Blood of Tyrants (Temeraire #8)

Blood of Tyrants (Temeraire #8) Page 14

Chapter 14

ANOTHER HOUR PASSED; NIGHT had come. Enough of the rocks had been drawn away, by now, that Temeraire could breathe freely once more; but he scarcely noticed the relief, by comparison with the rest, although he was very glad when Arkady—who had begun by then to feel well enough to complain incessantly and fidget—was freed from his side and helped away. Immortalis had stolen back to the camp, under cover of dark, to tell the others what had happened; Nitidus had flown back carrying Maximus’s surgeon Gaiters, who now was studying the dreadful chains and considering how they might best be removed.

Temeraire could not quarrel with his situation despite the discomfort. It was worth, oh, everything! to know that Laurence did not wish to leave him. Temeraire was with some difficulty trying to comprehend Laurence’s disgust of his own lost fortune—he could scarcely call it anything else—only because it could not buy him honor. The fortune could have bought him a great many other things, all of them very splendid, so that did not really explain it to Temeraire’s satisfaction. But he was not so determined to be unhappy that he would insist on Laurence’s being so, having been given such assurances.

“Why is he taking so long about it?” Arkady demanded of Temeraire, breaking in on his thoughts. Temeraire jerked his head up, for he had been drifting in a half-doze, dull with fatigue even though he could breathe now more easily. “Tell him to finish and take it off me. I do not see why he is waiting.”

Temeraire looked over. Gaiters had already drawn the hooks which had been driven through Arkady’s wings, by cutting them and pulling them away; his point of concern seemed to be how to cut out the barbs in Arkady’s shoulders so that the flesh would not be torn so badly that he could not fly.

“Well, I will have a go at it, at any rate. Horrocks, get me my knives,” Gaiters said, calling down from Arkady’s back to his assistant, and Kulingile was pressed from the work of digging to hold Arkady still for the operation. Arkady indeed shrilled loudly in protest and shuddered all over while the cruel knives dug around in his flesh; Horrocks pointed, now and again, and Gaiters, without taking his eyes off his work, grunted and nodded in answer, while the blood welled up continually around his hands. Horrocks mopped about them with a rag, and three of the midwingmen stood holding the bar of the barb steady.

Temeraire tried not to watch; it was gruesome, and he did not like surgery at all. But some fascination drew his eyes again and again to the spectacle, until at last Gaiters gave the word. “All right, fellows, lift away,” and he and Horrocks together reached within the wound to guide the barb out as the midwingmen raised up the bar. It emerged little by little—a thing of horror with curling spikes and gobbets of flesh still clinging to them.

The second one was extracted more quickly: not five minutes, and then Horrocks was finishing the sewing while Gaiters washed his hands. “What a vicious piece of work,” Gaiters said, looking it over laid out upon the ground. “I have never seen the like. I suppose they have so many dragons here they don’t mind if they ruin a number of them.”

Temeraire was very glad to have it bundled up and taken away, in any case; Arkady was coaxed limping away to a corner of the encampment, as he had been warned away from any exertion until the wounds had healed, where he collapsed almost at once into slumber, snoring loudly.

Kulingile turned back to help with the digging. Nitidus had been working industriously on the stones directly before Temeraire’s chest, clearing a safe path; he suddenly exclaimed, “Oh! I hear them; I am sure I do,” and in another quarter of an hour Sipho scrambled out of the first narrow opening, and a little while after Ferris and Forthing came staggering out over Temeraire’s forearm, which was still pinned in place.

Then at last Temeraire could heave himself free, the last of the stones pouring away from his hindquarters as he lunged out, and he collapsed wearily with a sigh beside Arkady. “Oh! how tired I am,” Temeraire said, closing his eyes, only for a moment, as Laurence came to his side and stroked his muzzle again. “But I am not going to wait an instant. We must get back to camp, and I will squash General Fela, and I do not mean to let Hammond or anyone else talk me out of it, either.”

But somehow his eyes did droop shut; they closed, and he heard Laurence saying, “He must have some water, and something to eat. Can we get it out of the camp, without being observed?”

