Наоми Новик – Victory of Eagles (страница 16)

‘We can go and fetch a great many cattle here, if they are drugged with laudanum,’ Temeraire said, ‘but it seems to me, that if the French are going about taking cows anyway, we would do better to eat their food first, instead of our own, and let them have the bother of gathering it; and that way we may fight and eat together.’

They all agreed it made a sensible strategy, and for Temeraire it was nearly more justification than cause: he wanted badly to fight. The urge to violence, the hunger for some explosive action, was always stirring in him now, craving release, and often Perscitia and Moncey eyed him anxiously. Sometimes Temeraire would even rouse up, not from sleep but from some halfway condition, and find himself deserted: the others all flown away some distance, crouched down low and watching him.

‘It isn't healthy, how he pens it up,’ Gentius said loudly after their meeting, not seeing Temeraire close enough to overhear. ‘You fellows don't know what it's like, having a really fine captain and losing her: it is worse than having all your treasure stolen. That is why he goes so queer now and again. A proper battle, that is what he needs, a bit of blood,’ and Temeraire wanted it very much. He did not like the sensation of being a passenger in his own life, unable to feel as he chose; if a battle would repair it, he was almost tempted to go seek one out at once.

But he had brought everyone else along, and he could not abandon them to their own devices now or drag them into a mindless squabble, even if he would have liked one. Instead he brooded on strategy, and when the urge grew too difficult to bear, he went away and curled himself tightly, with his head against his flank beneath the dark huddle of his wing, and murmured to himself from the Principia Mathematica. Laurence had read it to him so often that he had it all by heart, and if he spoke low, and flattened his voice, he might almost imagine he heard Laurence instead, reading to him in the rain, safe and sheltered beside him.

The very next morning, Minnow and Reedly came into camp flying so quick they had to skip-hop a few paces along the ground to stop, full of news: ‘Pigs,’ Reedly said, panting, ‘so many of them, a whole pen, back of their army, and some of 'em are big as ponies!’

‘Pigs,’ Gentius said thoughtfully, cracking an eye. ‘Pigs are good eating, all the way through.’

‘Pigs are easy to keep,’ Lloyd put in. ‘We drive 'em into the forest and they will feed themselves; you can go in and take one when you want, or round 'em up to drive them along.’

‘And there are only a couple of old Chevaliers to guard them,’ Minnow said. ‘They are big, but lazy, and they were fast asleep when we saw them.’

‘Very good,’ Temeraire said, attempting to sound cool and serene, although his tail wanted to thump the ground. 'Lloyd, you and your men will go with Moncey and the Winchesters. You will wait until we have attacked, and drawn everyone off, and then you will go and take the pigs and bring them along here.

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