League of Dragons

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“Still, you are the one who has been shot,” Temeraire said, not mollified, and it was of no use to point out that Hammond had stood the same hazard; indeed Laurence found it best not to discuss the particulars of the duel at all.

The remainder of his crew had arrived the previous day, driving the wagon-load of gold and treasure—much to Temeraire’s relief—and Laurence could not help but be aware that his officers were very shocked; their disapproval was a palpable thing. Of Jane Roland’s reaction he was left in no doubt, from Emily’s furious looks, and he was uncomfortably certain that the absent Granby, too, would have upbraided him in the strongest terms. The ground crew, who did not themselves suffer from the prohibition against dueling, were more tolerant, and indeed rather more pleased than not to have a captain who would fight a duel in the teeth of prohibition; they considered his ferocity as reflecting well upon them. But Laurence did not care to have an act of unpleasant necessity be approved as barbarism, so this was not much consolation.

The officers of course could not express their feelings through any open reproach, but they were worsening the quarrel by ranging with Churki in blaming him. Temeraire was now torn between his own anger with Laurence and his unwillingness to cede ground to Churki, and Laurence was very dismayed to find the quarrel migrate onto the person of Miss Merkelyte. Hammond had introduced this young lady to Churki, by way of answering her questions and, he hoped, reconciling the family to the continuing presence of two large dragons in their acreage. Churki found much to approve in the girl’s youth and beauty—too much to approve; she informed Temeraire, in haughty tones, that she would accept the young lady, on Hammond’s behalf, as a kind of apology.

“Well, I am not going to make her an apology,” Temeraire said, indignant on very wrong grounds. “I do not see why Hammond should have her at all. She is very beautiful, at least all the crew tell me so. She may marry Ferris.”

Laurence would have upbraided both beasts for their scheming, as an insult to the already-unwilling hospitality of their hosts, but when he had marshaled Dyhern and Mrs. Pemberton to make apologies to Mrs. Merkelyte and ask her to keep her daughter in-doors, that lady held a conference with her daughter, and then demanded instead to know the situations of both gentlemen, and the particulars of bride-price and settlements. They were serfs, despite their relative prosperity, and had much to be wary of in seeing their nation absorbed by Russia, where their caste was notoriously oppressed. It was perhaps not surprising that Mrs. Merkelyte was ready to seize an opportunity of lofting her child to the security of a far higher sphere of society, even at the cost of losing her.

The proposed grooms were more hesitant. Ferris, while by no means indifferent to Miss Merkelyte’s charms, had sufficiently disappointed his family, through no fault of his own, to wish to further provoke them by presenting them with a wife of whose birth and education they would have strongly disapproved; meanwhile Hammond had vague but firmly held plans to ally himself with a woman of wealth and influential family, when he should have achieved sufficient success to recommend himself to such a lady. Laurence could not blame them, but the natural consequence of their failing to come up to the mark was to permit every other man of their company, of remotely marriageable age, to imagine himself as the lady’s partner instead.

Forthing, whom Laurence was sorry to learn a widower, hinted himself willing to pay his addresses, while Ferris reddened with indignation; Cavendish quarreled with Baggy though they had not half a beard between them. Even O’Dea made it his business to sit by Laurence’s bedside and recite poetry, casting soulful looks across the room while struggling to contrive rhymes for Gabija.

No young lady who had been so thoroughly sheltered could be blamed for enjoying such attentions; meanwhile her mother kept a hawk’s eye on the proceedings, but did not demur so long as her sense of propriety was not crossed. Temeraire hurled fuel upon the fire by regularly ordering some item of his treasure brought out from under the tarpaulins, to be polished and displayed in the thin wintry sunlight. Churki grew incensed with the competition offered to her own ambitions and began to hold long insistent conversations with Hammond, from which he escaped with an expression so mortified that Laurence could not imagine what had been said.

“What has not been said?” Hammond paced the room, pale with red spots. “I will not forbear to say, Captain, that the morals of dragons are very sadly flexible,” and Laurence realized appalled that Churki was proposing that Hammond take the girl into his keeping, if he did not wish to marry her.

