Blood of Tyrants (Temeraire #8) - Page 6

Chapter 6

LAURENCE PUSHED THE FISHING-BOAT off, water already rising inside from the hole he had stove in her hull, and saw her go away downriver not without a qualm: even if remaining aboard would have been certain doom, she was still the quickest road to the sea, and the only one at all familiar. He had left the remains of his already-tattered old shirt wrapped around a bundle of branches to make a sort of scare-crow, standing up in the prow and fluttering out white; if only the boat evaded capture long enough to get some distance away before she sank, he hoped it might prove some source of confusion, if not long defer the pursuit.

At least it would conceal where they had gone, for a little while. Junichiro was already doing his best to obscure the marks their landing had made in the bank with more dead leaves and branches.

The going was slow among the trees, and slower still for lack of clear destination. Laurence could look up and catch a glimpse of the stars, now and again, which pointed him south-west generally, but besides this his progress was wholly blind. “Do you have any notion what is in the countryside near-by here?” he asked Junichiro, as they struggled onwards through the rough terrain.

“We are in Chikugo Province by now,” Junichiro said. He paused and looked up over his shoulder: a sound of leathery wings, faint but carrying over the water, not far distant.

Laurence caught sight of a large old pine, gnarled and twisted, roots erupting from the ground in low arches. They squirmed between two of these and pressed themselves back into the meager shelter their intersection offered. The night was not bitterly cold, but enough; they were wet, in thin cotton robes, and it would be a long while for the hollow to have warmed with their bodies. The dragon swept overhead a few times, with no particular direction, merely having a general look, or so it seemed to Laurence; but they huddled beneath the predatory search in silence, hearing the distant noise of search parties.

A clamor was raised somewhere off, in the direction of the river, and the dragon turned away towards it: perhaps the boat. Laurence breathed, but did not yet live and move; too soon for that. The sun was barely up, but had not yet penetrated the trees; he only saw the sky lightened overhead. The voices left off, after a while, and the dragon’s searching resumed, but more distant—it was looking somewhere on the other side of the river, Laurence thought. In any case, this was the best chance which was likely to come; a search would close in upon them soon enough if they merely remained in hiding.

He stood, not very quickly or easily; all his muscles protested the cavalier treatment he had served them, going from hot work to a cold, crouching bed, and he could only ruefully envy Junichiro, who bounded out of the hollow behind him as easily as a deer with the limberness of youth. “Have you any notion of the best direction?” he asked.

“We should continue southward and make for the coast of the Ariake Sea,” Junichiro said, “and follow its shore around to Nagasaki.” Laurence nodded, and followed him into the thicket.

They walked in silence most of the time, speaking only in low voices; the woods were deep and hushed about them, and every word seemed to ring out like a bell, inviting capture. But Laurence asked Junichiro the distance to the sea when they made a brief halt by a spring and they gave their feet a rest; blisters were already raising white upon his skin. The number meant nothing at first, as he did not know how long a ri was, but when they began walking again, Junichiro did his best to tell Laurence when they had crossed the distance, and he made it something near two and a half miles. Ten miles to the coast and sixty around, if they could not find another boat and cut across: three days’ forced march, for an infantry company—a company with boots and supply.

Laurence marched on after him and grimly did not make any close inspection of his feet: they would be worse before they were better.

“They are busy enough over something, there,” Granby said, peering through his spyglass, which was rigged out with a loop into which he might slip his hook, and thereby use his hand to steady the front. Temeraire would have liked a spyglass himself; he could not see why one might not be made in dragon-size.

“Why would anyone bother?” Iskierka said, dismissively. “If I want to see what is happening, I will just go fly over and take a look; should you like me to do so, Granby?”

“Stay where you are, if you please,” Granby said, “—or if you don’t please, for that matter,” he added. “The last thing I need is Hammond yowling at me some more; he leapt out at Berkley this morning directly he had put his head out of doors, before he had even swallowed a bite of breakfast: I think the fellow don’t sleep.”