He woke again with Mei nosing at him anxiously, and an even more anxious cow lowing in his ear: fortunately this second might be dealt with in the most summary fashion, if somewhat indecorously. Temeraire swallowed down the last bite of the head, spat out the horns, and said, “I beg your pardon: I was extremely hungry.”

Arkady himself was still sleeping, and Laurence was drowsing as well beneath the remains of one of the encampment’s tents, ragged and much abused by the landslide. Immortalis and Kulingile had gone back to camp. “We do not at all want General Fela to know you have uncovered his treason,” Mei said, much to Temeraire’s outrage. “We must find proof of his treachery which can be demonstrated to the Emperor, first. You have killed everyone here, so we have no-one to obtain a confession from.”

She sounded faintly reproachful about the last. “Well, they were trying to kill us, so I do not see how you can complain of that,” Temeraire said. “It is the outside of enough to say that we must have more proof. They are soldiers, they are under Fela’s command, and they were holding Arkady prisoner here, hidden away from all of us, and pretending that he brought the opium.”

“But you must see that Fela can make any number of excuses,” Mei said. “He will say that he did not know of these soldiers, that they are some small band of deserters; or he will say that Arkady did bring the opium, and is a false witness, and demand that he be put to torture.”

“What is she saying about me?” Arkady said, pricking up his head, his eyes sliding open. “And what is there to eat? I smell blood: have you not left me anything?” he added accusingly.

Temeraire did not think it was very prudent to tell Arkady that there might be any question of torture. “She is saying we must have more proof that General Fela is guilty, and that you did not bring the opium here,” he said. “And you needn’t complain; there is a nice goat, right there.” He also did not think it needed to be mentioned there had been a cow, too, just lately; anyway he was much bigger than Arkady, and needed a larger meal.

“Hm,” Arkady said, and reaching out seized the tethered goat with a practiced blow, to break its neck. “I do not see that question is sensible at all,” he said, around a mouthful. “Where would I have got any opium, and why would I have brought it here if I had? What good is it? Is it worth a lot of money?”

“Well, it is,” Temeraire said, “but General Fela would have it that you brought it here to give to some rebels.”

“He could scarcely have brought so many chests, alone,” Laurence said, coming out of the tent and buckling on his sword as he did. “Temeraire, pray inquire where he was intercepted, and how long ago? Why did he not come through Guangzhou?”

Arkady was disinclined to be helpful; he was already sagging back into exhausted sleep, and complained that he was tired after his meal, but after a little prodding muttered fretfully, “A month, and all this while I have been alone, and in chains, and now you will not let me sleep. Why would we have come so roundabout a way as the ocean? We had to come quickly: we have an important message for you.”

“Who does he mean by ‘we’?” Laurence asked.

“Oh,” Arkady said, lifting his head abruptly, looking more wide-awake and to Temeraire’s instant suspicion guilty; then he said in feigned tones of great surprise, “Why, Tharkay was with me, of course; haven’t you rescued him yet?”

“My God,” Granby said, springing up with dismay, when he heard the name. “You don’t remember,” he added to Laurence, “but he is a damned good fellow; he has saved all our necks more than once. I suppose Roland must have asked him to play the courier. He knows those roads backwards and forwards; his people on his mother’s side are in Nepal. He took us to Istanbul overland, the last time we were in this country.”

Laurence briefly caught at an elusive twist of memory: running beside someone through dark half-deserted streets, and a great echoing vaulted chamber half-drowned in water, drops striking like bells; but it meant nothing, and slid from his grasp without leaving him a face or a voice, though from what Granby said they had known the man five years and more.

“It was some human thing, about the war,” was all Arkady could tell them, maddeningly, of the message Tharkay had carried, “—something that fellow Napoleon means to do.” This ominous news might have encompassed everything from another invasion to offering peace on terrible terms, but Arkady flipped one wing in a small shrug when they pressed him. “It did not seem very important to me; I had my egg to think about. You will have to ask Tharkay.”

“If he is even alive,” Granby said, “and we can find him: Fela and his crew have been torturing him, no doubt, to get a confession out of him to use against us.”

