There was a faint orange glow of coming sunrise in the distance, to the west; and then he raised his head again realizing that was quite impossible. “Oh, oh!” he cried, “wake up, everyone—” and flung himself aloft as Iskierka came blazing towards them, turning now and again to fire flames off into the face of her pursuit: some seven or eight dragons, trying to get near enough to board her again: there were a handful of men on her back struggling already—“Laurence!” Temeraire cried, straining his eyes to make him out among the dim figures.

She shot by overhead and the French pursuit all of them backwinged as Temeraire rose into their path, scrambling to avoid running into him. Temeraire opened wide his jaws and roared furious thunder on them, a Pêcheur-Rayé point-blank in front taking the brunt of the attack. The French dragon wavered a moment mid-air, and then a great gush of blood came pouring out of his nostrils, his eyes bloodshot and strange. He sank from the sky tumbling over himself, and his wings broke beneath him like kites as he smashed into the ground.

Majestatis was coming up beside him and Ballista: the other French dragons, all middle-weights, turned tail and fled. Temeraire hovered a moment longer, panting with frustrate energy and confusion. Requiescat was rising, too, complaining, “What is all the noise for? It is too dark to fight.”

“We do not have to fight,” Temeraire said. “They have all run away.”

“Oh, cowards!” Iskierka said, circling back. “They did not mind fighting when they outnumbered me.” She turned her head back anxiously, glaring hotly at the French boarders upon her back. “Granby, you are well? Are you sure I should not just kill these men?”

“No: they have surrendered, and now they are our prisoners,” Granby said. “There is head-money for prisoners,” he added, wearily.

“I would rather kill them than have money,” Iskierka said. “They hurt you.”

“You have hurt him,” Temeraire said, angrily, “and after I gave him to you, too,” and he reached out urgently to take Laurence off her back. “Are you quite well?” he said anxiously.

“Yes,” Laurence said briefly, in the way that meant he was not well at all, but he did not like to say anything where anyone else might hear. Temeraire sniffed at him surreptitiously: he did not think Laurence was bleeding, but it was so dark he could not be sure he was not missing some injury. “We must away at once,” Laurence added, “they will bring more pursuit, and we have neglected our duty too long: we will have been missed.”

“We have been missed, and Wellesley sent a very rude note, too,” Temeraire said to him, turning his head back to talk, when they had all gotten under way, “which was not very sensible, but we have worked out that the army has all gone back to London: how did you get Granby away?”

“We had help,” Laurence said. He was looking at something very small in his hand, which glittered a little, golden, in the early dawn light.

“Is that a prize?” Temeraire asked in interest, cocking his head to look at it.

“No,” Laurence said.

The flight to rejoin the British Army was long, but at least uneventful: Iskierka gave no more trouble. If she was not much chastened, she was at least very solicitous of Granby, and willing to do nearly anything only to please him, and Temeraire had rearranged the order of flight, in any case, so she was directly under their eyes.

The ring was like a coal in the small breast pocket inside Laurence’s coat, which his hand kept returning to touch: heavy beyond its weight, while Woolvey’s blood dried cold and stiff on his stolen shirt. Laurence tried not to think of Edith, how she would learn the news, or what her fate would be, widowed and alone with a small child in the occupied city.

“He was a brave fellow, sir,” Janus ventured: the old sailor had climbed over to Temeraire, who was lighter-burdened than Iskierka, for the trip. “Bad luck we had, there.”

Laurence only nodded. He could not go back; his duty lay ahead.

They caught up Wellesley’s corps that afternoon, and paced them the rest of the long way to camp outside Coventry, with a bitter wind blowing south: a taste of the weather they would have in Scotland. The men came marching dully along the road, falling out of step into quicker shuffling as they came at last to the cold comfort waiting for them: ground frozen solid as stone, covered with drifting flurries of snow. At least the waggons rolled easily, wheels clattering: the muddy road had frozen into uneven ridges.

“I don’t see why we must be staying up here,” Requiescat said, gliding into another slow circle. “There is a nice clearing here below us: we could see just as well from there if anyone attacked, which they won’t, as we would have seen them sometime the last hundred miles.”

“We mayn’t land until the infantry are settled,” Temeraire said, but then turned his head back and murmured, “Laurence, why mayn’t we?”

“They have less comfort marching than do we aloft,” Laurence said tiredly, “and will sleep in worse: the least we can do in solidarity is protect them until they have established the guard-posts, and lit their fires. If you went to your leisure while they yet struggled, it would only arouse envy and discontent.”

Temeraire said, “Well, I can hover, but it is not very easy for the others to stay up: we had much better go down there and help them. We could pull up trees for them, for firewood—”

Laurence opened his mouth to say it would throw the men into a panic; but looking down at those slow and weary ranks, he did not think they had the energy to run, even if they had been half-dead with fear. “The smaller dragons, perhaps, might begin.”

Temeraire turned and spoke to the ferals, and Gherni led down a handful of them, smallest, to go and pull out the old dead trees from the forest, shaking needles and dirt and squirrels out of the logs as they lifted them up, and carried them by twos and threes to the camp. The men mechanically breaking up the ground for ditches did not at first even notice the activity at their backs, and then only flinched when the first logs were put down: they stared up at the dragons with their shovels and pickaxes clutched in their hands. Lester, who had just landed, stared back at them curiously, and then poked his head over to look at the ground and asked them something in his own tongue.

“He wants to know why they are digging,” Temeraire said, and, “No, no—” he called, and then went down himself, a descent which did send the men stumbling haplessly away, to stop Lester from picking one of them up: evidently with the plan of shaking him for answers, as if this would enable the man to speak the dragon-tongue.

“It is for a midden, stop being so foolish,” he informed Lester, and then turning his head back to Laurence added, “and I suppose we may help them with this also: I can do what Lien did at Danzig.”

She had used the divine wind there as the French dug their siege-trenches, to break up the frozen ground and make it easier for the men to dig. But it took several attempts, and the ruin of some fifty trees brought down by excess, for Temeraire to manage the same effect. “It is not,” he panted, having taken a moment to breathe, “quite so easy as it looks. It seems to me it ought to be easier to roar just a little, than all-out; but it is not. I do not understand why. Not,” he added hastily, “that I cannot do it perfectly well: if Lien can do it, so can I.”

“Since you are having trouble, I will help, too,” Iskierka announced, landing beside them, and before anyone could stop her, she had put her head down and blasted flame out onto the ice-packed ground.

A great cloud of hissing steam arose in the center of her strike, but for the most part the flames licked and billowed away to either side over the hard icy surface. Happily the ditch-diggers were by now established at a safe distance, watching rather nervously with their officers, and were not singed; but the fire caught in the heap of fallen trees which Temeraire had knocked down.