“Now see what you have done,” Temeraire said. “Quickly,” he called up, “fetch dirt, and put out the fires.”

“Wait,” Perscitia said, landing. “If we lay the logs down where you mean to dig the ditches, they will melt the ground, and the men can get warm while they wait.”

“See, it has all worked out for the best,” Iskierka said to Temeraire, brazenly adding, “I meant it so.”

He flattened his ruff and said, “Then you may help put the logs in place, since you have so very cleverly set them on fire before they were lined up properly.”

Laurence dismounted as they worked, and went to speak to the sergeant and his men and explain the scheme. “They won’t come this way?” was all the man wanted to know, wiping a nervous dirty hand over his blond moustaches, and leaving them streaked and muddy.

“If they do, they will do you no harm,” Laurence said, with no more patience, “and they are saving you an afternoon of hard labor after marching. When the fire in the logs has died down, you will find the ground easier to dig, and you may chop up the remains for tinder and sleep warmer tonight than you had any hope of doing.”

Wellesley rode up on his dark horse, wrestling to keep it under control, the animal skittish and shy of flames and dragons both. “What the devil are you doing, then?” He did not wait for an answer, but threw an eye over the works and snorted. “Clever as foxes, I see. Well, don’t stand there, man,” he said to the sergeant. “Go and clear the rest of that brush. Goren, we’ll have the wounded over here, nearest the fires. At least they can’t get up and run away from the dragons like ninnies: half of ’em haven’t legs anymore. And as for you and that beast of yours,” he added to Laurence, grimly, “finish here and be at the clearings in an hour, no more: I have words for you I don’t care to have interrupted.”

The horse and the general wheeled away, aides in train, and Laurence went back to Temeraire, who was pushing the last few logs into place with a broken-off branch, to save his talons from singeing: the fire was still very hot. Demane was already off his back and vanished, as he was wont to do given even five minutes in reach of the ground. “Roland, go and fetch him out,” Laurence said, and waited tapping his thigh until she came out of the woods some ten minutes later, half-dragging Demane along: he had a string of rabbits and squirrels already gathered from the wreckage the dragons had made, and looked surly to have been interrupted.

“Go set up a tent in camp, if you can,” Laurence said, “and then see what you can do in the way of forage for the dragons. Janus, I am sure you can be of use to Mr. Fellowes, or Mr. Dorset.”

“Aye, sir,” Janus said.

“You may keep working here until it is done,” Temeraire said to Iskierka, rather smugly, “since it was all your notion,” and carried Laurence over to the clearings, where Ballista was already improving their comfort by smashing up shrubs and thornbrake with her barbed tail. Perscitia had managed to establish a remarkable bonfire, by setting several of the fallen trees into a tent-pole shape, and using the crushed and pounded wreckage for tinder, although she was now eyeing the towering blaze a little nervously: it had grown a good deal higher than her head.

“A handsome signal,” Wellesley said sarcastically, when he came. “It is kind of you to spare Bonaparte the trouble of having to find us in the dark.”

“You have a dozen fires lit just over the hill in the other part of camp, so I do not think it makes much difference that this one is a little bigger,” Perscitia said, in defensive understatement. “And,” she added with sudden inspiration, “this is so bright the Fleur-de-Nuits cannot come near us: it will hurt their eyes too much to see anything else around.”

Wellesley only snorted at this justification, and turned to Laurence. “And I suppose you have another such clever explanation you would like to feed me—”

“Sir,” Granby said, breaking in, “the fault was mine, for letting Iskierka run away with me—”

“I imagine there is no shortage of blame to parcel out among you,” Wellesley said cuttingly.

“It is not Granby’s fault at all!” Iskierka said, overhearing. “He did not like our going, and I am sorry now to have disobliged him; but I do not see why we ought to flap along after you like chickens, with no-one to fight all day. If we are supposed to protect you, we would do much better to go find someone who meant to attack you, and kill them before they did; so what I did was perfectly sensible, and it was just bad luck we got captured. And even so it has all come right in the end, so you haven’t any cause to yell.”

“Yes, I begin to see your captain might be wholly innocent,” Wellesley said, eyeing her. “Granby, is it?”

“Yes, sir,” Granby said, miserably.

“The next time this creature disobeys, you will cut her loose,” Wellesley said. “You and your crew will be reassigned; as for her, I do not care if she goes in the breeding grounds or flies across the sea; if she won’t follow orders, she is useless, and worse than useless when she induces others to risk good beasts after bad.”

“Oh!” Iskierka said, jetting a hissing cloud of steam. “Oh, I am not useless! I have taken more prizes than anybody, I can beat anyone who tries to fight me—”

“Brawling does not impress me,” Wellesley said. “We are here to win a war, not a single battle or a private mill; and any one dragon, like any one man, is expendable. The nation has managed without a Celestial or a fire-breather this long, and we will manage again without you if we must. If you are spoiling for a fight, you will have one when we are ready to give it to the French; until then, you are going to behave, or you can give up your captain and get you gone: we will find other work for him.”

“Granby, you would never,” she appealed, and poor Granby stood white and wretched and looked at Wellesley, and then he said, low, “Dear one, I am an officer of the King.”

Laurence looked away. He did not know he could have passed a similar test. Temeraire was not willful, in the same fashion; his disobedience had been more deliberate and more grave than Iskierka’s—but that was an excuse. If Wellesley, if any superior, ordered him to leave Temeraire, a simple plain order to go to another duty, and not as a means to abuse—

Iskierka made a low dreadful keening noise in her throat, and hissed out a whistling of steam so thick it clouded the ground around her feet; then she leapt away across the clearing and huddled herself into a heap of coils. Arkady sprang to her side and began speaking to her hurriedly in the dragon-tongue.

“I would not care if she did go away with them,” Temeraire said, listening, “and if you ask me, it serves her just right. I should be very happy to have you back myself, Granby,” he added.

“I beg your pardon,” Granby said, looking wretched, and ran across the clearing after her.

“You have damned little room to criticize,” Wellesley said to Temeraire.

“I am not always running off to please myself!” Temeraire said. “I have never disobeyed, except when someone tried to take Laurence from me, or hurt him, first; and when the Government tried to murder all the dragons in the world.”

“So you have only been insubordinate or treasonous a dozen times or so, is that all?” Wellesley said dryly. “—No, save your breath and the rest of your excuses. Carry on this way again, under my command, and I will treat the promises I have made you as cavalierly as you do your duty: do you understand me? Both of you,” he added, “as I see I cannot lay the guilt on your handler’s shoulders alone; but I will be damned if I try and apportion the guilt.”

“Yes, sir,” Laurence said quietly.

“But we have not done anything wrong to-day: that was all because Iskierka ran off,” Temeraire protested. “It is not my fault, or Laurence’s.”