“What we’re to do about it is the question,” Captain Harcourt said, later that night. They had gathered in her tent, as secretly as they might, to discuss the matter; Mei had smuggled Laurence back to the camp, under cover of dark, while Temeraire and Arkady remained hidden in another valley. “We haven’t the faintest notion where they are keeping him, and if we challenge Fela, he will claim it is all a lie and he has no idea where Tharkay is; and like as not will kill him.

“I suppose Fela must be wary already,” she added. “Those guard-dragons are his, that much is sure enough. They are watching everything we do: they will have noticed Temeraire has been gone more than a day, and have seen Immortalis and Kulingile and Mei flying back and forth as well. If anything, we are giving him all the cause he needs to accuse us of going about and giving more aid and comfort to the rebels, in the meantime.”

“Rebels,” Hammond said slowly, from the chest upon which he sat, “—rebels, of whom we have seen not the least sign, and have no evidence for, but General Fela’s own reports,” and they all regarded him in surprise. “Oh! It is the prettiest arrangement,” he added, answering their growing astonishment, “I wonder I did not guess at it before. The conservative party required some excuse, some argument, to resist an alliance and to undermine Prince Mianning’s growing influence at court. They trumped up this rebellion, General Fela sent in a few false reports—”

“The devil,” Berkley said. “Are you saying there are no damned rebels at all?”

“I dare say there are some number of malcontents, and some quantity of small banditry here and there: enough to make reports plausible,” Hammond said. “But we have not heard a peep of any kind of truly organized force—no rebel army, no real fighting.”

They none of them spoke a moment; the implications hideous: “Good God, Hammond: if it is true, he put that village to the sword without cause,” Laurence said.

“Pray consider the desperate nature of Fela’s situation,” Hammond said. “He might have expected to vanish away a false rebellion as easily as he had created it, with no such measures required. Yet quite unexpectedly, the crown prince proposed your superceding him in command, with a substantial force and an experienced senior officer to back you. From that moment, he has known the lie of the rebellion could not long be preserved. His only hope is to quickly discredit us, and have General Chu and his force recalled—and he has made excellent headway on that front. But if Prince Mianning had not made the suggestion, and we had been sent here alone as the conservatives wished, I am sure he would have been delighted to keep us traipsing about these mountains looking for mythical rebels until the end of days.”

“Doing his best to arrange Laurence’s murder in the meanwhile,” Granby said. “But how are we to prove any of it?”

There was scarcely any hope of their finding Tharkay, or any other evidence, so unfamiliar with the territory as they were; General Fela and his own forces knew it far too well themselves, from having been stationed here for some time. “We must have help,” Laurence said.

Temeraire could not but feel the most dreadful awkwardness, marching coolly past the guard-dragons to General Chu’s tent, and summoning him out of it. Of course Laurence was nominally in command, and he himself as a Celestial technically took precedence over any other breed, but oh! What did that matter when everyone knew perfectly well that General Chu was a most senior dragon, a great general, and really meant to be in command; he could feel the outrage of the other dragons’ eyes upon him, and writhed inwardly to be behaving so rudely.

General Chu came out of his pavilion, between the two scarlet dragons whom Fela had appointed his personal honor-guard, and very stiffly bowed his head. “How may I be of service?” he said shortly.

Temeraire did not know how he could have answered; but Laurence had not the least hesitation. He said in quite a calm voice, “General Chu, have you found any trace of the rebels that the Emperor has commanded us to destroy?”

Chu’s mane bristled. “As yet we have not discovered their base of operations,” he said, even more shortly. “The search continues.”

“Then you would oblige me greatly by coming with us to discuss how we may improve that search,” Laurence said, and nothing more—no explanation, no polite adornment. One of the guard-dragons flattened his own heavy brows, and Temeraire avoided their eyes.

Chu’s eyes narrowed under the forward ridge of his mane. “If I may propose to Your Highness, there is no reason we cannot discuss the matter profitably here,” and indicated with his claw the great maps laid out just inside his pavilion, with clustered markers of red upon them showing the maneuvers of the dragons.

