Crucible of Gold

“I hardly hope so far,” Laurence said, tiredly. “At best, he may think on his danger from the Inca a little more, and seek out some truce; but he has a thousand slave-holders clamoring against any arrangement to which the Tswana would consent. And very likely he only thinks me a peculiar sort of lunatic.”

“Well, at least Hammond will have given them a better notion of you—or a worse notion, I should say,” Granby said, lowering his glass. “They haven’t a prayer against the Tswana without us, if they only have a short one with.”

“Granby!” Iskierka hissed up the slope at them, stones rattling away as she clawed partway up. “We must go at once: there are dragons coming towards our camp, from the south, at least five of them.”

“I oughtn’t have opened my mouth,” Granby said; Laurence gripped his arm at the elbow, over the thick straps which bound on the hook, and together they scrambled down into Iskierka’s reach to be put up onto her back. She leapt into the air with a mighty heave, and Laurence felt the rumble of her ceaseless inward workings beneath his legs like the grinding of a millstone as she drew up her flame, preparatory.

“Hi,” Granby said, thumping her in the shoulder with his fist, “that’s enough: those are our fellows, most likely, and you shan’t go flaming them only because they will make matters difficult. I don’t suppose their captains would love us for it,” he added over his shoulder, “but do you suppose Temeraire could talk the beasts round?”

“I think there is every likelihood of it,” Laurence said, as they closed in: Temeraire was on his haunches roaring out in greeting, and there was scarcely any mistaking the silhouettes of the approaching dragons: Lily’s wide-stretched wingspan, and the vast and impenetrable shadow which was Maximus’s bulk.

Chapter 17

MAXIMUS WAS BEING PERFECTLY UNREASONABLE about Kulingile, Temeraire was sorry to be forced to admit. Not that Temeraire did not understand his point of view, but after all, Kulingile had not chosen to grow so large; there was no sense in putting one’s back up. “And if I have grown used to it, after having been there when he hatched as quite the scrawniest thing imaginable, you cannot very well complain,” he added.

Maximus grumbled, deep in his belly, and said, “Oh, well, if he is a friend of yours,” and Kulingile rather uncertainly said, “Would any of you like some beef? Gong Su has just stewed a few of them—” which thawed him further.

“I am glad he is not mean, at any rate; not to be swallowed, if he were,” Maximus added to Temeraire, swallowing instead an entire cow. “And,” he added afterwards, cheered, “I rather think I have an edge on him in wingspan; I am almost sure of it.”

Temeraire was sure of no such thing, but prudently did not say so; everything went off reasonably and in the end they all settled into camp together with no outright quarreling. So there was really no reason for Berkley to be so distressed.

“Those damned blighters back at the fortress wouldn’t mention there was a beast of thirty tons sitting here at your back, would they,” Berkley said to Laurence, as he sat down at last: flushed through and downing a mug of grog which he now accepted, still breathing heavily. “No, it is all, ‘Laurence and Temeraire are up to their usual starts, go and talk sense into them.’ What have you done this time? That young whelp of an ambassador back at Paraty looked like to have an apoplexy when we told him we didn’t undertake to do any such mad thing; as if there were a chance of success, either. I suppose being dismissed the service once is not enough for anyone, ha ha.”

“The Admiral told us you had been reinstated,” Lily said to Temeraire, “but why are we not fighting: I thought that was what we were all sent here for?”

“I shall explain it all to you,” Temeraire told her and Maximus, “when we have all eaten, and slept: perhaps we ought to go and get another whale, so as not to have the bother of hunting for a few days.”

“No,” Maximus said decidedly, crunching the cow’s skull between his jaws, “no whales! If I don’t eat fish for a month it will not be too long: they did not have any meat on that ship. No fresh meat, I mean; it was all dried and mixed in with that porridgey stuff you gave them a notion of, and if we wanted anything better, we could go roust it out ourselves.”

“Don’t listen to him,” Messoria said, as she ate her portion more sedately, “there were half-a-dozen cows aboard only for him; but he would eat them all, nearly right away, and then it was complain, complain, complain, all three months of sailing.”

“I don’t see what is the use of saving them to get thin and tough, at sea,” Maximus said, injured.

Temeraire said, “Well, tomorrow I dare say we will find some more cattle, and I do not mind letting you eat my share to-night: how happy I am to see you all!”

There was something so very comfortable about having Maximus and Lily back, and all their formation also: Messoria and Immortalis, Dulcia and Nitidus, so that around the fire there were a great many voices, all friendly; and together they could certainly have stood against nearly anyone. There were of course still more of the Tswana, and anyway Temeraire did not want to fight them, but it was much pleasanter to think that they could fight, if they wished to, or if anyone offered them an unacceptable insult.

“Anyway it was still better than staying at home in England. It has been all watching the Channel, day and night,” Lily said to Temeraire, tipping her head back daintily to swallow the last haunch of her cow, “and not a single engagement; the French dragons have nearly all gone away, to Spain or to the east, and it is only a few unharnessed beasts who fly patrol along their coast now and never come across. So tiresome, but when we thought we might as well help Perscitia, with the pavilions she is building, everyone grew stupidly upset.”

“Dug out half the best quarry in Hertfordshire,” Berkley said to Laurence, “and tore up four dozen oaks in the Midlands.”

“So they sent us here,” Lily went on, “and we did not mind going; but now we have eaten, and I want to know what we shall be doing here? And why are you shy of fighting those other dragons, if they are the enemy?”

“I am not shy of fighting them,” Temeraire said. “Whoever said so? Only, they are not the enemy, in my opinion; they are those dragons we saw in Africa, and they are only here because they are trying to find their crews again: or what they call their descendants, who were taken for slaves.”

“Those dragons who took Catherine from me, that time?” Lily said, with a cold yellow gleam in her eye.

“You will meet Kefentse tomorrow,” Temeraire said hastily, “and I am sure he will apologize, just as he has apologized to me. Anyway, the real enemy are the Inca, and Laurence is sure that they will overrun this colony if we do not persuade the Tswana to stay and protect it.”

“So that part is true?” Captain Harcourt said to Laurence, her face baffled. “Hammond began to say you intended something of the sort, before he understood we weren’t going to oblige him, but I thought he must have muddled things up: not that I am in a hurry to go roaring in when we are outnumbered three to one, but where do the Inca come into it, at all?”

Laurence briefly acquainted them with the disastrous success which the French had found in the Incan empire, and Temeraire added, “We did try to stop it, of course: but she would marry Napoleon, for all we tried to warn her against him.”

“Small wonder,” Berkley said. “I’m only surprised you didn’t have to flee the country with a horde of dragons on your tails.”

“Well, we did,” Temeraire said. “—It was not in the least amusing; so I don’t see why you should be laughing,” he added, rather nettled.

“I would beg pardon if you deserved it, you great lunatic of a beast,” Berkley said, still snorting in what Temeraire felt was a most undignified way.

Harcourt and the rest of the formation of course had come direct from England, with all their crews, which overran the previously orderly camp in the usual haphazard manner of aviators; but they had also brought supply: guns, and powder, and chainmail armor to spare; and to the endless satisfaction of the sailors several casks of dark rum. Grog was served out with haste, and exchanged for fresh meat and fruit, while a comfortable bonfire was