Laurence said, quietly, controlled, “You are right, sir, that this treatment cannot but appall any sense of justice and decency. But what you have done, in merely striking their chains and throwing them upon the army and the innocent peasantry of their own country, is to set them upon a course whose certain event is their destruction at the hands of a furious and determined nation. And you have done this, not for their benefit, but to make them weapons to serve your own unjust ends and thirst for conquest.”
“Oh, villain!” Murat cried. “Where else should they turn, but on the holders of their whips? I told the Emperor I would not walk out of this country, without striking the chains off every beast I could find, if it cost me my life and him my service. March me away, then, and have me shot if you like; I have no regret. Vive la France!”
He flung his saber at Laurence’s feet, delivering this speech in parade-ground tones; it roused an answering cheer from his men and their beasts, despite their captivity. Laurence could not but shake his head: he found he did not question Murat’s sincerity; so wild an impulse seemed all of a piece with the very recklessness which had led him to expose himself and his men so deeply in enemy territory.
Roland with a quick jump leapt forward, and picked up the sword to give to Laurence, so he would not need to bend down and pick it up. “Sir, if you will give me your parole, I should be glad to return it,” Laurence said, mastering his own anger, and when Murat haughtily acquiesced, did so: he could not take insult from a man made prisoner, and Murat’s courage could hardly be denied; he had been at the fore of the French dragons, at Tsarevo Zaimische, time and again.
The niru had been swiftly going over the breeding grounds, in the meantime; and now one of Shen Shi’s lieutenants, a man named Guan Fei, quietly approached Laurence. “I must advise against preparing our cooking-pits here,” he said. “This place is unhealthy: there are many dead, who have not been properly buried. We should go along the river to the south, and find some clean ground.”
“The remaining dragons here will be unable to fly,” Laurence said, “and we ought still to feed them; and then free them ourselves and take them along with us, if they will come. If we can catch any of the rest, perhaps their fellows will be able to induce them to pause and listen, rather than fight.”
But Guan Fei said, “There are only four dragons we have found yet remaining within the grounds: we can arrange to transport them a short distance, but they are in any case ill and close to death. I have arranged for them to be tended.”
“There ought to be fifty dragons here,” Temeraire said in alarm. “Where are all the others?”
Laurence looking at Murat’s face, which showed no small degree of satisfaction, said grimly, “Kaluga. He has set them on Kaluga.”
It was not until the next day that Laurence had the pleasure of delivering his prisoner to Kutuzov in Kaluga: a thin and insubstantial pleasure, in the face of the disaster which had unfolded about them.
The town had been utterly unprepared for the sudden and thunderclap descent of forty heavy-weight beasts: the great magazines had been smashed open and ruined, immense quantities of munitions and grain taken, cattle and horses slaughtered and devoured; and much of the town itself smashed in the frenzy of destruction.
Temeraire and his fellows had driven on the last few miles from the breeding grounds to Kaluga, despite their fatigue and hunger. But even so they had come too late, and found a scene of wreckage only: the heavy-weights had come, the townspeople told Laurence, and plundered swiftly, and as swiftly fled back towards the north—perhaps carrying their stolen goods towards Napoleon’s army.
Temeraire had tried to go aloft again, in pursuit; he and his fellows had gone half-a-mile, heads drooping progressively lower, and then Shao Ri had roused up and shaken his head and turning towards Laurence and Temeraire had said, “We must halt.”
Laurence himself started from a half-doze and realized the folly of their attempt: after a day of hard fighting, little food and less rest, followed by a cold flight in the dark and a battle to end it, the dragons were at the limits of their strength. “Put out the signals, Gerry, if you please,” he said, and to Temeraire’s half-drowsing protest said quietly, “We cannot throw ourselves at nearly our own number of fresh heavy-weights, in this state; we would be destroyed. You must all have some rest, and something to eat, before we can continue on.”