he did he staggered, surprised, and blood came out of his nose. He fell forward into Laurence’s arms, senseless: young Digby was standing rather wobblingly behind him, holding the round-shot on the measuring cord; he had crept along from his lookout’s post on Temeraire’s shoulder, and struck the Frenchman on the head.
‘Well done,’ Laurence said, after he had worked out what had happened; the boy flushed up proudly. ‘Mr. Martin, heave this fellow below to the infirmary, will you?’ Laurence handed the Frenchman’s limp form over. ‘He fought quite like a lion.’
‘Very good, sir.’ Martin’s mouth kept moving, he was saying something more, but a roar from above was drowning out his voice: it was the last thing Laurence heard.
The low and dangerous rumble of Temeraire’s growl, just above him, penetrated the smothering unconsciousness. Laurence tried to move, to look around him, but the light stabbed painfully at his eyes, and his leg did not want to answer at all; groping blindly down along his thigh, he found it entangled with the leather straps of his harness, and felt a wet trickle of blood where one of the buckles had torn through his breeches and into his skin.
He thought for a moment perhaps they had been captured; but the voices he heard were English, and then he recognized Barham, shouting, and Granby saying fiercely, ‘No, sir, no farther, not one damned step. Temeraire, if those men make ready, you may knock them down.’
Laurence struggled to sit up, and then suddenly there were anxious hands supporting him. ‘Steady, sir, are you all right?’ It was young Digby, pressing a dripping waterbag into his hands. Laurence wetted his lips, but he did not dare to swallow; his stomach was roiling. ‘Help me stand,’ he said, hoarsely, trying to squint his eyes open a little.
‘No, sir, you mustn’t,’ Digby whispered urgently. ‘You have had a nasty knock on the head, and those fellows, they have come to arrest you. Granby said we had to keep you out of sight and wait for the admiral.’
He was lying behind the protective curl of Temeraire’s foreleg, with the hard-packed dirt of the clearing underneath him; Digby and Allen, the forward lookouts, were crouched down on either side of him. Small rivulets of dark blood were running down Temeraire’s leg to stain the ground black, not far away. ‘He is wounded,’ Laurence said sharply, trying to get up again.
‘Mr. Keynes is gone for bandages, sir; a Pêcheur hit us across the shoulders, but it is only a few scratches,’ Digby said, holding him back; which attempt was successful, because Laurence could not make his wrenched leg even bend, much less carry any weight. ‘You are not to get up, sir, Baylesworth is getting a stretcher.’
‘Enough of this, help me rise,’ Laurence said, sharply; Lenton could not possibly come quickly, so soon after a battle, and he did not mean to lie about letting matters get worse. He made Digby and Allen help him rise and limp out from the concealment, the two ensigns struggling under his weight.
Barham was there with a dozen Marines, these not the inexperienced boys of his escort in London but hard-bitten soldiers, older men, and they had brought with them a pepper gun: only a small, short-barrelled one, but at this range they hardly needed better. Barham was almost purple in the face, quarrelling with Granby at the side of the clearing; when he caught sight of Laurence his eyes went narrow. ‘There you are; did you think you could hide here, like a coward? Stand down that animal, at once; Sergeant, go there and take him.’
‘You are not to come anywhere near Laurence, at all,’ Temeraire snarled at the soldiers, before Laurence could make any reply, and raised one deadly clawed foreleg, ready to strike. The blood streaking his shoulders and neck made him look truly savage, and his great ruff was standing up stiffly around his head.
The men flinched a little, but the sergeant said, stolidly, ‘Run out that gun, Corporal,’ and gestured to the rest of them to raise up their muskets.
In alarm, Laurence called out to him hoarsely, ‘Temeraire, stop; for God’s sake settle,’ but it was useless; Temeraire was in a red-eyed rage, and did not take any notice. Even if the musketry did not cause him serious injury, the pepper gun would surely blind and madden him even further, and he could easily be driven into a truly uncontrolled frenzy, terrible both to himself and to others.
The trees to the west of them shook suddenly, and abruptly Maximus’s enormous head and shoulders came rising up out of the growth; he flung his head back yawning tremendously, exposing rows of serrated teeth, and shook himself all over. ‘Is the battle not over? What is all the noise?’
‘You there!’ Barham shouted at the big Regal Copper, pointing at Temeraire. ‘Hold down that dragon!’
Like all Regal Coppers, Maximus was badly farsighted; to see into the clearing, he was forced to rear up onto his haunches to gain enough distance. He was twice Temeraire’s size by weight and twenty feet more in length now; his wings, half-outspread for balance, threw a long shadow ahead of him, and with the sun behind him they glowed redly, veins standing out in the translucent skin.
Looming over them all, he drew his head back on his neck and peered into the clearing. ‘Why do you need to be held down?’ he asked Temeraire, interestedly.
‘I do not need to be held down!’ Temeraire said, almost spitting in his anger, ruff quivering; the blood was running more freely down his shoulders. ‘Those men want to take Laurence from me, and put him in prison, and execute him, and I will not let them, ever, and I do not care if Laurence tells me not to squash you,’ he added, fiercely, to Lord Barham.
‘Good God,’ Laurence said, low and appalled; it had not occurred to him the real nature of Temeraire’s fear. But the only time Temeraire had ever seen an arrest, the man taken had been a traitor, executed shortly thereafter before the eyes of the man’s own dragon. The experience had left Temeraire and all the young dragons of the covert crushed with sympathetic misery for days; it was no wonder if he was panicked now.
Granby took advantage of the unwitting distraction Maximus had provided, and made a quick, impulsive gesture to the other officers of Temeraire’s crew: Ferris and Evans jumped to follow him, Riggs and his riflemen scrambling after, and in a moment they were all ranged defensively in front of Temeraire, raising pistols and rifles. It was all bravado, their guns spent from the battle, but that did not in any way reduce the significance. Laurence shut his eyes in dismay. Granby and all his men had just flung themselves into the stew-pot with him, by such direct disobedience; indeed there was increasingly every justification to call this a mutiny.
The muskets facing them did not waver, though; the Marines were still hurrying to finish loading the gun, tamping down one of the big round pepper-balls with a small wad. ‘Make ready!’ the corporal said. Laurence could not think what to do; if he ordered Temeraire to knock down the gun, they would be attacking fellow soldiers, men only doing their duty: unforgivable, even to his own mind, and only a little less unthinkable than standing by while they injured Temeraire, or his own men.
‘What the devil do you all mean here?’ Keynes, the dragon-surgeon assigned to Temeraire’s care, had just come back into the clearing, two staggering assistants behind him laden down with fresh white bandages and thin silk thread for stitching. He shoved his way through the startled Marines, his well-salted hair and blood-spattered coat giving him a badge of authority they did not choose to defy, and snatched the slow-match out of the hands of the man standing by the pepper gun.
He flung it to the ground and stamped it out, and glared all around, sparing neither Barham and the Marines nor Granby and his men, impartially furious. ‘He is fresh from the field; have you all taken leave of your senses? You cannot be stirring up dragons like this after a battle; in half a minute we will have the rest of the covert looking in, and
