“Well, I am very glad to hear it,” Temeraire said, only a little mollified, “but even so that is more money than I have ever heard of, and they can settle in very comfortably, and eat well there all winter if they like as well: it certainly looked a very splendid city, from above.”
The retreat continued, the next day, although a temporary armistice held off the French advance behind them. It was tiring work, and sorrowful; as the day went on the dragons began to be loaded with the wounded, and had to witness their agony at being put aboard. And yet they were the fortunate, not to be dragged over the dreadful roads in horse-carts. Temeraire was drooping before the last flight, as the bloodied and weary men dragged themselves aboard, or were heaved up by their few able-bodied comrades; night was coming on, and the sun had sunk low. He gathered himself and heaved aloft, wings beating, and slowly began to fly. A deep red-orange glow rose against the sky ahead of them; the wind had grown stronger yet again. The riot of color did not diminish as they went, though the sky was sweeping to black above, the stars emerging, and as they drew near the city they heard a great crackling noise, punctuated by sharp explosions like shattering glass.
“Boze Moje,” one of the men said, low. “Onii goryat Moskvye.”
Laurence put the glass to his eye as they came overhead, a rolling wave of baking heat rising, lifting Temeraire soaring high: a handful of Russian soldiers were dashing through the city streets ahead of the line of leaping, hungry flames, carrying torches; there were heaped piles of hay and tinder at corners, and they were firing them as they went. They were burning their own city. Napoleon would find no shelter in Moscow, after all.
LAURENCE PAUSED A LONG moment in the empty street, caught by the sight of a swinging, blackened lantern and the shape of steps leading up to a gutted doorway, opening onto the rubble of a house. For a moment he thought it another old memory returning, some flash of the destruction of Portsmouth; then he recognized abruptly the home of Countess Andreyevna, where he had dined his first night in Moscow. Of the palatial house there was nothing left but jagged timbers thrust up into the sky, heaps of tumbled brick and cinders, one corner in the back where a narrow servants’ staircase and a corner of the second floor stood alone, a few feet of space.
“Do you see something?” Tharkay asked quietly. His own face was half-covered; only his eyes looked out above the scarf he had wrapped over his nose and mouth: not too incongruous a costume in the city, for there were yet quantities of dust and ash lingering in the air.
“No,” Laurence said. “No, it is nothing; let us go on.” He put his shoulder back to the yoke of the small cart they were dragging behind them, with its few bags of grain: their safe-passage and the only one required; the French had mastered their own maurauding troops and now were offering urgent and enthusiastic welcome to any of the local peasantry who offered to sell them any food—there being very few such offers; those who made them were meeting with savage reprisals from Russian partisans.
The streets of Moscow bore little resemblance to the thronged narrow lanes which Laurence had seen from aloft, only a month before: now half-deserted, frequented more by rats than men and full of rubble, lined with ruined houses and gardens still choked with ash. Some three-quarters of the city had burned, and if that disaster had denied the French its comforts and supply, Laurence found it hard to accept the price. Little better illustration could be wanted of the cost of Napoleon’s pride.
A troop of grenadiers marched past in good order, though their uniforms were an unholy mess: coats in a dozen different colors, most of them threadbare and patched, boots cracked and wrapped about with string; only their muskets still shone brightly. Their eyes drifted to the cart as they passed, with an interest more than academic; when they turned the corner, one man even detached himself from the end of the column and came back, and pointing at the bags said, “Qu’est-ce que c’est là?”
Without answering him, Tharkay silently presented him with a paper which had been prepared for them by one young Russian aide-de-camp, in that alphabet, and embellished with all the official art which his creativity had permitted; the name Louis-Nicholas Davout was the only legible Latin on the sheet. It was a name to conjure with, for Davout’s harshness with indiscipline was legendary, and reports had reached even the Russian camp of the executions he had ordered for pillaging. The soldier thrust the paper back and assumed an officious mien, saying coolly, “Le Maréchal est avec l’Empereur, en la place Rouge,” and pointed them along another street before hurrying to rejoin his vanished troop.