Tongues of Serpents (23 page)

There was a brief, dismayed silence as it raised its head. It was a strange, misshapen creature, with none of the lithe, deadly grace that every other dragonet whom Laurence had ever seen had possessed instantly on cracking the shell. It was a long almost skeletal thing, uniformly mottled brown-grey, and bristling along all its shoulders and in patches over its back with spikes very like the barbs on the tails of the Chequered Nettle, one of which had produced the egg; it had, also, inherited the claws of its Parnassian sire, so long they bid fair to snag upon its own flesh.

Its wings were a little stubby and badly cramped together, draped loosely over the hatchling’s sides, but as it tried to stretch them out, those sides were revealed—distended into swollen folds which bulged out over the dragonet’s shoulder and hip-joints, as if its rib cage were shrunken in too small, and the hide too large for it.

Yet it was otherwise painfully thin to look upon, the bones of the shoulders and hip standing in sharp relief: long and narrow, and had been folded upon itself several times in the tight bounds of the shell. The dragonet had evidently suffered from the confinement, and moving palsied-slow unwound itself only a little at a time, and pausing every short while to gasp a few labored breaths. Laurence could only wince for its sake. It was scarcely the size of an underfed hound.

“Oh, I am hungry,” the dragonet said, in a small piping voice which sounded very much as though it were being whistled through a reed; but none of the aviators moved. Drewmore and Blincoln shifted uneasily, and looked at Forthing, who already had edged back away. They, too, stepped back, from the hatchling, and a general uneasy silence began.

“Well,” Rankin said after a pause, “it is a pity. Gentlemen, I assume you are one and all in agreement? There is no officer who would care to try the harnessing? Mr. Dorset?”

Dorset was already pacing around the hatchling, inspecting it; he shook his head absently. “I cannot speak either to the source or the effects of the deformity until I have opened it, of course; from the labored breathing I should imagine the lungs are constrained. Quite an interesting case.”

No-one else spoke; Laurence did not immediately follow, until Rankin turned and said, “Mr. Fellowes, I believe you are our only ground-crew master; I must ask you to undertake the duty—I am afraid we do not have rifles. Would you prefer a sledge, or a pistol?”

Temeraire, Laurence thought, had also not yet understood; before he should realize, Laurence said sharply, “That is quite enough, sir; I wonder if you could have the temerity to call yourself a Christian. Mr. Fellowes, we will have none of that.”

Rankin wheeled on him and snapped, “That you are ignorant of all principles of the Corps, and disdain those few you know, is no surprise; that you have the audacity to set yourself up as authority likewise—What can you, who received the privilege unlooked-for and unearned, understand of the feelings of any aviator on such an occasion, who has lived all his life in waiting for it? It is our duty—as much our duty as harnessing the beast would be, if it were fit for service; it is not. It is not, and there is nothing to be done for it.”

“It is nonetheless one of God’s creatures for its lack of usefulness,” Laurence said, “and I will not see it murdered.”

“Would you prefer to see it abandoned and exposed, to suffer slowly?” Rankin said. “A dragon comes out of the shell ready to fend for itself: do
you
imagine this hatchling could do so, if we should leave it here, unharnessed and alone?”

The dragonet, as yet mostly preoccupied with untangling itself, looked back at them wary and uncertain. Fumbling its long-clawed feet over one another and its tail, it tried to spread out its wings, and managed to flap and raise a little dust; but then it ceased the effort, and fell to gasping instead.

“Oh,” Temeraire said sadly, to the hatchling, “you cannot fly?”

“I am sure I will manage it shortly,” the hatchling said, in its small pale voice, “only I am so stiff; and hungry.”

Rankin jerked his hand cuttingly. “It cannot live long in any case,” he said.

“Then,” Laurence said, “we will give the poor beast some food, and what comfort it can take, until the natural end should come; if that be quick or late, that does not relieve us of the obligations of humanity.”

“And who do you propose should feed it?” Rankin said. “No aviator will do it and so bind himself, sacrificing his one chance; and I will be damned if I will allow you to impose a low convict upon us with a claim to call himself Captain—”

“I will feed it myself,” Laurence said.

