“What?” Hammond said, even as the sailors began to back away. “What is it, Captain?”
“Plague,” Laurence said. “Plague; and all of them are dead.”
Temeraire was sorry for the people, of course, but as after all they had no more use for the sheep—which were not sheep, but another animal entirely, larger, with a long neck and meat not unlike venison, which Hammond called a llama—he did not scruple to enjoy them tremendously. Fish was very well and good, but one grew tired of it unendingly, especially when there was no chance of preparing it differently, either, and the sea-lions they had taken on that last island but one were not really a sufficient change.
“You might try stewing a few of them for tomorrow,” he said to Gong Su, gnawing clean a final bone, “and I would not mind some of that maize, either, did you call it, Mr. Hammond? It has a pleasant smell,” emanating from the fire where a great many ears were presently being roasted for the men to eat along with a round dozen of the guinea pigs.
There were also potatoes—very peculiar in color, a lurid purple—which had come out of a great storehouse at the edge of the town. There were many other things in it also besides food: woven blankets, sandals, even several bronze tools whose purpose they could not make out: a long wooden handle with a blade set into it at the end, but it did not seem to be a weapon. “Something to do with farming, I suppose,” Granby said, turning it over in his hands.
The bulk of the stores however were fish: dried fish, salted fish, fish, fish, fish. And there were not very many of the llamas at all left, when one considered them with an eye towards extended supply. “We had better start looking for some other town,” Iskierka said, when they had done eating and looked over the remaining herd. “Those will not last for long, and I am d—d if I will eat more fish.”
The men were very eager to be gone themselves, as soon as any other place could be found. “You had all three better go,” Granby said. “I make no odds of anyone coming to a plague-ridden town, and if there is anyone left to object to our making free of their goods, there cannot be so many of them, anyway; we will do perfectly well, and you should meet the local beasts in force if there are any.”
“I am not leaving Demane here with the sailors,” Kulingile said, flatly.
“I will go hunting,” Demane said, “and you will go find us somewhere to stay; I am not a child who needs to be always watched.”
He stalked off; Temeraire thought it was rather hard on Kulingile, who drooped unhappily, but there was a great deal of sense in what Granby said. “And you would not want to bring Demane along the very first time to meet strange dragons, anyway,” he said to Kulingile, which he meant as consolation, even though privately Temeraire would have preferred to keep Laurence with him also: he could not help but recall that in Africa he had also thought Laurence would be safe, and returned after only a day’s flight to Capetown and found him snatched away by the Tswana.
“We will not go very far, either,” he added.
There was at least no need to range widely over the ground: there was the river, and to either side of it a narrow green wilderness, and beyond that only a broad dusty desert; they needed only follow the course of the water. They did once come across what Temeraire decided on consideration was a road: the footpath itself was difficult to make out, certainly not intended for use by dragons, but it was marked very regularly with trees which could not have lined up in such a way by nature. It cut the river and continued on both north and south, which provoked some debate: Iskierka was for turning aside to follow it.
“It is built by people,” Iskierka said, “so that must mean they go along that way, and where we find them, we will very likely find more llamas, and perhaps some other beasts.”
“If they are travelers, they might go a very long distance without having any animals besides a horse, or something else to ride and not to eat,” Temeraire said. “I cannot call it a good notion to go off into the desert when we do not want to be gone long. It is much more likely that we will find some people living along this river, if we only keep to it.”
“But if they live along the river, they likely eat fish,” Iskierka said, grumbling.
The expanse of green around the river broadened as they continued in the upstream direction. Kulingile was watching the progress of the sun by looking at the shadow of his wing, and wanting only to go back; but when Temeraire out of pity proposed his doing so early, Kulingile said low, “No; if I went back without you, Demane should know I had come to look for him; he does not want me back sooner.”