Наоми Новик – Victory of Eagles (страница 1)
NAOMI NOVIK
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
Harper
First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins
Copyright © Naomi Novik 2008
Cover design © HarperCollins
Cover illustrations © Dominic Harman
Naomi Novik asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library
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HarperCollins
Source ISBN: 9780007256761
Ebook Edition © FEBRUARY 2009 ISBN: 9780007318612
Version: 2017-04-28
For Dr. Sonia Novik
who gave this book a home
Table of Contents
The breeding grounds were called Pen Y Fan, after the hard, jagged slash of mountain rising like an axe-blade at their heart, rimed with ice along its edge and rising barren over the moorland. It was a cold, wet Welsh autumn already, coming on towards winter, and the other dragons were sleepy and remote, uninterested in anything but meals. A few hundred of them were scattered throughout the grounds, mostly established in caves or on rocky ledges, wherever they could fit themselves. No comfort or even order was provided for them, except for the feedings, and the mowed-bare strip of ground around the borders, where torches were lit at night to mark the lines past which they might not go. The town-lights glimmered in the distance, cheerful and forbidden.
Temeraire had hunted out and cleared a large cavern on his arrival, to sleep in; but it would be damp, no matter what he did in the way of lining it with grass, or flapping his wings to move the air, which in any case did not suit his notions of dignity. Much better to endure every unpleasantness with stoic patience, although that was not very satisfying when no-one would appreciate the effort. The other dragons certainly did not.
He was quite sure he and Laurence had done as they ought, in taking the cure to France, and no one sensible could disagree; but just in case, Temeraire had steeled himself to meet with either disapproval or contempt, and he had worked out several very fine arguments in his defence. Most importantly, of course, it had been a cowardly, sneaking way of fighting: if the Government wished to beat Napoleon, they ought to fight him directly, and not make his dragons sick to make him easy to defeat; as if British dragons could not beat French dragons, without cheating. ‘And not only that,’ he added, ‘but it would not only have been the French dragons who would have died. Our friends from Prussia, who are imprisoned in their breeding grounds, would also have gotten sick. And it might perhaps even have spread so far as China; and that would be like stealing someone else's food, even when you are not hungry; or breaking their eggs.’
He made this impressive speech to the wall of his cave, as practice. They had refused to give him his sand-table, and he had no-one of his crew to jot it down for him. He did not have Laurence, who would have helped him work out just what to say. So he repeated the arguments over to himself quietly, instead, so he would not forget them. And if these arguments did not suffice, he might point out that it was, after all,
He might have saved himself the trouble. No one accused him of anything, nor, as he had privately, and a little wistfully thought possible, had they hailed him as a hero. They simply did not care.
The older dragons, not feral but retired, were a little curious about the latest developments in the war, but only distantly. They were more inclined to reminisce about their own battles from earlier wars, and the rest had only provincial indignation over the recent epidemic. They cared that their own fellows had sickened and died; they cared that the cure had taken so long to reach them; but it did not mean anything to them that dragons in France had also been ill, or that the disease would have spread, killing thousands if Temeraire and Laurence had not taken over the cure. They also did not care that the Lords of the Admiralty had called it treason, and sentenced Laurence to die.
They had nothing to care for. They were fed, and there was enough for everyone. If the shelter was not pleasant, it was no worse than what the dragons were used to, from the days of their active service. None of them had heard of pavilions, or ever thought they might be made more comfortable than they were. No-one molested their eggs; the groundskeepers took them away with infinite care in wagons lined with straw, and hot-water bottles and woollen blankets in the wintertime. They would bring back reports until the eggs were hatched and of no more concern; it was safer, even, than keeping them oneself, so even the dragons who had not cared to take a captain at all, would often as not hand over their own eggs.
They could not go flying very far, because they were fed at no set time but randomly, from day to day, so if one went out of ear-shot of the bells, one was likely to come too late, and go hungry. So there was no larger society to enjoy, no intercourse with the other breeding grounds or with the coverts, except when some other dragon came from afar, to mate. But even that was arranged for them. Instead they sat, willing prisoners in their own territory, Temeraire thought bitterly. He would never have endured it if not for Laurence; only for Laurence, who would surely be put to death at once if Temeraire did not obey.
He held himself aloof from their society at first. There was his cave to be arranged: despite its fine prospect it had been left vacant for being inconveniently shallow, and he was rather crammed-in; but there was a much larger chamber beyond it, just visible through holes in the back wall, which he gradually opened up with the slow and cautious use of his roar. Slower, even, than perhaps necessary: he was very willing to have the task consume several days. The cave had then to be cleared of debris, old gnawed bones and inconvenient boulders, which he scraped out painstakingly even from the corners too small for him to lie in, for neatness' sake. He found a few rough boulders in the valley and used them to grind the cave walls a little smoother, by dragging them back and forth, throwing up a great cloud of dust. It made him sneeze, but he kept on; he was not going to live in a raw untidy hole.
He knocked down stalactites from the ceiling, and beat protrusions flat into the floor, and when he was satisfied, he arranged some attractive rocks and dead tree-branches, twisted and bleached white along the sides of his new antechamber, with careful nudges of his talons. He would have liked a pond and a fountain, but he could not see how to bring the water up, or how to make it run when he had got it there, so he settled for picking out a promontory on Llyn y Fan Fawr which jutted into the lake, and considering it also his own.