Several dragons had come into the Japanese port. This alone was not unusual: they had seen several coming and going and in the town beyond, in the past several days, but those had been nearly all of them courier-beasts, or a few light-weights evidently engaged in the trade in some way. This party was led by a middle-weight, a grey dragon wearing an elaborate drapery of green, which had some sort of jeweled border that sparkled in the sunlight; Temeraire could not tell if it was diamonds, or beads, or something else, but it certainly looked very attractive. John Wampanoag had flown over a little while ago, evidently to meet the new party.

Temeraire observed it all with anxious hope: if only Wampanoag was right this moment explaining that they would leave should Laurence be found; if only the dragon were a person of substance, who might push things forward; if only she would listen to Wampanoag; if—if—if.

“Whyever has Hammond not been useful,” he said, in rising impatience, “and got us aboard a translator? I might have begun to learn a little Japanese, and be able to speak with them directly. Can you see, is she speaking with Wampanoag?”

“I don’t see, at all,” Granby said, and Temeraire began to wonder if perhaps he had not ought to go ashore after all, just briefly, to speak with them. He felt a great deal better, indeed. He had drunk up all the medicine and eaten all the porridge resolutely, every day; and he had gone for a very long swim just this past evening, with not the least ill-effects.

“I am sure I could manage it without any trouble,” he said, “and it only seems courteous that I should pay a call, while we are guests here—”

“Will you not ever have any sense?” Hammond said, when he had come running; Temeraire narrowed his eyes at Churki, whom he suspected of having made him some signal—perhaps they had agreed upon it in some way.

“They condemn us all as little better than pirates,” Hammond continued, “and they must look upon this ship as the most rank provocation—a vessel of this size, this strength! Our armament! Bearing an entire formation’s worth of beasts, and,” he added, “you will note they do not have heavy-weights among them, so far as we have seen.”

“That is perfect nonsense,” Temeraire said. “I have never seen a dragon half as big as that sea-dragon.”

“But he is confined only to the water!” Hammond said. “That is nothing to what a dragon of Kulingile’s size could do, in the air, anywhere in the country he liked, if they have no heavy-weights of their own to check him: he might run rampant over them.”

“I might, too,” Maximus said, raising his head with a jealous gleam—he was not so inclined to quarrel with Kulingile as he had been, but he could scarcely be blamed when Hammond insisted on being so outright provoking.

“Good God, I hope I do not mean that in the nature of a compliment, I assure you,” Hammond said, entirely missing the point, as usual.

“So much the better, then,” Temeraire said. “I am very content for them to be worried, and to wish us gone: let them only find Laurence, and bring him to me, and we shall go.”

“If they should even believe such a promise, and find it possible to fulfill your demands,” Hammond said, “they will not fear us the less for going out of their sight, on such an endeavor. What do you imagine such a nation must think, with a vast neighbor so near-by, which has on previous occasions attempted their conquest, making alliance with another nation equipped with vessels of a size that might ferry a dozen dragons in a week across the China Sea? They cannot help but fear it.”

“Then they must be afraid,” Temeraire said, outraged. “You desire that alliance, you have said so again and again—”

“That does not mean I must be in a great hurry for the Japanese to learn of it,” Hammond said, “and particularly not to think that more has been accomplished than has; it is better not to announce the wedding before the proposal has been accepted.”

In Temeraire’s opinion, this was quite absurd; if the Japanese wished to be anxious and imagine dreadful things happening, when no-one had done anything to them at all—bar taking a few trees which they had not been busy to use anyway—that was their affair. “Mine,” he said, “is to see Laurence brought safe back to me, and if flying across and having a few words with that other dragon will persuade them, or our making some show of strength, I am happy to see it done: I would not hesitate in the least.

“Indeed,” he added, with a sudden kindling impulse, and looked down to where Captain Blaise was consulting with Granby, “Captain Blaise! Will you listen to me, if you please? I do not suppose we have exercised the great guns, in over a month—surely you ought to do it, do you think? If we cannot make answer for the Phaeton straightaway, at least we should like them to know we might—that we are not only sitting here because we cannot.”

Captain Blaise did not look up at Temeraire directly, but he said after a moment, “Do you know, Captain Granby, I do believe we ought to exercise the great guns. And then at least those ruddy blighters will know we might answer them properly, if we liked.”

Temeraire did not see why Blaise needed parrot what he had said, as though he had thought of it himself, but he did not very much care; Hammond’s protests, swift to come, were not in the least heeded, and Temeraire had the pleasure, only a little while later, of hearing the drumroll as the ship beat to quarters, and every hand went to his rope or gun.

