Free Victory of Eagles by Naomi Novik

the wrist, and looking at him with the focused, too-earnest expression
    of the profoundly drunk. Laurence did not know what to say; he had agreed, and had laid down his life
    to prevent it, but he did not care to be congratulated for it, by a stranger.
    “ Treason is another word, if you like,” another officer said, at the nearest populated table, making no
    pretenses about eavesdropping; a bottle of whiskey half-empty stood before him, and he was drinking
    alone.
    “Hear, hear,” another man said.
    There were entirely too many bottles in the room, and too many angry and disappointed men. It was an
    invitation for a scene. Laurence disengaged his hand. He would heartily have liked to excuse himself and
    shift tables, but Frette had abandoned him to Prewitt and his willing company, and Laurence could not
    imagine imposing himself on anyone else in the room. “I beg you gentlemen not to speak of it,” he said
    quietly, to the table: to no avail. Reynolds was already arguing with the whiskey-drinker, and their voices
    were penetrating.
    Laurence set his jaw, and tried not to hear. “And I say,” the whiskey-drinker was saying, “that he is a
    traitor who ought to be drug outside, strung up, and drawn and quartered after, and you with him, if you
    say otherwise—”
    “Medieval sentiment—” They were both standing now, Reynolds shaking off Gounod’s half-hearted
    restraining hand to get up. Their voices had risen enough to drown all nearby conversation.
    Laurence rose, and catching Reynolds by the shoulder firmly, pressed him back towards his chair. “Sir,
    you do me no kindness by this; leave off,” he said, low and sharply.
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    “That’s right, let him teach you how to be a coward,” the other man said.
    Laurence stiffened. He could not resent insults which he had earned, he had sacrificed the right to defend
    himself against traitor —but coward was a slap he could not gladly swallow. Yet even if dueling were
    not forbidden aviators, he could not make challenge. He had caused enough harm; he could not—would
    not—do more. He closed his mouth on the bitterness in the back of his throat, and did not turn to look
    the man in the face, though he stood now so offensively close his liquored breath came hot and strongly
    over Laurence’s shoulder.
    “Call him a coward, when you would’ve sat and done nothing,” Reynolds flung back, resisting the push.
    He shook off Laurence’s hand, or tried. “I suppose your dragon would think a lot of your being happy to
    see ten thousand of them put down, poisoned or good as, like dogs—”
    “At least one of ’em ought to be poisoned,” the other man said, and Laurence let go of Reynolds and
    turned and knocked him down.
    The man was drunk and unsteady, and going down pulled the table and the bottle over with him, cheap
    liquor bubbling out over the dirt as it rolled away. For a moment no-one spoke, and then chairs went
    back across the tent, eagerly, as if nothing more had been wanted than a pretext.
    The quarrel at once devolved into a confused melee, with nothing so organized as sides; Laurence saw
    two men from the same table wrestling in a corner. But a few men singled him out, one a captain he knew
    by face from Dover, if not immediately by name; he had streaks of black dragon blood fresh on his
    clothing. Geoffrey Windle, Laurence remembered incongruously, as they grappled, and then Windle
    struck him full on the jaw.
    The impact rocked him back on his heels: his teeth snapped together, jarring all up to his skull with the
    startling pain of a bitten cheek. Gripping a tent-pole for purchase, Laurence managed to seize a chair and
    pull it around between them as Windle lunged at him again; the man tripped over it and went into the pole
    with his full weight: considerable, as he had some three stone over Laurence. The canvas roof above
    sagged precipitously.
    Two more men came at Laurence, faces ugly with anger, and caught him by the arms together to