely at his bloody stump, and needed a little coaxing to limp along to the orlop. ‘As clean a shot as I have ever seen,’ Laurence said, encouragingly, and left him there for the surgeons. The steady roar of cannon-fire was going on overhead.
He climbed the stern ladder-way and plunged into the roaring confusion of the gun-deck. Daylight shining through jagged gaping holes in the ship's east-pointed bows, made a glittering cloud of the smoke and dust kicked up from the cannon. Roaring Martha had jumped her tackling, and five men were fighting to hold her long enough against the roll of the ship to get her secure again. At any moment, the gun might go running wild across the deck, crushing men and perhaps smashing through the side. ‘There girl, hold fast, hold fast—’ The captain of the gun-crew spoke to the canon as if she were a skittish horse, his hands flinching away from the smoking-hot barrel. One side of his face was bristling with splinters standing out like hedgehog spines.
No one knew Laurence in the smoky red light, he was only another pair of hands. His flight gloves were still in his coat pocket. Wearing them, he clapped on to the metal and pushed her by the mouth of the barrel, his palms stinging even through the thick leather, and with a final thump she heaved over into the channel again. The men tied her down and stood around trembling like well-run horses, panting and sweating.
There was no return fire, no calls passed along from the quarterdeck, no ship in view through the gun port. The ship was griping furiously where he put his hand on the side, a sort of low moaning complaint as if she were trying to go too close to the wind. Water glubbed in a curious way against her sides, a sound wholly unfamiliar, and he knew this ship. He had served on Goliath four years in her midshipman's mess as a boy, as lieutenant for another two and at the Battle of the Nile; he would have said he could recognise every note of her voice.
He put his head out of the porthole and saw the enemy crossing their bows and turning to come about for another pass She was only a frigate: a beautiful trim thirty-six gun ship which could have thrown not half of Goliath's broadside; an absurd combat on the face of it, and he could not understand why they had not turned to rake her across the stern. There was only a little grumbling from the bow-chasers above, not much of a reply to be making, though there was a great deal shouting.
Looking forward along the ship, he saw that she had been pierced by an enormous harpoon through her side, as if she was a whale. The end inside the ship had several curved barbs, which had been jerked back to bite into the wood. And when Laurence put his head out of the port-hole, he caught sight of the cable at the harpoon's other end swinging grandly up and up, into the air, where two enormous heavyweight dragons were holding on to it: a Grand Chevalier, and a Parnassian, middle-aged, likely traded to France during an earlier peacetime, and a Grand Chevalier.
It was not the only harpoon: three more cable-lines dangled from their grip to the bow, and Laurence could see another two stretched from the stern. The dragons were too far aloft for him to note all of the details, with the ship's motion underneath him, but the cables were somehow laced into their harnesses. By flying together and pulling, they were pivoting the ship's head into the wind. The dragons were too far aloft for round-shot to reach them. One of them sneezed, from the action of the frantic pepper guns, but they had only to beat their wings to get away from the pepper, hauling the ship merrily along while they did it.
‘Axes,
