The Temeraire Series

‘Well, what is there to complain of, then?’ Requiescat said. ‘We have everything as we like it.’

‘So you will quarrel over a wet unpleasant cave, but you will not fight to sleep in a pavilion, which is never wet or cold, even in winter?’ Temeraire said, scornfully. ‘You only think you have things as you like them to be, because you have never seen anything better, and that is because you have spent all of your lives penned up here or in coverts.’

When he had described pavilions for them a little more, and the dragon-city in Africa, he added, ‘And in Yutien, there were dragons who were employed as merchants. All of them had heaps of jewels – only tin and glass, Laurence said, but they were very pretty anyway; and in Africa they had gold enough to put it on all of their crew members.’ There were not many dragons present who did not sigh at least a little; those who wore their small treasures looked at them, and many of the unadorned looked at them, wistfully.

‘It all sounds a lot of gimcrackery to me,’ Requiescat said.

‘Then you may stay here and have my cave, which is not a quarter as nice as a pavilion,’ Temeraire said coolly, ‘and when we have beaten Napoleon and taken many prizes, you shan't have a share; Moncey will have more gold than you.’

‘Prizes!’ Gentius said, rousing unexpectedly. ‘I helped in taking a prize once. My captain had a fourteenth share. That is how she bought the picture.’

Everyone knew of Gentius's painting, and an impressed murmur went around: this example proved better than hypothetical jewels in a country which none of them had seen.

‘Now, now, settle down,’ Ballista said, thumping her tail, but with a considerably more lenient air. ‘Look here, I suppose no one much wants the French to beat us, we have all had a go with them before, if we were ever in service. But the corps don't want us unless we take harness and captains, and we cannot just wander into battles: we will get circled and shot up. That is no joke, even for us big ones.’

‘If we fight thoughtlessly and singularly, we will,’ Temeraire said, ‘but there is no reason we must do that, and we cannot be boarded if we have no harness, or—or anyone to capture. We will form our own army, and we will work out tactics for ourselves, not stuff men have invented without bothering to ask us even though they cannot fly themselves. It stands to reason that we can do better than them, if we try.’

‘Hm, well,’ Ballista said to his convincing argument, and the general murmur of agreement found it so too.

‘All right, all right,’ Requiescat said. ‘Very nice storytelling, but it is all a hum. Treasure and battles are well and good, but what d'you mean to do for dinner?’

The next morning, they landed together on the grounds at the feeding time. The cows in their pen were bellowing invitingly, and their delicious grassy scent made Temeraire's tongue want to lick the air. But the other dragons all kept the line with him: no one even turned their nose toward the running cattle. The herdsmen prodded the cows forward with no results, and then looked at each other and back at Lloyd, in confusion.

Lloyd began pacing up and down the line of dragons looking up at them all in bafflement, saying entreatingly to one after another in turn, ‘Go on, then, eat something.’ Temeraire waited until Lloyd came up to him, then bent his head down and said, ‘Lloyd, where do the cows come from?’

Lloyd stared at him. ‘Go on, eat something, old boy,’ he repeated feebly, so it came out as a question more than a command.

‘Stop that; my name is Temeraire, or you may call me sir,’ Temeraire said, ‘since that is how to speak to someone politely.’

‘Oh, ah,’ Lloyd said, not very sensibly.

‘You have heard that the French have invaded?’ Temeraire enquired.

‘Oh!’ Lloyd said, in tones of relief. ‘None of you need worry anything about that. Why, they shan't come anywhere near here, or interfere with your cows. You shall all be fed, the cows will come here every day, there's no call to save them, old boy—’

Temeraire raised his head and gave a small roar, only to quiet him; snow tumbled down the slope on the other side of the feeding grounds, but it was not very much, a foot perhaps, scarcely deep enough to dust his talons. ‘You will say sir,’ he told Lloyd, lowering his head to fix the groundsman securely with one eye.

‘Sir,’ Lloyd said, faintly.

Satisfied, Temeraire sat back on his haunches and explained. ‘We are not staying here,’ he said, ‘so you see, it is no help to tell us that the cows will always be here. We are, all of us, going to fight Napoleon and we need to take the cows with us.’