“What?” Temeraire said, his head swinging around sharply. Laurence paused, astonished, and Temeraire said, “You would—?” and his voice was trembling, thrumming with distress and wrath, an edge of the resonance of the divine wind to it.

“Have done,” Rankin said, impatiently. “You cannot feed it; unless it has no sense at all, it will not take food from your hands: it can see you are Temeraire’s, and it knows he would kill it at once. Which,” he added, “would save us the difficulty, I suppose.”

Laurence threw him a disgusted look; Temeraire might perhaps
dislike
the gesture, but as for murdering a small and helpless hatchling, he did not in the least believe it. He said, “Temeraire—my dear, what is this absurdity; you cannot imagine I would propose any substitution, ever.” That Temeraire was distressed, however, was certain; Laurence added, “My intentions are only the most practical: and I beg you to feed the hatchling yourself, if you should have any objection to my performing the office.”

“Oh,” Temeraire said, his ruff smoothing a little. “Oh, well; I do not
mind
that, but, Laurence—” He leaned his head over and in a low and confiding tone said, rather hesitantly, “Laurence, maybe you have not quite understood—it cannot fly.”

Laurence was very much shocked—shocked, appalled; he scarcely knew what to say. Rankin said, “There; will this convince you to have done enacting us this thorough Cheltenham tragedy?”

Temeraire snorted at Rankin. “I am sure I do not see why you must speak if all you wish is to be unpleasant,” he said, “and Laurence, if you should feel very strongly, of course I will give the hatchling some food. Only, it does seem a little strange.”

“More than a little strange,” Caesar said. “Why, what’s it to do when you aren’t about, and it is hungry? Anyway, we are still in this desert, and it has been scraps and string all week; there may be a bit of extra food about now, but it’s a long way back to the cows. You might have a little sense, instead of wasting it.”

“Perhaps it might come to be able to fly, after all,” Temeraire said, “if it is only tired, from being shaken a great deal—although—then it might have stayed in the shell to rest—”

He trailed off, not very convincingly; and Laurence found himself abruptly unsure—adrift; what he had supposed a certain mooring had shifted, and was floating with him in an unknown current. If the hatchling
should
linger—deformed, helpless, without any means of sufficiency—rejected by the Corps, and its fellows also—

“Temeraire, you will oblige me greatly if you would give it something,” Laurence said, nevertheless; there was no alternative which did not appall the worse: which was not full of barbarism and cruelty, and must be rejected out of hand.

He turned, and stopped: the hatchling was feasting slowly but with great determination in the gutted innards of the kangaroo, with a loop of belt around its neck for token harness, and Demane looked up and said, “I am naming him Kulingile.”

“It means, ‘all is well,’” Temeraire said to Caesar, “and I do not see what business you have complaining, when Demane was of my crew. I do not see why I must always be losing some one of my officers or my ground crew whenever an egg should happen to hatch; it is become quite unreasonable.”

And almost enough to make one
not
wish to go and find the other egg: a certain anticipation of injury which made Temeraire feel not so delighted as he ordinarily would have been, with the intelligence which Laurence and Tharkay had brought back from the natives.

Not really, of course; it was not the fault of the egg, and in truth Temeraire was deeply, profoundly relieved, even to have the little scraps of direction; but—he might admit he was not quite feeling himself. He would not have minded a few days more of quiet rest, and stewed meat. Temeraire did not mean to complain aloud, but his throat was so very uncomfortable, and it seemed very hard he should have to go to all this trouble, and suffer indignities, only to be robbed of yet another crewman. He sighed.

“I beg your pardon; he
is
an officer,” Laurence was saying to Rankin, “and not merely a personal servant: Demane has been rated nearly two years, and served as acting-captain on Arkady—”

“A feral beast, which could not be controlled in any case,” Rankin said, dismissively. “No; if you imagine I will submit this to the Admiralty, you are thoroughly mistaken. Your servant has made a pet of the creature, and so far as I am concerned, they neither of them have anything to do with the Corps at all; he is welcome to ship back to England if you imagine he will fare better with recognition there. Not that the beast will survive long enough to make that necessary.”

“Only long enough to eat up the best of everything,” Caesar said, disapprovingly; and Temeraire did think the hatchling was being excessive. Kulingile did not eat very quickly, but he had not stopped eating since he had begun, and was now nearly inside the carcass.