“I prefer to be surveying the territory directly, with my own eyes,” Laurence said. “We will seek out a higher vantage point, if you please. You there, you may keep your places,” he added, when the honor-guard would have risen. “We do not need an escort.” He touched Temeraire’s side; Temeraire was desperately glad to leap aloft and escape the mortification and the cold glares. He hovered just out of ear-shot, pretending not to notice the outraged expressions on the other dragons, and their flattened wings and spines, as General Chu heaved himself into the air and followed.

Arkady was not yet well enough to fly, but that dawn they had loaded him onto Kulingile, who was good-natured enough not to mind his ongoing sighs and restless shifting. He had shown them the way to a pass through the mountains, not far from the encampment where he had been chained, and a valley at its end with a small and glacier-cold pond fed by a trickling cleft in the rock.

“Here,” he had said, “this is where they took us. We saw them having a drink, so Tharkay thought we should ask them for direction; but after he climbed off my back, and spoke with them, suddenly they sprang on him.”

“What did you do?” Temeraire said.

“Oh, well,” Arkady said, “I thought it would be a very good thing if I could only get away, so I could come round and free him later, of course—so I tried to fly away as quick as I could; but those red fellows are fast, even if they do not look it much,” he added disgruntled.

“As though he had any right to be,” Temeraire had said indignantly to Laurence, after, “once he turned tail and left poor Tharkay, and I am sure would never have given him another thought.”

Arkady and Kulingile were waiting for them there in the valley when they descended with Chu; Temeraire had been sure to fly on ahead as quickly as he could, without pausing for conversation. “What is this?” Chu demanded. “Who is that peculiar dragon, and why have we come here?”

“Sir,” Laurence said, “I beg your pardon for the maneuver which has brought you here. We have reason to believe we have all been practiced upon, to an extent difficult to swallow; but we have not a hope of demonstrating it, without your assistance.”

But Chu received the explanation of Arkady’s presence, and of Fela’s treachery, with enormous skepticism; Temeraire laid back his ruff to see it, and said angrily, “I suppose you would rather believe that we are all liars—that I am a liar, and Laurence as well, even though he is the Emperor’s adopted son.”

Chu snorted a little. “That does not disqualify anyone to be an emperor’s son, or an emperor for that matter: what is an emperor but one who tells a lie that all the world believes?”

Temeraire was rather taken aback by this remark, which made an uncomfortable sort of sense, and did not quite know how to answer it. Chu waved a wing-tip dismissively and said, “But in any case, I do not think you liars; I think you want China to make alliance with this foreign nation of yours, and so you are willing to believe the lies of others. General Fela, to have committed such treachery? To have sent false reports, and connived at the attempted murder of the crown prince?”

“Sir,” Laurence said, “have you seen any evidence at all, of the rebellion which he claimed was so greatly resurgent as to challenge his own forces?” General Chu was silent in answer, frowning; in the cold mountain air, the breath from his nostrils drifted forth in pale clouds.

“Then I ask you to indulge us this far,” Laurence went on. “You yourself commanded the army which cleared away the last insurgency. You are well acquainted with these mountains, and whatever rebel fastnesses were taken and secured by the army at that time. Is there anywhere close-by, where they might have taken and concealed a prisoner? If we can find our man, we may find answers with him; his guards may be questioned, and other evidence found.”

“Hm,” Chu said, after a moment, and then he said, “Well, it will not hurt for us to take a look.”

He leapt aloft, Temeraire after him, both dragons beating far up to where the air grew thin and cold. A thin clouding layer of haze reduced the mountains to faded blue, but the sharp and angular lines of their peaks might be clearly seen below. Temeraire heard Laurence’s breath coming quickly; his own was laboring in his chest, and his wings working mightily to keep with Chu.

Chu did not keep them so high long, but soon dropped to a more comfortable height. There he flew in ruminative circles a while, and then beat up a second time, as though to confirm some conclusion; then he swung in easy circles back down to the clearing. He plunged his head into the cold pool and drank deep, then raising his head shook water from his mane vigorously.

“It is a long while since I hunted these mountains,” he said, half-aside to himself, “but I have not forgotten all the bolt-holes of the rabbits yet. There was a White Lotus fortification, a cave, near Blue Crane mountain. And there is some smoke coming from the mountain-side now.”

