Victory of Eagles

He rolled triumphantly through to the end of his recitation, but then had to wait for applause while his audience worked out just what had been said. “But I don’t understand, did you win the battle or not?” Messoria said finally, puzzled.

“Of course we won the battle,” Gentius said irritably. “And we did a sight better without Captain Haulding—hah, I have remembered his name after all—aboard, I can tell you that. I was writ up in the newspapers, even, and Government gave over and made her captain properly: because we had done well,” he finished, with a meaningful nudge to Temeraire’s shoulder. “That is the road: win battles for them, and they will come about, see if they don’t.”

“That is all very well,” Iskierka remarked, “as soon as they let us have some battles. There he comes now, ask him when we shall be fighting,” and she nudged Temeraire: Laurence was coming down the path from the castle.

Temeraire hardly knew how to look Laurence in the face; bitterly conscious now of his guilt, he half-expected Laurence to upbraid him at once. But Laurence said only, to Roland and to Demane and Sipho, “Go and rouse up the other captains; at once, if you please,” and stood waiting and silent until the others had been drawn from their uncomfortable bivouacs. “Gentlemen, I have been commissioned temporarily, and given command of this expedition; you will find your written orders there, and I trust they allow of no ambiguity.”

Laurence had a sheaf of papers in his hands, packets each sealed separately and inscribed with the other captains’ names; he handed the orders to Sipho to carry around.

“Damned paperwork, with Bonaparte in our parlor,” Berkley muttered. “Trust the Army for this sort of thing—”

“You will oblige me greatly, Berkley, by putting those orders by safe, somewhere they ca

But Laurence did not explain further. Instead he went on, “The French are harassing our farmers with raiding bands, and so supplying the wants of their army. Our duty is to stop this predation, and so far as is practicable without undue risk to the dragons, to reduce the forces available to Napoleon.”

There was a pause, and then Granby said, “—you mean—his irregulars?”

“I do,” Laurence said.

“What does he expect us to do with the prisoners, cart them about with us in the belly-rigging?” Berkley said.

“There will be no quarter given,” Laurence said. There was a heavy finality to his tone, which somehow warned off any other questions; the captains did not say anything even to one another. “We will begin in Northumberland, tomorrow, and work our way south. We leave at dawn, gentlemen; that is all.”

They stood a moment longer looking at their orders and at Laurence, with oddly uncertain expressions; in the end they all drifted away back to their tents without another word said. Temeraire himself was at a standstill. He could not understand why Laurence should have taken the command. He was already in command, and it was important, was it not, for a dragon to have the post—Laurence himself had said as much. Temeraire did not mean to be selfish anymore, at all, now that he knew he had been selfish; if Laurence wished the command, of course he should have it, and yet, if it mattered for politics—for all the dragons—

He struggled over it; ventured at last timidly to ask, and added hurriedly, “I do not mind at all, for myself, personally, I am very happy that you are restored, and a captain now again. Only, if it is important—”

He was yet mostly coiled up with the others, but everyone else was asleep; the other men were gone into their tents. Laurence had told Roland and Demane and Sipho to go and sleep in his tent, and had stayed out, wrapped in his coat and cloak and looking over maps, which he had laid out on a small camp-table; he was marking them with a small wax pencil, here and there.

“In the present case, it is the more important you should not be in command, or anyone but myself,” Laurence said.

There was something odd in his voice: queerly flat, as if he did not much care what he was saying, and he did not look up from his work. Temeraire wished very much it were not so dark, and he could see Laurence’s face. “In any case,” Laurence added, “whether the courts will believe you truly the commander is a proposition yet untried; and I hope you would not risk the lives and the careers of the other captains, unconsenting, for the sake of your precedence.”

“But,” Temeraire said, “are they not risking their lives anyway?”

“In battle,” Laurence said, “not afterwards.”

Temeraire did not much want to pursue; however dreadful to think Laurence was angry with him, it would be all the worse to know, to hear it from Laurence himself. “Laurence,” Temeraire said anyway, bravely, “pray explain to me; I know—I know I have let you be hurt, because I did not try to understand well enough, and I do not mean to let it happen again, only I ca

Laurence did look up at that, his eyes briefly catching a reflection from the castle upon the hill. “There is nothing to help; I am in no danger.”

“If they should be, so should you,” Temeraire said.

“I ca

“I WANT HIM BLED,” Wellesley had said, in the tower room of Edinburgh Castle, standing over the map of England swarming with blue markers, with the icy rain lashing at the windows. Distantly, down the hall, the muffled sound of the King’s voice was rising in some complaint; to Laurence it seemed very loud. “Every man to him is worth five to us. He must bring them across at great expense, and he must spend his dragons’ strength to do it. And his men live off the land—he relies upon them raiding the countryside, feeding themselves and driving in cattle for the dragons, and keeping his supply lines meager and short.”

“You mean you wish us to attack his irregulars,” Laurence broke in, tired of evasions.

“His supply-lines, his foragers, his scouts.” Wellesley thumped the map. “He has hundreds of small raiding parties scattered throughout the country north of London; he ca

“You will not engage,” he added, “any substantial party, with other dragons in number, or artillery: I do not mean to lose any of the beasts.”

Laurence had expected something of the sort, from the tenor of Wellesley’s summons; he was not surprised, and heard it with dull acceptance. The strategy was sound, coldly speaking: if Bonaparte began to lose men quicker than he could replace them, and found his supply growing short, he would have to accept a battle on whatever terms it was offered him, or withdraw entirely.

But dragons were not put to such a use in civilized warfare; Wellesley knew it, and so did he. Pragmatism alone held them too valuable to risk and too expensive to supply, save against a more substantial target, of strategic importance, than a small party of light foot armed only with muskets. But it was not pragmatism but sentiment which with a single voice called inhuman the exceptions made from time to time. There was little that aroused more horror and more condemnation from ordinary men than the prospect of dragons set loose against them; men had been court-martialed and hanged for it, even by their own side.