A large tent had been erected upon neutral ground outside Vyazma, a field cleared half-a-mile in either direction and policed watchfully by dragons of both parties: for the French part, Laurence saw, nearly all middle-weights of no breed which he recognized, most of them with large broad foreheads. Deep chests and heavy shoulders were common as well, but their hides were of peculiarly motley appearance, muddied greens and yellows and browns.
He thought grimly that he detected Lien’s hand at work there, though there was no sign of her either at present or reported by the Russian scouts; at least one spy report not three weeks old had positively placed her at the Chateau de Saint-Cloud, outside Paris, in the company of the new Empress and the infant heir. “I can believe nearly anything of her,” Temeraire said, “but she cannot have let Napoleon go to war without her: I am sure she cannot. I dare say she is hiding somewhere, and will find some way to do something dreadful to us before the end. Not,” he added, “that I will not be entirely ready to meet her, Laurence, of course.”
Gong Su had not disagreed with him openly, but quietly told Laurence afterwards, “It is considered the foremost duty of every Celestial to guard the Emperor’s line, a duty which precedes even the ties of companionship: and Napoleon has now but this one child. I think it likely that Lung Tien Lien has indeed remained in Paris, to protect him and to forward his education,” a stroke of great good fortune for which Laurence could not but be grateful.
But Lien had now had charge of Napoleon’s aerial forces and his breeding programme for a full five years, and the fruits of her labor were everywhere to be observed not only in the looks but in the wide intelligence and education of the French dragons. These were frequently to be seen sitting up high on their haunches and peering into the distance, getting the best look they could at the disposition of the Russian troops, and then putting their heads together to murmur and exchange thoughts. They were all of them under harness, but many of them bore no evident captain, and several of them emblems which might have been symbols of rank.
Indeed one of the dragons, a grey-and-green beast not quite a middle-weight, sat quietly and unobtrusively in the corner of the field, unremarked; but Laurence saw with disquiet that besides a very cursory harness, only enough to take up perhaps a few riders, it bore a wide red sash pinned with a large silver star: a Marshal? Napoleon had granted Lien the baton years before, establishing the precedent; a dragon of sufficient military gifts to have merited another such grant would surely make a deadly opponent.
There were also three heavy-weights beside: a Petit Chevalier and a Chanson-de-Guerre, each holding one corner of the French line, and anchoring the center was a dragon as different from every other beast upon the field as could be imagined: an Incan dragon, with its long lapping scales like feathers gleaming a brilliant sky-blue and tipped with scarlet, looking more like some immense sort of brooding phoenix, wearing a kind of golden headdress and its belly armored in a mesh washed with gold and bearing many decorations: surely an officer in the Incan armies, and if not yet wholly familiar with Western warfare, likely to be an able commander in the air.
But there were enough signs of weakness visible to hearten a Russian ally, too: hard use had worn many a harness-strap and tarnished many a buckle; the men aboard the dragons looked thin, and they were fewer in number than they ought have been, for so many beasts. However skillfully they had stretched their supply, however swiftly they had moved, still their ranks had dwindled during their long march, and Napoleon could not easily get more men to swell them out again. Laurence had taken a short flight aloft with Temeraire, earlier, and spied out a little of the enemy’s artillery: nearly all nine-pounders or lighter, although there were many of them, and the number of cavalry astonishingly small; Bonaparte was relying heavily upon his aerial advantage.
And to this encouragement, Hammond had sent a welcome dash of joyful news: Placet had arrived breathless from Moscow the night before, with Captain Terrance, wide-awake sober for once, spilling off his back; he had seized Laurence by both arms. “Wellington has smashed Marmont, at Salamanca,” he said. “On July the twenty-second. Routed him foot and horse and wing: the French lost thirteen thousand men, and they say Marmont is dead, or at least so gravely wounded we will not see him again in the field this year.”