Crucible of Gold

“Sir, I make noon,” Forthing said, and at the same time Hualpa sat up on his haunches and shook his head in evident signal. The Copacati left off his conversation and turned to face Iskierka across the court, his feathered wings outspread with the tips brushing the ground.

 

Iskierka followed his model, drawing her coiling length beneath her and stretching wide her own wings, the membrane translucent in the bright sun and the color flat in comparison with the Incan dragon’s long, glittering scales. “What effect do you suppose it may have, upon the beast’s prowess; the feathers, I mean?” Hammond asked Forthing interestedly, tone-deaf to the situation.

 

“Well—” Forthing said, “they have a look of scales; I expect they may make it nastier to get at the wings if she goes after them, fighting—”

 

“She won’t go after the wings,” Ferris said, a little rudely, “unless she hasn’t any sense. His neck is twelve points from the shoulder-joint, so he can look all the way round: if she closes with him there, he’ll just turn his head and plant those fangs right below her breastbone: he won’t need to be a Longwing for that to do the job.”

 

Forthing said, “If she grappled; I don’t suppose anyone has ever heard of clawing, on a pass—”

 

“Gentlemen,” Laurence said, sharply, and they both subsided; Granby did not look much happier.

 

Perhaps another forty dragons had descended upon the temple and ranged themselves upon the steps of the pyramid: the largest four, who shared their level, all of them easily of heavy-weight class and ornamented with sufficient gold and silver to put a duchess to shame; but even these were accompanied only by a relatively few people, around whom they coiled their bodies jealously. When they looked, they looked not at Temeraire and Kulingile, but at himself and Granby and the others of their party, and there was an envious quality to the looks.

 

“Will you ask Hualpa whether there are an uncommon number of dragons in this city?” Laurence asked Temeraire, low.

 

“Certainly; this is the third largest city of Chirisuyo, and perhaps the eleventh largest in all Pusantinsuyo,” Hualpa said—meaning, he clarified, the southernmost province of the empire, one of eight such provinces, and its second most populous part; a hasty sketchwork elicited that the imperial territory extended now to the neighborhood of the Straits of Magellan, since the reign of the last Sapa Inca but one.

 

“If half of the local beasts are here, which I must assume unlikely,” Hammond said, “then in seven such cities—without consideration for the beasts which live in the more remote areas—”

 

His calculations were interrupted by all the dragons setting up a roar in full voice, Kulingile and Temeraire belatedly sitting up on their haunches to join in; before the noise had died away, the Copacati was launching himself aloft, and Iskierka shot after him.

 

Their first passes were mere flourishes: the Copacati darting in and back away at once, a baiting maneuver; Iskierka snapped her jaws at him striking-quick, but without much of an attempt to get near: only the clashing of her teeth chasing him back. Their shadows marked their positions upon the ground: Temeraire had gathered that the courtyard itself formed the boundary of their struggle, and leaving its bounds was tantamount to yielding; Laurence could see Iskierka casting a quick eye down to place herself, before she launched her own probing attack.

 

She looped towards the sun and went in high, claws outstretched, and the Copacati was for a moment slow to react—“Bloody hell, it’s a feint; damn you,” Granby yelled up at Iskierka, “don’t—”

 

Too late: she was plunging at the Copacati’s exposed back, and as she descended the other dragon abruptly convulsed his body nearly in half, and so managed to flip himself to receive her with bared fangs already glistening. A low hiss of approval rose from the stands: the dragons sat up, anticipating.

 

But Iskierka had already begun to veer off from her straight-line course: the initial movements, Laurence realized, camouflaged by the sun backing her. Her back coils rolled, and their weight pulled her along; she fell away to the side and cleared the Copacati’s striking range: by feet rather than by yards, Laurence judged, peering through his glass, but good enough; then she was circling away again to the far end of the courtyard limits.

 

Willing to be even-handed in their evaluations, the spectator dragons hissed for her as well, with even louder enthusiasm; Hualpa said something to Temeraire. “He says this has all the makings of a really excellent fight, which honors the gods,” Hammond said, “and perhaps it will end in—” He slowed and awkwardly finished, “in a death; but this I gather, Captain Granby, is a most uncommon occurrence.”