THE NEXT HE knew of the world was a cup of clean water held for him by Emily Roland. Dorset was kneeling on the floor beside him, and bracing him up by the waist. Laurence managed to put a hand around the cup and guide it to his mouth, spilling a little; he was palsied as an old man and trembling. He was lying on his stomach on a thin pallet of gathered straw covered with shirts, bare to the chest himself; and he was desperately hungry.
"A little at a time," Dorset said, giving him small round balls of cooled porridge, one after another. They had eased him onto his side to eat.
"Temeraire?" Laurence said, around an involuntary and desperate gluttony, wondering if he had only dreamed. He could not move his arms freely: his back had scabbed over, but if he reached too far forward the edges split, fresh blood trickling down the skin.
Dorset did not at once answer. "Was he here?" Laurence said sharply.
"Laurence," Harcourt said, kneeling down by him, "Laurence, pray do not get distressed; you have been ill a week. He was here, but I am afraid they ran him off; I am sure he is quite well."
"Enough; you must sleep," Dorset said, and for all the will in the world, Laurence could not resist the command; he was already fading again.
When he woke it was daylight outside, and the cavern nearly empty, except for Roland and Dyer and Tooke. "They take the others to work, sir, in the fields," she said. They gave him a little water, and reluctantly at his insistence the support of their shoulders, so he might stagger to the edge of the cave and look outside.
The cliff face, opposite, was cracked, and the dark stains of dragon blood looked deep burnt orange-red on the striated walls. "It is not his, sir, or not much," Emily said anxiously, looking up at him.
She could tell him nothing more: not how Temeraire had found them, nor if he had been quite alone, nor his condition; there had been no time for conversation. With the number of dragons flying at all hours through the gorges, Temeraire had passed for a few moments as one in the throng, but he was too large and remarkably colored to escape notice, and when he had put his head into the cave to see them, he had at once raised an alarm.
Temeraire had penetrated so far only because their captors evidently did not anticipate an incursion of dragons, so deep into their stronghold; but there was a guard now, newly stationed above their cell: Laurence could see its tail, hanging down from the top of the cliff, if he painfully turned his neck, as far as he could, to look directly upwards. "And I expect that means he got clear away from them," Chenery said comfortingly, when the others had been returned, late in the afternoon. "He can fly rings around half the Corps, Laurence; I am sure he gave them the slip."
Laurence would have liked to believe it, more than he did; three days had gone by since that delirious state had broken, and if Temeraire had been able, Laurence knew very well he would have made another attempt in the teeth of any opposition; perhaps had, and out of their sight had been injured again, or worse.
Laurence was not taken, the next morning, with the others: they had been set along with the other prisoners of war to working in the elephant-fields, spreading the manure, much to the satisfaction of the young women to whom the work ordinarily fell. "Nonsense; I would be perfectly ashamed if I could not manage it," Catherine said, "when all those girls do: a good many of them are further along than I am, and it is not as though I have not been brought up to work. Besides, I am perfectly stout; indeed I am much better than I was. But you have been very sick, Laurence, and you are to listen to Dr. Dorset and stay lying down, when they come."
She was very firm, and Dorset also; but they had been gone a little more than an hour when another dragon came for Laurence: the rider issuing peremptory commands, and beckoning. Roland and Dyer were ready to back him into the depths of the cave, but the dragon was a smallish creature, not much bigger than a courier, and could easily have put himself inside. Laurence struggled to his feet, and for decency's sake took one of the sweat-and blood-stained shirts which had helped make up his pallet to cover himself, if he was not truly fit to be seen.
He was carried back to the great hall: the king was not there, but the iron-works were in full swing under the supervision of Prince Moshueshue; the smiths were engaged in pouring bullets, with the help of another dragon, who nursed their forge regularly with narrow breathed tongues of flame, rousing the coals within to a fever-pitch of heat. They had somehow acquired several bullet-molds, and there were still more muskets stacked upon the floor, if marked here and there with bloody fingerprints. The room was sweltering, even with a couple of smaller dragons fanning away vigorously to make the air move; but the prince looked satisfied.
He took Laurence back towards the map again; it had been already a little improved, and an entirely new addition made to the west: a vague distance allowed for the Atlantic, and then the approximate shapes of the American continents drawn out: the great harbor of Rio most prominently marked, and the islands of the West Indies placed a little tentatively somewhere to the north. There was none of the exactness needed to make it of practical use for navigation, Laurence was glad to see; he was far from that earlier complacency, during their abduction, which had dismissed their captors as a threat against the colony itself: there were too many dragons here.