“Ha, this makes me feel like a young soldier again,” Chu said, peering over the mountain’s ridge, “flying over the northern plains looking for the enemy, under the great Kang-Xi Emperor! It is not at all respectable, of course,” he added, “for either of us; but it can be excused in this case, I think.”

There was some sort of activity at the cave, certainly: as Temeraire raised his head cautiously to peek over, alongside, he could see that the fortifications by the mouth of the large cavern had been rebuilt, and fresh traces of cart wheels tracked through the dust of the slope and into the entryway.

“Either we have found your nest of traitors, which I do not suppose in the least,” Chu said, “or we have found the rebels. But we will soon find out. We will go back to camp, and send ten niru here to investigate thoroughly—”

“Temeraire!” Laurence said sharply, and Temeraire sprang for Chu and bowled him over the slope, only just in time as three dragons plunged towards them from a concealed height above, talons outstretched, and plowed dirt and stone into a cloud where they had been: three scarlet dragons, the very honor-guard which had been appointed to Chu by Fela.

Though flung off his feet, Chu nimbly rolled his entire body over itself and got up roaring. “What is this outrageous behavior?” Chu said, rearing up onto the slope and bellowing at them. “You are traitors! Lost to all decency and right thinking!”

The scarlet dragons half-cowered from him a moment, plainly hesitant, as well they ought to have been, but Temeraire could see that they did not mean to stop. He gathered his breath, his chest swelling, and as the red dragons steeled themselves to leap he roared, shaping the thunder of the divine wind into their path, and the slope crumbled away and left them tumbling down in a heap of stones and broken shale, falling trees entangling their limbs. That seemed poetic justice to him, after his own half-burial. “It serves them all very well,” he said, dropping down to his own feet.

“Temeraire!” Laurence called to him. “We must away at once, before they can call more assistance. If you and Chu only return to camp, with this evidence, Fela is undone; they must slay you at once, or face disaster.”

“The disaster they have made for themselves!” Chu said angrily. “Come: your companion is right, we must get back to camp.” But there was no chance; more of the scarlet dragons were spiraling down from the clouds, all the dozen dragons and more who had been guarding them in the camp: Fela’s loyalists, and all too plainly a willing part of his conspiracy.

“Let me down!” Arkady was squawking, further down the slope, where he and Kulingile had waited for Temeraire and Chu to finish their spying.

“Well, hurry up then!” Demane said, as Arkady scrambled off Kulingile’s back and crept hastily away into a narrow crevasse, peering out and up at them with only the tip of his grey nose showing.

Still they were three against a dozen, and Temeraire struggling to gather his breath again. Chu said, “Quickly, behind me!” and leapt aloft. Temeraire and Kulingile dropped in behind him. Chu darted into a gap between two mountain ridges, angling himself sharply to pass his wings through the space, and led them onwards through a dizzying rush of mountains: thick green slopes and grey stone flying past at such a speed that Temeraire could only blindly follow, twisting himself to meet every new gap and losing his sense of direction all over again at every third turning.

Kulingile was gasping, but at last they burst out between two peaks into the air over a valley, and beneath them, chasing through the very channel they had fled along, were the traitorous dragons. “Now!” Chu said, and Temeraire gathered his breath and roared out, and the peak before him shattered; boulders toppling. Kulingile flung himself down after them, and bore two of the red dragons to the ground beneath his wickedly long talons, drowning them in the rockslide before he sprang aloft again.

The enemy had split up their ranks, however, and still more beasts were coming; six and six from either side approaching, and another six descending from above. The odds were too great. “We must try and fight a way through for you,” Chu said to Temeraire. “You must return to camp, with the Emperor’s son,” and while Temeraire could appreciate that sentiment, his heart recoiled at the idea that he should flee and leave others to fend off the enemy. He felt very sorry suddenly he had ever criticized Laurence for risking himself; he had never properly understood how dreadful it would be.

“We cannot on any account desert you, General,” Laurence said. “Your own survival must be of paramount importance: if you can win back to camp, you will be trusted and obeyed, where we may be considered too partial, and your death somehow laid at our door by further machinations.”