The eruption of flame and smoke and thunder was everything which he could have desired: the great dreadful roar of the broadside, the gouts of red and blue flame, the thick clouds of black powder smoke rolling away over the water before the wind, carrying towards the harbor. And then Captain Harcourt said, “Do you know, fellows, I think we will go up and have a bit of exercise, ourselves,” and to compound Temeraire’s satisfaction he could watch Lily and all her formation aloft, weaving through the intricate patterns of battle-maneuver. Even Iskierka took an interest, and capped the entire production by going aloft at the very end, and blazing a great circle of fire like a wreath around the ship. Ordinarily Temeraire by no means approved her rampant showing away, but in this case he forgave it. “That has shown them,” he said with real joy.

“Yes,” Hammond said, low and grim: he had not left the dragondeck all the while, but yet stood by Churki’s side, his thin narrow hands clenched upon each other as though he wished to wring them out. “And now we must wait for what they will choose to show us.”

A host of fiddler crabs, too small to be worth the attention of fishermen, scuttled away rapidly along the empty seashore at Laurence’s approach: numerous enough that he and Junichiro were able to rake together a pile of them, with branches, onto a rock and away from their escape into the mud. They ate them raw, cracking the shells and sucking the large claw indecorously clean, without the least hesitation.

They went a little way towards easing the bite of hunger, and a small rivulet emptying into the sea near-by, running quickly over rocks, was fresh enough to drink. Laurence soaked his feet again in the salt water without removing the sandals, if he could even have done so without a knife at this point: the cords had sunk into his swollen flesh. He looked across the sea. The sun was setting at the far end, throwing an orange beam across a flat and level plain of water placid as glass, with scarcely a wave to be seen: broad gentle ripples only coming in to shore, nearly silent.

“I would undertake to cross it on a log, paddling with my hands,” Laurence said to Junichiro. “It is not twenty miles across, here?”

Junichiro thought as much, when they had made some more calculations, and refreshed by their crab supper they plunged back into the forest and hunted out a few sturdy fallen branches, to be latticed together with saplings and the interstices stuffed with leaves. Three hours of work, by the fading light, gave them a raft serviceable enough for the distance—or so Laurence hoped.

“Can you swim?” he belatedly thought to ask, and was glad for Junichiro’s nod; if she came apart beneath them, halfway across, the distance would not be insurmountable, if they could only hold on to a few of the larger limbs.

The moon had risen, brilliant full. “I will try her,” Junichiro said, and carried the raft out upon the water and lay himself upon it flat, cautiously. She did not come apart at once; Laurence looked up from shore at his shout of triumph, and was very satisfied. The wind was in the west, gentle, a mere breath; he finished the last of the work, two branches crossed and tied with some strips of fabric cut, with a sharp rock, from the robe he wore; the rest of it he rigged on her as a sail, and striding out into the water he pushed the foot of the makeshift mast through the raft while Junichiro steadied her, and secured it beneath with another knotted length of fabric, filled with sand and pebbles.

He cautiously got himself upon her, braced his hip against the mast with Junichiro doing the same on the other side, slipped his finger into the loop of the cord he had tied around the end of the cross-yard, and drew her into the wind. The irregular sail stirred, and belled, and lifted; she began to move slowly but surely out upon the water.

“Well,” Laurence said, after they had glided a dozen yards, and not yet sunk, “I would not like to meet even a strong breeze with this rig, but if we can contrive not to move very much, I suppose we may make it into sight of the opposite shore.”

The sea was peculiarly still beneath them, broken more by the eddy of their passage than any waves. Laurence slept in fits and starts, rousing at the tug of the cord upon his finger to adjust the sail. Occasionally he glanced over the side and even saw fish moving, moonlight on dark scales through clear water, and watching them felt a curious sense of familiarity, something just out of reach.

“Have you any family?” Junichiro asked drowsy, drifting. “Any children of your own?”