“Well, of course there is no reason for her to go into Hammond’s keeping,” Temeraire said, “but she might go into yours. Indeed, that seems to me an excellent solution: we can pay bride-price now, and she may choose which of my crew she likes when she is ready. Or perhaps she might marry someone else,” he added, struck as though by a remarkable inspiration, “and then they should join my crew also: I have thought, Laurence, that we might do well to have a few more officers.”

After this conversation, Laurence said to Hammond, “For God’s sake, send for that doctor and ask if I am not well enough to be moved before we have more to reproach ourselves with than we already do; I am sure neither of these wretched beasts would scruple to make themselves procurers, only to win their point.”

The doctor came and pronounced Laurence on the mend, but not well enough to be allowed a flight in cold air; after this disappointment he inspected Dobrozhnov, and further complicated the situation by announcing that the gentleman evidently meant to live after all.

Dobrozhnov still moaned incessantly that night, but by the following morning, he began to be well enough to sit up and make an even worse nuisance of himself. Most unfortunately, he spoke Lithuanian. Nor felt, so far as Laurence could tell, any compunction about abusing the hospitality he had received: indeed he was no sooner well enough to speak, than he began to make clear by his behavior that he considered Miss Merkelyte fair game, and himself entitled to enjoy her favors, if only he should conquer her resistance ahead of his competitors. Laurence did not understand the words with which he addressed her, but the tone was so familiar it might have been better suited to a bawdy-house, and covered her with confusion.

Laurence had been determined to say nothing to the man; indeed, to ignore his presence insofar as possible: the situation was impossible otherwise. But he could hardly sit by and watch the progress of the seduction of an innocent girl, whose character was so alarmingly threatened, and not least through the actions of his own crew. “Hammond,” Laurence said, “he must be induced to leave that girl alone. Can you get rid of him?”

“I hardly know how,” Hammond said dubiously. “We can scarcely get him out of the house without the dragons seeing him: they are watching the door every minute to see who is coming in or out to speak with Miss Merkelyte.”

Just when he would have preferred to be ill for longer, Laurence found his own recovery speeding; he was well enough to stand up by himself the next day, and when he went slowly and haltingly outside, on Ferris’s arm, the cold did not bite with more than its usual ferocity. But he could not avoid knowing that their own departure would now leave the girl unprotected. Dobrozhnov had spent an hour in close conversation with the mother that very morning, and Laurence had seen gold change hands—ostensibly in thanks for the house’s hospitality. The coins were a trifle to a man as wealthy as Dobrozhnov, but to the household they meant ten years’ work and good fortune, and Mrs. Merkelyte plainly did not conceive that such a sum had been pressed upon her by a man with anything other than serious intentions; nor did Dobrozhnov have any hesitation letting her imagine he meant to offer her daughter a respectable marriage, rather than an arrangement as dishonorable as it was likely to be of short duration.

“Forthing,” Laurence said at last, grimly settling on the least of the many evils from which he had to make his choice, “will you marry her?”

“If—if she likes,” Forthing said, a little uncertainly; he had not received much encouragement. He was not rich and had never been handsome, even before the fresh scar which marred his face, nor were his manners of a sort that could impress a young woman, and he was besides this a little too practical to be entirely in love himself. “Only, I don’t know what I’m to do with her. I could send her to my sister. I suppose she’d learn English quick enough?”

“Whatever use is that?” Temeraire said, objecting immediately. “Why should she go away? I wish her to remain with us.”

“We cannot be taking her to war,” Laurence said.

“Why not?” Temeraire asked. “Roland comes to war, and so does Mrs. Pemberton. And Laurence,” he lowered his head, if not much his voice, “must it really be Forthing? I am sure she is too beautiful for him: only look at his coat!”

“Pray come and speak with her mother,” Laurence said to Forthing, deferring this argument; he felt not a little guilty at Forthing’s doubtful expression, but under the circumstances he could see no better solution.

