Crucible of Gold

mid-air, so the iron tips of the things were half-melted as they fell down upon the deck of the frigate, and all the gun-boats, and so became stuck on to the wood. Temeraire hovered, watching in satisfaction: the crews had dived away to avoid the rain of smoking-hot iron spikes, and now could not easily manage their boats.

He looked up sharp, however: there was a fresh roaring, around the other side of the second transport, but this time of guns and not of dragons: and Maximus was bellowing in pain.

Temeraire leapt into the air: one of the frigates which he had thought disabled by the rocks had managed to turn broadside to the Maréchal’s dragondeck, and had all-too-cleverly reserved her fire until the moment when Maximus had landed to take off the caltrops: all her guns had gone at once, and poor Maximus had been exposed quite: a gaping rent showed in one of his wings, where the membrane hung loose as a piece of cut sailcloth, and he was bleeding black from shoulder and haunch and side. The Maréchal’s foremast also had been badly shattered, and splinters stuck porcupine- like from his head and neck: he swung his head back and forth with his eyes shut tight, bellowing, and meanwhile the frigate was surely reloading all her guns.

But even as Temeraire flew towards them, Lily was already at work: she dived low and spat a long running stream of acid along the deck, directly above the sides which faced the Maréchal, and cries rose up with the hissing steam as the droplets ate their way down into the gundeck and spattered the crews. Temeraire came following in a rush, and roared up the ocean furiously: the frigate reeled away on a great twenty-foot swell, and the second broadside erupted only stuttering, to hurl the cannonballs into the ocean some ten yards ahead of the Maréchal’s keel.

“There!” Temeraire said, triumphantly, and then cried out himself, shuddering, and nearly dropped into the sea: there was a dreadful burning pain just beneath his wing-joint, so that to stay aloft was agony with each stroke; he cried out gasping again, and abruptly Kulingile was there beside him, to take his weight, and saw him down to the deck of the Maréchal beside Maximus.

“But Laurence,” Temeraire said, gulping a breath, “Laurence—”

“He has not got himself shot,” said Gaiters, Maximus’s surgeon, who was laboring away urgently and with his arms bloodied to the shoulder, “so just you hold still there, until one of us can come and look at you; for God’s sake,” he roared up at the young ensign who was temporarily his assistant, and attempting to assist him in stanching the wounds, “pack that sailcloth in harder; stand on it, if you have to.”

“I am not going to sit on deck while we are still fighting,” Temeraire protested, and craned his head around to look at the injury—perhaps it was not quite so severe as all that, and he might—“Ow!” He stopped: even turning so far was dreadfully unpleasant; he could feel the hooks of the ball tearing at his flesh. “Maximus, are you very badly hurt?”

“I am sure I will be perfectly stout when they have patched me together,” Maximus said, with a grunt. “I should not have roared at all, only it took me by surprise.”

“You will be stone-dead in an hour if we do not stop this blood, so you will shut your eyes and keep quiet, damn you,” Gaiters said furiously. “Where is that fire-breather? Why don’t she make herself useful: I will need this cauterized, as soon as I have dug out this ball—”

“Ough,” Maximus said—not really a complaint, Temeraire thought loyally; it was only a startled noise—as Gaiters very nearly put his head into Maximus’s side, and came out dragging the great iron cannonball with him in both hands, hissing himself in pain: it was still hot, and he dropped it on the deck and rolled it away over the side with his foot.

Iskierka landed, in answer to their signal, and heated the iron bar which Gaiters held out to her with tongs; Maximus reared up his head and yelled—not even the most loyal interpretation could call it anything else, sadly—as it was clapped to the wound, sewn up already with catgut.

But even as the wound was seared, the ship shuddered beneath them with the rolling thunder of the guns, and Temeraire looked anxiously out towards the Polonaise, where Laurence was still fighting. Although Lieutenant Creed and his party had so far also managed to keep the French penned belowdecks, there were still nearly six hundred men aboard, and those had gone to the gundeck, instead, and now were taking aim at the other transport’s deck to save her from their own fate.

But Granby’s men and Roland’s had done their work: the chainmail netting hung over the sides of the ship, and if it did not stop the balls it dragged them down so they went splashing one and all into the sea; only a couple from the end reached the other ship, and splintered away a portion of her dragondeck.

Berkley stood up from Maximus’s head, and climbing down heavily to the deck banged his big gauntleted fist down on the planking beside the fore ladderway. “Is your captain down there? We have the deck; you can see your fellows are all ahoo; now say you strike, or I will let you up, and the dragons can start knocking you overboard like ninepins: but I will damned well have an end of it.”

Chapter 19

“I DO NOT WISH IN THE LEAST to diminish your very just sense of accomplishment, Captain,” Hammond said to Laurence, looking out from the promontory at the two transports, flying British colors and supporting at present three and four dragons respectively: the rest being engaged in shepherding anxiously the boats which were ferrying over their recovered kindred, or bringing themselves the sacks of grain and dried salt beef which should sustain them over the six-week journey to the coast of Africa: in a species of justice, perhaps, they would disembark at the ruins of Lunda, that same port which had seen so many of them first pressed into bondage.

“Not in the least,” Hammond repeated, in dismal tones. The Potentate could also be glimpsed, at a fair distance but coming in: she would be at anchor before sunset, Laurence judged, and they would begin their own process of provisioning her for the journey back to Portsmouth: one which Hammond certainly could not anticipate with any sense of pleasure.

No good would come him from the report which the Portuguese ambassador should make of him: at best, Hammond would figure as an ineffectual nonentity; at worst, as deliberately conniving at Laurence’s insubordinate maneuvering, and the latter was more likely: to do him credit, with the transports acquired, Hammond had devoted his energies to winning over sufficient support at the Portuguese court for the negotiations to see them grudgingly accepted.

And Hammond could not rely on any leavening of success to gloss his supposed misdeeds. The Admiralty would make hay of the cutting-out of the transports, but the Foreign Office would not care much for that in the face of the devastating news regarding the Inca, and to hear that yet another great power had aligned itself, willingly, with Bonaparte: to hear that Britain stood now alone.

“And whatever am I to do about the beast? It is very well and good to say she is not mine; if she persists in following me, she may as well be mine, and I cannot find that any of the dragons have the least sympathy, or inclination to chase her away,” he added, in some exasperation. Indeed Churki’s attachment showed every sign of tenacity, and Hammond’s attempts to dismiss her were met with the amusement of a parent retrieving a wayward child.

“She can’t very well follow you over-sea,” Chenery said.

“Can she not?” Hammond said bitterly. “I have already overheard her discussing arrangements with Temeraire: she means to provide so many bullocks, in exchange for her passage; and how is she to be got off the ship once she has landed on it?”

“But Laurence,” Temeraire said, when Laurence had at Hammond’s plea spoken with him, “I cannot see any reason why Churki should not come back to England with us: you have said very often that the Admiralty is always quite desperate for new dragons who will fight. She was an officer in the Inca army, you know: no-one could argue she does not know how to go about it, and she has promised she will, if she is given her own crew.”

“My dear, she is a subject of an empire which must now be inimical to our own,” Laurence said. “If she aids us, she is a traitor; if she does not, she is our enemy.”

“It does not seem to me treasonous,” Temeraire protested. “After all, it is not as though she were going to fight Incan dragons, her friends perhaps; she will be fighting the French, and she says the Sapa Inca marrying does not make Napoleon her Emperor. Anyway,” he added, “I cannot see myself being so