“No,” Laurence said; the lack of a ring upon his hand told him that much, enough that he could give the answer in confidence. “But I have my young gentlemen to look after, which is, as responsibility goes, not unlike: midshipmen, and some lieutenants, not your age,” and as he said it he felt a name upon his lips—Roland, he thought, and was nearly sure of it; Roland. Hope filled him: that was not a name eight years old; that was something emerged from the lost depths.

They drowsed again and woke; they were nearing shore: the moon had been caught in the frame of the open volcanic cone of a high mountain: “Mount Tara,” Junichiro said. “We should try and land to the south.” He did not need to say why: directly ahead over the water, a cluster of bobbing lights shone in the distance, marking a fishing village or a settlement.

Laurence adjusted their direction. The mast gave them another few miles, but the wind changed a little, likely as they emerged from the sheltering bulk of the mountain: it came suddenly into their faces with more strength, and the sail was taken aback. Mast and sail both tipped; branches cracked; abruptly Laurence was in the water. He put his hand out blindly, trying to get his bearings, and touched sand, groped, straightened: he and Junichiro were standing, only knee-deep in water, and there were trees visible against the horizon perhaps a mile distant through the shallows.

They slogged through the remaining distance slowly, with the longest branches as walking-sticks. The thin cotton of the under-robe was soaked and plastered to Laurence’s skin, chilling-cold, and broad sheets of dark seaweed tangled clammy about their ankles, but the stand of trees ahead was all the encouragement he might have wanted. He undid his bundle again and put on the green coat, the good wool staving off some cold. They staggered out through thick sheaves of sea grass, crawled up onto the sandy shore, and onwards just into the trees without getting up off their hands and feet.

There were dry leaves, rough branches, a large stone—this time, Laurence prodded it first with his stick to be sure it was nothing more. The sun was rising. They dug into the leaves, and Laurence shut his eyes; hunger gnawed, and thirst; his feet complained in earnest; but none of these proved able to stave off sleep. He slept as long as nature let him: the sun rising across the water warmed their resting place, and eased both ache and chill. He woke warm, and with only a tolerable amount of pain was able to get himself halfway up and knee-walk awkwardly a sufficient distance away to relieve himself.

Junichiro still slept, and Laurence let him continue; he crawled down to the shore again and put his feet back into the cold water to numb awhile before he tried them. There were some fishing-boats out on the water, but at a long distance that made the men aboard them only stick-figures, in straw hats; when one waved, Laurence raised a hand in answer without fear. Sitting on the shore he worked out a loose thread from the green coat still in his bundle, to tie around the pin of one of the gold bars: bent in half, it made a serviceable hook, and he thought there might be a chance of some biting even so near the shore.

He took a mudskipper, by sitting still until they forgot to fear him, and with it as bait took a few better, and roused Junichiro to eat before they set out again. They had cut across a good deal of the distance: twenty miles left. Laurence counted it in quarter-miles and ignored his feet and the increasing heat of the day. He had bundled the coat back up around the sword, and wrapped the tatters of the sail around his head.

Junichiro said nothing, but eyed him sidelong, repeatedly; Laurence looked down at his bare chest, and realized Junichiro was looking at the many scars of pistol-shot and blade; mute testimony to Laurence’s experience in battle. He did not recognize them all. He touched one long stroke along his shoulder, the white smooth long-healed line of it, then shook his head and let his hand drop.

When he had finished, Junichiro tried to press his own outer robe on him. “We look like beggars,” he said urgently, in his persuasion.

“That,” Laurence said, “I dare say we cannot avoid in any case; and it must be your task to approach anyone we must bespeak, while mine shall be to keep far out of sight. Keep it.”

They struggled on through brush and trees, following a very awkward course well away from the road: but Laurence wanted only to find some coast, anywhere not settled, where they might approach Nagasaki cautiously. Any pursuit must expect the port to be his destination—the net would surely be waiting for him there, and his only hope should be to espy some European ship, or the Dutch commission, and strike out for it in some roundabout way. An improbable goal perhaps, but he had come nearer than he had looked to do, in cold rational consideration.

And then—and then—but there was no sense in contemplating that future, and all its blank impenetrability, until he had come to it.

