"Naomi Novik - Temeraire 04 - Empire of Ivory" - читать интересную книгу автора (Novik Naomi)

impossible escape. The knots of the carrying-harness were tightening, giving up more slack, so all the
loops and bands of it hung loose and swinging with the thrashing, struggling men.

Laurence came on one of the soldiers, a young man, eyes wide and staring in his wind-reddened face and
his thick mustache wet-tipped with sweat, trying to work his arm beneath the main harness, blindly,
though the buckle was already straining open, and he would in a moment have slid wholly free.

“Get back to your place!” Laurence shouted, pointing to the nearest open loop of the carrying-harness,
and thrust the man’s hand away from the harness. Then his ears were ringing, a thick ripe smell of sour
cherries in his nostrils as his knees folded beneath him. He put a hand to his forehead slowly, stupidly; it
was wet. His own harness-straps were holding him, painfully tight against his ribs with all his weight
pulling against them. The Prussian had struck him with a bottle; it had shattered, and the liquor was
dripping down the side of his face.

Instinct rescued him; he put up his arm to take the next blow and pushed the broken glass back at the
man’s face; the soldier said something in German and let go the bottle. They wrestled together a few
moments more; then Laurence caught the man’s belt and heaved him up and away from Temeraire’s
side. The soldier’s arms were spread wide, grasping at nothing; Laurence, watching, abruptly recalled
himself, and at once he lunged out, reaching to his full length; but too late, and he came thumping heavily
back against Temeraire’s side with empty hands; the soldier was already gone from sight.

His head did not hurt over-much, but Laurence felt queerly sick and weak. Temeraire had resumed flying
towards the coast, having rounded up the rest of the ferals at last, and the force of the wind was
increasing. Laurence clung to the harness a moment, until the fit passed and he was able to make his
hands work properly again. There were already more men clawing up: Granby was trying to hold them
back, but they were overbearing him by sheer weight of numbers, even though struggling as much against
one another as him. One of the soldiers grappling for a hold on the harness climbed too far out of the
press; he slipped, landed heavily on the men below him, and carried them all away; as a tangled,
many-limbed mass they fell into the slack loops of the carrying-harness, and the muffled wet noises of
their bones cracking together sounded like a roast chicken being wrenched hungrily apart.

Granby was hanging from his harness-straps, trying to get his feet planted again; Laurence crab-walked
over to him and gave him a steadying arm. Below he could just make out the washy seafoam, pale
against the black water; Temeraire was flying lower and lower as they neared the coast.

“That damned Pou-de-Ciel is coming round again,” Granby panted as he got back his footing; the French
had somehow got a dressing over the gash in the dragon’s wing, even if the great white patch of it was
awkwardly placed and far larger than the injury made necessary. The dragon looked a little
uncomfortable in the air, but he was coming on gamely nonetheless; they had surely seen that Temeraire
was vulnerable. If the Pou-de-Ciel and his crew were able to catch the harness and drag it loose, they
might finish deliberately what the soldiers had begun in panic, and the chance of bringing down a
heavy-weight, much less one as valuable as Temeraire, would surely tempt them to great risk.

“We will have to cut the soldiers loose,” Laurence said, low and wretched, and looked upwards, where
the carrying-loops attached to the leather; but to send a hundred men and more to their deaths, scarce
minutes from safety, he was not sure he could bear; or ever to meet General Kalkreuth again, having
done it; some of the general’s own young aides were aboard, and doing their best to keep the other men
quiet.

Riggs and his riflemen were firing short, hurried volleys; the Pou-de-Ciel was keeping just out of range,