Golden Age and Other Stories by Naomi Novik
So she had her captain’s bars and Excidium’s wings at her back, and she did not mean to be cowed.
However, she was not quite so angry as she had been, as a girl, so neither did she mean to pick a quarrel where it would not serve the Corps. Caudec was a lump, but he was not at least a scoundrel, or a disgrace to the name; she knew he had done serviceable work under Captain Lenton. He did not shine amid the firmament, and that had kept him from an egg of his own, so he had taken a post where he might be a captain in all but name. Jane could understand the choice; he had not done it out of liking to bully a shy woman. The men were kept in decent order, if all of them a bit dull, but no really good officer would be eager to serve on a mismanaged dragon, even a Longwing. Her wing-dragons had better crews, and Candeoris, the Regal Copper at their heels.
She would repair that, by and by. First it remained to see if Caudec could be salvaged, and she had an inkling that today would see that question answered. They had chased Bonaparte’s fleet all round the Med now without yet catching a glimpse of them, but Jane felt in her bones the pursuit had drawn close.
Alexandria harbor was packed to the brim with French transports, and the French had been here. This Nelson knew his business, too. If they could be caught, he would catch them.
Jane had seen from aloft his captains rowing day after day over to the flagship, and she had sent Candeoris’s Captain Nutley down once or twice, since she could not go herself without setting up a great noise. Nutley was not a lump, but he still did not like taking orders from a girl fifteen years his junior when Excidium and his own beast were not in the middle. However, Jane was prepared to use a few wiles for that: she had written him a letter asking if he would represent the formation, and write a note to all the captains afterwards with whatever he learned.
So she knew what Nelson meant to do, in nearly any circumstance, and so did his captains, and her own. She would have liked to hold like conferences herself, if she could have trusted her captains to come, but instead she had talked out her plans with Excidium, in the afternoons when Caudec took his sleeping shift. She would settle for managing the dragons, and let the men decide if they liked to be more than passengers aloft.
She walked back to the knot of the tailbone, with a nod to the riflemen, and sat there under the warmth of the climbing sun, letting the fierce wind of Excidium’s vast wings stream past her until a slight increase came, a quickening of half a beat; she turned and saw Glidius winging back towards them at break-neck pace. She went back along Excidium’s back double-quick, trusting her hands to find the harness-rings without looking. “All hands topside, Mr. Caudec,” she said, again before he could speak: he had been stewing at the neck watching her all this while, waiting for his chance. “Bridely,” she called, ignoring the gape Caudec gave her, “show Glidius a signal: where? ”
Glidius had a young captain, a boy of sixteen as enthusiastic as you could like: he had his flags out and waving the first symbols of French ships already. Saved the trouble of telling them what anyone could guess, that he had found the fleet, he at once began spelling out the name. “Aboukir Bay,” Jane said, recognizing the name when he was halfway through. “Bridely, ask him how many, ships, dragons, and then relay to the flagship and to the full wing: French fleet in Aboukir Bay, with numbers, and give credit to Bezaid for first sight.”
Bridely did not hesitate; he had caught the excitement himself, and all the men in earshot; even Caudec had paused. She turned and gave him a hard look. “Mr. Caudec!” she said sharply, and he started, at last understood he must swallow his prepared lecture, and turning instead finally said to Lieutenant Gladstoke, “All hands topside, Mr. Gladstoke.”
The men came swarming out of the belly-netting, half of them rubbing their faces. They were a slovenly lot: unshaven and half-dressed. Jane did not much care, except it gave her something to do with them. “Gentlemen!” she said, the trumpet to her mouth and her lungs behind it. “We have finally managed to corner the Frogs to give us a dance; before sundown this evening, if the wind does not change, and I trust every man aloft finds the news as welcome as do I. Breakfast at once, and coats and neckcloths all round: let us be presentable for the festivities. We will request pontoons at four bells of the afternoon, so Excidium can have a rest and a sup. You may cheer your dragon,” she added, and after a startled moment they all shouted, “Excidium!” in tolerably full voice.
Excidium flicked his ears back, just a twitch, but enough she knew he had heard. “Pass the word for a steady pace, if you please,” she called to him. “We have some young beasts along, who may need a reminder.”
Candeoris was indeed creeping up on their tail already, as the signals were being passed along; Excidium did not speak, but flicked his own tail in a slight lash by way of hinting, and gave his wing-tips a quick flip on the down-stroke to mark the formation’s leading edge to either side. It was enough reminder to the beasts, if not to their captains, and in a moment they had all settled nicely. The crew, too, had all made a dash for the belly-netting to make themselves presentable, and the duty officers were passing up biscuit and grog: the ground-crew had been left behind with the Allegiance, too.
