Tongues of Serpents Page 0,37

Green moaned wordless and incoherently when touched, and vomited up all he was given before they had managed to lift him into the belly-rigging. His condition silenced the noisiest complaints, from respect, but a low muttering grew as they went back aboard: it seemed fresh proof of the hostility of the country which surrounded them.

Perhaps through this distraction, or only from fatigue, they turned at some point wrongly; or so Laurence supposed, when after an hour they had not yet found again their former camp or the river. The sound of running water could be heard, but the canyons brought distant echoes near, now and again, and even from high aloft they could only see impenetrable green, and the alternating pattern of flat clifftops rising and the tree-choked valleys between.

It was very hot. Abruptly and without warning, Caesar set down, tiring all at once. He fit himself into a little shade at the edge of a clearing and curled small, for once without any noise or complaint; he only shut his eyes and lay breathing heavily. Rankin dismounted and stood by his head frowning while Dorset, the surgeon, climbed down from Temeraire's back to make his inspections. Dorset looked into Caesar's mouth and nostrils, then pushed his spectacles up into place again as he rose. "There is as yet no serious condition, in my judgment, but he is overheated; and has not had enough water: at this stage of his growth he does not yet possess those reserves which should make him able to bear more privation."

"Well, we haven't any water here, so there is no use his lying down now," Iskierka said, callously, nudging at Caesar's flank with her nose; he did not stir, except to flick the long narrow end of his tail. "I am thirsty, too; and not getting less so while we sit here."

Rankin snapped, "Captain Granby, you will restrain your beast, if you please. I will not take Caesar flying about wildly in this heat again; we will have to wait until after dark."

"Except my beast, if you like, has it aright: we haven't water here, and we aren't going to find some more easily in the dark," Granby said. "Precious soon he will need that more than rest. Could we get him up on Temeraire's back?"

Temeraire put back his ruff, but reluctantly said to Laurence, "Oh; I suppose I can carry him, if I must; but I think we had much better let everyone down, and go and find water first. Once we know where it is, we may come back and fetch them all, when it is cooler and not so unpleasant to be loaded down."

Laurence shook his head. "I had rather not part company," he said, "when we have already seen we can so easily mistake our way; we have grown too complacent, in thinking that we need only go aloft to find our path again. I feel as though we have turned around three times in the last quarter-of-an-hour, for all the sun has not shifted."

"It seems to me," Iskierka said, "that the trouble is all these trees, everywhere; I might burn off some of them, and then we could see where the river is, perhaps."

"After four days of a firestorm, we would not very much care, however," Rankin said cuttingly.

The trees were not of a sort which would be easily amenable to burning, either, nor to being knocked down: these were not small scrubby creatures, despite their queerly peeling trunks, but old giants, prime timber; Laurence had seen half-a-dozen which could have made the Allegiance a new mainmast. Even Temeraire's strength could not have quickly uprooted one, and a single tree falling would scarcely have made any notable diminishment in the cover.

They determined at last to wait a little while: the sun was climbing to its zenith, white-hot and hammering directly down upon them. The day grew yet more still; the faint breath of wind brought no relief, only a dry, papery feeling to one's skin, lips cracking and white.

They unloaded the dragons and Rankin, turning to the convicts, ordered them to break off young tree-branches, and rip up some of the undergrowth, to lay over Caesar's hide to deepen the shade and give a little vegetal coolness from what water remained within the limbs. The men only resentfully obliged him, then with more attention treated Jonas Green in the same manner: he had been lowered to lie in the darkest shade, and Dorset was dosing him with a small