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

waiting for the best moment to chance his attack. Then Iskierka sat up and blew out another stream of
fire: Temeraire was flying ahead of the wind, so the flames were not turned against him, this time; but
every man on his back had at once to throw himself flat to avoid the torrent, which burnt out too quickly
before it could reach the French dragon.

The Pou-de-Ciel at once darted in while the crew were so distracted; Iskierka was gathering herself for
another blow, and the riflemen could not get up again. “Christ,” Granby said; but before he could reach
her, a low rumble like fresh thunder sounded, and below them small round red mouths bloomed with
smoke and powder-flashes: shore batteries, firing from the coast below. Illuminated in the yellow blaze of
Iskierka’s fire, a twenty-four-pound ball of round-shot flew past them and took the Pou-de-Ciel full in
the chest; he folded around it like paper as it drove through his ribs, and crumpled out of the air, falling to
the rocks below: they were over the shore, they were over the land, and thick-fleeced sheep were fleeing
before them across the snow-matted grass.




The townspeople of the little harbor of Dunbar were alternately terrified at the descent of a whole
company of dragons onto their quiet hamlet, and elated by the success of their new shore battery, put
into place scarcely two months ago and never before tried. Half-a-dozen courier-beasts driven off and
one Pou-de-Ciel slain, overnight became a Grand Chevalier and several Flammes-de-Gloire, all
hideously killed; the town could talk of nothing else, and the local militia strutted through the streets to
general satisfaction.

The townspeople grew less enthusiastic, however, after Arkady had eaten four of their sheep; the other
ferals had made only slightly less extravagant depredations, and Temeraire himself had seized upon a
couple of cows, shaggy yellow-haired Highland cattle, sadly reported afterwards to be prize-winning,
and devoured them to the hooves and horns.

“They were very tasty,” Temeraire said apologetically; and turned his head aside to spit out some of the
hair.

Laurence was not inclined to stint the dragons in the least, after their long and arduous flight, and on this
occasion was perfectly willing to sacrifice his ordinary respect for property to their comfort. Some of the
farmers made noises about payment, but Laurence did not mean to try and feed the bottomless appetites
of the ferals out of his own pocket. The Admiralty might reach into theirs, if they had nothing better to do
than sit before the fire and whistle while a battle was carrying on outside their windows, and men dying
for lack of a little assistance. “We will not be a charge upon you for long. As soon as we hear from
Edinburgh, I expect we will be called to the covert there,” he said flatly, in reply to the protests. The
horse-courier left at once.
The townspeople were more welcoming to the Prussians, most of them young soldiers pale and wretched
after the flight. General Kalkreuth himself had been among these final refugees; he had to be let down
from Arkady’s back in a sling, his face white and sickly under his beard. The local medical man looked
doubtful, but cupped a basin full of blood, and had him carried away to the nearest farmhouse to be kept
warm and dosed with brandy and hot water.

Other men were less fortunate. The harnesses, cut away, came down in filthy and tangled heaps weighted
by corpses already turning greenish: some killed by the French attacks, others smothered by their own
fellows in the panic, or dead of thirst or plain terror. They buried sixty-three men out of a thousand that
afternoon, some of them nameless, in a long and shallow grave laboriously pickaxed out of the frozen