“Murat went to the breeding grounds on the Motsha River,” Grig said, “and let them all go. He told them—”
The cloud was resolving into a great mass of dragons, most of them grey-white beasts with also a handful of smaller black dragons like the Russian couriers, flying raggedly and slowly but coming onward for all that: not towards the battlefield, nor towards their army, but heading directly for the supply-train in their rear. Temeraire flung himself towards their path, but even as he tried to intercept their course, they were already flying past like hurtling comets, lean and swollen-bellied and hollow-ribbed, some of them with eyes nearly shut and others dripping a kind of trailing slime from the sides of their mouths.
The Shen Lung, though ordinarily not combatants, were nevertheless well prepared to guard the supply against enemy attack: the twenty of them in the rear rose up swiftly to form a knot of protection over the cooking-pits, but preparation was no match for the number and desperation of the loosed ferals, in a battle whose sole question was, whether the supply should be ruined, or not. Some ferals blindly flung themselves heedless of claws and teeth down, and dragged quartered pigs dripping from the pits, then fled with their prizes away; others avoided the defenders and threw themselves instead further on to fall upon the rearing, terrified carthorses of the supply-train stretched down the road to the south.
These, too, were defended promptly by their drivers, who despite the little warning they had been given with courage unshipped their pikes and began to thrust at the snatching ferals; but there were not dozens of dragons, but a hundred and more, and though maddened with hunger they were not dumb beasts. They quickly began to form impromptu bands: one beast or two would draw the defenders, and the other snatch a horse away in that brief opening; then all three together would dart off bearing their trophy.
In the span of ten minutes, all had been reduced to utter chaos in the Russian baggage: carts unhorsed or overturned, and the rest trying both to defend themselves and keep their frantic horses from destroying themselves with their plunging, desperate attempts to break loose from their traces and escape. The Cossack aviators were trying to do what they might, but even massed, their small beasts could not stand against the grey dragons when the latter were so blindly determined to bull their way through.
The ferals were indiscriminate in their hunger: Laurence saw, looking back, that there was some chaos also in the French rear, where a few knots of starving dragons had hurled themselves against their supply-train; but Murat had evidently aimed the beasts well, and the general course of their flight was leading directly to the Russian rear. A dozen afflicted the French; it seemed near a hundred and more had fallen upon the Russians.
The niru who had been held in reserve had now come aloft. “Pray do not hurt them, if you can help it!” Temeraire called to them, as they joined him and began to swiftly work to envelop the rampaging cloud of ferals. “Let us try and force them to the ground: I am sure if only we can, they will listen to us, once we give them a little food.”
But the ferals had no intention of staying either to listen or be recaptured, as surely they must have feared. Those who had already snatched some food were darting away in every direction, like fish escaping from a closing net; only an especially ragged few, who had not been able to seize a prize and had reached the limits of their strength, were borne down. Others yet unsuccessful began to abandon their attempts, and then, to Laurence’s horror, he saw them turning away from the well-defended supply, and falling upon the rows of the prone and bloody ranks of the wounded soldiers in their hospital.
Temeraire roared in protest, and led the niru in a scattering charge: but a dozen dragons fleeing carried off men screaming for aid and rescue in their talons. “God in Heaven,” Laurence said, sickened, as he saw one wild-eyed creature raise a thrashing man to its jaws even as it flew, and with a snap of teeth and a savage jerk tear him in half.
Temeraire with a surge caught two of the beasts, and seizing them by the necks with his talons dragged them down to the ground. Laurence saw Ferris raise his rifle to his shoulder and take aim at one of the dragons, who was still trying even pinned to the ground to eat its victim. They were perhaps twenty yards distant. The gun spoke, with a burst of grey smoke; the dragon’s head jerked back like a kicking horse, a spurt of blood and ichor coming from its eye, and fell limp. The man it had seized fell to the ground with it, and began to drag himself sobbing away, pulling his leg from between its teeth.