“He builds them in the woods, where there are no roads at all,” General Barclay said. “A heavy-weight knocks down a few trees for them and goes on; the middle-weights come, deposit some goods and cattle, assist in building a little fortification, and go on; a few light-weights strike out across the countryside for whatever of substance they can steal, leave it, and go on; then a company remains with a couple of light guns and a few couriers, enough to carry supply forward. If our Cossacks strike, they defend themselves. If we come in force, they snatch whatever they can carry and flee, dispersing to the nearest other depots and reinforcing these, and call for a heavier beast to strike in return.”
The Russians had only evaded Napoleon through good luck and desperate contortions, and because he and his generals had thrown away several chances by arguing with one another. Napoleon’s own brother Jerome had simply run away from his corps on the eve of battle in a temper and gone back to France; or so the Russians said—they had evidently learned of the incident from their spies, and it was repeated with great enjoyment. Then, too, thanks to heavy rains, the Russian roads had become quite impassable with mud at several points, slowing the French advance and forcing Napoleon’s dragons to carry the guns nearly all the way by air. Temeraire had carried a twelve-pounder himself once, in the retreat from London, and it had been quite exhausting; one could not lug something so heavy and then fight again straightaway, particularly not without a healthy dinner.
It seemed that Napoleon had tried to repair the sluggishness of his advance, as much as he could, by personally flying about to the different parts of his army, when he could, to take command directly; he had been at the battle of Kliastitzy, and smashed the Russian corps there, opening his Marshals’ road to St. Petersburg; and a week later at Smolensk, where by the narrowest of margins the Russian Army had escaped him. And now he was closing in ever more swiftly; he would be on them within a day, perhaps two, and it seemed the Russians had decided at last to fight.
Chu, when Temeraire and Laurence had finished translating the Russian accounts of the campaign so far, hummed deep in his throat, skeptically. “Are they sensible men?” he demanded.
“I know it seems peculiar that they have been running away all this time,” Temeraire began, but Chu snorted.
“Nonsense,” he said. “What is peculiar is that they have been planning to fight an army larger than theirs in every way, with inferior air support. If they did not know we were coming, they had much better have kept running!”
Temeraire was taken aback; Laurence said, “General Chu, Moscow is in some sense the central city of their nation—it is not formally the capital, but the Tsar is crowned here; they cannot let it fall without some resistance.”
“Oh, I see; politics,” Chu said. “Well, at least find out for me why they have organized their aerial forces in such an absurd way, for there must be some reason. I see they do not have any proper system of supply, but they could at least field forty middle-weights, instead of those fifteen hulks and so many of those little fellows.”
The Russians looked irritated to be questioned on this point. “Does this beast of yours not know how long an egg takes to hatch?” General Tutchkov said to Laurence, impatiently. “How does it suppose we should have got fifty middle-weight beasts under harness since they crossed the Niemen?”
“You might have gone to your breeding grounds,” Temeraire said. “I dare say if you had offered even a little of all that immense treasure to your retired beasts, or your ferals, they would have been delighted to fight for you.” This suggestion met only with stares, and a great comprehensive snort from Kutuzov out of his bulbous nose, which was quite rude; but at any rate, it answered Chu’s remaining concern: the Russians had not thought to do so.
“So, they are not sensible men,” Chu said with finality. “How do they expect to properly oppose a nation whose aerial forces so outweigh their own? They may be victorious in this war, thanks to our assistance, and yet find themselves in the gravest difficulty in the next season once again.
“But,” he added, “that is not my business, but theirs! My business is to win now, and if that is the only reason, and these numbers are correct, I am satisfied with our prospects for battle. But I must yet have four days to concentrate upon the battlefield.”
Kutuzov was silent a moment, when this information was conveyed: the great massed corps of Napoleon’s army were hard upon their rear, and even falling back might not gain them sufficient time along the road to Moscow. “Well,” he said finally, “if we cannot win the time from our enemy, we must ask him if he will be so kind as to give it to us.” And he called over one of his pages, and took up a pen and paper, to write swiftly a letter to the Tsar.