So he merely said, “I am glad that you are all of like mind with me, gentlemen, so far as engaging to fight; but we must now consider our other charge: we have bought these eggs too dear in blood and gold to lose them now. We cannot assume the Corps will arrive in time to take them safely home, and if this campaign lasts us more than a month or two, as is entirely likely, we will have the Kazilik egg hatching in the midst of a battlefield.”

They none of them spoke for a moment; Granby with his fair skin flushed up red to his roots, and then went pale; he dropped his eyes and said nothing.

“We have them properly bundled up, sir, in a tent with a good brazier, and a couple of the ensigns watching it every minute,” Ferris said, after a moment, glancing at Granby. “Keynes says they will do nicely, and if it comes to real fighting, we’d best set the ground crew down somewhere well behind the lines, and leave Keynes behind to look after the eggs; if we have to fall back, we can stop and catch them all up quick enough.”

“If you are worried,” Temeraire put in unexpectedly, “I will ask it to wait as long as it can, once the shell is a little harder, and it can understand me.”

They all looked blankly at him. “Ask it to wait?” Laurence said, confused. “Do you mean—the hatchling? Surely it is not a matter of choice?”

“Well, one does begin to be very hungry, but it does not feel so pressing until one is out of the shell,” Temeraire said, as if this were a matter of common knowledge, “and everything outside seems very interesting, once one understands what is being said. But I am sure the hatchling can wait a little while.”

“Lord, the Admiralty will stare,” Riggs said, after they had all chewed over this startling piece of intelligence. “Though perhaps it is only Celestials who are like that; I am sure I never heard a dragon talk of remembering anything from inside the shell at all.”

“Well, there is nothing to talk about,” Temeraire said prosaically. “It is quite uninteresting; that is why one comes out.”

Laurence dismissed them to go and begin to make some sort of camp, with their limited supplies. Granby hurried away with only a nod; the other lieutenants exchanged a look and followed him. Laurence supposed it was less common with aviators, than with Navy men, that a man got his step only for being in the right place at the right moment, hatchings being under more regular control than captured ships. In the early days of their acquaintance, Granby had himself been one of those officers resentful of Laurence’s acquiring Temeraire. Laurence understood his constraint, and his reluctance to speak; Granby could neither speak in favor of a course which would almost certainly result in his being the most senior candidate available when the egg should hatch; nor protest against one which would require him to make the attempt to harness a hatchling under the most dire circumstances, in the midst of a battlefield, the egg barely in their hands for a few weeks, of a rare breed almost unknown to them, and almost certainly no future chance of promotion if he failed.

Laurence spent the evening writing letters in his small tent: all he had in the way of quarters, and that having been put up by his own crew; there had been no offer made to quarter him or his men more formally, though there were barracks for the Prussian aviators erected all around the covert. In the morning he meant to go into Dresden, and see if he could arrange to draw funds on his bank; the last of his money would be gone in a day, provisioning his men and Temeraire at war-time prices, and he had no inclination to go begging to the Prussians under the present circumstances.

A little while after dark, Tharkay tapped one of the tent-poles and came in; the ugly wound at least had not mortified, but he was still limping a little and would bear the deep gouge upon his thigh the rest of his days, a furrow of flesh all seared away. Laurence got up and waved him to the cushion-heaped box which was all he had as a chair. “No, sit; I will do perfectly well here,” he said, and himself lay down Turkish-style upon the other cushions on the ground.

“I have only come for a moment,” Tharkay said. “Lieutenant Granby tells me we are not to leave; I understand Temeraire has been taken in lieu of twenty dragons.”

“Flattering, I suppose, if considered that way,” Laurence said wryly. “Yes; we are established here, if against our design, and whether we can fill that tally or no, we mean to do what we can.”

Tharkay nodded. “Then I will keep my word to you,” he said, “and tell you, this time, that I mean to depart. I doubt an untrained man would be anything other than a dangerous nuisance aboard Temeraire’s back in an aerial battle, and you hardly need a guide when you cannot stir out of the camp: I cannot be of any further use to you.”

“No,” Laurence said slowly, reluctant but unable to argue the point, “and I will not press you to stay, in our present circumstances, though I am sorry to lose you against a future need; and I cannot at the moment reward you as your pains have deserved.”

“Let us defer it,” Tharkay said. “Who knows? We may meet again; the world is not after all so very large a place.”

He spoke with that faint smile, and stood to give Laurence his hand. “I hope we shall,” Laurence said, gripping it, “and that I may be of use to you in turn, someday.”

Tharkay refused an offer to try and get him a more personal safe-conduct; and indeed Laurence did not have much fear he would need one, despite his game leg. With no further ado, Tharkay put up the hood of his cloak and picking up his small bundle was gone into the bustle and noise of the covert; there were few guards posted around the dragons, and he vanished quickly among the scattered campfires and bivouacs.

Laurence had sent Colonel Thorndyke a stiff, short word that they meant to offer their services to the Prussians; in the morning the colonel came again to the covert, bringing with him a Prussian officer: rather younger than other of the senior commanders, with a truly impressive mustache whose tips hung below his chin, and a fierce, hawk-like expression.

“Your Highness, may I present Captain William Laurence, of His Majesty’s Aerial Corps,” Thorndyke said. “Captain, this is Prince Louis Ferdinand, commander of the advance guard; you have been assigned to his command.”

They were forced for direct communication to resort to French. Laurence ruefully thought that at least his mastery of that language was improving, with as much use as he was being forced to make of it; indeed he was for once not the worse speaker, as Prince Louis spoke with a thick and almost impenetrable accent. “Let us see his range, his skill,” Prince Louis said, gesturing to Temeraire.

He called over a Prussian officer, Captain Dyhern, from one of the neighboring coverts, and gave him instructions to lead his own heavy-weight, Eroica, and their formation in a drill to give them the example. Laurence stood by Temeraire’s head watching, with private dismay. He had wholly neglected formation-drill practice over the long months since their departure from England, and even at the height of their form they could not have matched the skill on display. Eroica was nearly the size of Maximus, Temeraire’s year-mate and a Regal Copper, the very largest breed of dragon known; and he was not a fast flier, but when he moved in square his corners nearly had points, and the distance separating him from the other dragons scarcely varied, to the naked eye.

“I do not at all understand, why are they flying that way?” Temeraire said, head cocked to one side. “Those turns look very awkward, and when they reversed there was enough room for anyone to go between them.”

“It is only a drill, not a battle-formation,” Laurence said. “But you can be sure they will do all the better in combat for the discipline and the precision required to perform such maneuvers.”