suggestions of a covert approach.
“We will not avert suspicion by creeping past their coast stealthily and falling upon their water or taking their game without invitation,” Laurence said. “And both we must have imminently; I must think it better to ask first, and hope we are met hospitably.”
“As much as one can call it asking, when we appear with three dragons in tow,” Hammond said, dismally.
But there was no alternative. The pirates’ map had not led them astray, but many of the islands marked upon it had scarcely deserved the name, and certainly could offer no safe harbor. The two weeks of their journey leaping from one to another, with only a few string bags of cocoanuts and salt pork for refreshment, had not left them in a condition to recommend themselves as guests, even while increasing their urgency to do so. Unshaven faces dirty and sunken-cheeked, ragged clothing and cracked boots: they looked very beggars, and were suitably perishing of hunger and thirst to match that state.
“I do not mean to steal anything, and I will just say a word in Kulingile’s ear, and Iskierka’s, so they shan’t, either,” Temeraire said. “But those sheep do look so very nice and fat: surely they can spare us one or two; or three, even. We might put that wall back up for them, that has fallen into the ocean, if they liked to be repaid; or perhaps if we should begin by doing it, they would feel grateful and inclined to be courteous.”
Laurence examined the damage from aloft: a retaining wall around the grounds of the great stone structure, a low pyramid of broad stepped levels, and a portion of it had tumbled over as a single block now lying in the surf being battened on by the waves. “Where? Oh; yes, I see it—no, that is a house—” Hammond said, peering through the glass futilely, until he surrendered it again to Laurence. “It cannot but help to have some way to reconcile them to our arrival, I suppose—”
They signaled Iskierka and Kulingile on to a landing place a little south of the village, to avoid coming upon them in force, and Temeraire flew on. “Can you land on their beach, without disturbing those boats?” Laurence asked Temeraire, as they drew near: these were a handful of small craft drawn far up on the sand; Laurence wondered if perhaps a greater part of the village’s fleet might already be out to sea.
“That would be a piece of good luck,” Temeraire said, “if it means fewer men about whom we must persuade we are friendly, and not like those conquistadors; I will set down very carefully.” He did manage to alight without causing harm to anything more than one large raft, which lying at an angle caught the draught of his wings and was lifted halfway into the water: but Temeraire hastily snagged it with one talon and drew it back up the sand without worse than a few gouges in the wood.
But no-one at all came down to the sand to greet them, nor even issued cries of alarm; at least none that could be heard over the sailors calling up, asking to be let loose from the nets. “Quiet there: I would as soon set loose a pack of wolves, before we have been made welcome,” Laurence said. “If there is any man among you who is not afraid to come with us to make our introductions, he may come out: the rest of you must wait.”
He untied the rope from Temeraire’s breastplate and threw it out over the side; with one hand for the rope and another for Hammond’s elbow, he climbed down.
“I’ll go, sir,” Baggy called out, in his wavering half-broken voice; Laurence took out Mayhew as well, ignoring that fellow’s faint dissatisfied murmur, which did not quite reach a volume requiring acknowledgment: Laurence was determined to promote him, if he could, and regardless if Mayhew did not like it; a few more men volunteered themselves from curiosity, or a desire to stretch their legs.
“I do not see that I ought to only sit here while you go,” Temeraire said, disconsolate. “After all, I speak more Quechua than do you, or anyone but Hammond; and my accent is better than Hammond’s, too. Oh; with no offense meant.”
As Temeraire was larger than any of the village houses, save the one ceremonial building on the hill, and the street would not have allowed his passage, Laurence could not endorse his attempting to come with them. “They can hardly miss seeing you from the village in any case,” he said, “and your presence here must induce them to caution: I do not think we can be walking into danger.”
“There is something wrong with my accent?” Hammond said, under his breath, as they left.
They scarcely seemed to be walking into any human habitation at all: they climbed the low sandy hill into the village, with Temeraire looming behind them on the shore, and came to the first houses without any sign of life. “Halloa,” Laurence called, without answer, except one fat waddling creature which looked a cross between a lap- dog and a rat, which put its nose out of doors and came towards them with every overture of friendliness.
“A guinea pig, I believe,” Hammond said, picking the animal up: it offered no resistance but snuffled at him curiously.
“Looks like good eating, that,” Baggy said, making the creature the recipient of ever-as-longing a look as Temeraire had cast upon the sheep. “Which is to say, if they was to offer us some, I wouldn’t say no,” he added hastily.
“Can they all have decamped so quickly, without our seeing them?” Hammond said. “Perhaps we were seen on our approach—our lanterns?”
“No,” Laurence said: there was no smoke of cooking-fires, and weeds grew thick in the street. “There is no- one here.”
“I can scarcely credit that so prosperous a settlement should have been abandoned,” Hammond protested. “Their herds—the boats on the shore—”
Laurence stepped to the doorway of the hut where the guinea pig had come, and looked inside: a few low pallets on the floor, empty, covered with blankets; some clay pots for cookery; a jug smelling pungently of liquor, when he bent over it. All the gently disordered air of a house lived-in, or only temporarily abandoned. Outside, on a wooden rack, ears of maize tied together by the papery husks were drying in the sun; picked at by birds, but far from stripped-clean.
They climbed up the road to the stepped pyramid: the earth around it had been turned a great deal on both sides of the pathway, and the mounds of dirt not covered over or laid smooth; only a few weeds had sprung up on most. The opening of the pyramid was a black empty mouth, waiting; Laurence stepped just inside, out of the sunlight, and waited for his eyes to adjust to the dark.
And then stepped back, quickly, putting his cloak over his mouth. “Back to the shore,” he said. “Put that animal down, Hammond; back to Temeraire, at once, and do not step off the path, or go into the houses.”
“What?” Hammond said, even as the sailors began to back away. “What is it, Captain?”
“Plague,” Laurence said. “Plague; and all of them are dead.”
Temeraire was sorry for the people, of course, but as after all they had no more use for the sheep—which were not sheep, but another animal entirely, larger, with a long neck and meat not unlike venison, which Hammond called a llama—he did not scruple to enjoy them tremendously. Fish was very well and good, but one grew tired of it unendingly, especially when there was no chance of preparing it differently, either, and the sea-lions they had taken on that last island but one were not really a sufficient change.
“You might try stewing a few of them for tomorrow,” he said to Gong Su, gnawing clean a final bone, “and I would not mind some of that maize, either, did you call it, Mr. Hammond? It has a pleasant smell,” emanating from the fire where a great many ears were presently being roasted for the men to eat along with a round dozen of the guinea pigs.
There were also potatoes—very peculiar in color, a lurid purple—which had come out of a great storehouse at the edge of the town. There were many other things in it also besides food: woven blankets, sandals, even several bronze tools whose purpose they could not make out: a long wooden handle with a blade set into it at the end, but it did not seem to be a weapon. “Something to do with farming, I suppose,” Granby said, turning it over in his hands.
The bulk of the stores however were fish: dried fish, salted fish, fish, fish, fish. And there were not very many of the llamas at all left, when one considered them with an eye towards extended supply. “We had better start looking for some other town,” Iskierka said, when they had done eating and looked over the remaining herd. “Those will not last for long, and I am d—d if I will eat more fish.”
The men were very eager to be gone themselves, as soon as any other place could be found. “You had all three better go,” Granby said. “I make no odds of anyone coming to a plague-ridden town, and if there is anyone left to object to our making free of their goods, there cannot be so many of them, anyway; we will do perfectly well, and you should meet the local beasts in force if there are any.”
