Crucible of Gold

He eventually sat back on his haunches, satisfied, and Magaya smoothed down her collar of feathers in equal pleasure; she called over her shoulder to the watching workmen, and several of them trooped away to the storehouses: returning momentarily with many more baskets, of clothing and the leather sandals worn locally, of dried maize, and even one smallish one full of salt.

Yardley was brought out of one of the huts, and slunk over with a sullen and guilty air. “Sure I am coming down sick, sir, with that plague as killed all those people,” he said, “so I thought I might as well stay here to die, and for them to give you goods for all the fellows—”

“That is enough, Mr. Yardley,” Laurence said, putting a halt to this flow of excuses. “You are very fortunate indeed that Mr. Ferris found you; do you imagine that you would be permitted to live a life of indolence once we had gone, and the beast no longer needed to keep you seduced to hold you by her? I see no idle hands on this farm.”

“Sure I don’t mind work,” Yardley said, outrageously, then added, “and she is the sweetest thing you ever saw, sir; as friendly as could be,” which amazed Laurence for a moment, looking at Magaya with her eleven tons and viciously serrated teeth, until he saw in the doorway of the hut a young woman standing and waving cheerful farewell, all unclothed save a blanket wrapped around her and under one bare shoulder.

He shook his head. “Temeraire,” he said, “will you find out from Magaya if that young woman has been made promises—if she expects marriage—”

“What do you mean?” Magaya said suspiciously. “You cannot have her!—or do you mean you will leave Yardley with us, after all?”

“No, no,” Temeraire said, “I mean—Laurence, what do I mean?” he asked doubtfully.

“If there is a child,” Laurence said, “there must be consideration for its care.”

“Of course we will take care of it,” Magaya said, when this was put to her. “The mother is in our ayllu, so the baby will be, too.”

“Yes, but,” Laurence began, “have her chances of marriage been materially harmed, by her—her congress, with—”

“Why would they be?” Magaya said.

“I am sure I do not know,” Temeraire said, and looked at Laurence inquiringly.

“As she is no longer virgin,” Laurence said in despair, forcing himself to bring it out. “And even if that dragon does not care either way, perhaps men will; pray inquire of the young lady, herself.”

“Very well, but it seems silly to me,” Temeraire said, and when he put the question to her the young woman blinked up at him and looked as perplexed as Magaya herself had. Laurence shook his head and gave up: the young woman plainly was neither friendless nor excessively sorry at the desertion; nor could he feel he was doing her any great disservice by taking Yardley away.

Of Handes, he saw nothing all the time, save perhaps a skulking half-crouched shadow the sun threw out from behind one of the storehouses, as though someone had hidden in the space between the wall and where the roof reached down nearly to the ground. Laurence looked irresolutely; he did not intend to make himself a prig, and he felt all the compulsion of their dire need and the mercy of leaving Handes behind, and yet there was everything to dislike in the principles of such an act, if not the practicals.

“I do not think there can be anything really wrong in it,” Temeraire said. “Magaya seems a decent sort now that she has come around to behaving better, and I am sure she will take excellent care of Handes: which is more than he deserves, anyway. Besides, Laurence,” he added, “you have just said yourself that the King’s subjects have the right to do as they wish, so long as it is consistent with their duty: Handes wishes to stay here, and it seems to me even if he did not wish to do so, one might consider it his duty to do so, since we will come by so many useful goods, in consequence.”

“It is no free man’s duty to allow himself to be sold into slavery, in a foreign land, no matter how good the price,” Laurence said.

“It is not exactly slavery, though,” Temeraire said. “You would not say that you were a slave, after all, only because you are mine.”

It was some time since Laurence had considered himself entitled to demand Temeraire’s obedience, which otherwise might have enabled him to explain the contradiction easily; and on the face of it, he realized in some dismay, the relations between captain and beast could with more rationality be given the character of possession by the latter, than the former.

“I dare say,” Granby said, when Laurence had laid this insight before him that evening, while all around them the camp bustled with activity, as the new harnesses were stitched together under Shipley’s busy and strutting supervision. “At least I am damned sure Iskierka would agree with you on the subject; pray don’t say it so loud. This wretched country cannot be a good influence: we may count ourselves lucky if Temeraire don’t go home thinking dragons ought to have men and not just votes.”

Chapter 10

HOME AND ENGLAND seemed very distant in the morning, when they came into the foothills of the great clawing peaks of the Andes, serrated and blue-shadowed where the long swaths of snow lay on their sides. The river divided into a hundred little tributaries trickling down the mountain-sides as they climbed, and by evening the dragons were landing in a high meadow gasping for breath. They had made scarcely ten miles if their progress were to be measured as a line drawn on a map, Laurence thought, and more than a hundred straight up.

He stumbled himself, climbing down from Temeraire’s back, and they were all of them short of breath and queerly sick with some miasma of the mountain air. A few of the men fell over heaving like bellows, and lay where they fell.

Laurence walked to the edge of the meadow where it ended in cliff to breathe deep of some cleaner air and pull it into his lungs, and found he was looking down at a series of terraced fields: man-made yet lying fallow; maize plants struggled with weeds and tall grasses for dominion, and even a few tools lay half-buried in the greenery, abandoned.

All the rest of that journey had the same quality, as though they walked through a stranger’s unattended house, neither host nor servants there to greet them. They saw once in a while dragons, some even laboring in the fields and others carrying loads of timber. Only once in the first few days did they see any human life: a couple of young girls sitting in a field with their arms wrapped around their knees, watching over a great herd of grazing llamas in a high valley.

They threw a swift startled glance up at the strange dragons and dived for cover into a nearby cave little more than a crevasse in the rock, too narrow for any dragon to reach into, and rang out a clanging bell for alarm. “Pray let us continue on,” Hammond shouted anxiously in Laurence’s ear, “as quickly as may be; there is nothing served by offering even the appearance of provocation—”

“We might have stayed and had some of those llamas, fresh,” Iskierka said, later that evening; instead they had come to ground in another abandoned field with a storehouse, and she was eating a porridge of dried maize flavored with the smoked llama meat which Gong Su had prepared.

“It is truly wonderful, the quantity of supply which this nation has provided along its roads,” Hammond said, inspecting the storehouse. “I believe we have seen not fewer than six to-day alone; do you agree with me, gentlemen?”

Gong Su also was interested in the construction of the storehouse, and when he saw Laurence looking, showed where his attention had been drawn to its design. “It must work excellently, for draining the rainfall: certainly this food has not been stored recently, but very little is spoilt.”

Easy, also, to build up great stores when so far as they could see there were few to consume them. There was something strange and sad in the dragons tilling the great fields, to raise crops which no-one would eat. The handful of beasts to which Temeraire spoke looked at the two hundred men and more aboard with eyes at once eager and resentful: and many offers were made him.

“There once were more men,” Taruca said, when Laurence questioned him. “Many more: my grandfather told me there were so many that only half the ayllu had even one dragon among their