They found a little brackish pool, and drank, in the late afternoon. Junichiro dug up some wild radish, which he recognized as edible, and they gnawed its woody toughness as they walked. A few times they had to hide a little while crouching in brush, to avoid notice from other foragers; once they came upon a well-traveled road, and scurried across it like rabbits making a dash for safety, in a brief empty gap between walking travelers and sedan-chairs and ox-carts. A dragon went by overhead once, but flying fast, not searching; they listened huddled under concealing branches until its wingbeats faded.

The sun was sinking again, beginning to throw long shadows and wink at them through the branches. Laurence was trudging onwards, mind full of counting and steps, when Junichiro put out a hand to stop him. He lifted his face into the wind; he breathed in salt, and recognized belatedly the distant low crash of waves and voices both, not far off.

The trees were thinning ahead, approaching a road: a busy road, crowded with travelers and cargo. They crept up to a curve and looking down it saw before them the harbor laid out in a neat half-curve: a small island full of Dutch houses sat divided from the town by a narrow canal, and a great many boats filled the harbor together.

“Oh,” Junichiro said, stifled, and Laurence followed the line of his gaze: there was a company of men standing off to the side of the road by a sort of tall signpost carved with characters, looking out upon the harbor. He at first did not understand Junichiro’s exclamation, and then he recognized abruptly one of the party, standing to the side, armed: it was Kaneko, and down in a cleared field beside the port he saw Lady Arikawa resting, a grey-green curve of dragon.

“I thought she would have liked to let us go,” Laurence said to Junichiro.

Junichiro made an impatient gesture: why would Laurence never understand? “Of course she wishes us to escape,” he said. “But she cannot openly allow it, and my—and the honorable Kaneko would not merely stand by, either: it ought to have been the duty of the magistrate to secure you, but you were held in his house.”

“Well, we must get around them, somehow,” Laurence said, “and try to get there,” indicating the tiny Dutch settlement. “They will hide us, I hope, even if they choose to ship me back to Europe a prisoner of war. Let us go south a distance, and see if we can get across the road: I would like a better look at the harbor.”

Junichiro followed him back into the trees, not without a lingering look, regretful, back at his former master.

Temeraire looked dully down at the sodden scrap: white linen, very fine, with Laurence’s mark plainly upon it; he had bought a dozen shirts like it, in Brazil, to repair his shipwrecked wardrobe, before they set out for China.

“I am sorry to give you bad news,” Wampanoag was saying, “but I don’t mind saying it is more than I hoped to turn up, whether bad or good. It must have washed up on the shore, I guess.”

Maximus nudged at his shoulder, gently, a warm butting of his nose; Temeraire was aware of it, he supposed, and grateful distantly. “Did they tell you where they found it?” he asked, formally; he would pursue all inquiry—he would—

“You’ll forgive my saying so,” Wampanoag said, “but they weren’t inclined to be talkative, after that show you lot put on. No-one could help but take it the wrong way: this whole city is full to the brim of warehouses, every last one of them built of nicely seasoned wood. I suppose if you just turned out this lady here,” he dipped his head towards Iskierka, “the whole place would be burnt to the waterline in a couple of hours, even if you didn’t care to lob over a few cannon-balls at the same time.”

“Oh,” Temeraire said, after a moment, “I am sorry to have occasioned them any concern. I hope—” He trailed off. He did not hope anything, really; he was only trying to be polite, since there was nothing else to do but try to behave in a civilized fashion, but he could not quite contrive something to say.

“We hope,” Hammond said, jumping in at once into the breach of silence, when he saw that Temeraire had nothing more, “that you will be so kind as to convey our deepest apologies, to the governor, and to the shogun, for any action on our part which might have given rise to intimations—to false intimations—of hostility, and make plain to his Excellency that the Government of Britain desires nothing more than peace and future tranquility in the relations between our nations. And pray assure them,” he added, “that we will at the earliest possible moment,” and he threw a hard look at Captain Blaise, “be taking our leave of them, with many thanks for their consideration in allowing us to remain so long in pursuit of our repairs, and our lost friend.”

He carried on the conversation from there, for some time; Wampanoag seemed perfectly willing to listen to him, and to agree to carry more messages back and forth; Temeraire did not pay much attention.

