Victory of Eagles - [Temeraire 05] by Naomi Novik

Author:Naomi Novik [Novik, Naomi]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, Fantasy, Fantasy fiction, Alternative History, Dragons, Great Britain - Officers, Fiction - Fantasy, Napoleonic Wars; 1800-1815, Alternative histories (Fiction), Historical, Fantasy - Historical, General, Science Fiction And Fantasy, Ship captains, War stories, England, War & Military
ISBN: 9780345512253
Publisher: Del Rey
Published: 2009-05-18T23:00:00+00:00

Chapter 10

I AM AN OFFICER NOW,though,” Temeraire said, “so I do not see why I must wait.”

“You might be a general, and it will not make you any smaller,” Laurence said. “A twenty-ton dragon must give over trying to sneak, and that is our only hope at all of getting Granby out.”

“But what if you should be captured,” Temeraire said, “and then I would be just as bad as Iskierka: it is my duty to keep you safe.”

They had fought very nearly this same battle before, however, in Istanbul, and his protests were rather an expression of unhappiness than fresh and determined objections. “We have not time to quarrel; Granby’s very life if not his liberty may depend on quick action,” Laurence said gently, and Temeraire sank to his belly with his ruff pinned back, threshing the matted straw of the meadow uneasily with his claws and raking up dust and furrowed earth with it.

Laurence was grateful for the established habit of the conversation, if a little guilty, for it allowed him to practice a degree of deceit: he knew under ordinary circumstances, he would not in this same situation go, however much he might wish to. If he were captured, Temeraire would be prisoner, and in their already dire straits the risk could not be run, not for so slim a chance as they faced to bring out Granby and Iskierka.

The circumstances were not ordinary. Laurence was a man already dead in law. He could not value preserving his own life very high; and so long as he were killed instead of captured in the attempt, which he had some right to hope might be arranged, Temeraire would not be lost to Britain: he had made the agreement with Wellesley, and now was bound directly, not only through Laurence himself. And there was no-one else to go. Iskierka had been the only one of their motley company with a proper crew, and all of them had been captured with her: lieutenants, midwingmen, even her ground crew all aboard. All that were left now were Laurence’s small handful of crew, and for senior officers only Dunne and Wickley, former midwingmen of Laurence’s crew who had acquired enough of the ferals’ language to be useful as translators. A handful of other officers had been similarly placed with the ferals for a gift with languages more than any other quality; most of them were young, very young: nearer fourteen than twenty, and not to be sent on an expedition little better than a dice-throw. Tharkay shook his head at the lot of them, and said to Laurence, “Better if we go alone.”

Tharkay had taken a commission with the Corps, at least for the moment; but this was not something which any service could require. “You are not obliged—” Laurence began.

“No,” Tharkay agreed civilly, with one raised brow, and Laurence bowed and left it there. Laurence exchanged his bottle-green coat for Blythe’s leather smock, with its pockets large enough to conceal a multitude of sins: two pistols and a good knife, and one of Blythe’s hammers.

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