League of Dragons (36 page)

One difficulty briefly reared its head: Windle, plainly resentful of the mechanism which had made his dragon an earnest advocate of pleasing Laurence's judgment, loudly said, “It is nonsense, Obituria. Where do you suppose this money is, really? It is jots on paper, not cash in hand, and so it will remain. And meanwhile you are eating this smoky charqui stuff instead of good fresh beef; you have dropped two stone of flesh, I dare say, in this last week.”

Obituria had, and looked far the better for it; Laurence knew what General Chu would have said of the regular diet of British dragons. But she looked uncertain, and Ricarlee, never backwards in suspicion, presented himself that same afternoon demanding his funds in some less ephemeral form.

“Very good,” Laurence said however, having prepared himself for this eventuality, and presented Ricarlee with a neatly bound sheaf of paper money, and a scattering of shilling coins and pence, which the dragon could not have held conveniently in any manner. “Perhaps you would prefer me to deposit it with your bank?” When Ricarlee professed himself innocent of any accounts, Laurence added, “Temeraire banks with Rothschild, and has had no cause for complaint, I believe.”

He was glad, now, to have been forced to grapple with the difficulty of managing Temeraire's funds. Drummonds' and Hoare's had balked entirely; they refused to do anything but put the money into an account in his own name. Tharkay had come to his rescue: Avram Maden had a considerable acquaintance among the notable Jewish families of Europe, and the Rothschild bank in London had as a favor to him offered Laurence an appointment.

The young man he had first spoken to, in their offices, had been polite but skeptical; their business was ordinarily more in the line of coin-dealing, Laurence vaguely understood. But unexpectedly the head of the bank had come into the room: Mr. Nathan Rothschild, who had been distantly acquainted with his father through Mr. Wilberforce. The gentleman had paid Laurence his condolences, listened to the difficulty before him, asked briefly about the rate of pay dragons were entitled from the Admiralty and the length of their life spans; shortly thereafter Temeraire had become the proud possessor of an account, and if the bank-book were inconveniently small for his talons, at least he showed no signs of needing to consult it.

“Well, if Temeraire banks with them, I suppose I will allow them to hold my money, too,” Ricarlee said loftily, willing to be satisfied by whatever Temeraire possessed.

The bank was equally willing; indeed, after all the hundred dragons of their force had followed suit, a representative was even sent to pay a visit to their camp. That young gentleman plainly entered the field-covert in a spirit of calm desperation, and as he hailed from the Frankfurt branch, his command of English was imperfect, which increased his miseries: the dragons—who had awaited his advent with a fervor rather like idolatry—kept putting their heads down to hear him more closely. But when no one had devoured him after an hour, he began by degrees to be less anxious, and to speak more fluidly of markets and shares to the enraptured attention of his audience, who by the time he left had all begun a lively debate on the merits of putting their money into the Funds as compared with speculating in currency or investing in shipping ventures.

Still, Laurence could not rejoice at his success. There was something low in this method of bringing dragons to heel, something nearly ignoble. He could not fault Poole's silent but visible indignation; even Granby looked a little distressed during the regular conferences which the dragons demanded, where Laurence announced each division. The entire enterprise had a quality of interference in it, thrusting himself between captain and dragon, which Laurence knew very well was anathema in the Corps. But even Poole could scarcely make a complaint that his commander was keeping his dragon in good order, against his will.

Nevertheless, he seethed visibly, and many of the other captains were more discreetly resentful, when they ought to have been in alt. Blücher had marched into Dresden and Leipzig nearly unopposed, and still Napoleon's growing army had not stirred out of Mainz: the campaign would begin well into the territory France had formerly conquered, and in every other part of the army, confidence brimmed over, with an eagerness for battle; meanwhile in the field-covert, his officers were sullen and silent, and performed their duties grudgingly.

“It seems to me I ought to get another share, for carrying her about,” Requiescat said, squinting at the rolls. He and Iskierka had come by Temeraire's clearing to look them over and argue their divisions, yet again. “No-one
else
is lugging about another dragon on their back, and she ain't much like a feather anymore, either.”