Mrs. Erasmus had also been brought, and Laurence braced himself for a further interrogation, to which he would not allow himself to feel unequal, but Moshueshue did not repeat the king's demands or his violence; his servants instead gave Laurence a drink, oddly sweet, of pressed fruits and water and cocoanut milk, and his questions were of generalities and trade, wide-ranging. He had a bolt of cloth to show Laurence, calico-patterned and certainly from the mills of England; some bottles of whiskey, unpleasantly harsh and cheap by the smell, also of foreign manufacture. "You sell these things to the Lunda," Moshueshue said, "and those also?" indicating the muskets.
"They have lately fought a war against them," Mrs. Erasmus said, quickly adding her own explanation, at the tail of the translation: there had been a battle won, two-days' flight from the falls. "North-west, I think," she said, and asked Moshueshue permission to show him the territory, on the great map of the continent: north-west, and still deep inland, but in a few days' striking-distance of the ports of Louanda and Benguela.
"Sir," Laurence said, "I have never heard of the Lunda before two weeks ago; I believe they must have these goods from perhaps the Portuguese traders, upon the coast."
"And do you only want captives, or will you take other things in trade? The medicines you stole, or - " and one of the women carried over at Moshueshue's beckoning a box of jewels, absurdly magnificent, which would have made the Nizam stare: polished emeralds tumbled like marbles with diamonds, and the box itself of gold and silver. Another carried over carefully a tall curious vase, made of woven wire strung occasionally with beads, in an elaborate pattern without figures, and another an enormous mask, nearly tall as she herself was, carved of dark wood inlaid with ivory and jewels.
Laurence wondered a little if this were meant for another sort of inducement. "A trader would oblige you, sir, I am sure. I am not a merchant myself. We would be glad - would have been glad - to pay you for the medicines, in what barter you desired."
Moshueshue nodded, and the treasure was taken away. "And the - cannon?" He used the English word, himself, with tolerable pronunciation. "Or your boats which cross the ocean?"
There were enough jewels in the box to have tolerably purchased and outfitted a fleet of merchantmen, Laurence would have guessed, but he did not think the Government would be very pleased to see such a project go forward; he answered cautiously, "These are dearer, sir, for the difficulty in their construction; and would do you very little good without the men who understand their operation. But some men might be found, willing to take service with you, and such an arrangement made possible; if there were peace between our countries."
Laurence thought this was not further than he could in justice go, and as much attempt at diplomacy as he knew how to make; he hoped as a hint, it would not be badly received. Moshueshue's intentions were not disguised; it was not wonderful that he, more than the king, should have taken to heart the advantages of modern weaponry, more easily grasped at musket-scale by men than by dragons, and should have cared to establish access to them.
Moshueshue put his hand on the map-table and gazed thoughtfully down upon it. At last he said, "You are not engaged in this trade, you say, but others of your tribe are. Can you tell me who they are, and where they may be found?"
"Sir, I am sorry to say, that there are too many engaged in the trade for me to know their names, or particulars," Laurence said awkwardly, and wished bitterly that he might have been able to say with honesty it had been lately banned. Instead he could only add, that he believed it soon would be; which was received with as much satisfaction as he had expected.
"We will ban it ourselves," the prince said, the more ominously for the lack of any deliberately threatening tone. "But that will not satisfy our ancestors." He paused. "You are Kefentse's captives. He wants to trade you for more of his tribe. Can you arrange such an exchange? Lethabo says you cannot."
"I have told them that most of the others cannot be found," Mrs. Erasmus added quietly. " - it was nearly twenty years ago."
"Perhaps some investigation could locate the survivors," Laurence said to her doubtfully. "There would be bills of sale, and I suppose some of them must yet be on the same estates, where they first were sold - you do not think it so?"
She said after a moment, "I was taken into the house when I was sold. Those in the fields did not live long, most of them. A few years; maybe ten. There were not many old slaves."
Laurence did not quarrel with her finality, and he thought she did not translate her own words, either; likely to shield him from the rage which they could provoke. She said enough to convince Moshueshue of the impossibility, however, and he shook his head. "However," Laurence said, trying, "we would be glad to ransom ourselves, if you would arrange a communication with our fellows at the Cape, and to carry an envoy with us, to England, to establish peaceful relations. I would give my own word, to do whatever could be done to restore his kin - "
"No," Moshueshue said. "There is nothing I can do with this, not now. The ancestors are too roused up; it is not Kefentse only who has been bereft, and even those who have not lost children of their own are angry. My father's temper was not long when he was a man, and it is shorter since his change of life. Perhaps after." He did not say, after what, but issued orders to the attending dragons: without a chance to speak, Laurence was snatched up, and carried out at once.