Jane took a covered mugful herself, watered down by half on her standing orders, and went to munch her biscuit looking over the leading edge of Excidium’s shoulder. The news had gone through the fleet below with as much energy: every vessel had pressed on a bit more sail, and she could see crews busy scrubbing the decks. “We are making a good time,” she commented to Caudec, when he cautiously made his way out to her: she was balanced at the very edge where the chest sloped down and away. She did not remember any time before she had been used to sit so, but Caudec had come to the Corps at seven like most boys, and he had not gone aloft before twelve; besides he was not a young man anymore
“A word with you, at the tail,” Caudec said, and reached out to put his hand on her arm.
She had half expected something of the sort. She had chosen the sitting place deliberately. The crew were most of them down below, and others at least plausibly out of earshot; he could not be humiliated, before the men, and kept on. She did not move, and only looked at him and said, “Take your hand off me this instant, Lieutenant, or I will have Excidium take you off and put you in the netting.”
He halted, his face caught between anger and a sagging foolishness. He did not take his hand away at once, but he did not try to pull upon her, either, so she drew a deep breath, and thrust down the rising anger before it could climb too high into her gorge. Davidson was more than ten years dead, now, thanks to a French rifleman, and past anything she could do. She would not deal with Caudec as if he were the same man who had made her mother weep, telling her tenderly it was just as well she was in the Corps, and what a dreadful life it was for a worn-out woman otherwise without a man’s protection; all the while taking her pay and making her say she was grateful to have him warm her bed.
Caudec was only used to think he might give the orders, and that he was the only one fit to give them; and he had been right, not very long ago.
“I am not my mother, Mr. Caudec,” Jane said. “I am and I will be captain here. You must decide now if you will bear it, and be the officer and the bulwark Excidium and I require, without trying to lay claim to a false authority. If not, you go below, and I will leave you on board ship when we take flight for the battle.”
He still hesitated. His mustache worked up and down with his mouth, but he kept in the spluttering; so she added, “You may consider this day a trial, if you like. I am sure if afterwards, you prefer to ask their Lordships for another post, they will have every con
He swallowed, and then he took his hand away slowly from her arm. Jane nodded briskly as if he
had just agreed with a whole heart. “Just as well: if I am knocked on the head in the fighting, I am sure Excidium shall be glad to have you aboard,” she said, which would give him another scrap of hope to cling to. “Pray look in on our armaments, if you please; we must have fresh locks in all the incendiaries, and if we are short of powder or shot, we had better know it and send down word before the pontoons come out.”
He did not say anything, but he nodded after a moment, and turned in his carabiners and went back towards the spine. Jane put him at her back again, and looked out ahead. She could see the ocean rushing away beneath them, and a tiny distant forest of masts and white sails standing in a line inside the blue cupped half-circle of the bay ahead. There were fourteen dragons sunning themselves on the shore, more than she had at her back. Jane smiled into the wind. She was not afraid.
Golden Age
(art by Sandara Tang)
TANG SHEN WAS very tired. The ship was still sinking behind him, the hollow sound of its wooded sides beating against stone audible even through the roar of the storm. The dragging weight of the crate pulled upon his body at the other end of the rope looped around his arms, and he had been ill for three weeks now. The fever still burned in his forehead and ached in every joint even now being numbed by the water. But he had been champion swimmer in his village as a boy, before he had bent to his studies; he had been given his promotion and sent upon this perilous journey for that very reason.
In any case, he was the last of his companions left; they had all sickened with the same terrible fevers as the rest of the barbarian crew, and now the ship itself with all of those sailors was vanishing beneath the waves. He was the last hope of the egg’s survival. He kept his arms and legs moving through the surf. Perhaps none would ever know what he did here; perhaps he would fail. But at least he would try.
Lightning flashes overhead illuminated the wall of rock looming to his right, but he caught a glimpse ahead of the pale white of an empty shore, sand reflecting the light. His strength renewed by hope, he gulped air and plunged beneath the ocean’s tumult. He swam as many strokes as he could before surfacing, trying to clear the dark mass of the rock. One more gasp for air, and then he managed to kick round and into the small bay. The water calmed a few strokes further in, and calmed further quickly; when he put his head into the water, he could see darker shapes waving beneath him, a forest of seaweed growing from below.
The waves were helping him now, carrying him in. He stopped laboring and let them slosh his body forward, his arms moving in slow, dull circles. The ocean floor rose abruptly and caught his feet. He began almost crawling rather than swimming, grabbing at the floor and pushing himself along for a long way in the shallow water until he managed to stagger up onto his feet and gain the shore. The wind still blew fiercely, and the wide fronds of the trees overhead were lashing with a dull rushing noise, but he was on dry ground. He sat heavily at the base of a tree and began to pull in the crate hand over hand. It was nearly at the shore when his hands fell from the rope, and his head leaned back against the trunk of the tree.
