Musket-fire spat against his flank, hot stinging bursts of pain, but he was through and pulling up and away, the guns silenced, their crews shattered. Looking back he saw the wreckage they had already made in that brief span of time: the cooking-pits clogged with dirt and smoking metal, many spoilt; a dozen of the Shen Lung moaning upon the ground, bleeding, many of the wounded dragons injured again also; and near the half-collapsed pavilion—
Temeraire flung himself down again next to Chu: the general’s great scarlet side was heaving, and with each breath a gush of blood rose up and spilled black from three gaping wounds, clustered near the top of his back; his wings lay limp against his sides. “No, no,” Temeraire said, wretchedly. Five of the Chinese dragon-surgeons were already at work, digging their arms within to bring out the shot: one was calling for long tongs to be brought. Another managed to draw out one, which had struck upon a rib; the ball had burst like a star, and another torrent of blood followed it when the surgeon pulled it out.
Chu’s eyes were closed; he coughed, rattling, and blood trickled from the sides of his mouth; one of the surgeons was thrown from his back. Temeraire almost nosed at him, but timidly held back; he did not know what to do. Zhao Lien landed beside him and said, “I have ordered five niru to the north, accompanied by couriers, to scout for more of the enemy attempting to flank us, as General Chu directed. What are your commands?”
She was speaking to him, Temeraire realized; she was asking him for orders. Abruptly, Temeraire felt rage swelling hot in his breast; he imagined with burning satisfaction throwing himself to the front, commanding all the legions to fall in behind him and overturn the French defenses, smash their artillery and then slaughter all their ranks, no matter what the cost. He would drive them forth with the divine wind, and avenge—
“Temeraire,” Laurence said softly, a hand on his neck, and Temeraire dragged in a breath; he looked at Zhao Lien, and saw her regarding him narrowly, warily, as though she feared what he might do. He swallowed and said to Laurence, in English, “Laurence, what ought I do, now?”
“If you will be counseled by me,” Laurence said, “we will determine which of the three jalan commanders is senior, and appoint them to the command.”
Temeraire took another breath, and nodded; he said to Zhao Lien, “Who is the senior commander, of the three jalan?”
She sat back upon her haunches, relaxing a little. “I am,” she said.
“Then—then you shall take command, until General Chu is quite recovered,” he said, though he could not help but think longingly, one more time, of the glorious vision of his charge. “And I am quite sure,” he added savagely, “that there are more soldiers coming; it is just the sort of thing Napoleon likes to do, so you had better plan as though there were.”
Zhao Lien turned to a limping Shen Shi, who had one badly torn wing, and conferred with her about supply; then she turned and said, “If the soldiers who approach are a substantial force, our situation will be extremely precarious.”
“But we still outnumber them so heavily in the air!” Temeraire said, uncertainly. “Of course we must still beat them, surely.”
“We cannot be assured of doing so in the present position,” Zhao Lien said. “An immediate assault upon the artillery must lose us half our fighting troops. This, having diminished our aerial advantage, may permit the enemy to hold their well-fortified positions against us. If they have sufficient ground forces to strike against the flank of our allies’ ground soldiers—”
Interrupting her explanation, Lung Yu Fei came blazing into the camp as swiftly as a rocket, skidding in the dirt as she pulled up: Temeraire regarded her with dismay even before she opened her mouth and said, “There is a whole army coming, from the north-east: they are coming through the trees on foot.”
? ? ?
Once again now the advantage changed hands, as abruptly as before; but Kutuzov’s caution had not deserted him even in an apparent moment of triumph: he had placed his rear-guard to cover the road to Moscow, and had kept a great many of his forces uncommitted to the battle. Even before the French reinforcements had completed half their advance, the Russian Army was melting away again eastward, escaping the trap.
Laurence and Temeraire scarcely touched ground the next four hours, trying as best they might to create a unified action with the Russian forces: a coordination almost impossible to achieve when the two of them were nearly the sole interlocutors between the two bodies of troops. The battle had lent itself to a sharp separation between commands; the retreat by no means did so, for the Russians badly needed air cover, and the French had been reinforced by some forty dragons more, under the command of the very dragon Laurence had noted at the false negotiations: Marshal Ombreux.