Tongues of Serpents Page 0,64

in the dark. The roll of thunder came a long, dragging moment later; and a thin, wispy grey curtain of rain trailed down at one end of the cloud.

"We had better not," Laurence said, grimly, "and we ought not set down on higher ground, either; you are too large."

There was a little open space, of bare red earth and yellow grass, among some larger dunes and sheltered from the worst of the rising wind; the clouds were near upon them by then, and spattering gusts of rain which did not fill the eagerly outstretched canteens and cups, but only dimpled the softer loose dirt and left spots upon their clothing, and rattled the dry blades of grass. It was still hot and oppressive. The dark cloud came rolling up across the sky, suddenly quick after its long creeping approach, and the sun vanished.

More great long forks of lightning were tonguing down to the earth against the wide-open horizon, all around, and the voices of the thunder roared and groaned to one another from one side of the clouds to the other, so that one almost imagined meaning into it. Temeraire could not stop himself trying to make sense of it - he felt on the verge, over and over, as when he had learned only a little of some different sort of language, and thought he had just picked out a familiar word or two amid the sea of new sounds.

The wind shifted, coming hard into their faces: another thin spatter of unrefreshing rain thrown into his eyes and nostrils and flinging the dust upon him, so he had to blink and shake his head, snorting; a smell of distant smoke quite clear upon his tongue. Violet and orange haze spread across the sky, and Temeraire put out his wing a little further to shield the egg a little better from the wind.

"Peculiar sort of color there," Caesar said uneasily, sitting up on his hindquarters: he had grown a great deal, and when he stretched, now, his head might clear Temeraire's shoulder. It was a strange color: a vivid glow of red as though someone had painted a line across the horizon, and it was altering the color of the sky, casting that umber light on the clouds, so they were at once blue and muddied with orange-red, and still the lightning flashing against it, although now difficult to see.

"May I beg you to put me up," Laurence said, and Temeraire lifted him so he might see; Laurence opened up his glass and stood looking on Temeraire's shoulder, and then said, "Thank you; Captain Rankin, Mr. Forthing, I believe we had better get all aboard again."

The fire came upon them with shocking speed, a low hissing beneath the continuing crash of the thunder and dry wind, whispering with great malice and hunger, and Laurence shouting over the noise, "Leave that, damn your eyes," while one of the convicts came reluctantly out from behind some bushes and through the grey wisps of drifting smoke, dragging a cask of rum which he had somehow stolen away after their landing, meaning to privately enjoy. The other men jeered and called, yelling at him, "Bring it on quick, Bob, and we'll be merry as grigs all this fucking flight for once; you won't have it all to yourself, you old sodden bitch, no you won't."

Maynard halting stooped to heave the cask up to his shoulder. The fire was in the distance yet, a broad and smoke-shrouded wall of glowing orange seen through the veil, but already the yellow tips of grass were igniting like red embers upon the crest of the dune behind him as he bent, and a wave of heat came shimmering almost palpable into Temeraire's face and stole his breath.

Maynard was staggering towards them, and the cask was dripping; small sparks of blue fire going up as the droplets struck the ground to meet the catching tinder of dry grass, and then the thickets were going up ahead of his feet, smoke rising in one thin column after another blown into spreading curtains. Temeraire could not see the fire at all anymore as a separate thing: all the world beyond the dunes was flame, and the smoke climbing into thick and stinging pillars around him.

The man let the cask fall, and began to run shambling and coughing towards them. Temeraire felt very strange; his head was thick and confused and his wings felt leaden. He breathed in deeply, and coughed and