“I don't see why
that
should mean you get anything more. She hasn't done anything of use, herself, so it is not as though you are doing anyone a service by bringing her.” Iskierka snorted a bit of flame disapprovingly.

“Certainly I am being of use,” Ning said, popping her head up from the other end of the clearing. “Simply because you cannot yet
see
the Chinese legions does not mean they are not
coming,
and they are coming because I am here. And you must all hope they arrive,” she added, “because otherwise, you will lose.”

Temeraire flattened his ruff in some annoyance at this dismal interjection. “We will
not
lose,” he said, “although naturally the legions
will
come, and be of great use, but that is not the same as saying we will
lose,
if they do not.”

“Well, you will,” Ning said. “I have been stretching my wings, while you all lie in camp all day—”

“And why are some of
us
tired, and you not, I'd like to know,” Requiescat interjected.

“—and I have met any number of ferals, in these parts. Their conversation has been most illuminating. However, I do not mean to quarrel,” she added, “and I am sure I wish you all every success.”

“Then you might as well do your part, when we next fight,” Temeraire said. “That fire you can make would have been very handy indeed in Berlin, if only you had bothered to exert yourself a little. I am sure if you did, Laurence would be perfectly pleased to award you a suitable share of the prize-money,” he added.

“And what about me, hey?” Requiescat said.

“Perhaps Ning ought to then make over some of her share to you,” Temeraire said, “for your services in ferrying her: that would be perfectly suitable.”

“I must beg your pardon,” Ning said, with some asperity, sitting up on her haunches, “but before you have quite concluded making these arrangements on my behalf, I must demur. I
am
doing my part, to preserve the alliance with China, and with that you must content yourselves.”

“Doing her part not to take any side, until she knows who is going to win,” Iskierka said, with a sniff, and Temeraire could not disagree.

“I know you are not
cowardly,
” Temeraire said to Ning, after Iskierka and Requiescat had both gone away still arguing, “as you have been perfectly willing to defend yourself, when necessary.” There had been more than one occasion when dragons new to their camp had tried to deny Ning precedence—she was still small, although nearing the size of a light-weight by now—and she had firmly though politely made plain she would not stand for it; three or four dragons still sported a badly scorched toe, or tail-tip. “So I cannot see why you would not like to do your share, and
earn
your share thereby. Surely you must see it gives a very strange appearance for you to be nowhere on the rolls, at all: you have not a single shilling to your name!”

Ning did cast a quick, wistful glance over at the rolls, but she only answered, “It is very well to count shillings and pounds. What is a shilling? It is the money that here, to-day, will buy you a rabbit. But in London, before we left, it would buy you
two.
”

“Rabbits are harder to come by here than in London,” Temeraire said.

“Just so,” Ning said. “Because there is a war, and an army tramping through the fields, so there are fewer rabbits, and more mouths to eat them. Therefore, if the war were not occurring, there would be more rabbits, and perhaps you might even buy
three
rabbits, with your same shilling. Why therefore should I content myself to gather pounds and shillings, when I might instead command their value?”

“But so long as I have more pounds and shillings than another dragon, I may buy more rabbits, no matter what they are worth,” Temeraire said. “And so long as you have
no
shillings, you can buy none, no matter how many there are.”

“A consideration which would occupy my attention a great deal, if I did not have the prospect of becoming companion to a wealthy and powerful sovereign,” Ning said firmly.

“Yes, but
which
sovereign,” Temeraire muttered to himself, when she had curled herself back up to sleep. He did not mean to say so, but it made him feel a little uneasy that Ning did
not
care to join their side properly, just yet. Ning might talk of rabbits all she liked, but no dragon could really wish to be left out of anything so nice as prize-money, so she was only refraining because she really did think they might lose. She was wrong, naturally, but he would have liked to inquire a little further as to why, if he could have done so without suggesting he meant to believe her.