“The kangaroo is bigger than you are,” he said, “and you seem to be eating all of it; you might leave some for tomorrow.”

Kulingile pulled his head out of the kangaroo, having torn free another fresh gobbet of meat, and tipped back to swallow down the lump, which traveled as a visible knot down his skinny throat. He panted a few times afterwards, his very peculiar-looking sides heaving out and in, and then said thin and piping, “But I am still hungry now, and my captain fetched it for me, so it is mine, and I will eat it; I will,” and he pushed his head back inside.

Temeraire sighed, and supposed he could not be mean enough to grudge the hatchling its meal; it must, he thought, be very distressing not to be able to fly. He looked at it critically: it was those sides, so queerly bulging and heaped on one another, he thought, which were
likely the problem. “I do not suppose you might cut a bit of them out, and sew it up again,” he suggested to Dorset, who was sitting cross-legged by the hatchling’s side and listening to the chest with his ear-trumpet.

“A little quiet if you please,” Dorset said absently, “and it would be of the greatest use imaginable if he would stop eating,” he added to Demane, “—the digestive processes are drowning out the action of the pneumotic system.”

“He will sleep when he isn’t hungry anymore,” Demane said, a possessive hand still on the dragonet’s neck, stroking. He looked over at Roland with a rather triumphant expression, which faded when she turned her back and with a set face went to the other side of the camp, to busy herself with packing away the gear for their departure.

“I didn’t think you would be so jealous,” he said to her, when the dragonet had gone to sleep a little later.

“Yes, very jealous,” Roland said without turning, “you ass: I will be taking Excidium in seven years or so, when Mother is ready to be grounded.” Temeraire silently swelled with indignation, overhearing this.

“Then—” Demane said, and she rounded on him, and said, “What business have you, dragging it out for the poor thing and everyone, only to make a show of yourself? Half these fellows are grounded because their beasts died, d’you think anyone likes it, watching it fight just to get its breath? It’ll outgrow its lungs in a week—”

“You don’t know!” Demane snapped. “The captain doesn’t think it’s going to die.”

“Of course he does,” Roland said, “we all do; listen!” The dragonet, breathing, was quite audible from across the camp; long effortful hissing breaths, which distended its sides. “And the captain wasn’t looking to save it for himself, was he? Only he’ll go through fire if he thinks he ought to; he’s churchy. You aren’t; so I think you are a perfect selfish beast,” she added, and stalked away.

“I am not!” Demane said, and looked up at Temeraire. “He might not die,” he demanded.

“Well, I do not see any reason he should
die,”
Temeraire said; he was not at all inclined to see the hatchling die, it would be very distressing, “except I do not quite know what he is to do for food, if he should ever have to hunt for himself.”

“I can hunt for him,” Demane said.

“And he is so very small, that perhaps he will not take a great deal of feeding,” Temeraire agreed, and added encouragingly, with a burst of inspiration, “and perhaps he will turn out to be a scholar, and not need to fly at all—or a poet.”

Demane did not look very happy at this suggestion; it was always a little difficult to persuade him to sit to his books, and he was already grown deeply disappointed in his brother, who could hardly be got away from them. Temeraire felt however that he had hit upon an ideal solution, “and after all,” he said to Laurence, “I do not find that anyone asks a fresh-hatched egg to hunt, when it is a person; Harcourt’s egg could only lie about and flap its arms and wail, and at least Kulingile can speak, and eat without someone else putting food into his mouth a bit at a time.”

On this philosophy, he tried to begin teaching Kulingile his characters, when he had woken up, but Kulingile only pulled in his wheezing breath and said, “But I am hungry.”

“It is only two hours since you ate,” Temeraire said, “you cannot be hungry again.”

“I am hungry,” Kulingile repeated sadly.

“Well, at least learn these first five,” Temeraire said, with a sigh, “and then you may have some lizard.”

Kulingile looked at the scratched characters, then looked up and said, “I have learned them.”

“You have not,” Temeraire said, and swept the marks clean from the dirt with the smooth curve of his talon. “Draw them over,” but he was forced to yield in the end, for the long claws would not allow Kulingile to write.