Free Victory of Eagles by Naomi Novik Page A

rush
    him against the nearest table: drunk enough to be belligerent, not enough to be clumsy. He still had on his
    buckled shoes and his laddered stockings, and neither good purchase on the ground, nor the weight of
    his boots to kick out with. They pinned him down, and one had out a knife, a dull eating-knife, still slick
    with grease from his dinner. Laurence set his heel down against the surface of the table and heaved,
    managing to get his shoulders loose a moment, twisting away from the short furious stabbing of the blade,
    so it only tore into his ragged coat.
    The tent-pole creaked and gave, and the canvas came pouring down upon them in a sudden
    catastrophic rush. His arms were free, only to be imprisoned worse in the smothering folds, so heavy he
    had an effort to lift it clear enough from his face to breathe. He rolled off the table, and then there were
    hands gripping his arm again, pulling at him. Laurence struck out blindly at the new attacker, and they
    went falling together, rolling along the dirt floor, until the other man managed to drag the edge of the
    canvas off their heads and get them into the open air; and it was Granby.
    “Oh, Lord,” Granby said: Laurence turned and saw half the tent crumpled in on a heaving mass beneath.
    Those sober enough to have avoided the fighting were carrying out the lanterns from the other side, and
    others dousing the collapsed canvas with water; some smoke trickled out from beneath.
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    “You’ll do a damned sight more good to come out of the way; here,” Granby said, when Laurence
    would have gone to help, and drew him along one of the camp paths, narrow and stumbling-dark,
    towards the dragon-clearings.
    They walked in silence over the uneven ground. Laurence tried to slow his short, clenched breathing,
    without success. He felt inexpressibly naïve. He had not even thought to fear such a possibility, until he
    heard it in the mouth of a drunkard. But when they did hang him—knowing it would lose them
    Temeraire’s use—what might not those same men do, who had meant to infect all the world’s dragons
    with consumption and condemn them to an agonized death. Of course they would gladly see Temeraire
    dead, rather than of use to anyone they were disposed to see as an enemy—France or China or any
    other nation. They would not scruple at any sort of treachery necessary to achieve his destruction; to
    them Temeraire was only an inconvenient animal.
    “I suppose,” Granby said, abruptly, out of the dark, “that he insisted on it: your carrying the stuff to
    France, I mean.”
    “He did,” Laurence said, after a moment, but he did not mean to hide behind Temeraire’s wings. “I am
    ashamed to say, he was forced to, at first; I am ashamed of it. I would not have you believe I was taken
    against my will.”
    “No,” Granby said, “no, I only meant, you shouldn’t have thought of it at all, on your own.”
    The observation felt true, and uncomfortably so, though Laurence supposed Granby had meant it as
    consolation. A sudden sharp stab of feeling caught his breath: loneliness and something more, an
    inarticulate next cousin to homesickness. He wanted very badly to see Temeraire. Laurence had slept his
    last night beneath the sheltering wing nearly three months ago, in the northern mountains, treason already
    committed and a few hours snatched before they made the fatal flight across the Channel. Since then
    there had been only a succession of prisons, more or less brutal, for them both: and what had these
    months been for Temeraire, alone and friendless and unhappy, in the breeding grounds full of feral beasts
    and veterans, with likely no order or discipline to keep them from fighting.
    They fell into silence again, passing the clearings one by one, the millhouse rumble of sleeping dragons to
    either side, their own dinners finished and their crews toiling on the harnesses with only a few lanterns, the
    faint clanking of the smiths’ hammers tapping