more dragons had already lifted their heads up above the tree cover, trying to crane their heads over to see what was going on, making a great noise of cracking branches; the ground even trembled underfoot when the abashed Maximus dropped lower, back down to his haunches, in an attempt to make his curiosity less obvious. Barham uneasily looked around at the many inquisitive spectators: dragons ordinarily ate directly after a battle, and many of them had gore dripping from their jaws, bones cracking audibly as they chewed.
Keynes did not give him time to recover. ‘Out, out at once, the lot of you; I cannot be operating in the middle of this circus, and as for you,’ he snapped at Laurence, ‘lie down again at once; I gave orders you were to be taken straight to the surgeons. Christ only knows what you are doing to that leg, hopping about on it. Where is Baylesworth with that stretcher?’
Barham, wavering, was caught by this. ‘Laurence is damned well under arrest, and I have a mind to clap the rest of you mutinous dogs into irons also,’ he began, only to have Keynes wheel on him in turn.
‘You can arrest him in the morning, after that leg has been seen to, and his dragon. Of all the blackguardly, unchristian notions; storming in on wounded men and beasts—’ Keynes was literally shaking his fist in Barham’s face; an alarming prospect, thanks to the wickedly-hooked ten-inch tenaculum clenched in his fingers, and the moral force of his argument was very great: Barham stepped back, involuntarily. The Marines gratefully took it as a signal, beginning to drag the gun back out of the clearing with them, and Barham, baffled and deserted, was forced to give way.
The delay thus won lasted only a short while. The surgeons scratched their heads over Laurence’s leg; the bone was not broken, despite the breathtaking pain when they roughly palpated the limb, and there was no visible wound, save the great mottled bruises covering nearly every scrap of skin. His head ached fiercely also, but there was little they could do but offer him laudanum for the pain, which he refused, and order him to keep his weight off the leg: advice as practical as it was unnecessary, since he could not stand for any length of time without suffering a collapse.
Meanwhile, Temeraire’s own wounds, thankfully minor, were sewed up, and with much coaxing Laurence persuaded him to eat a little, despite his agitation. By morning, it was plain Temeraire was healing well, with no sign of wound-fever, and there was no excuse for further delay; a formal summons had come from Admiral Lenton, ordering Laurence to report to the covert headquarters. He had to be carried in an elbow chair, leaving behind him an uneasy and restive Temeraire. ‘If you do not come back by tomorrow morning, I will come and find you,’ he vowed, and would not be dissuaded.
Laurence could do little in honesty to reassure him: there was every likelihood he was to be arrested, if Lenton had not managed some miracle of persuasion, and after these multiple offences a court-martial might very well impose a death sentence. Ordinarily an aviator would not be hanged for anything less than outright treason. But Barham would surely have him up before a board of Navy officers, who would be far more severe, and consideration for preserving the dragon’s service would not enter into their deliberations: Temeraire was already lost to England, as a fighting-dragon, by the demands of the Chinese.
It was by no means an easy or a comfortable situation, and still worse was the knowledge that he had imperilled his men; Granby would have to answer for his defiance, and the other lieutenants also, Evans and Ferris and Riggs; any or all of them might be dismissed the service: a terrible fate for an aviator, raised in the ranks from early childhood. Even those midwingmen who never passed for lieutenant were not usually sent away; some work would be found for them, in the breeding grounds or in the coverts, that they might remain in the society of their fellows.
Though his leg had improved some little way overnight, Laurence was still pale and sweating even from the short walk he risked taking up the front stairs of the building. The pain was increasing sharply, dizzying, and he was forced to stop and catch his breath before he went into the small office.
‘Good Heavens; I thought you had been let go by the surgeons. Sit down, Laurence, before you fall down; take this,’ Lenton said, ignoring Barham’s scowl of impatience, and put a glass of brandy into Laurence’s hand.
‘Thank you, sir; you are not mistaken, I have been released,’ Laurence said, and only sipped once for politeness’s sake; his head was already clouded badly enough.
‘That is enough; he is not here to be coddled,’ Barham said. ‘Never in my life have I seen such outrageous behaviour, and from an officer— By God, Laurence, I have never taken pleasure in a hanging, but on this occasion, I would call it good riddance. But Lenton swears to me your beast will become unmanageable; though how we should tell the difference I can hardly say.’
Lenton’s lips tightened at this disdainful tone; Laurence could only imagine the humiliating lengths to which he had been forced in order to impress this understanding on Barham. Though Lenton was an admiral, and fresh from another great victory, even that meant very little in any larger sphere; Barham could offend him with impunity, where any admiral in the Navy would have had political influence and friends enough to require more respectful handling.
‘You are to be dismissed the service, that is beyond question,’ Barham continued. ‘But the animal must be gotten off to China, and for that, I am sorry to say, we require your cooperation. Find some way to persuade him, and we will leave the matter there; any more of this recalcitrance, and I am damned if I will not hang you after all; yes, and have the animal shot, and be damned to those Chinamen also.’
This last very nearly brought Laurence out of his chair, despite his injury; only Lenton’s hand on his shoulder, pressing down firmly, held him in place. ‘Sir, you go too far,’ Lenton said. ‘We have never shot dragons in England for anything less than man-eating, and we are not going to start now; I would have a real mutiny on my hands.’
Barham scowled, and muttered something not quite intelligible under his breath about lack of discipline; which was a fine thing coming from a man who Laurence well knew had served during the great naval mutinies of ’97, when half the fleet had risen up. ‘Well, let us hope it does not come to any such thing. There is a transport in ordinary in harbour at Spithead, the Allegiance; she can be made ready for sea in a week. How then is the animal to be gotten aboard, since he is choosing to be balky?’
Laurence could not bring himself to answer; a week was a horribly short time, and for a moment he even wildly allowed himself to consider the prospect of flight. Temeraire could easily reach the Continent from Dover, and there were places in the forests of the German states where even now feral dragons lived; though only small breeds.
‘It will require some consideration,’ Lenton said. ‘I will not scruple to say, sir, that the whole affair has been mismanaged from the beginning. The dragon has been badly stirred-up, now, and it is no joke to coax a dragon to do something he does not like to begin with.’
‘Enough excuses, Lenton; quite enough,’ Barham began, and then a tapping came on the door; they all looked in surprise as a rather pale-looking midwingman opened the door and said, ‘Sir, sir—’ only to hastily clear out of the way: the Chinese soldiers looked as though they would have trampled straight over him, clearing a path for Prince Yongxing into the room.
They were all of them so startled they forgot at first to rise, and Laurence was still struggling to get up to his feet when Yongxing had already come into the room. The attendants hurried to pull a chair – Lord Barham’s chair – over for the prince; but Yongxing waved it aside, forcing the rest of them to keep on their feet. Lenton unobtrusively put a hand under Laurence’s arm, giving him a little support, but the room still tilted and spun around him, the blaze of Yongxing’s bright-coloured robes stabbing at his eyes.
‘I see this is the way
