With this reply Laurence had to be content, but he went away dissatisfied; a dragon properly trained ought be a better judge of aerial maneuvers than any man, it seemed to him, and Dyhern’s answer more willful blindness than sound military judgment.

THE INNER COUNCILS of the army were wholly opaque to Laurence; the barrier of language and their establishment in the covert, far from most other divisions of the army, distanced him twice over even from the usual rumors that went floating through the camp. What little he heard was contradictory and vague: they would be concentrating at Erfurt, they would be concentrating at Hof; they would catch the French at the River Saale, or at the Main; and meanwhile the weather was turning to autumnal chill and the leaves to yellow around their edges, without any movement.

Nearly two weeks had crept by in camp, and then at last the word came: Prince Louis summoned the captains to a nearby farmhouse for dinner, fed them handsomely out of his own purse, and to their even greater satisfaction enlightened them a little.

“We mean to make a push south, through the Thuringian forest passes,” he said. “General Hohenlohe will advance through Hof towards Bamberg, while General Brunswick and the main army go through Erfurt towards Würzburg,” he went on, pointing out the locations on a great map spread out over the dinner table, the destination towns near the known positions where the French Army had been established over the summer. “We have still not heard that Bonaparte has left Paris. If they choose to sit in their cantonments and wait for us, all the better. We will strike them before they know what has happened.”

Their own destination, as part of the advance guard, would be the town of Hof, on the borders of the great forest. The march would not be quick; so many men were not easily supplied, and there were some seventy miles to cover. Meanwhile along their route supply-depots had to be established, particularly with herds for the dragons, and the lines of communication secured. But with all these caveats, still Laurence went back to the clearing with much satisfaction: at last, to know something and to be moving was a thousand times better, no matter how slow it would seem to abruptly be bounded by the speed of infantry and cavalry, dragging their guns along in waggons.

“But why do we not go farther out ahead?” Temeraire said, when an easy two hours’ flight had brought them, the next morning, to their new covert. “It is not as though we are doing anything of use here but making ourselves some clearings; even those slow dragons can manage flying a little longer, surely.”

“They don’t want us getting too far off from the infantry,” Granby said. “For our sake as much as theirs; if we went off on our own and ran into a troop of French dragons with a regiment of their own infantry and a couple of guns to back them up, we shouldn’t enjoy it above half.”

In such a case, the enemy dragons would have a clear advantage, the field guns giving them a space of safety in which to regroup and rest, and providing a zone of danger against which the dragons without infantry support could be pinned. But despite this explanation, Temeraire still sighed, and only grumblingly reconciled himself to knocking down some more trees, for firewood and to clear space for himself and the Prussian dragons, while they waited for the marching infantry to catch up.

In this creeping manner they had covered barely twenty-five miles in two days, when abruptly their orders were changed. “We will be massing first at Jena,” Prince Louis said, shrugging ruefully at the vagaries of the senior officers, who continued to meet daily, ferried back and forth by dragon-couriers. “General Brunswick wishes to move all the army together through Erfurt instead.”

“First we move not at all, and now we change directions,” Laurence said to Granby, with some irritation; they had already gone farther south than Jena and now would have to travel some distance northward as well as west; with the slow pace of the infantry it might mean half-a-day lost. “They would do better to have fewer of these conferences, and to more point.”

The army was not assembled around Jena until early October; by then Temeraire was hardly the only one irritated with the pace. Even the most stolid of the Prussian dragons were restless at being held on so short a rein, and strained their necks out westward daily, as if they might win a few more miles by wishing for them. The town was upon the banks of the great Saale River, broad and unfordable, which would serve well as a barrier to defend. Their original destination of Hof lay only twenty miles farther south along its course, and Laurence, studying the maps laid out in the impromptu captains’ mess organized in a large pavilion, shook his head; the change of position seemed to him a retreat without cause.

“No, you see, some of the cavalry and infantry have been sent ahead to Hof anyway,” Dyhern said. “A little bit of bait, to make them think we are coming that way, and then we pour down on them through Erfurt and Würzburg, and catch them still in parts.”

It sounded well enough, but there was a small obstacle to the plan, shortly discovered: the French were already in Würzburg. The news traveled round the camp like wildfire, scarcely moments after the panting courier had ducked into the commander’s tent, reaching even the aviators with scarcely any delay.

“They say Napoleon himself is there,” one of the other captains said, “the Imperial Guard is at Mainz, and his Marshals are all over Bavaria: the whole Grande Armée is mobilized.”

“Well, and so much the better,” Dyhern opined. “At least no more of this damned marching, thank God! Let them come to us for their thrashing.”

Into this sentiment they were all prepared to enter, and a sudden energy gripped the camp; all sensed that battle was close at hand, as the senior officers again closeted themselves for intense discussions. There was no shortage of news and rumors now: every hour, it seemed, some fresh piece of intelligence reached them, though still the Prussians were sending out scarcely any reconnaissance missions, for fear of their capture.

“You will enjoy this, gentlemen,” Prince Louis said, coming into their mess. “Napoleon has made a dragon an officer: it has been seen giving orders to the captains of his aerial corps.”

“Its captain, surely,” one of the Prussian officers protested.

“No, it has none at all, nor any kind of crew,” Prince Louis said, laughing; Laurence, however, found nothing amusing in the news, particularly when confirmed in his suspicion that the dragon in question was entirely white.

“We will see to it you have a chance at her on the field, never fear,” Dyhern said only, when Laurence had briefly acquainted them all with Lien and her history. “Ha ha! Maybe the French will not have been practicing their formations, if she is in charge? Making a dragon an officer; next he will promote his horse to general.”

“It does not seem at all silly to me,” Temeraire said, with a sniff, when this had been passed along; he was disgruntled at the news of Lien’s preferment among the French, when contrasted with his own treatment by the Prussians.

“But she can’t know a thing about battles, Temeraire, not like you,” Granby said. “Yongxing kicked up such a fuss about Celestials not fighting; she shan’t ever have been in one herself.”

“My mother said that Lien was a very great scholar,” Temeraire said, “and there are many Chinese books about aerial tactics; there is one by the Yellow Emperor himself, though I did not have a chance to read it,” he finished regretfully.

“Oh, things out of books,” Granby said, waving a hand.

Laurence said grimly, “Bonaparte is no fool. I am sure he has their strategy well in his own hands; and if giving Lien rank were enough excuse to convince her to come into the battle, I am sure he would make her a Marshal of France, and call it cheap at the price; it is the divine wind we must fear now, and what it may do to the Prussian forces, not her generalship.”