Lethabo had explained that in the wake of the burning of Rio, their demands having gone unanswered, the Tswana dragons had swarmed out over the nearby countryside and among the nearest estates, snatching up slaves and carrying them back to the city. Rumor had soon outrun their work, and many more slaves as well had begun to flee their masters, and to make their way to the city in hopes of liberation.
There had been no direct battle offered, no extensive engagement: the Tswana were too anxious to avoid any injury coming to the slaves, and the few confrontations with local militia had quickly been resolved in their favor, their having early on seized or ruined nearly all the available artillery. At first the Tswana had carried on their rescue with impunity, but some of the colonists, fearing both the loss of their property and the direct attacks which had not yet come, had hit upon a dreadful solution to forestall them. The slave-owners had made some number of their slaves hostage and penned them into barns or small buildings on their property, which they now threatened to set alight if ever the dragons approached.
This tactic had, in the near term, established a stalemate: the Tswana had confined themselves to snatching only slaves they saw in the open. But their anxiety to protect their kindred warred with their impatience, and the stalemate would not survive for long.
“Yes,” Temeraire confirmed, as they flew back to the camp. “I have been speaking to Kefentse, and he is firmly of the opinion that they must attack regardless. They have been quite at a standstill for two months now, and the hunting is getting thin if they avoid the estates where slaves are held. They do not all agree with him, of course. Dikeledi—she is that middling pinkish dragon with the horns, whom you have seen, flying—Dikeledi has not yet found any survivors of her own tribe, and so she refuses to countenance the risk.”
She was less willing to be deceived than many of her fellow-dragons; having lost her village only a few years before, one of the last struck, she insisted on recognizing the survivors in their persons, rather than accepting others as their descendants to renew her lineage. She was not one of the larger beasts, but had nevertheless enormous consequence among the Tswana for her skill and maneuverability in the air, and, Laurence gathered, was held to be the reincarnation of a priestess of great renown.
But Temeraire reported the general opinion had begun to turn against her: the other beasts were grown angry and brooding over the hostage slaves, whose treatment they feared; particularly after the attempt at starving out one of the plantation owners had ended in horrified failure when he began to starve his slaves in turn.
“A bloodbath on all sides is certain to ensue,” Laurence said, “if we cannot forestall it; therefore, Mr. Hammond, you will oblige me with rather less concern for the injured sentiments of our allies, and more for the swift advancement of a truce which should preserve their very lives.”
The Portuguese government had retreated to a fortification in the city of Paraty, near the limits of the day’s flying range of a dragon. Temeraire flew in under a somewhat ragged British flag which had been dug out from the rubble of the city and provided by Lethabo, despite which their approach met shouts and ringing bells of alarm and assembling troops. Temeraire pulled up and hovered out of range of the guns, while Gerry vigorously hung out the colors and made the handful of appropriate Portuguese signals which had been cobbled out of the collective memory of the aviators, none of whom had ever served very long as signal-ensign.
These were received doubtfully below, plainly occasioning a great deal of discussion, until reply came some quarter-of-an-hour later, and they were bidden to land in the face of a bristling defense: all the guns which the Portuguese yet held, and their crews sweating at the touch holes with the match smoldering.
“You will go aloft again when you have let us off, Temeraire, if you please,” Laurence said, with an eye on those nervous hands. “We can have no reliance on the judgment of those men: keep out of range until they have recognized our party.”
“Well, I will: but only just out of range,” Temeraire said uneasily, “and if there is any difficulty, I am certain if I should come at them from the flank, and roar at the proper angle, I could roll up all those guns at once.”