Наоми Новик – Empire of Ivory (страница 2)
‘Will you hold still, for all love?’ Granby said despairingly; he was throwing his own weight against the straps to try and pull her head down. Allen and Harley, the young lookouts stationed on Temeraire’s shoulders, had to go scrambling out of the way to avoid being kicked as Granby was dragged stumbling from side to side by her efforts. Laurence loosened his buckles and climbed to his feet, bracing his heels against the strong ridge of muscle at the base of Temeraire’s neck. He caught Granby by the harness-belt when Iskierka’s thrashing swung him by again, and managed to hold him steady, but all the leather was strung tight as violin-strings, trembling with the strain.
‘But I can stop him!’ she insisted, twisting her head sidelong as she tried to work free. Eager jets of flame were licking out from the sides of her jaws as she tried once again to lunge at the enemy dragon, but their Pou-de-Ciel attacker, small as he was, was still many times her size and too experienced to be frightened off by a little show of fire; he only jeered, backwinging to expose all of his speckled brown belly to her as a target in a gesture of insulting unconcern.
‘Oh!’ Iskierka coiled herself tightly with rage, the thin spiky protrusions all over her sinuous body jetting steam, and with a mighty heave reared up on her hindquarters. The straps jerked painfully out of Laurence’s grasp, and involuntarily he caught his hand back to his chest, numb fingers curling over instinctively. Granby had been dragged into mid-air and was dangling vainly from her thick neck band, while she let loose a torrent of flame: thin and yellow-white, so hot that the air about it seemed to twist and shrivel away. It made a fierce banner against the night sky.
But the French dragon had cleverly put himself before the wind, coming strong and from the east; now he folded his wings and dropped away, and the blistering flames were blown back against Temeraire’s flank. Temeraire, still scolding Gherni back into the line of flight, uttered a startled cry and jerked away while sparks scattered over the glossy blackness of his hide, perilously close to the carrying-harness of silk and linen and rope.
‘Enough there; put up that pistol,’ Laurence roared at him through the speaking-trumpet. Lieutenant Ferris and a couple of the topmen hurriedly unlatched their harness-straps and let themselves down to wrestle it out of the officer’s hands. They could only reach the fellow by clambering over the other Prussian soldiers, however, and though too afraid to let go of the harness, the men were obstructing their passage in every other way, thrusting out elbows and hips with abrupt jerks, full of resentment and hostility.
Lieutenant Riggs was giving orders, distantly, towards the rear; ‘Fire!’ he shouted, clear over the increasing rumble among the Prussians; the handful of rifles spoke with bright powder-bursts, sulphurous and bitter. The French dragon made a little shriek and wheeled away, flying a little awkwardly: blood streaked in rivulets from a rent in its wing, where a bullet had by lucky chance struck one of the thinner patches around the joint and penetrated the hide.
The respite came a little late; some of the men were already clawing their way up towards Temeraire’s back, snatching at the greater security of the leather harness to which the aviators were hooked by their carabiner straps. But the harness could not take all their weight too, not so many of them; if the buckles stretched open, or some straps gave way, and the whole began to slide, it would entangle Temeraire’s wings and send them all plummeting into the ocean together.
Laurence loaded his pistols fresh and thrust them into his waistband, loosened his sword, and stood up again. He had willingly risked all their lives to rescue these men from a trap, and he meant to see them safely ashore if he could; but he would not see Temeraire endangered by their hysteric fear.
‘Allen, Harley,’ he said to the boys, ‘run across to the riflemen and tell Mr. Riggs: if we cannot stop them, they are to cut the carrying-harness loose, all of it; and be sure you keep latched on as you go. Perhaps you had better stay here with her, John,’ he added, when Granby made to come away with him. Iskierka was quiet for the moment, her enemy having quit the field, but she still coiled and recoiled herself in sulky restlessness, muttering in disappointment.
‘Oh, certainly! I should like to see myself do any such thing,’ Granby said, taking out his sword; he had foregone pistols since becoming Iskierka’s captain, to avoid the risk of handling open powder around her.
Laurence was too unsure of his ground to pursue an argument; Granby was not properly his subordinate any longer, and the more experienced aviator of the two of them, counting years aloft. Granby took the lead as they crossed Temeraire’s back, moving with the sureness only a boy trained up from the age of seven could have aloft; at each step Laurence handed forward his own lead-strap and let Granby lock it on to the harness for him, which he could do one-handed, that they might go more quickly.
Ferris and the topmen were still struggling with the Prussian officer in the midst of a thickening clot of men; they were disappearing from view under the violent press of bodies, only Martin’s yellow hair visible. The soldiers were near full riot, men beating and kicking at one another, thinking of nothing but an impossible escape; the knots of the carrying-harness were tightening, giving up more slack, so all the loops and bands of it hung loose and swinging with the thrashing, struggling men.
Laurence came on one of the soldiers, a young man, eyes wide and staring in his wind-reddened face and his thick moustache wet-tipped with sweat, trying to work his arm beneath the main harness, blindly, though the buckle was already straining open, and he would in a moment have slid wholly free.
‘Get back to your place!’ Laurence shouted, pointing to the nearest open loop of the carrying-harness, and thrusting the man’s hand away from the straps. Then his ears started ringing, a thick ripe smell of sour cherries flooded his nostrils as his knees folded beneath him. He put a hand to his forehead slowly, stupidly; it was wet. His own harness-straps were holding him, painfully tight against his ribs with all his weight pulling against them. The Prussian had struck him with a bottle; it had shattered, and the liquor was dripping down the side of his face.
Instinct rescued him; he put up his arm to take the next blow and pushed the broken glass back at the man’s face; the soldier said something in German and let go the bottle. They wrestled together a few moments more; then Laurence caught the man’s belt and heaved him up and away from Temeraire’s side. The soldier’s arms were spread wide, grasping at nothing; Laurence, watching, abruptly recalled himself, and at once he lunged out, reaching to his full length; but too late, and he came thumping heavily back against Temeraire’s side with empty hands; the soldier was already gone from sight.
His head did not hurt over much, but Laurence felt queerly sick and weak. Temeraire had resumed flying towards the coast, having rounded up the rest of the ferals at last, and the force of the wind was increasing. Laurence clung to the harness a moment, until the fit passed and he was able to make his hands work properly again. There were already more men clawing up: Granby was trying to hold them back, but they were overbearing him by sheer weight of numbers, even though struggling as much against one another as him. One of the soldiers grappling for a hold on the harness climbed too far out of the press; he slipped, landed heavily on the men below him, and carried them all away; as a tangled, many-limbed mass they fell into the slack loops of the carrying-harness, and the muffled wet noises of their joints and bones cracking sounded together like a roast chicken being wrenched hungrily apart.
Granby was hanging from his harness-straps, trying to get his feet planted again; Laurence crab-walked over to him and gave him a steadying arm. Below he could just make out the washy sea foam, pale against the black water; Temeraire was flying lower and lower as they neared the coast.
‘That damned Pou-de-Ciel is coming round again,’ Granby panted, as he got back his footing; the French had somehow stretched a dressing over the gash in the dragon’s wing, even if the great white patch of it was awkwardly placed and far larger than the injury made necessary. The dragon looked a little uncomfortable in the air, but he was coming on gamely nonetheless; they must have spotted Temeraire’s vulnerability. If the Pou-de-Ciel were able to catch the harness and drag it loose, it might deliberately finish what the soldiers had begun in their panic, and the chance of bringing down a heavy-weight, much less one as valuable as Temeraire, would surely tempt them to great risk.