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Laurence cleared his throat; he was already standing, having ordered his desk and chair removed to make more room, though he had kept back his inkstand and pen with several sheets of paper, now resting upon the sill of the stern windows behind him. ‘Gentlemen,’ he said, ‘you have all heard by now that we found a dragon egg aboard the prize; Mr. Pollitt has very firmly identified it for us.’
Many smiles and some surreptitious elbowing; the little midshipman Battersea piped up in his treble voice, ‘Congratulations, sir!’ and a quick pleased rumble went around.
Laurence frowned; he understood their high spirits, and if the circumstances had been only a little different, he would have shared them. The egg would be worth a thousand times its weight in gold, brought safely to shore; every man aboard the ship would have shared in the bounty, and as captain he himself would have taken the largest share of the value.
The Amitié’s logs had been thrown overboard, but her hands had been less discreet than her officers, and Wells had learned enough from their complaints to explain the delay all too clearly. Fever among the crew, becalmed in the doldrums for the better part of a month, a leak in her water tanks leaving her on short water rations, and then at last the gale that they themselves had so recently weathered. It had been a string of exceptionally bad luck, and Laurence knew the superstitious souls of his men would quail at the idea that the Reliant was now carrying the egg that had undoubtedly been the cause of it.
He would certainly take care to keep that information from the crew, however; better by far that they not know of the long series of disasters which the Amitié had suffered. So after silence fell again, all Laurence said was simply, ‘Unfortunately, the prize had a very bad crossing of it. She must have expected to make landfall nearly a month ago, if not more, and the delay has made the circumstances surrounding the egg urgent.’ There was puzzlement and incomprehension now on most faces, though looks of concern were beginning to spread, and he finished the matter off by saying, ‘In short, gentlemen, it is about to hatch.’
Another low murmur, this time disappointed, and even a few quiet groans; ordinarily he would have marked the offenders for a mild later rebuke, but as it was, he let them by. They would soon have more cause to groan. So far they had not yet understood what it meant; they merely made the mental reduction of the bounty on an unhatched egg to that paid for a feral dragonet, much less valuable.
‘Perhaps not all of you are aware,’ he said, silencing the whispers with a look, ‘that England is in a very dire situation as regards the Aerial Corps. Naturally, our handling is superior, and the Corps can outfly any other nation of the world, but the French can outbreed us two to one, and it is impossible to deny that they have better variety in their bloodlines. A properly harnessed dragon is worth at least a first-rate of one hundred guns to us, even a common Yellow Reaper or a three-ton Winchester, and Mr. Pollitt believes from the size and colour of the egg that this hatchling is a prime specimen, and very likely one of the rare large breeds.’
‘Oh!’ said Midshipman Carver, in tones of horror, as he took Laurence’s meaning; he instantly went crimson as eyes went to him, and shut his mouth tight.
Laurence ignored the interruption; Riley would see Carver’s grog stopped for a week without having to be told. The exclamation had at least prepared the others. ‘We must at least make the attempt to harness the beast,’ he said. ‘I trust, gentlemen, that there is no man here who is not prepared to do his duty for England. The Corps may not be the sort of life that any of us has been raised to, but the Navy is no sinecure either, and there is not one of you who does not understand a hard service.’
‘Sir,’ said Lieutenant Fanshawe anxiously: he was a young man of very good family, and the son of an earl, ‘do you mean – that is, shall we all—’
There was an emphasis on that ‘all’ which made it obviously a selfish suggestion, and Laurence felt himself go near purple with anger. He snapped, ‘We all shall, indeed, Mr. Fanshawe, unless there is any man here who is too much of a coward to make the attempt, and in that case that gentleman may explain himself to a court martial when we put in at Madeira.’ He sent an angry glare around the room, and no one else met his eye or offered a protest.
He was all the more infuriated for understanding the sentiment, and for sharing it himself. Certainly no man not raised to the life could be easy at the prospect of suddenly becoming an aviator, and he loathed the necessity of asking his officers to face it. It meant, after all, an end to any semblance of ordinary life. It was not like sailing, where you might hand your ship back to the Navy and be set ashore, often whether you liked it or not.
Even in times of peace, a dragon could not be put into dock, nor allowed to wander loose, and to keep a full-grown beast of nine or ten tons from doing exactly as it pleased took very nearly the full attention of an aviator and a crew of assistants besides. They could not really be managed by force, and were finicky about their handlers; some would not accept management at all, even when new-hatched, and none would accept it after their first feeding. A feral dragon could be kept in the breeding-grounds by the constant provision of food, mates, and comfortable shelter, but they could not be controlled outside, and they would not speak with men.
So if a hatchling let you put it into harness, duty forever after tied you to the beast. An aviator could not easily manage any sort of estate, nor raise a family, nor go into society to any real extent. They lived as men apart, and largely outside the law, for you could not punish an aviator without losing the use of his dragon. In peacetime they lived in a sort of wild, outrageous libertinage in small enclaves, generally in the most remote and inhospitable places in all Britain, where the dragons could be given at least some freedom. Though the men of the Corps were honoured without question for their courage and devotion to duty, the prospect of entering their ranks could not be appealing to any gentleman raised up in respectable society.
Yet they sprang from good families, gentlemen’s sons handed over at the age of seven to be raised to the life, and it would be an impossible insult to the Corps to have anyone other than one of his own officers attempt the harnessing. And if one had to be asked to take the risk, then all; though if Fanshawe had not spoken in so unbecoming a way, Laurence would have liked to keep Carver out of it, as he knew the boy had a poor head for heights, which struck him as a grave impediment for an aviator. But in the atmosphere created by the pitiful request, it would seem like favouritism, and that would not do.
He took a deep breath, still simmering with anger, and spoke again. ‘No man here has any training for the task, and the only fair means of assigning the duty is by lot. Naturally, those gentlemen with family are excused. Mr. Pollitt,’ he said, turning to the surgeon, who had a wife and four children in Derbyshire, ‘I hope that you will draw the name for us. Gentlemen, you will each write your name upon a sheet here, and cast it into this bag.’ He suited word to deed, tore off the part of the sheet with his name, folded it and put it into the small sack.
Riley stepped forward at once, and the others followed suit obediently; under Laurence’s cold eye, Fanshawe flushed and wrote his name with a shaking hand. Carver, on the other hand, wrote bravely, though with a pale cheek; and at the last Battersea, unlike virtually all the others, was incautious in tearing the sheet, so that his piece was unusually large; he could be heard murmuring quietly to Carver, ‘Would it not be famous to ride a dragon?’
Laurence shook his head a little at the thoughtlessness of youth; yet it might indeed be better were one of the younger men chosen, for the adjustment would be easier. Still, it would be hard to see one of the boys sacrificed to the task, and to face the outrage of their families. But the same would be true of any man here, including himself.
Though he had done his best not to consider the consequences from a selfish perspective, now that the fatal moment was at hand he could not entirely suppress his own private fears. One small bit of paper might mean the wreck of his career, the upheaval of his life, disgrace in his father’s eyes. And, too, there was Edith Galman to think