The dragon did not turn back for the prison-cave, however, but turned instead for the falls, rising up out of the gorge and to the level of the plateau across which the great river flowed. Laurence clung to the basketing talons as they flew along its banks and over another of the great elephant-herds, too quickly for him to recognize if any of his compatriots were among the followers tending the ground; and to a distance at which the sound of the falls was muted, although the fine cloud of smoke yet remained visible, hovering perpetual in place to mark their location. There were no roads below at all, but at regular intervals Laurence began to notice cairns of stones, in circles of cleared ground, which might have served as signposts; and they had flown ten minutes when there came rearing up before them a vast amphitheater.
It was near to nothing, in his own experience, but the Colosseum in Rome; built entirely of blocks of stone fitted so snugly that no mortar, visibly, held them together, the outer enclosure was built in an oval shape, with no entrances but a few, at the base, formed with great overlapping slabs of stone laid one against another like the old stone circles in England. It stood in the middle of a grassy field, undisturbed, as he would have expected from some ancient unused ruin; only a few faintly worn tracks showed where men had come into the entries on foot, mostly from the river, where stakes had been driven in the ground, and a few simple boats were tied up.
But they flew in directly over the walls, and there were no signs of disuse within. The same drymortar method of construction had raised a series of terraces, topped and leveled out with more stone slabs, laid flat, and irregularly arranged; instead of even tiers, narrow stairways divided the theater into sections, each a haphazard arrangement of boxes intended for human use and filled with wooden benches and stools, some beautifully carved, and large stalls surrounding them for dragons. The higher levels simplified further, into wide-open stands with sections marked off only with rope; at the center of it all, a large grassy oval stood bare, broken up with three large stone platforms, and on the last of these, a prisoner with drooping head, was Temeraire.
Laurence was set down a few lengths away, with the usual carelessness, jarring his back sorely; at his repressed gasp, Temeraire growled, a deep and queerly stifled noise. He had been muzzled, with a piece of dreadful iron basketry, secured upon his head with many thick leather straps, which allowed his jaws a scant range of motion: not enough to roar. A thick iron collar around his throat, at the top of his neck, was leashed with three of the massive grey hawsers, which Laurence could now see were made of braided wire, rather than rope; these were fixed to iron rings set in the ground, equidistant from one another, and preventing Temeraire from throwing his weight against any one of them more than the others.
"Laurence, Laurence," Temeraire said, straining his head towards him with all the inches the cables would yield; Laurence would have gone to him at once, but the dragon which had brought him set its foreleg down between them: he was not permitted.
"Pray do not hurt yourself, my dear; I am perfectly well," Laurence called, forcing himself to straighten; he was anxious lest Temeraire should have done himself some mischief, flinging himself against the collar: it looked to be digging into the flesh. "You are not very uncomfortable, I hope?"
"Oh, it is nothing," Temeraire said, panting with a distress which belied his words, "nothing, now I see you again; only I could not move very much, and no-one comes to talk to me, so I did not know anything: if you were well or hurt; and you were so strange, when I saw you last."
He backed slowly and cautiously one pace and let himself down again, still breathing heavily, and gave his head a little shake, as much as the chains would allow, so they rang around him; like a horse in traces. "And it makes eating a little difficult," he added bravely, "and water taste of rust, but it does not signify: are you sure you are well? You do not look well."
"I am, and very glad to see you," Laurence said, business-like, though in truth he was at some pains to keep his feet, "if beyond words with surprise; we were mortally certain we should never be found."
"Sutton said we would never find you, by roaming wild about the continent," Temeraire said, low and angry, "and that we ought to go back to Capetown. But I told him that was a very great piece of nonsense, for however unlikely we should find you looking in the interior, it was very much less likely we should find you back at the Cape. So we asked directions - "
"Directions?" Laurence said, baffled.
He had consulted with some of the local dragons, who, living farther to the south, had not been subject yet to the slave-raiding, and were not so disposed to be hostile. "At least, not once we had made them a few presents of some particularly nice cows - which, I am sorry, Laurence, we took quite without permission, from some of the settlers, so I suppose we must pay them when we have got back to Capetown," Temeraire added, as confidently as if nothing stood in the way of their return. "It was a little difficult to make them understand what we wanted, at first, but some of them understood the Xhosa language, which I had got a little of from Demane and Sipho, and I have learnt a little of theirs as we came closer: it is not very difficult, and there are many bits which are like Durzagh."
"But, forgive me; I do not mean to be ungrateful," Laurence said, " - the mushrooms? What of the cure? Were there any left?"
