The exhausted dragons slept eight hours, in four watches, with the French dragons always under a wary eye; Laurence had put their captains and crews aboard the swiftest of the dragons of the niru, and kept Murat himself aboard Temeraire, but he was mindful that not all the French dragons might have been harnessed from the shell, and might not feel the intensity of attachment to their captains which ordinarily served to render a captured beast meek. He was well served by his caution: a little while after dawn, he roused to find two of the French dragons being wrestled to the ground again, having made an attempt to creep away.
In the morning, they returned to Kaluga, where the army was slowly marching in, and Laurence delivered their noble prisoner to the headquarters. Murat had been considered by the Russians an honored foe; they saluted him in the air and on the field, when they saw him: a great horseman, a great swordsman, a great soldier, fearless in battle and gallant in his personal manner, he was in most respects the romantic ideal to which young Russian officers aspired.
But now as Laurence escorted him past many of those who had cheered him, not long before, and into the building of the headquarters, silence followed them: a hard, angry silence. In his office, Kutuzov said, very briefly, coldly, “Your Majesty,” and then paused; he then said, “The Tsar has commanded that you be sent to Tobolsk,” a city which Laurence recalled: they had passed it, in the earlier stages of their journey from China, deep in Siberia’s wastes, “there to await the conclusion of the war; you depart in the morning.”
Murat’s courage, to do him credit, flagged not a moment; he only said, cheerfully, “I am sorry to miss the rest of it! May I write a letter to my wife?”
He did not wait for permission, but brazenly reached for pen and paper on Kutuzov’s desk, and scribbled out a careless note:
My darling Caroline! My luck has gone sour; I have been taken prisoner and am being shipped away to some distant corner of beyond, whose name I have already forgotten—
“Tobolsk, was it?” he asked, and scribbled it in.
I am perfectly well; Liberté has not a scratch; tell your brother to win the war as quick as blazes and bring me home before I die of boredom. Ever yours, Joachim.
He folded it once and handed it over. “You are welcome to read it over, but I promise there are no secrets,” he said. “I’ve no head for ciphers. I don’t suppose there are any pretty women in this country?”
Laurence could not but feel some sympathy, seeing him sent away: he knew the bitter pang of being sent away from the field to linger in remote exile in an alien land, and felt an echo of the misery of his own transportation, the heavy bowing weight upon his shoulders, the knowledge that he and Temeraire would be denied the chance to be of any use. And Murat had not even the comfort of his own dragon’s company; Liberté would be kept imprisoned far from him, and very likely in one of the same dreadful breeding grounds they had emptied.
But Laurence felt nothing but coldness for Murat’s acts: the impulse to free the dragons might have been a noble one, but it would not have been carried out, if it had not so neatly aligned with his interests and those of Bonaparte, and if truly motivated by disinterested affection would never have been done in so crude a way, which showed so much disdain for the evil consequences that would fall on those dragons themselves.
“Sir,” Laurence said to Kutuzov, when Murat had been escorted away to await his transport, “will you tell me where we stand?”
Kutuzov shook his head. “Thirty ferals were seen at Maloyaroslavets this afternoon, with cartloads of grain from Kaluga.” Answer enough: that meant the Russian dragons were accepting the lures which the French had thrown out to them. Laurence was silent. He could no more reproach the beasts for pursuing a course of liberation, than the Russians for wishing to defend themselves against Napoleon’s invasion.
He returned to his own encampment and found an unhappy Grig lingering there, having managed to beg Temeraire’s pardon, and wanting company: twenty Russian light-weights had vanished from the muster. “They are leaving,” he said, low. “I think—I think they are going over to Napoleon.”
“How many of them speak French?” Laurence asked, grimly.
“So many of our officers speak it,” Grig said, “I dare say nearly all of us know a little, at least.”
Meaning that by serving as go-betweens, they might permit Napoleon to turn the ferals into more than simply a wild foraging party, scarcely under his control; they might allow him to weld them into a true fighting force, and use them effectively in battle.
The day was drawing on; Laurence spoke long with Shen Shi, and several officers of the Russian general staff, upon the one essential note: supply, supply, supply. The roads from the south were slow and choked with mud, and more attacks had already been reported, against their supply depots. At last he fell asleep for a few hours of rest, on Temeraire’s arm; at eleven in the night, Roland woke him.
“I’m sorry, sir,” she said, quietly, “but there’s a dispatch,” and handed him the note; he broke it open and read: Napoleon’s army had begun to move south, along the Kaluga Road. He was coming. He had chosen the great gamble. A cold and stinging wind was blowing into Laurence’s face; he rubbed away sleep, and found his hand wet; he looked up. Snow was falling.
Winter had come.
To Cynthia Manson, my amazing agent and friend, with much love and gratitude