So at a stroke, Napoleon had already managed to whittle down their aerial advantage to a thin margin, now composed not very much of numbers but only of the greater experience and skill at maneuvering which the Chinese forces brought to battle, as compared to his young legions.
The night was very clear, and very cold: Temeraire’s breath streamed away behind them in long trailing gusts as he flew on. The first hard frosts had come at last; before they had gone aloft, the ground had been frozen beneath them to a depth of seven inches, and many of the Shao Lung, unused to the cold climate, had been grumbling. It was the twenty-fifth of October. Laurence had to check their course against the stars, several times, until at last they struck the line of the Ugra River and turned to follow it southeast; a gibbous moon hung pale white, shining off the water and more translucently the skin of ice forming over its surface.
“When we arrive,” Laurence had said to Temeraire and Zhao Lien, “we must first give them something to eat; we cannot expect beasts who are starving to hear any reason, but having been fed might listen, when Temeraire and Grig can speak with them in their own tongue.”
Shen Shi had looked even more grave, but had at last agreed to release an additional quarter-day’s ration from her already-strained depots; the grain and drugged cattle were now being carried by the dragons following them along with their own supply. The sixty remaining dragons of the first jalan, under Shao Ri, were coming with them; the rest, and Zhao Lien, had remained with Kutuzov’s army to cover the withdrawal south. A withdrawal which could all too easily end in disaster, if Kaluga’s storehouses were struck.
“Temeraire,” Grig said, laboring to catch them up, “Temeraire, there is someone there on the river, I think.”
“Where away?” Temeraire asked, and stooping they landed to find a Cossack dragon, barely the size of a Winchester, lying smashed and dying upon the bank half in and half out of the water: his side riddled with bullets, and his two riders both broken beneath his body. The dragon was already nearly gone; one man, who had been half in the frigid water, was dead; but the other opened his eyes and turned his head to look Laurence in the face.
“We will have you out in a moment,” Laurence said to him, kneeling to put a hand on his shoulder, the best comfort he could give; ribs were protruding from the man’s flesh, and the dragon lay over his legs. The Cossack only seized him by the collar with a desperate final straining effort and tried to pull him close; Laurence leaned in, and the man whispered, “Murat,” and released him, falling back; a little gush of blood came from his lips, and he was still.
Laurence rising to catch at the harness and climb back aboard said, “Temeraire, we must go at once. Send half the niru along the river, quietly, until they see the other end of the breeding grounds, and then we must close in on all sides: and let us pray the quarry has not yet escaped us. And pass the word: douse all lights.”
Lanterns all extinguished, they flew low and quietly over the tree-tops, until coming over a hill they reached a wide shallow valley of the breeding grounds; a massive Russian heavy-weight nearly the size of a Regal Copper was crouched low, its head hanging to the ground, as four men labored frantically upon its back, working on a massive chain of iron stained with rust. They were not surgeons, but blacksmiths: Laurence realized abruptly that the French had forgone removing the barbs for the practical expedient of merely cutting the chains off them, and leaving the difficult hooks where they were.
A small portable forge glowed orange-red where they hammered on the second link, having already broken the first; the dragon was already moving its right wing, experimentally, and looking over with a craning head at its own back to watch the work: it was nearly quivering. The beast did not look quite so starved as had the grey light-weights: if maddened past fear of maiming by starvation, a heavy-weight might have been able to break even the strongest hobble, and then could have done enormous damage. But it certainly looked lean and hungry enough, and eager for its freedom.
The smiths were working with desperate urgency, and around them all the crew and company of twelve dragons in harness were looking anxiously in all directions, around Liberté himself; but on the ground before him, as nonchalant as if he was in the midst of Paris instead of engaged in a wildly reckless and dangerous enterprise behind his enemy’s lines, Murat walked back and forth whistling unconcerned. Laurence put a restraining hand silently on Temeraire’s neck, and kept his glass stretched out, watching the far side of the breeding ground, for any glint of the other half of their own company; he did not mean to lose this chance through excessive haste.