“Christ preserve us,” Laurence said involuntarily, reaching for his pistol. The beast was not very much smaller than Temeraire, larger than he had imagined ever seeing a feral dragon, built heavy in the shoulders with a double ridge of spikes, the color of red-brown mud, patterned liberally with yellow and grey. “Another gun, Riggs, another gun—”

Riggs fired away, and the feral dragon hissed in irritation, batting, too late, at the streaking flare that burst blue light overhead. His head snaked back towards them, the pupils of his virulent yellow-green eyes narrowing, and he bared his jaws; then Dulcia came darting through the canopy of the trees, crying, “Chenery, Chenery,” and flung herself clawing madly at the much larger feral’s head.

Taken aback by the ferocity of her reckless attack, the red-brown dragon recoiled at first, but snapped back at her with astonishing speed, caught the leading edge of her wing in his mouth, and shook her up and down by it. She shrilled in pain, but when he let her go, apparently satisfied that she had learnt her lesson, she dived back at him again, her teeth bared, despite blood spider-webbing blackly over the membrane of her wing.

He backed away a few paces as best as he could in the close press of the forest, crushing over a few more trees with his rump, with rather a bewildered air, and hissed at her again. She had put herself between them and the feral, and, spreading her wings wide and sheltering, reared up as large as she could make herself, foreclaws raised. Still she looked rather toy-like next to his massive bulk, and instead of attacking, he sat back on his haunches and scratched his nose against his foreleg, in an attitude almost of embarrassed confusion. Laurence had seen Temeraire often express a certain reluctance at fighting a smaller beast, conscious of the difference in their weight-class; but in turn, smaller dragons would not offer battle to one so much larger, ordinarily, without supporting allies to make the contest a more equal one; only the incentive of her captain’s safety was inducing Dulcia to do so now.

Temeraire’s shadow fell over them, and the feral jerked his head up, shoulders bristling, and launched himself aloft to meet the new threat, more his match. Laurence could not see very well what was going forward, though he craned desperately: they had Dulcia to contend with, who in her anxiety to see Chenery and gauge his injuries was bending close and interfering. “Enough, let us get him aboard,” Dorset said, rapping her smartly upon the breast until she backed away. “In the belly-rigging; he must be strapped down properly,” and they hurriedly secured the makeshift litter to the harness.

Meanwhile above the feral darted back and forth about Temeraire in short half-arcs, hissing and clicking at him like a kettle on the boil. Temeraire paused in mid-air, his wings beating the hovering stroke which only Chinese dragons could manage, and his ruff came up and spread wide as his chest expanded deeply. The feral promptly beat away a few more wing-spans, widening the distance between them, and kept his position until Temeraire gave his terrible thundering roar: the trees shaking with the force of it so that a hail of old leaves and twigs, trapped in the canopy, came shedding down upon them, and also some of the ugly lumpen sausage-shaped fruits, whose impact thumped deep aggressive dents in the ground around them; Chenery’s midwingman Hyatt uttered a startled oath as one glanced off his shoulder. Laurence rubbed dust and pollen from his face, squinting up: the feral looked rather impressed, as well he might be, and after a moment’s more hesitation peeled away and flew out of their sight.

Chenery was got aboard with no less haste, and they flew at once back to Capetown, Dulcia constantly craning her head down towards her own belly to see how he did. They unloaded him sadly in the courtyard, and he was carried into the castle, already become feverish and excited, to be examined by the governor’s physician, while Laurence took in the one poor sample that was all the day’s work had won them.

Keynes regarded it somberly, and finally said, “Nitidus. If we must worry about ferals in the forests, even so near, you must have a small dragon to carry you into the woods; and Dulcia will not go away when Chenery is so ill.”

“The thing grows hidden, under bushes,” Laurence said. “We cannot be hunting from dragon-back.”

“You cannot be getting yourselves knocked about by rhinoceri and eaten by ferals, either,” Keynes snapped. “We are not served, Captain, by a cure which consists in losing more dragons than are made healthy, in the process of acquiring it,” and turning, stamped away with the sample to Gong Su, to have it prepared.

Warren swallowed when he heard Keynes’s decision, and said in a voice which did not rise very high, “Lily ought to have it,” but Catherine said strongly, “We will not quarrel with the surgeons, Micah; Mr. Keynes must make all such determinations.”

“When we have enough,” Keynes said quietly, “we may experiment to see how far the dose may be stretched: at present we must have some strength in dragons to get more, and I am by no means confident that this quantity would do for Lily’s size. Maximus will be in no condition to do more than a little easy flying for weeks yet.”

“I understand perfectly, Mr. Keynes, let us say not another word on the subject,” she said, so Nitidus was fed upon the posset, and Lily continued to cough miserably; Catherine sat by her head all the night, stroking her muzzle, heedless of the real danger to herself from the spatters of acid.

WHOLLY UNLIKELY—WHOLLY unlikely,” Dorset said severely, when Catherine in despair suggested, two weeks later, that they had already acquired all the specimens which there were in the world.

Nitidus had suffered less than most of the dragons, although complained somewhat more, and he recovered with greater speed even than Dulcia, despite a nervous inclination to cough even after the physical necessity had gone. “I am sure I feel a little thickness in my head again this morning,” he said fretfully, or his throat was a little sensitive, or his shoulders ached.

“It is only to be expected,” Keynes said of the last, scarcely a week since he had been dosed, “when you have been lying about for months with no proper exercise. You had better take him out tomorrow, and enough of this caterwauling,” he added to Warren, and stamped away.

With this encouraging permission, they had promptly renewed the search which had been curtailed by Chenery’s injury, confining the sphere a little closer to the immediate environs of the Cape; but after two more weeks had gone by, they had met with no more feral dragons and also with no more success. They had brought back in desperation several other varieties of mushroom, not entirely dissimilar in appearance, two of which proved instantly poisonous to the furry local rodents which Dorset made their first recipients.

Keynes prodded the small curled dead bodies and shook his head. “It is not to be risked. You are damned fortunate not to have poisoned Temeraire with the thing in the first place.”

“What the devil are we to do, then?” Catherine demanded. “If there is no more to be had—”

“There will be more,” Dorset said with assurance, and for his part, he continued to perform daily rounds of the marketplace, forcing the merchants and stall-keepers there to look at his detailed sketch of the mushroom, rendered in pencil and ink. His steady perseverance was rewarded by the merchants growing so exasperated that one of the Khoi, whose Dutch and English encompassed only the numbers one through ten, all he ordinarily required to sell his wares, finally appeared at their gates with Reverend Erasmus in tow, having sought his assistance to put a stop to the constant harassment.