He spoke to convince himself as much as Temeraire: but his conscience smote him badly for this undeniable piece of sophistry, and still more when Tharkay had been rigged out in the red robes: he did indeed look a very imposing potentate. “You look as wretched as a cat, Will,” Tharkay said. “You need not borrow so much trouble; I dare say we will be run out of camp at bayonet-point before ever we announce ourselves.”
When he ran so dreadful a risk, Laurence could hardly begrudge him the right to extract what black humor might be found in the situation: they were far more likely to be shot, than laughed at, in the prevailing mood of the Russian Army, and Tharkay, in assuming a deceptive r?le, most likely to be held culpable. “Are you certain you wish to go forward with this?” Laurence said to him quietly. “If the Russian command are determined to reject help offered with an open hand, it need not be our concern to deliver it to them in the face of all obstacles which they put before us.”
“And go back to China, with three hundred dragons at our back?” Tharkay said. “No, Laurence; it would be an unconscionable waste, and I find I have committed too much to the enterprise to see it fail now.” He paused, and with less levity added, “You must know, Laurence, that if we cannot stop Napoleon here, likely we can never stop him. If he has time to establish a Kingdom of Poland, and feed it the rest of Prussia little by little; if he can ship over a hundred Incan dragons—” The sentence required no completion; Laurence nodded. With the wealth and power of the Incan Empire merging with his own, and his conquests in Europe secured, Napoleon’s position would grow the more unassailable; his fist would close ever tighter. Russia was the last great counterbalance left in Europe; if it fell, Napoleon would turn all his attention to Spain. And when Spain had been crushed—he would look to Britain once again.
He settled on his own sword, then flanked Tharkay on one hand; Gong Su took the other, with Dyhern, Forthing, and Ferris behind, all of them in the best show they could arrange. They were preceded into the camp by two Jade Dragons: the size of draft-horses and utterly foreign with their lean vulpine heads and dragging wings, bearing suspended between them, on chains slung from their necks, a fence-post on which they had rigged Chu’s banner, framed on either side by lanterns in the Chinese style.
Their procession met with bewildered astonishment as they began it, and collected up a number of strays and camp-followers in their train as they went through the encampment: boys running alongside staring and calling in Russian. One of them, rather daring, darted forward to touch with a finger the wing of Lung Yu Fei, the Jade Dragon nearest the side; she whipped her head on her long narrow neck around and hissed at him for this effrontery. With her jaws of serrated teeth scarce inches from his face, the boy paled and fell backwards in alarm, scuttling away on hands and feet like a beetle while his friends jeered him good-naturedly.
They were very nearly as good as a circus coming up the hill for pageantry, and the very growing noise of their approach removed the necessity of passing some challenge: the inhabitants of Kutuzov’s pavilion came out themselves to see and to stare as they climbed the hill towards them: the field marshal himself a portly and beribboned gentleman in front, white-haired and with a large, high-browed face, the nose and cheeks and jowls bulbous, one eye milky; epaulettes and medals and sash proclaiming his identity. Beside him was a tall lean man with a smooth-pated head: Barclay de Tolly, Laurence thought. Their party came to a halt some several arm’s-lengths away, and the Russian high command regarded them in silent astonishment while not a word was said.
Tharkay carried the event in high aplomb, his face set in the sternest lines as he regarded the assembled Russian company with a searching air, and then said over his shoulder, in Chinese, “I think that will do; you had better be the first to break the silence.”
“Gentlemen,” Laurence said to them in French, “I am Captain William Laurence, of His Royal Majesty’s Aerial Corps. I am here on behalf of our ally, the Emperor of China, in the company of his envoy, and I have the honor to offer you three hundred of the Chinese aerial legions, who can be on the battlefield in four days: if you will use them.”