They did not go far. The local hunger for grazing land and timber had scraped the fields and hillsides down to scrubby low grass, all the way to the base of Table Mountain and its satellite peaks, where the slopes grew prohibitive: loose conglomerations of grey and yellow rock in stepped terraces like old rotting stone walls held together by grass and green moss, and clayey dirt for mortar. They halted there and rested on the loose scrubby ground in the shadow of the sheer cliff wall. An extensive scurrying went on in the underbrush as the small game fled from their presence, small furry creatures like brown badgers.

“It is a very strange sort of mountain,” Temeraire observed, craning his head to look back and forth along the long ridge of the peak above them, sheared smooth and flat as if by a leveling knife.

“Yes; oh, very; and how hot it is,” Nitidus said, meaninglessly and half-asleep, and tucked his head beneath his wing to nap. They let him sleep in the sun, and Temeraire yawned, too, and followed his example; Laurence and Warren stood together looking back down into the deep bowl of the harbor where it ran down into the ocean, the Allegiance a toy ship among ants at this distance. The neat geometric pentagon of the castle was drawn in yellow upon the dark earth, with the dragons small, still lumps upon the parade grounds beside it.

Warren took off his glove and rubbed the back of his hand across his brow to wipe the sweat off; he left a careless smudge. “I suppose you would go back to the Navy, if it were you?” he asked.

“If they would have me,” Laurence said.

“A fellow might buy a cavalry commission, I suppose,” Warren said. “There will be no shortage of soldiers needed if Bonaparte continues to have things his way; but it could hardly compare.”

They were silent a while, considering the unpleasant options which would be the portion of so many men cast effectively on shore, by the death of the dragons on which they served.

“Laurence,” Warren went on, after a moment, “this fellow Riley, what sort of a man is he? Ordinarily, I mean; I know you were lately both standing on your honor.”

Laurence was astonished to be appealed to in such a way, but answered, “A gentleman and one of the finest officers of my acquaintance; I cannot say a word against him, personally.”

He wondered very much what should have spurred the inquiry. With the Allegiance confined by her orders to harbor, until the dragons should once again be ready to depart, Riley had of course come to the castle and dined with General Grey on more than one occasion. Laurence had absented himself, but Catherine and the other captains had gone more often than not. Perhaps some quarrel had taken place to give rise to such a question, and Laurence hoped that perhaps Warren would elaborate. But he only nodded, and changed the subject to the likelihood that the wind would change, before their return, so Laurence’s curiosity remained unsatisfied, and the question had only the effect of making him sorry afresh for the quarrel, which he now supposed should never be made up, and the termination of their friendship.

“Nitidus does seem better, does he not?” Temeraire murmured to Laurence, in confidential tones audible only to anyone within twenty feet, while they made ready to return; Laurence could answer wholeheartedly that he thought so as well, and when they returned to the parade grounds, the light-weight ate almost to his healthy standard, putting a period to two goats before he again fell asleep.

On the morrow Nitidus did not want to repeat the exercise, and Dulcia would only go half so far before dropping down to rest. “But she did for a whole one of those oxen, a yearling calf,” Chenery said, doing for a substantial glass of whiskey and water himself, “and a damned good sign I call it; she has not eaten so much in a sixmonth.”

The next day neither of them would go, but sat down again, almost as soon as they had been persuaded to get up on their feet, and begged to be excused. “It is too hot,” Nitidus complained, and asked for more water; Dulcia said more plaintively, “I would rather sleep some more, if you please.”

Keynes put a cup to her chest to listen, and straightening up shook his head. None of the others could be stirred much beyond their sleeping places. When the tallies over which the aviators had labored were examined closely together, the dragons did indeed cough less, but it was not much less; and this benefit had been exchanged, their anxious observers soon perceived, for listlessness and lethargy. The intense heat made the dragons sleepy and disinclined to move, the interest of their new surroundings having now palled, and the brief resurgence in their appetites had evidently been spurred only by the better eating available on shore, as compared to the late stages of the sea-journey.

“I would not have regretted it, not at all,” Sutton muttered, hunched over the table and speaking to himself, but so violently that it could not but be overheard. “How could there be any regret, in such circumstances; there could be none,” in anguish as great as though his guilt over the prospect of a cure for his own Messoria, when so many others might be left to die, had been the very cause of failure; and Little was so white and stricken that Chenery took him into his tent, and plied him with rum until he slept.

“The rate of progress of the disease has been slowed,” Keynes said, at the close of their second week. “It is not an inconsequential benefit,” he added, little consolation for their better hopes.

Laurence took Temeraire away flying, and kept him on the shore all the night, to spare his fellow captains at least briefly the contrast between Temeraire’s health and that of their own dragons. He felt keenly his own portion of guilt and shame, the confused mirror of Sutton’s unhappiness and Little’s: he would not have contemplated trading Temeraire’s health for all the rest, and though he knew his fellow-captains would understand perfectly and feel each of them the same for their own partner, in as irrational a way he felt the failure a punishment for this private selfishness.

In the morning, new sails stood in the harbor: the Fiona, a quick-sailing frigate, had come in during the night, with dispatches. Catherine opened them slowly, at the breakfast-table, and read off the names: Auctoritas, Prolixus, Laudabilis, Repugnatis; gone since the new year.

Laurence, too, had a letter, from his mother:

All is desolation; we are done, for at least another year, and likely more, if the Government should fall again. The Motion was carried in the Commons; the Lords again defeated it, despite everything which could be done, and a most extraordinary Speech, by Mr. Wilberforce, which should have moved the Possessor of any Soul deserving of the name. The Newspapers at least are with us, and speak with all the Outrage merited by so disgusting an Event: the Times writes, “Those Nay-sayers who give no Thought to the Future may sleep easy this Night; the others must try if they can to find Rest, in the sure Knowledge that they have laid up a Store of Misery and Sorrow, which they shall be asked to repay, if not in this World, then in that To Come,” only a just Reproach…

He folded it and put it aside in his coat pocket; he had no heart to read further, and they left the dining room a silent party.

The castle barracks were large enough to house a larger party than they made, but with the disease marching implacable along, the captains by silent agreement preferred to stay closer by their sick beasts. The other officers and men not wishing to be outdone, a small battalion of tents and pavilions sprang up about the grounds, where they most of them spent their days and nights, barring the infrequent rain. All the better to discourage the occasional invasion of the local children, who remembered Temeraire’s last visit of a year ago enough to have lost some of their fear; they had now formed the game of working one another up, until one, challenged past the point of endurance, would make a mad flurrying dash through the parade grounds among the sleeping dragons, before fleeing back out again to receive the congratulations of his peers.