"We had already given all those we collected to the Fiona," Temeraire said, "and if those were not enough, then Messoria and Immortalis could do very well taking back the rest, without us," he finished defiantly, "so Sutton had no right to complain, if we liked to go; and hang orders anyway."
Laurence did not argue with him; he had no wish of giving any further distress, and in any case, Temeraire's insubordination having been answered by a success so improbable, he would certainly not be inclined to listen to any criticism on the subject: the sort of break-neck reckless venture crowned inevitably, Laurence supposed, by either triumph or disaster; speed and impudence having their own virtue. "Where are Lily and Dulcia, then?"
"They are hiding, out upon the plains," Temeraire said. "We agreed that first I should try, as I am big enough to carry you all; and then if anything should go wrong, they would still be loose." He switched his tail with something halfway between irritation and unease. "It made very good sense at the time, but I did not quite realize, that anything would go wrong, and then I would not be able to help them plan," he added plaintively, "and now I do not know what they mean to do; although I am sure they will think of something" - but he sounded a little dubious.
As well he might; while they had been speaking, dragons had been coming in a steady stream, carrying in large woven baskets or upon their backs men and women and even children, and settling all down within the stands: a vast company, larger than Laurence had yet suspected. The people arranged themselves in a hierarchy of wealth, those sitting on the lowest levels dressed in the most elaborate finery, panoply of furs and jewellery in a splendid vulgar display. There was a great variety among the beasts, in size and shape, and no sign of recognizable breeds, save perhaps a tendency towards similar coloring, in those who sat near-by one another, or in their pattern of markings. There was one constant, or nearly, however: the hostile looks which were bent upon Laurence and Temeraire, from all sides. Temeraire flared his ruff, as best he could with the constricting straps, and muttered, "They needn't all stare so; and I think they are great cowards for keeping me chained."
Soldiers were being brought in, now, by dragons more armored than ornamented, and many of them in bloodstained gear: no mark of slovenly habits but deliberate, worn proudly; many of the stains were fresh as though they had come straight from the recent battle which Mrs. Erasmus had mentioned. These took up places around the floor of the great stadium, in even ranks, while servants began to cover the large central stage with furs, lion-skins and leopard, and similarly draped a wooden throne; drums had been carried in, and Laurence was thankful when they set up a great thunder, and drew all eyes away: the king and the prince had arrived.
The soldiers beat their short-hafted spears against the shields, and the dragons roaring their own salute set up a wave of rattling noise, on and on, while the royalty seated themselves upon the central dais. When they were settled, a small dragon, wearing an odd sort of necklace of fur tails around his neck, leapt up on his haunches, beside the dais, and clearing his throat hushed the crowd with startling speed; his next deep breath was audible in the sudden silence. And then he launched himself into something between story and song: chanted, and without rhyme, to the beat of only one soft drum which kept time for him.
Temeraire tilted his head, to try and make it out; but when he looked at Laurence, and would have spoken, the dragon guarding them gave him a shocked glare even before a word had issued, which quelled him in embarrassment; until with sunset, the chant finished, and the raucous applause burst out again as torches were lit all around the dais. It had evidently been, from what Temeraire could gather, a kind of history of the deeds of the king and his ancestors, and more generally of the many assembled tribes, delivered entirely from memory, and covering some seven generations.
Laurence could not help but feel the liveliest anxiety for the purpose of the convocation; the opening ceremonies thus completed, it proceeded swiftly to angry speeches, greeted with roaring approval and again that thunder of spears against shields. "That is not true at all," Temeraire said indignantly, during one of these, having picked out a few of the words. One highly decorated dragon, a grey-black fellow of middle-weight size, wearing a thick neck-collar of tiger furs banded with gold, had come and ranged himself opposite Temeraire, and was gesturing at him pointedly. "I would not want your crew anyway; I have my own." He and Laurence were evidently figuring, in most of these exhortations, as material evidence, to prove the existence of the threat and of its magnitude.
Another dragon, very old, whose wing-spurs dragged upon the ground, and whose eyes were milky with cataracts, was led out into the field by a small escort of hard-faced men whose box, upon the lowest level, was left empty by their departure: they had no family with them. No-one spoke as the dragon crept to the dais, and heaved himself upon it; he raised his trembling head, his speech a thin and fragile lament which silenced all the crowd, and made the women draw to them their children, the dragons curl anxious tails around the clustered knots of their nearest tribesmen; one of the escort wept silently, with his hand over his face, his fellows giving him the courtesy of pretending they did not see.