Lloyd did not seem to understand him at first; it required the better part of an hour to work it into his head, that they were all leaving the grounds and did not mean to come back. When it did, he became desperate, and began to beg and plead with them in a very shocking way, which made Temeraire feel wretchedly embarrassed: Lloyd was so very small, and it felt like bullying to say no to him.

‘That is quite enough,’ Temeraire said at last, forcing himself to be firm. ‘Lloyd, we are not going to hurt you or take away your food or your property, so you have no right to carry on at us in this way, only because we do not like to stay.’

‘How you talk; I'll be dismissed from my post for certain, and that's the least of it,’ Lloyd said, almost in tears. ‘It's as much as my life is worth, if I let you all go out wandering wild, pillaging farmers' livestock every which way—’

‘But we are not going pillaging, at all,’ Temeraire said. ‘That is why I am asking you where the cows come from. If the Government would feed them to us here, they are ours, and there is no reason we cannot take them and eat them somewhere else.’

‘But they come from all over,’ Lloyd said, and gesturing to his herdsmen added, ‘the drovers bring a string every week from a different farm. It is as much as all of Wales can do, to feed you lot; there's not one place.’

‘Oh,’ Temeraire said, and scratched his head; he had envisioned a very large pen, somewhere over the mountains perhaps, full of cows waiting to be taken out and carried along. ‘Well,’ he decided, ‘then you all will have to help: you will go to the farms and fetch the cows and bring them along to us. That way,’ he added, with a burst of fresh inspiration, ‘no one can complain to you, or sack you, because you will not have let us go off at all.’

This solution did not immediately promote itself to the herdsmen, who began to protest: some of them had families, and none of them wished to go to war. ‘No, that is all stuff and nonsense,’ Temeraire said. ‘It is your duty to fight the French as much as it is ours; more, because it is your Government, and it would press you if you were needed. I have been to sea with many pressed men; I know it is not very nice,’ he added, although he did not entirely see why they did not like to go; anywhere was better than this loathsome place, and at least they would be doing something, rather than sitting about, ‘but if Napoleon wins, that also will not be very nice, and anyway, I dare say the Government will stop your wages if they learn that you are sitting here with no dragons about. And if you come, we will give you a share of the prizes we take.’

Prizes proved to be a magical word with men as well as dragons, as did the general conviction, arrived at through a deal of quiet muttering, that if they did not go with the dragons, they should certainly be blamed for the desertion; but no one could complain they had not done their duty if they followed the beasts. Or at least, it would be more difficult to find them.

‘We might be ready soon as next week,’ Lloyd said, with one last gasping attempt. ‘If you'd all just have a bite to eat, and a bit of sleep first—’

‘We are leaving now,’ Temeraire said firmly, and rising up on his haunches called out, ‘Advance guard, aloft; and you may take your breakfast with you.’

Moncey and the small dragons gleefully leapt onto the herd, first for once, and went eating as they flew; it was perhaps a little messy, but much quicker to eat as one went. Minnow swallowed the head of her cow, and waved a wing-tip. ‘We will see you at the rendezvous,’ she called down. ‘Come on then pips, off we go,’ she said to the other courier-weights and they all stormed away rapidly northwards and east, along the planned route.

‘Now can we eat?’ Requiescat said, watching after them plaintively.

‘Yes, you may all eat, but have half now and take the rest to eat along the way, otherwise you will fly slowly, and be hungry again anyway at the end of it,’ Temeraire said. ‘Lloyd, we are going to Abergavenny, or outside it, anyway; do you know where that is?’

‘We can't drive the herd all that way by tomorrow!’ Lloyd said.

‘Then you will have to bring them as close as you can and we will manage somehow,’ Temeraire said; he was done listening to difficulties. ‘I have seen Napoleon's army fight, and within a week they will be in London, so we must be, also.’

‘We are a hundred fifty miles from London,’ Lloyd protested.

‘All the more reason to travel fast,’ Temeraire said, and flung himself into the air.

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