Tongues of Serpents Page 0,39

hunching his wings away from Caesar's claws. "That is not at all helpful, in the least; and will you stop catching at me? I am not to be climbed like a hill."

Their departure so delayed, the light was very nearly gone before they were aloft again: only the gorge walls holding a little reflected brightness, the trees a solid dark mass beneath, blanketing the ground. Lacking any certainty of their way, they continued along the line of the gorge, eastward away from the vanishing sun, hoping in such a way to retrace part of their course; the sound of water tormented them, once in a while, coming so clear that Temeraire would raise his head and prick forward his ruff.

From time to time, Iskierka would set down, where there was a little opening, and thrust her head beneath the cover: but there was no sign of water. The stars had slowly begun to come out, and Laurence looking up realized in dismay from the Southern Cross that they had somehow turned again: they were traveling north-west, instead. "Temeraire," he said, "set down: there, in the space at the base of that cliff."

"What the devil are you doing?" Rankin demanded; sharp with anxiety.

"We have lost our way, again," Laurence said. "We cannot keep flying in circles and exhaust them: better we should rest until the stars come more clear."

Temeraire was indeed very hot and fatigued; where Laurence touched the hide with his bare hand, after they had landed, it felt nearly feverish: blood pumped vigorously along the great swollen vein curving down from the wing-joint. "I do not feel ill; only so thirsty," Temeraire said.

Caesar was also worse: somnolent again and still, barely twitching when Rankin touched his head. They had only a few cans of water left among them; Temeraire held up the dragonet's head carefully with a talon, and they tipped what little they had inside. They could not do more than moisten his tongue and mouth, but it at least perhaps gave a sensation of relief; he seemed to lie easier, afterwards.

"Let's have a little rum, then," Jack Telly said, whining; and with some reluctance Laurence approved Blincoln's doling it out to the men in small cups: the worst possible medicine for their present condition, considered as a matter of health, and yet as a matter of discipline the most necessary; they were grown restive in direct proportion to the increasing torpor of the dragons, and the folly of discomfort might easily drive them to desertion and flight into the wilds of the forest, however more unlikely they were to find relief or water on their own.

"I suppose we might dig to a little water," Granby said. "We aren't in a desert, at least."

They had the shovels, and Iskierka was persuaded to oblige as well; but the ground was too porous: they managed to sink a hole some ten feet down, and a few inches of water filled in, but it ran quickly away, and the sides collapsed too easily to hold. Every man had a handful of water, soaked up in handkerchiefs and wrung out into the mouth; they soaked a few more again and laid them over poor Jonas Green's face, to give him a little relief; and then they were forced to give it up: they could not even fill a cup or a can.

The sky was yet obscured by clouds, which only infrequently broke long enough to show the stars. "We ought to have listened to Temeraire from the first," Laurence said quietly. "In the morning, I think we must unload him and separate; we cannot hope for more than another day of searching from him or Iskierka, without we find them water."

"And when you have found any water, how do you propose to find your way back?" Rankin said. "If you do, of course; that certainly would simplify the problem."

"Oh, honestly," Granby said, a more measured if less formal response than Laurence would have liked to make, when Temeraire had spent so much of his strength already in carting Caesar about. Rankin compressed his mouth, and did not apologize, but neither did he attempt to continue this line of inquiry; he looked over at Caesar instead, with real anxiety: he could not, Laurence supposed, ever hope to have another beast, if he lost this one as well; and perhaps he had learnt to value the privilege more, after finding himself out of harness.

"In the morning, we'll have Iskierka set a fire going, a