“And still the Austrians are flying back and forth between Vienna and Dresden every day,” Dyhern said, grumbling even as he offered Laurence a cup of remarkably good coffee. “If he gives us one good knock, they will scurry back into his pockets, you may be sure.”

They were encamped outside Leipzig, near the small town of Lützen, waiting for the order to move onwards. The headquarters of the allied forces had been moved forward from the east and established in Dresden: the Tsar himself was there with Field Marshal Kutuzov—whom report had very ill, which was certainly doing nothing to improve the coordination and communications of their army. And then the word had come last night: Napoleon had left Paris. Napoleon was coming to the front. The whisper had traveled around every campfire at a rapid pace, throwing an evil shadow over every man. Laurence had heard the murmurs as he walked through camp that morning, past the stirring fires and the dim wash of dawn, lightening a heavy grey sky.

He was meeting with Dyhern and the Russian Admiral Ilchenko, to review the supply manifests for the week ahead. Laurence had not managed to acquire more than a smattering of Russian in the last campaign, and Ilchenko was entirely innocent of English, while Dyhern's French left much to be desired; they communicated therefore in a patchwork of languages, often translating the same remark more than once, to be sure they had understood. But this awkwardness was the least of their difficulties.

Further reserves had joined them from the east as the Prussian Army mobilized fully, and more Russian dragons had come from the heartland, now that spring was reducing the need for them to keep the ferals from raiding. In numbers, they now even approached Napoleon's reported tally of four hundred beasts, although numbers alone were not a sufficient measure.

The Prussians now could field some 130 beasts, many of them having been liberated on the way to Berlin—but half of these were slow-flying heavy-weights. Even their middle-weights stood on the heavier side, and they had very few light-weights at all. Laurence would privately have preferred to keep the large beasts ferrying men and guns—especially guns. He knew it was a general tenet of the Chinese legions that dragons above middle-weight were a waste of muscle, but a middle-weight could not carry a twenty-four-pounder for any distance, and a heavy-weight could. Napoleon had previously made just such a use of his own heavy-weight dragons to bring a far greater weight of metal to bear upon the battlefield than horses over bad roads could arrange. But Laurence could not direct Dyhern, who with his comrades not unnaturally hungered for more avenging victories in the field. And in any case, the Prussian artillery-men were in no hurry to mount dragons.

On the Russian side, they claimed eighty beasts, but in practice only the thirty heavy-weights were under military discipline, and these could be used for nothing but battle. They cared too little for men—indeed barely acknowledged their existence save as the occasional providers of food and treasure, or the brutality of bit and hobble. A week gone, Vosyem had sent three hundred soldiers plummeting to a grisly death, because a knot of the carrying-harness had irritated her under the wing. She had not complained to her officers; she had simply turned her head round mid-air and torn away the silk with a few quick slashes of her serrated teeth, ignoring the cries and pleas of her passengers and the frantic spurring of her officers. The infantry had since refused to go aboard any of the Russian beasts, and Laurence could scarcely blame them.

As for cargo, one could give a Russian dragon almost anything to carry, but one could not rely on getting it back again. Only the day before, Admiral Ilchenko had very grudgingly come to Laurence to ask for Temeraire's assistance: Jevionty, one of his newly arrived dragons, would not surrender a cannon he had been ordered to carry from Vilna to the waiting artillery company whose charge it was, and he had begun to snarl and hiss at any officer who even attempted to approach him.

“Do not hiss at
me,
” Temeraire said with great dignity, when he had descended into the clearing. “If I wanted a gun of my own, I should
buy
one, with my money,” and Jevionty a little abashed had muttered apology: the reputation of Temeraire's treasure had spread widely among the Russian dragons. “And I cannot see what you want with this cannon. They are not pretty to look at, and they are no use unless you have men to fire them for you.”

“It is
mine,
” Jevionty said obstinately, “and it
is
valuable, or else why do they want to steal it from me?” He had lost his own hoard in the devastation of Moscow, and was keen to rebuild it in any manner possible: the Russian beasts counted standing among themselves almost entirely based on their possessions.