“Laurence,” Temeraire said, “perhaps you ought to go with General Chu, and—”

The knot of dragons was closing in upon them; but shrieks and cries erupted, as a torrent of flame enveloped their hindquarters and Iskierka burst through their ranks behind it, her talons raking along their sides in either direction. “What are you all hovering about here and talking for?” she demanded, whipping about them mid-air. “Don’t you see you are under attack? Hurry up and do some fighting! The others are coming as quick as they can.”

She whipped away again, and Temeraire dived after her, indignant at her reproaches; he roared as she flamed, and together they broke apart the other side of the closing net just as the arrow-head formation massed behind Lily came diving towards them all. “Hah,” Maximus called, as he swung by, “we thought you might have got yourselves into trouble, after those guard-dragons slunk off: we followed them here, and so you have.”

“We did not get ourselves into trouble, at all,” Temeraire said. “It came to us, without any effort on our parts.”

Chu was falling in on his left flank, calling to Temeraire, “Hurry! Tell them to send up a signal! Blue lights and red, together!”

Temeraire was inclined to think, himself, that they were quite enough to manage the enemy; together their formation had dealt with quite more than a dozen dragons, and the red dragons were not as large as himself, much less Maximus and Kulingile. But Laurence shouted the word on to Granby, through his cupped hands, and in a moment the flares went up: blue lights bursting against the mountain-side, and Iskierka followed them with a torrent of red flame.

Dodging another pass from the red dragons, Temeraire noticed that the fighting had doubled back over the cave, and too late realized they had been neatly herded. Soldiers were coming out of the cave-mouth and hoisting into the air bundles which, when the scarlet dragons dived to seize them, proved to be enormous weighted nets.

Four of the scarlet dragons threw themselves in a tumbling pass through the narrow gaps in the formation, their crews lashing out with long barbed whips in either direction that threatened the British dragons’ wings and managed to cut the formation apart, while others in groups of three pounced with the nets. Nitidus and Immortalis were falling off in one direction, a net catching at Nitidus’s wing and leg, so that he would have plummeted into the jagged mountains but for Immortalis giving him support.

Another three of the dragons managed to entangle Lily and Messoria and flung nets over them both, carrying them to the ground, wings and limbs thrashing as they roared, men of their crews broken and bloody beneath them as they fell. Three of the scarlet dragons were feinting at Maximus, drawing him in one direction and another, their crews carving up his flanks with the long whips while the British riflemen fired volleys that the twisting and darting of the dragons sent astray.

The scarlet dragons were fighting too well together, Temeraire realized in dismay: being so nearly alike they all might take any position in the fighting, and exchange places, and alter their formations to suit any particular moment of the fighting. Meanwhile Maximus and Dulcia were the only ones left, and Dulcia could not do very much to help Maximus, outweighed by the scarlet beasts as she was.

He could not go and help; he and Iskierka were struggling to keep together as the enemy beasts came towards them, and even with her fire, it was proving dreadfully difficult: he could not build up enough force behind the divine wind to use it to proper effect over and over. Iskierka only just turned her head over his back and burnt up a net as it flew for his wings; he managed to dive beneath her belly and roar away three dragons coming from beneath with their crews aiming for her with stakes topped by pointed steel caps.

Below, he heard terrible screams, and smelled the acrid bite of Lily’s poison: she had righted herself. The spray of her acid had gone through the net and spattered the defenders before the cave-mouth, and with a great heave, she and Messoria burst free, themselves bellowing as they brushed against a few lingering drops.

But Temeraire could see Kulingile being driven down: one of the scarlet dragons had flung herself at him in a sacrificial roll, hurtling into his chest heedless of his clawing talons. As he reeled back, three others seized on him with jaws and talons closing over his wings and his legs, tearing at the membranes. Temeraire wanted to fly to his rescue, but he could not gather the divine wind, or drag himself free: he was being dragged down as well. “Laurence!” he cried in alarm, thrashing, trying to see if Laurence was still on his back, still hooked on and safe, as three dragons pinned him to the mountain-slope.

