“LA GRANDE ARMéE, HE is calling it,” Tharkay had said, lying exhausted and thin against the cushions which propped him, in Laurence’s own camp-bed: they had carried him gently and carefully dragon-back, in a hammock of netting, back from the caves. “They have been mustering all winter; he will march into Russia in three months—in two—” He stopped, breathing hard, and asked, “What is the day?”
“It is the third of May,” Laurence said, quietly. The abuse had not marked Tharkay excessively: fortunately they had wished to preserve the appearance of a more honest confession, perhaps, when they had wrung one from him. But he had been lashed more than once, judging by the half-healed marks; there were burns upon his limbs as from a hot poker, and his hands were badly mangled.
“In a month,” Tharkay said. “He will march in June; that was our latest intelligence.”
“With near a million men?” Laurence said, low.
Tharkay nodded, minimally. “And some hundred dragons.”
It was indeed a message terrible enough to bring a man racing flat-out halfway around the world. The largest army ever heard of, and with it Napoleon meant to crush the last embers of resistance out of Europe: first Russia, and then he would turn all his attention to the Peninsula. Hammond was already rising, pale. “I must go speak with General Chu at once, and with Qin Mei: we must—these events must require our immediate return to the capital. Oh! We must return at once.” He left unceremoniously, and Tharkay closed his eyes.
Laurence sat silently with him in the growing dark of the tent, groping back through patchwork scenes of memory. He remembered the Goliath sinking more clearly now; he remembered the faces of the officers at his court-martial; he remembered the cold bleak desperation of the flight across the Channel, to take the plague-medicine to France.
“I hope you will forgive my mentioning it, Will,” Tharkay said, eventually, rousing Laurence from his reverie. “—I recognize there is a certain pot-calling quality to my doing so under the circumstances, but have you noticed that the top of your head appears likely to come off?”
Laurence put up a hand: he had taken off his hat. The scalp-wound had crusted over, and the bandages had come loose in the fighting; he had not had an opportunity to repair them, and the scabbing made a gory line of dried blood around half his skull. “It is only an inconvenience,” he answered. “Will you try and take a little wine?”
He eased Tharkay up, and gave him the glass; Tharkay held it awkwardly between his bruised and bloody hands, drank thirstily, and sank back again.
Temeraire peered in through the tent-opening, with one enormous platter-like eye. “I have seen to General Fela,” he said, with an enormous and glittering satisfaction which made unnecessary any questions about that gentleman’s fate, “—General Chu acknowledged I had every right to do it; but how is poor Tharkay?”
“Not yet expired,” Tharkay said, dryly, without opening his eyes again. “Though I would be glad of some rest; and that, I think, I cannot rely upon.”
“No,” Laurence said, quietly. “We will have to leave at once; and, pray God, bring some of these legions with us.”
? ? ?
“Be careful, there,” Iskierka called, a hiss of steam escaping her spikes, and Temeraire craned his head over a little further, just to be sure there was not good cause for her concern. The egg was supported in a nest of furs, within a well-tried net, and there were three dozen handlers directly beneath it, their fingertips lightly touching the surface, in case the net should break, but still anything might happen; one could not be too careful. Temeraire was glad when the maneuver was complete, and the egg transferred at last from his back to the waiting, ceremonial dais where it would await its hatching.
He nosed at the dais again, to be sure it was just the right temperature. With his head close, he could hear the low gurgle of water running through it, which the head of the Imperial household had explained to him brought the heat, from a cistern below. It was indeed very pleasantly warm without being excessively hot, and a gentle breeze played through the hall in which the egg now stood: the central hall of Prince Mianning’s palace, where they had first made their bows on arriving in China; but in attendance now there were only Mianning’s trusted retainers, as well as Mei and a handful of Imperial dragons, and Temeraire’s own mother, Qian.
Iskierka finished her own re-inspection of the dais, and drew her head back to snort with satisfaction. “That is well enough, I suppose,” she said. “I hope you will make a point to those fellows, Temeraire, that they will answer for it, if anything should go badly. You may be sure I will not listen to anyone telling me that I cannot squash this fellow, or that fellow, if anyone should hurt the egg; I will certainly come back and answer it.”