The rest of the day passed away in useful, numbing minutiae. They had a wind already, as favorable as anyone could want; they had only to wait for the tide. There were the decks to be holystoned again, the sails to be slushed. Temeraire swallowed the medicine when it was brought him, and the physician looked him over again closely. He organized three of the stronger hands to pull down the lower edge of Temeraire’s eye so he might inspect the dark flesh there, a particularly uncomfortable operation, but Temeraire made no objection.

Wen Shen sniffed, after prodding Temeraire a few more times, and said to Gong Su for translation, to Granby, “All right, he is well enough to fly; so do not let him sit there too long while you are sailing—he must fly a little every day, now, and swimming also cannot do him any harm.”

So he was better, too, as though that mattered now. He might have been dreadfully ill for all the use he could hope to be, to Laurence. Temeraire felt the stirrings of resentment rising, suddenly, as he lay mute after the inspection—what had Laurence been about, after all, losing himself in such a stupid way? Anyone—anyone at all—might have cut apart the storm-chains. Anyone might have saved them, and the ship, if they had cared to do so—it had not been Laurence’s duty alone, to do it. Laurence ought have let the ship sink, if no-one else had decided to cut the chains, and stayed with Temeraire. They had not been so far from shore. It would have been the work of a few hours to get them to land, and they might have saved all their crew and any number of sailors as well.

“I would rather have him back, than this whole ship and everything upon it,” he burst out, without caring who heard him; and then Forthing, who was sitting by him, said, “I am very sorry, Temeraire, that he should have been lost—”

Temeraire snarled at him outright. “You are not sorry,” he spat. “You think you may have your chance, now.”

Forthing flushed alternately red and very pale, and then said, “I don’t: you’ve made plain enough you’ve no use for me; and I am sorry, because he gave me my first lieutenant’s step, when he might have left me on shore in New South Wales, and most men would have. If I live to get back to a covert, now I am like to have a chance for my own beast; and if I don’t, my son will, when he is older.”

Temeraire paused: “You have a son?”

“He is eight now,” Forthing said, “and at Kinloch Laggan.”

“Oh,” Temeraire said. “Well,” he added, “it does not make me like you any better; having a son is no excuse for looking like a shag-bag, and I dare say it is the opposite—you might consider you are reflecting on him, too, and not just upon me.”

Forthing stared at him and said, “What?” and looked down at himself.

“Why will you not buy a shirt?” Temeraire said. “Even if you do not buy a particularly decent one, you might buy something clean; and that coat is nothing like green: not at all. Whoever could wish to acknowledge you as a connection in any way when you look like an untended scare-crow? The hands before the mast have a neater appearance, and I know that Laurence has given you a hint, now and again—”

He stopped: Laurence rang in his ears, and the hot glow of temper died away beneath his spirits; he sank back low and put his head beneath his wing, as the bosun’s bellowing cry went up, “Make sail! All hands to make sail!”

Laurence and Junichiro struggled away from the harbor, paralleling the course of the road for a short distance. The sun was lowering, and the traffic thinning out; at last it seemed worth the risk, and they came out of the trees and scrambled to the other side, heads down and shoulders hunched, between parties of travelers nearly lost in twilight; Laurence hoped they would see nothing more than a pair of lumpen beggars.

They climbed up the far side of the road, through the last thin ranks of trees to the shore: the narrow harbor still stretched out a long way southward to the open sea, and there at her mouth Laurence saw with a shocking, nearly painful sensation, the tremendous immensity of a dragon transport: four masts, the British colors flying stained to red with a last sun-beam, and a great horde of beasts upon her dragondeck tangled in a riot of serpentine colors.

She was making sail.

“Oh, God,” Laurence said. “Fire—I must have some fire, at once—gather some kindling!”

He sprang back down through the trees to the road, all concern for disguise or concealment shed. An ox-cart was trundling along towards him, a lit lantern hung swinging from the seat, and ignoring the outraged bellow of the driver and the cut of his whip, Laurence seized the edge and snatched it away. Another lash stung his back as he threw himself back up the hill, but Laurence cared nothing for that: the light was failing.

Junichiro had already begun to scrape together a heap of branches and dry leaves, though with an anxious look, and when Laurence bent to set them alight he snatched up another branch and began to turn up the earth in a wide channel around the fire, to keep it from spreading. Laurence worked in nearly a frenzy: the wind was fair to the east, and the tide was going out. She would be gone in hal