Chu roared, coming down upon the back of one of the red dragons, and seized the younger beast by the neck and wrenched it expertly sidelong; the dragon shrieked and fell off Temeraire’s shoulder. “Hah!” Chu said, and seizing one of the fallen trees from the slope flung it at the dragon on Temeraire’s other legs, and Temeraire managed to heave up; the last of the three dragons fled aloft. “Come along!” Chu said. “It is time for us to get out of the fighting.”

“What?” Temeraire said, gasping for breath, and then looked up as a thrumming noise came sharply from overhead: more of the red dragons were wheeling into view, but these were not Fela’s beasts; these were Chu’s soldiers, their armor polished and fresh, gathered in two formations of six and nine.

“This way,” Chu said, and led Temeraire to a flattened peak, broken earlier by the divine wind, high enough to let them see the wheeling, fighting dragons clearly.

“Come upon their left flank,” Chu roared to the smaller formation, and “Zhao Lien, bar their escape,” he shouted to the leading dragon of the other, then sat back on his haunches with satisfaction as the dragons moved skillfully and methodically to begin bringing down the traitor-beasts. “Where are you going?” he demanded, when Temeraire would have gone back aloft. “No, no: there is no excuse for that anymore. We have won the battle: it is only a matter of time, now.”

Temeraire flattened his ruff to his neck in irritation, especially when he saw Iskierka dart by, flaming another two beasts. But he could not quarrel with it; they were winning, that was plain enough.

“Temeraire,” Laurence said, and to his alarm Temeraire saw him unclasping his carabiners, and Forthing and Ferris with him. “We must get down and look into those caves: we must find Tharkay. When the traitors see the fighting going against them, they might well kill him rather than leave him to be witness against them and perhaps General Fela himself. General Chu,” he added, “you would oblige me if you might send down some soldiers with us, from your beasts.”

“Oh,” Temeraire said unhappily as Chu roared the command to his dragons: the cave-mouth was indeed not at all large enough to let him or another dragon go inside. He had only just resolved not to condemn Laurence for wishing to go into fighting, but he had not thought that resolve would be put to the test quite so soon. “Pray be careful,” he said, steeling himself to it, and watched in anxiety as Laurence plunged within the caves, Ferris and Forthing on his heels, and a number of Chu’s soldiers with them.

And then he could do nothing but sit and watch the battle, and wait, while Iskierka and Lily and Maximus and Kulingile helped knock about the traitors, as they well deserved; Temeraire clawed the slope in frustration.

“Hm! I must have a better look at that fire-breather of yours,” Chu said to Temeraire, adding insult to injury. “It is the accepted understanding that they cannot be bred without a grievous lack of balance, but I see she is a most skillful flier. Her temperament, I have observed, is not ideal, but one may make some allowances. Where was she hatched?”

“She is Turkish,” Temeraire said, rather coldly, as Iskierka went showing away again with a great corkscrewing spiral turn, flame sweeping the air like a banner. “She is a Kazilik dragon. I suppose you are quite an expert, on these matters.”

“I am indeed,” Chu said, equably. “I am a minister of the breeding office, and I have served three terms as overseer of the Imperial breeding programme.”

The ground before the cave-mouth still smoked with the Longwing acid, several crates burnt through: Laurence caught a glimpse, in one, of balls of opium charred through and wafting a thick rope of pale grey smoke into the air. He plunged between them and over the deserted fortifications, dead soldiers sprawled over the ground, one with a face half-eaten-away and stiffened hands still clutching at his own head stared as he went past and into the darkness of the cave-mouth.

Laurence’s eyes took a moment to adjust: a few lanterns hung from a thin rope strung overhead, and a honeycomb of tunnels dividing away in front of him. “Sir,” Forthing said, “we had better mark the way we’ve gone.” He took down a lantern, and tearing it open fetched out the candle.

Laurence nodded, taking a piece of the candle. “Each of you take a side,” he said, “and do not go down more than five branchings, for the moment.” He spoke grimly; if the tunnels did go so deep into the mountains, they might search months without finding a concealed prisoner.