However, Mrs. Merkelyte was grown particular: not entirely remarkable, when she had a wealthy Russian baron sleeping on her floor making a pretense of courtship, and two dragons busily trying to offer her the choice of a British diplomat and a younger son of the nobility, however unwilling these latter two might be. Dyhern awkwardly demurred from serving as go-between, for which Laurence could hardly blame the man, so Hammond had to be recruited to the task. He tried to persuade her through the barrier of German, but he was nervous lest he make a remark too easily misconstrued to commit him as the bridegroom, rather than Forthing. The discussion continued for only a little while; mother and daughter exchanged a glance; the girl looked away—the mother shook her head. Meanwhile Dobrozhnov watched all the proceedings sidelong from his own cot, with an amused and half-incredulous expression, as though he thought the offer absurd; Laurence was conscious of a strong desire to knock him down again.

Gabija did not admire Dobrozhnov; her own preference was quite certainly for Ferris, on whom her eyes often lingered: with his sword and pistols and flying-coat, and the military carriage which had never deserted him, he presented the qualities of an officer even though he no longer possessed the rank. He had a smooth high forehead beneath auburn locks, and over the course of the preceding year he had filled out in muscle to match his height; if not a match for her in beauty, he could reasonably have been called handsome even by a judge with more basis for comparison. She was too shy to even attempt to speak to him, but she made excuses to be in his way, and even dared to linger near Temeraire, who might be relied upon to call Ferris over whenever she was by.

But despite these evident signs of calf-love, Laurence feared her susceptible to Dobrozhnov’s persuasion: she plainly did not wish to settle, any longer, for the quiet country life which would have been her natural lot. If no better offer were made her, she might well be persuaded to accept Dobrozhnov’s suit, without understanding what fate she embraced.

And yet Laurence had reached the end of what solutions he might offer: he could not press Ferris to marry under the circumstances. Temeraire however felt no such hesitation, and when the failure of Forthing’s suit had been reported—to Churki’s visible and ruffled-up satisfaction—he urged at once, “Ferris, are you sure you would not like to marry her,” while Laurence, catching his breath upon the camp-chair which had been arranged for him, could not yet object.

“I must beg to be excused,” Ferris said, and dragged his eyes away from Miss Merkelyte’s appealing glance with an effort: she was feeding the chickens in the yard, and made a remarkably charming portrait with her dress hiked up to her knees, and curls of her dark hair escaping from under a kerchief. He swallowed, and added with some bitterness, “It would be too much to prostrate my mother a second time,” and took himself away.

“Temeraire,” Laurence said, “you cannot be tormenting him so: leave off.”

“But if we do not object, I do not see why he ought to imagine his mother will; after all, she has never seen Gabija,” Temeraire began, but he stopped and raised his head, his ruff pricking up.

A small dragon came dropping out of the clouds in the distance: one of the local ferals, green, with a remarkable bony crest atop her head in orange and brown stripes. She sighted them and came on, circled once and descended. “So here you are!” she said, in accusatory tones. “What do you mean by hiding yourself away like this?”

“I beg your pardon?” Temeraire said, glacially. “I have come here to look after Laurence, who was injured in a duel; and I do not propose to let anyone object to it, either.”

“Hm,” the feral said, “well, as long as you aren’t trying to get out of it, at least: I hope you wouldn’t be that sort of dragon.”

“I am not that sort of dragon, at all!” Temeraire said. “And it is quite outrageous that you should come flitting back again to accuse me of any such thing. It is not as though I were going to wait about forever on the very thin chance that you should return. After you have found Eroica, then it will be very well for you to start talking about my trying to get out of it: as though I were a scrub.”

“What?” Dyhern said, standing up; he had been sitting upon a log near-by, occupying himself with whittling while Laurence spoke with Temeraire and Ferris, and to Laurence’s regret, he had heard his dragon’s name mentioned.

“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 (#u2c004f13-30c1-5c1a-8410-7b0e03864e9d)

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.