Napoleon had evidently no sooner received the news of his deadly danger than he had at once leapt into action and flung his men back onto the road—an immense gamble on his part: if Kutuzov had only moved more quickly, the French should have been vulnerable to an attack in their rear. But with the crisis upon him, as so often before, Napoleon had disdained the smaller course and seized the one avenue of obtaining some compensatory advantage, which the choice of ground might give him, against the suddenly altered balance of power between himself and his enemies.
And he had been rewarded, for the moment of great danger had passed. The bulk of the French Army, falling back west by forced marches, had been already well away before the Russians had roused, and as soon as the sky had grown even a little light, the French dragons had begun their quick hop-scotch portage of men and guns, and sped them even further away.
Temeraire could not but regret the opportunity lost, but after all, they would win in any case, and in some way it seemed more sporting, that Napoleon should know what force would meet him, and have a chance to do his very best, and then be defeated anyway. “Not, of course,” he said hastily, “that I mean we ought not have taken advantage of the opportunity, or that it would have been unfair; this is war, after all, and I do not mean to be romantical—but as it has been lost, anyway, we may console ourselves that the quality of our victory will be the greater, if no-one can say Napoleon did not have a fair chance to win, that he was only taken by surprise.”
“When we are in battle with the greatest general of this age, and perhaps of any,” Laurence said, “I will be glad enough for victory of any kind; we can ill afford to sacrifice this chance or any other.”
Temeraire refused to be so pessimistic: Napoleon was not trying to get away entirely, which would have been maddening; he had only fallen back on a nearby town, Tsarevo Zaimische, and soon the battle would be joined properly—although it seemed, not to-day, but tomorrow. Kutuzov was advancing their army, but they would not be in position properly until late, and then there would not be enough time to engage the enemy.
Chu growled deeply in his throat. “And where are we to get supply, if we do not defeat him the next day?” he demanded, and summoned Shen Shi to join him and Temeraire in proceeding to Kutuzov’s tent; although at least General Kutuzov came out at once to speak to them now, and listened with attention to their difficulties.
“We have four days’ adequate supply on hand, and of that we require three to reach our nearest resupply point,” Chu said, his tone glacially polite.
“Which means, sir,” Laurence said, having translated this, to the perplexed pause which received it, “that the legions should have to quit the field by mid-day tomorrow, regardless of the circumstances of the battle.”
Kutuzov at once sent for his own quartermasters, and an urgent conference was held. “General, we cannot procure three hundred head of cattle overnight!” one of these worthies protested. “Not unless you mean to starve the entire army for three days to feed them.”
“What do we want with three hundred head of cattle?” Chu said, with a disparaging snort.
“Twenty would serve excellently, if they are animals like this one,” Shen Shi said, indicating an unhappy bullock in the near distance, intended for the Russian couriers, “and ninety tons of grain. A hundred and ten, if we must transport it ourselves, so long as the supply is within forty miles.”
This list of requirements was so at war with the understanding of the Russian supply-officers that some argument was required even to persuade them to believe it correctly conveyed to them; then at last with some doubtful reluctance one said to the others, “The magazine at Mozhaisk is sufficiently supplied. We might get pigs from the farms near Kozhukhovo—”
Some seven of the supply-dragons set off at once, with a few rather alarmed Russian officers flung aboard with the crew to smooth the paths of the requisition, and the immediate crisis was averted; but Chu shook his head disapprovingly as they went back to their own campsite. “If they don’t have enough dragons for their infantry, of course this kind of sluggish maneuvering must be the consequence,” he said, “but what a mess! I expect those French will have dug in like moles by the time we get started in the morning.”
Indeed, when Temeraire went aloft shortly afterwards to have a look, he could see the French working frantically on earthworks and fortifications—the heavier dragons were holding entire trees in place, lengthwise, piled upon one another while men lashed them with rope and the middle-weights heaped up dirt to either side. “That is an inordinate number of trees,” Tharkay said to Laurence, as they took their turns peering down through the glass.