“They bit me,” he said; as improbable as the accusation was, investigation turned up small leaking wounds upon his flank where the bats had clung and fed, so it seemed, upon the blood; and several more of them were discovered on all the dragons.
There was something especially horrid in feeding this species of hunger, but the bats were no more to be escaped than the mosquitoes, though Granby slept on Iskierka’s back and woke several times throughout the night to chase them off with his one good arm; and their bites offered a similar kind of discomfort, growing hard and swollen and hot to the touch after a day.
The half-healed injury which Granby had taken to his arm, in the sinking of the Allegiance, had been aggravated and all earlier progress lost in his being flung from Iskierka’s back to the limits of his harness-straps, leaping to escape the flames. Laurence looked at it grimly, in the light: the elbow grossly swollen and bruised purple-black, and the hand dangling useless. They had no surgeon; only the former barber Dewey, who had been pressed into the Allegiance out of a dockside carouse, and his only contribution was to offer, “Why, I can have it off easy as you please, sir, if the little miss will lend me her knife; and someone can find me a bit of drink to steady my hand,” which made Roland glare.
“Wrap it up tight for me, Laurence, if you please,” Granby said hastily, “and let us see what a few weeks will do: it does not pain me over-much—” this last delivered while he was clammy-cold and pale with agony; but Laurence was in too much doubt of the wisdom of the arm’s removal to argue for its being endured: the shoulder which seemed the real seat of the injury could not itself be taken off.
Four days later, the arm looked yet worse: a bluish darkening beneath the skin from elbow to fingers, and Granby could not close his hand. The shoulder at least seemed a little recovered, and when palpated the flesh of the upper arm yet felt warm; but in the morning there was a feverish heat growing above the elbow, and the engorgement of the blood vessels creeping upwards.
“Had it better come off?” Granby said, looking at Laurence’s face.
“I think it must,” Laurence said grimly, and Dewey, coming to inspect his field of work, patted Granby’s shoulder.
“Never you fear, Captain; why, I have had off the arm of a fellow twice your size in under three minutes; although I do not have my saw.” He took the knife which Roland silently proffered him, her irritation at being called miss now subsumed in anxiety, and carried it down to the riverside to sharpen against the stones of the bank.
“Laurence,” Temeraire said, peering over, “whatever are you about? Surely you do not mean him to take off Granby’s arm, for good? Iskierka is asleep: I am sure she ought to be consulted on the subject.”
“That is all I need, at present,” Granby said, under his breath. “Let her sleep, if you please, and Laurence, I would be glad of something to bite on.”
Laurence nodded, and rose to call Forthing and Mayhew to assist him with holding Granby down; abruptly from the bank came a shriek, and he turned to see Dewey being dragged into the river headfirst, a pair of massively wide crocodilian jaws clamped about his skull. They all stared, horrified; three more of the creatures erupted from the water, seizing on flailing arms, legs, and wrestling over the body with terrible strength: before even Temeraire could act, the water was running red, and his lunge pulled out only a headless corpse, lacking also a leg, with a crocodile dangling still clenched upon the other.
“Oh!” Temeraire said, furious, “oh, what do they mean, eating him!” and plunged his head savagely into the midst of the still-frothing waters: he came up with three thrashing beasts, each perhaps a ton in weight, and holding them in his jaws cracked them with a sound not much less dreadful than Dewey’s own death-cry.
He flung them down, and went again into the water, and again, until he had piled up a dozen carcasses; by then the rest had slunk beneath the surface and glided prudently away.
“There,” Temeraire said, panting, “they will think better of it, next time,” and Laurence had not the heart nor the stomach to argue with his estimation of the animals’ intelligence: in any case the men would certainly think better of going anywhere near the riverbanks without great care.
Iskierka had been roused by Temeraire’s frenzy; she sat up and yawned and said, “Whatever did you do that for? They are not good eating; but I will have a couple, if there is nothing better,” and several of the men crept away into the trees to be noisily and emphatically ill.
The crocodiles were abandoned uneaten; but the slaughter forced their immediate departure, as the scavengers of the jungle were too enraptured by the immense feasting prepared for them to delay: the monkeys were not afraid of dragons, and neither were the beetles. Granby said uneasily, “I will have to make the best of it,” and wrapped his arm up against his waist once more before he pulled himself one-handed aboard Iskierka’s back.