When the morning came, the wind and tide had left the crate by Tang Shen’s feet. His corpse was already beginning to bloat in the hot sun. Its rays also penetrated the waterlogged wood and slowly began to steam the moisture from the straw. It was pleasantly hot within the crate. The egg rested peacefully. The ocean continued to throw up bits of shattered wood from the wreck, scraps of sailcloth and rope, barrels and boxes marked Amitié.
THE CORPSE'S bones were mostly picked clean by rats and ants by the time the egg within the crate began to crack. The hatchling was not pleased to emerge into a thick cloud of straw, nor to find a thick wooden wall beyond it; instinct and desperation made his struggles vigorous, and he managed to tumble his crate over and burst open the weakened lid. The dragonet spilled out onto the sand and rolled over twice before sitting up on his haunches, shaking sand off indignantly.
To either side of him a small gentle curve of sand stretched away a little distance, quite empty.
Ahead, the vast wide ocean ran dark blue to the horizon. Behind, a solid tangle of greenery and trees. He nosed curiously at the crate from which he had emerged, and the collapsing pile of bones at the other end of the rope, but neither responded. He looked round himself uncertainly. The silence seemed very peculiar. He had spent the last several months surrounded by the echoing voices of French sailors and Chinese attendants, the constant creak and groan of a sailing ship, the rise and fall of her rhythm on the waves.
“Bonjour?” he called at last, tentative. No one answered him.
But the eerie quality of his situation could not long compete for his attention. He was hungry, and there did not seem to be anything here to eat. He broke open several of the barrels, and found some soggy biscuit and some salt pork. He took a few bites of each, but their edibility seemed questionable. He flung out his wings and shook them, and after a couple of attempts managed to get into the air. He could not stay there for very long, but fortune smiled on him: on his third crash into the water, he knocked into a sea turtle. It was large and perplexed by the collision; the dragonet suffered no similar confusion. He immediately bit off the turtle’s head, and then swam awkwardly to the shore dragging it along and spent the rest of a pleasant afternoon prying open its shell and devouring the soft meat. It was delicious.
As the sun went down he sat upon the shore looking out at the ocean in a more harmonious spirit. He sang one of the sailors’ songs, without quite grasping what the words meant, because it was the only way he had found to make any of the friendly noise that had gone missing. And then he curled himself up and went to sleep.
A WEEK later, beginning to fly longer distances, he stumbled upon a cove with two other dragons in it dozing. They were roughly his size, and startled when he landed. They hissed at him at first, but he was carrying a large fish which he had just caught, and after a moment of thought, he carved it into three pieces, and shoved the other two portions over. He felt that no one could take that the wrong way, and his instinct was correct; after a moment, the other two dragons ate up their shares, and afterwards they spoke to him. He could not understand what they were saying, but then one of them said, very slowly and roundly, “Français?” and he brightened and nodded.
They took him a short flight to a much larger beach, where the rest of a flock of dragons were sunning themselves comfortably, and there introduced him to Galant. Very quickly the familiar sounds began to fall into place and take on meaning.
“But where did you come from?” Galant demanded, when shortly they could make themselves understood to one another. “You are nothing like the rest of us.” He himself had been hatched in a French colony on another distant island, and had flown away because they wished him always to be carrying heavy loads, but he still looked like the local dragons, with longish scales in many bright colors: he said they were scattered all throughout the islands. “And what is your name?”
“Oh,” the dragonet said, doubtfully. He vaguely recalled the voices speaking around him; had they called him something? “Céleste,” he said after a moment. “At least, I think so. And I hatched on a beach over on the other side.”
“Yes, but eggs do not sprout from the sand,” Galant said decisively. He flew back with Céleste to the beach, and after a little inspection announced that he had come from a shipwreck, and undoubtedly the ship had been French.
“Not that you need take mu
“That is very kind of you,” Céleste said, although he felt privately that he would rather speak to everyone else himself, and not through an intermediary all the time.
He did manage to master the island dragons’ language in another few weeks, which was just as well, because everyone was becoming quite disgruntled with him: he was still growing. Céleste tried to share as much of his catch as he could bear to, apologetically; he was conscious that he was taking rather more than any ten other dragons, and the others were making dark remarks about overfishing. But he was still hungry all the time.
He found a few signs of some other presence on the island as he flew across it, hunting: little decaying huts that someone had surely built, but when he peered inside, there was no one ever there.
“There were people here, some time, I believe,” Galant said. “But they were all taken away in ships.”
There were no large animals.
Increasing hunger at last drove Céleste to attempt a longer flight. “There are whales and sometimes even kraken, if you go out past all the reefs,” Mikli told him: she was one of the island dragons. “They are so big you could not eat all of one,” which Céleste was not quite sure he believed. Mikli was one of the quickest to talk about greedy persons, who liked to take so many fish that there were not enough for everyone, even though not long ago there had been no difficulty. But Galant agreed that one could indeed find enormous fish out in the deeper ocean. And it stood to reason, Céleste felt, that there must be something big enough to feed him somewhere.