When he had done, and returned slowly to his place, several of the soldiers began to stand forward to make their remarks: one general, a heavy barrel-chested gentleman, discarded his leopard-skin drape impatiently as he paced, with so much energy his skin gleamed in the torchlight with sweat, arguing vehemently in a voice projected to reach the highest tiers, gesturing at them at regular intervals, striking his fist into his hand, and pointing occasionally at Temeraire. His speech roused them all not only to cheering, but to agreement, grim nodding; he was warning them, that many more such dragons would come, if they did not take action now.
The night dragged on, grim and long; when the children had all fallen into exhausted sleep, some of the dragons and the women carried them away; those left kept speaking, climbing lower down in the stands as room opened, and voices grew more hoarse. Fatigue at last freed Laurence from dread; they had not been stoned yet, nor offered any other violence but words, and his back throbbed and itched and burned, sapping the energy even to be afraid. It was still not easy to stand and be pilloried, even if Laurence thankfully could escape the understanding of the better part of the accusations leveled against them; he solaced himself by keeping as straight as he could make himself, and fixing his gaze beyond the top ranks of the audience. But he was looking not to see, unfocused, so he did not immediately notice, until a vigorous waving made him realize, with a start, that Dulcia was perched on the top rank of seats, now empty.
She was small enough, and her green-and-mottled coloring sufficiently common, to pass for one of the company, whose attention was in any case fixed upon the speakers; when she saw she had Laurence's eyes, she sat up and held up in her forehands a ragged grey sheet. Laurence had no notion what it was, at first; and then realized it was an elephant-hide, with three holes painstakingly sawed out of it, in the shape of signal-flags: tomorrow, was all the message, and when he had seen it, and nodded to her, she as quickly vanished away again into the dark.
"Oh; I hope they will come and let me loose, first," Temeraire murmured, fretful at the prospect of a rescue in which he had no say. "There are so many dragons; I hope they will not do anything rash."
"Oh! I do too," Harcourt said anxiously, when Laurence had been returned to them, well-roasted and spat-upon, after the conclusion of the ceremonies; she went to the mouth of the cave at once to peer up at their sentinel. The dragon was slumped rather unhappily upon his ledge, with his head drooping down; in the distance the drums were still going, in a celebration which bid fair to continue deep into the night.
They could not prepare, save in the most general way, by drinking as much as they could hold, and washing up; but they all applied themselves to these tasks with more energy than they deserved. "Bother; it is moving again," Harcourt said, as she squeezed out her wet hair, and she put her hand to the small of her back and rubbed. Inconveniently she had just begun to show; her breeches were now obliged to be left open, and the sides held together over her middle with a bit of bark-string left from their bindings; her shirt was loose, to cover the arrangement. "Oh, if only it is a girl! I will never, never be so careless again."
By grace they slept well: the masons did not return to their work, perhaps given holiday, and so for once they were not woken with the dawn. No dragon came to carry any of them to the fields; although for an unpleasant balance, no dragon came to bring them any porridge, either, so they would have to make their attempt empty-stomached. There were still a good many dragons flying back and forth through the gorges, all day, but as evening fell their activity reduced, and the women went back early to their cavern-halls, singing, with the baskets full of washing balanced upon their heads.
Of course they had all expected the rescue to be made at night, rationally; but without certain knowledge, the day was full of tension and constant anxiety, and the urge to be always looking out of the cavern-mouth, in a way which could only have roused suspicion. Sunset roused them all to feverish attention; no-one spoke, all of them straining, until a little while after dark the heavy sailcloth-flapping of Lily's enormous wings could be heard, distantly, on the quiet air.
They all waited for the sound to approach more closely, to see her head in the cavern-entrance; but it did not come. There was only a sneeze, and then another, and a third; concluded shortly with a sort of grumbling cough, and then the retreat of her wings. Laurence looked at Catherine, perplexed, but she was edging towards the cave-mouth, beckoning him and Chenery over; a faint sizzling noise, like bacon on a too-hot frying-pan, a pinched sharp vinegared stink: there were a few pockmarks bubbling on the floor near the cavern-mouth.
"Look," Catherine said softly, "she has made us handholds," and she pointed where thin smoky trails rose, barely visible, from the cliff face.
"Well, I dare say we can manage the climb, but what do we do when we are down?" Chenery said, with more optimism than Laurence felt. He had been made to go rock-climbing at Loch Laggan, by the training master Celeritas, some twenty years past the time most aviators began the habit, and had learned thereby to manage upon a dragon's back without too much discredit to himself; but he remembered the experience, cramped beetle-like creeping one hand or foot at a time, without anything like pleasure, and there he had been wearing carabiners.