London, if one cannot even fly for an hour. And Arkady does not give a fig for liberty, anyway; all he wants are cows. We may as well patrol; or even do formations.’
This was the mood in which they went aloft, a dozen of the ferals behind them more occupied in squabbling amongst themselves than in paying any attention to the sky; Temeraire was in no way inclined to make them mind, and with Tharkay gone, the few hapless officers set upon their backs had very little hope of exerting any form of control.
These young men had been chosen for their language skills. The ferals all far too old, in draconic terms, to acquire a new tongue easily, so their officers would have to learn theirs instead. To hear them trying to whistle and cluck the awkward syllables of the Durzagh language had quickly palled as entertainment and become a nuisance to the ear. But it had also to be endured; no one aside from Temeraire knew the tongue fluently, and only a few of Laurence’s younger officers had acquired a smattering in the course of their journey to Istanbul.
Laurence had indeed lost two of his already-diminished number of officers to the cause: both Dunne, one of the riflemen, and Wickley of the bellmen had a good enough grasp of Durzagh to translate basic signals, and were not so young as to make command absurd. They had been set aboard Arkady in a highly theoretical position of authority; the natural bond which the first harnessing seemed to produce was absent of course, and Arkady was far more likely to obey his own whimsical impulse than any orders which they might give. The feral leader had already expressed his opinion that flying over the ocean was absurd, he proclaimed it a useless territory for which no reasonable dragon would have interest, and the likelihood that he would veer away at any given moment in search of better entertainment seemed to Laurence precariously high.
Jane had set them a course along the coastline, for their first excursion. There was no risk at all of action, so near to land, but at least the cliffs interested the ferals. The bustle of shipping around Portsmouth had drawn their eye, and they would gladly have investigated further if not called to order by Temeraire. They flew on past Southampton and westward along towards Weymouth, setting a leisurely pace. The ferals resorted to wild acrobatics for entertainment; swooping to heights that should have rendered them dizzy and ill, save for their habituation among the loftiest mountains on the earth. They plummeted into absurd and dangerous diving manoeuvres, skimming the sea so closely that they threw up spray from the waves. It was a sad waste of energy, but the ferals now were well-fed by comparison to their previous state, and they had a surfeit which Laurence was glad enough to see spent in so unrestrained a manner, even if the officers clinging sickly to their harnesses did not agree.
‘Perhaps we might try a little fishing,’ Temeraire suggested, turning his head around, when little Gherni abruptly cried out above them, and then the world spun and whirled as Temeraire flung himself sidelong; a Pêcheur-Rayé went flying past them, and the champagne-popping of rifle-fire spat at them from his back.
‘To stations,’ Ferris was shouting, men scrambling wildly; the bellmen were casting off a handful of bombs down on the recovering French dragon below while Temeraire veered away, climbing. Arkady and the ferals were shrilly calling to one another, wheeling excitedly; they flung themselves with eagerness on the French dragons: a light scouting party of six, as best Laurence could make out among the low-lying clouds, the Pêcheur the largest of the lot and the rest all light-weights or couriers; both outnumbered and outweighed, therefore, and reckless to be coming so close to British shores.
Reckless, or deliberately venturesome; Laurence thought grimly it could not have escaped the notice of the French that their last encounter had brought no answer from the coverts.
‘Laurence, I am going after that Pêcheur; Arkady and the others will take the rest,’ Temeraire said, curving his head around even as he dived.
The ferals were not shy by any means, and gifted skirmishers, from all their play; Laurence thought it safe to leave the smaller dragons entirely to them. ‘Pray make no sustained attack,’ he called, through the speaking-trumpet. ‘Only roust them from the shore, as quickly as you may—’ as the hollow thump-thump of bombs, exploding below, interrupted.
Their own battle was not a long one; without the hope of surprise, the Pêcheur knew himself thoroughly overmatched, Temeraire a more agile flyer and in a wholly different class so far as weight. Having risked and lost a throw of the dice, he and his captain were evidently not inclined to try their luck again; Temeraire had scarcely stooped before the Pêcheur dropped low to the water and beat away quickly over the waves, his riflemen keeping up a steady fusillade to clear his retreat.
Laurence turned his attention above, to the furious howling of the ferals’ voices: they could scarcely be seen, having lured the French high aloft, where their greater ease with the thin air could tell to their advantage. ‘Where the devil is my glass?’ he said, and took it from Allen. The ferals were making a sort of taunting game of the business, darting in at the French dragons and away, setting up a raucous caterwauling as they went, without very much actual fighting to be seen. It would have done nicely to frighten away a rival gang in the wild, Laurence supposed, particularly one so outnumbered, but he did not think the French were to be so easily diverted; indeed as he watched, the five enemy dragons, all of them little Poux-de-Ciels, drew into close formation and promptly bowled through the cloud of ferals.
The ferals, still focused on their show of bravado, scattered too late to evade the rifle-fire, and now some of their shrill cries expressed real pain. Temeraire was beating furiously, his sides belling out like sails as he heaved for the breath to get himself as high, but he could not easily gain such altitude, and would be at a disadvantage to the smaller French beasts when he did. ‘Give them a gun, quickly, and show the signal for descent,’ Laurence shouted to Turner, without much hope; but the ferals came plummeting down in a rush when Turner put out the flags, none too reluctant to position themselves around Temeraire.
Arkady was keeping up a low, indignant clamouring under his breath, nudging anxiously at his second Wringe, the worst-hit, her dark grey hide marred with streaks of darker blood. She had taken several balls to the flesh and one unlucky hit to the right wing, which had struck her on the bias and scraped a long, ugly furrow across the tender webbing and two spines; she was listing in mid-air awkwardly as she tried to favour it.
‘Send her below to shore,’ Laurence said, scarcely needing the speaking-trumpet with the dragons crowded so close that they might have been talking in a clearing and not the open sky. ‘And pray tell them again, they must keep well-clear of the guns; I am sorry they have had so hot a lesson. Let us keep together and—’ but this came too late, as the French were advancing down in arrow-head formation, and the ferals followed his first instruction too closely on and had spread themselves out across the sky.
The French also at once separated; even together they were not a match for Temeraire, who they had surely recognized, and by way of protection engaged themselves closely with the ferals. It must have been an odd experience for them; Poux-de-Ciel were generally the lightest of the French combat breeds, and now they were finding themselves the relative heavy-weights in battle against the ferals, who even where their wingspan and length matched were all of them lean and concave-bellied creatures, a sharp contrast against the deep-chested muscle of their opponents.
The ferals were now more wary, but also more savage, hot with anger at the injury to their fellow and their own smaller stinging wounds. They used their darting lunges to better effect, learning quickly how to feint in and provoke the rifle volleys, then come in again for a real attack. The smallest of them, Gherni and little motley-coloured Lester, were attacking one Pou-de-Ciel together, with the more wily Hertaz pouncing in every now and again, claws blackened with blood; the others were engaged singly, and more than holding their own, but Laurence quickly perceived the danger, even as Temeraire called, ‘Arkady! Bnezh s’li taqom—’ and broke off to say, ‘Laurence, they are not listening to me.’
‘Yes,
