Наоми Новик – League of Dragons (страница 20)

“All right,” the feral said, “so go on and bring out the plate, then: we are here, aren’t we?”

“I believe,” Temeraire said in awful tones, “that there was a small matter of proof, and as for we—” Here he stopped, and Laurence heard Dyhern make a short, sharp inhalation, audible even across the farmyard, and then he was running, his arms open wide as a boy as he pelted downhill, shouting: there were half a dozen heavy-weight dragons breaking through the cloud cover, wisps of fog boiling away over their grey and brown bodies, and Eroica was in the lead.

Chapter 6

LAURENCE HAD RARELY SEEN a man so overcome: Dyhern could not manage any language but German, and his speech was so choked with tears that it could not have been comprehensible if he had been speaking the most fluent English, but he wrung Laurence’s hand with fervor enough to make words superfluous. Eroica, too, was beyond words, attempting as well as any dragon of twenty-three tons and armored in bone plates might to make himself a lap-dog, nearly knocking Dyhern over with attempts at caressing, while his fellows crowded around with enormous anxiety and peppered Dyhern with questions, asking after their own captains, their own officers. The noise was extraordinary.

“Temeraire,” Laurence said, almost too baffled to share in the delights of so unlikely a reunion, “I suppose you must have engineered this, but I cannot conceive how.”

“Oh,” Temeraire said, in despairing tones; he was regarding the touching scene with his ruff flattened so thoroughly against his neck as to make it nearly impossible to see at all.

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