He shouted Tharkay’s name, and called in English as he led the way down the first tunnel; distantly for a little while he heard Forthing and Ferris doing the same, until the rock swallowed their voices. He dragged the softened wax across the rough rock wall, at each division of the passage, choosing always the rightmost way; it left a smudge of pale yellow that showed clearly in the light of the torch one of the soldiers carried by his side. The wind currents brought other noises: he heard shouts and footsteps, echoing queerly along the hallways, and his mouth held the unpleasant taste of bitter smoke.

They looked into storerooms, mostly empty and disused. By any fourth or fifth branching, the tunnel would begin to take on more the character of what the place had once been, Laurence supposed: a mine, the tunnels rough-hewn and pickaxed; when they reached a dead end in one, the torch gleamed on a thin line of silver, the remnant of a vein pursued to its end.

In one chamber, somewhere near the third branching, they found a writing-table, with a handful of scattered letters and pen and ink: but old; the ink dried to a black crumbled clot. Laurence glanced at the topmost sheet, a work broken off mid-stream, and then held it to the soldier nearest him, an officer he thought; the man wore a mark of senior rank. “Can you make anything of it?”

The soldier studied it and said, “This is a letter written to Ran Tian Yuan: I believe he was a chief of the rebels,” in a woman’s clear voice. “He was executed ten years ago.” Laurence with a start looked at her: deep lines about her eyes, her face not very old but leathered from sun and wind, and a peppered scar of burnt-in powder upon her cheek.

The woman took up the papers and held them out to one of the other soldiers, to be bundled up together; she fell in again with Laurence as they went through the tunnels. Laurence glanced back at the other soldiers behind them. Their hair was bound up beneath snug caps, with wrappings bound down beneath their chins, likely for warmth when aloft; in the dim light he could not tell whether they were men or women.

The tunnel died shortly after, and they retreated towards the entry, to take another branch; before they could go down this, footsteps came towards them running. Laurence was appalled to find the soldier thrust him behind her arm as they drew their swords, and another of the soldiers push through the hallway to take her side instead.

The enemy soldiers coming had a look of desperation, drawn blades wet with blood, and pulled up short to see them; then it was a sudden, close struggle in the passageway. Their numbers were even, Laurence thought, but he could not easily tell; the tunnel was too narrow to see clearly, and the soldiers at the front, of both parties, had dropped their torches to free their hands for fighting. He took a blow from a fist to his temple and shook his head to clear it; then thrust back high, his long blade coming over the other’s guard. Then he caught another arm descending, and the woman soldier drove her own blade, a shorter one, into the man’s arm-pit beneath his thick jerkin. She grunted abruptly with pain and fell: one of the enemy had thrust a sword into her thigh. Laurence stepped into the gap. He killed three more, and then a sword took him hot in the meat of his arm; he dropped back and let another step into his place.

Abruptly the enemy soldiers gave over the fight: they made one heaving push, and then withdrew hurrying down the hall. Laurence said, “Let them go.” Twelve lay dead in the corridor, and five of their own party. The waste of it made him sorry, with the battle above already decided. They bound up their hurts as best they could. The woman officer was limping; another soldier, Laurence thought a man, looked dazed: his cap and its bindings were wet through with blood, and a trickle coming down his cheek. Two soldiers stood with him; he swayed between them and did not speak.

Laurence looked down the branching they had been on the point of taking: he wished to get the wounded to safety, but the enemy soldiers had been coming this way. “Come with me, if you please,” Laurence said, to two of the unwounded soldiers, one of them a torch-bearer, “and the rest stay here. We will have a quick look, then return to the entry.”

The passageway smelled of smoke: burning wood, a torch, acrid. His head ached. Blood was wet and sticky upon his arm and on his fingers, and the orange glow of torchlight played from behind his back and over the corridor walls, leaping like a bonfire. There was a strange familiarity to it: the narrow walls in around him. And when he came to a wooden door set in the wall, he put his hand upon it and pushed it open.

There was a room, and a pallet inside it; a small torch burned low in a socket upon the wall. A man lay upon the cot, his face bruised and battered, his hands curled against his chest bloody: and Laurence knew him; knew him and knew himself. He remembered another door opening, in Bristol, three years before, and a voice asking him to come outside his prison, in a Britain under siege.

“Tenzing,” Laurence said, and, as Tharkay opened feverish eyes, went to help him stand.