Laurence had the map of the coastline dug out of Temeraire’s bags, and was showing him the likely course the Fiona would have followed. “Go as quickly as you can, and bring back more men. Messoria and Immortalis, too, if they can manage the flight; and tell Sutton to ask the governor for everyone who can be spared from the castle, all the soldiers, and no damned noise about flying, either.”

“He can always get them drunk if need be,” Chenery said, without lifting his head; he was sitting by the netting and keeping a tally as the mushrooms were thrown in, his lips moving in the count along with his fingers. “So long as they can stumble back and forth by the time you have got them here, they may be soused to their skulls.”

“Oh, and barrels, also,” Harcourt added, looking up from the stump where she was sitting, with a cool cloth soaked in water upon her forehead: she had attempted to help with the harvest, but the stink had overwhelmed her, and after a second round of vomiting, painful to all of them to hear, Laurence had at last persuaded her to go and sit outside instead. “That is, if Keynes thinks the mushrooms had better be preserved here; and oil and spirits.”

“But I do not like our all leaving you here,” Temeraire said a little mulishly. “What if that big feral should come back again, or another one? Or lions: I am sure I hear lions, not very far away.” There was not the least sound of anything but monkeys, howling in the tree-tops at a fair distance, and birds clamoring.

“We will be perfectly safe: from dragons, or lions, too,” Laurence said. “We have a dozen guns and more, and we need only step into the cave to hold them off forever: that mouth would not let in an elephant, much less a dragon, and they will not be able to fetch us out.”

“But Laurence,” Temeraire said quietly, putting his head down to speak confidentially; at least, as he fancied. “Lily tells me that Harcourt is carrying an egg; surely at least she ought to come, and I am sure she will not, if you refuse.”

“Why, damn you for a back-alley lawyer; I suppose you have cooked this up between the two of you,” Laurence said, outraged at the deliberate calculation of this appeal, and Temeraire had the grace to look ashamed of himself, but only a little. Lily did not even do as much, but abandoning subterfuge only said to Harcourt, wheedling, “Pray, pray, do come.”

“For Heaven’s sake, enough cosseting,” Catherine said. “In any case, I will do much better sitting here in the cool shade than tearing back and forth, weighing you down to no purpose when you might be carrying another pair of hands instead. No, not a man will you take; only make all the speed in the world, and the sooner you have gone, the sooner you will come back again,” she added.

The belly-netting was as full as it could be without cramming, and Temeraire and Lily were got off at last, still making wistful complaints. “Near enough five hundred, already,” Chenery said triumphantly, looking up from his tally, “and most of them fat, handsome things; enough to dose half the Corps, if only they will last the journey.”

“We will give them their damned herd of cows,” Laurence said to Ferris, meaning Demane and Sipho, who were now taking their ease stretched out upon the ground before the cavern mouth, making grass whistle and refusing to pay much attention to Reverend Erasmus’s attempts to read them an instructive tract for children, his first attempt at translation into their tongue; his wife was helping with the harvest.

Ferris blotted his forehead against his sleeve and said, in stifled, choked tones, “Yes, sir.”

“We will need larger quantities than required of the fresh,” Dorset said, joining them. “Should some potency be lost in the journey, a concentrated dose will compensate for the preservation. Pray stop the harvesting for now: at this rate no one will be left to carry.” The frantic pace had already slackened, with the wearing away of the first flush of excitement and the urgency of getting the dragons loaded, and many of the men looked sick and wan; several were being noisily sick into the grass.

The tents had all gone to make sacks of mushrooms, and there would certainly be no sleeping in the cavern, so they cleared instead the ground before it, chopping through the thornbushes with swords and axes. The remnants they used to build a low encircling break about the edge of the clearing, thorny and obdurate enough to give pause to smaller beasts, and a few parties were set to collecting dry wood for a fire. “Mr. Ferris, let us establish a watch,” Laurence said, “and now that we have all been rested, we will go to work in shifts: I should like to see a more efficient job of it.”

A quarter-of-an-hour seemed long enough, inside that damp, dark space beneath, with only the narrow crack of white light at one end. Besides the mushrooms themselves, there was a grassy stink very like damp manure throughout, and the sour smell of fresh vomit which they had themselves added to the atmosphere. Where they had already cleared the mushrooms, the earth was strangely springy underfoot, almost matted, not like dirt at all.

Laurence staggered out again into the fresh air, gratefully, with his arms full. “Captain,” Dorset said, following him out: he was not carrying a mushroom, and when Laurence had deposited his armload before the newly organized sorters, Dorset showed him a torn-edged square of matted grass and muck, the flooring of the cave. Laurence gazed at it uncomprehendingly. “It is elephant dung,” Dorset said, breaking apart the chunk, “and dragon also.”

“Wing, two points west of north.” Emily Roland’s treble voice rang out high and sharp, before Laurence had fully understood; at once all was a confused hurrying into the shelter of the cave. He looked for Reverend Erasmus, and the children; but before he could be herded inside the cave, Demane with one quick look at the oncoming dragon snatched his brother up bodily from the ground, and ran instead away into the underbrush, the dog dashing off after them; its barking came back twice, at increasing distances, and then cut off into a muzzled whine.

“Leave the mushrooms, take the guns,” Laurence cupped his hands over his mouth to roar over the commotion; he snatched up his own sword and pistols, put aside to help with the carrying, and gave Mrs. Erasmus his hand to descend into the cavern, past the riflemen already crouched down by the door; shortly the rest of them were crammed in also, all of them jostling involuntarily to keep as near the entrance and its fresh air as they could, until the dragon landed with an earth-trembling heavy thud, and thrust his muzzle directly up against the opening.

It was the self-same feral: dark red-brown, with the queer ivory tusks in his muzzle. The hot queasy kerosene smell of dragon-breath came in upon them as he roared furiously, and the faint undertaste of rot from old meals. “Hold fast, men,” Riggs was yelling, by the entrance, “hold fast, wait for it—” until the dragon shifted his position, his open jaws before them, and the volley went off into the soft flesh of its mouth.

The dragon squalled in fury and jerked back. His talons came scrabbling in at the edges of the hole, too large to come all the way inside, and began to pull and claw at the rock. Small pebbles and stones worked loose; dirt rained down upon them from the ceiling. Laurence looked around for Mrs. Erasmus: she was silent, and only bracing herself against the wall of the cavern for steadiness, her shoulders rigid. The riflemen were coughing as they reloaded urgently; but the dragon had already learnt, and did not present them another target. Its claws came curling in on both sides of the fissure, and then it began to throw its weight back, until all the chamber trembled and groaned.

Laurence drew his sword and leaped forward to hack at the talons, then to stab, the hard scaly flesh resisting the edge but not the point; Warren was beside him, and Ferris, in the dark. The dragon roared again outside and flexed its talons, blindly knocking them down as easily as gnats might be swatted. The hard polished bony curve of one claw slid across Laurence’s coat in a line over the belly, thrusting him hard against the matted cavern floor, and the tip caught and pulled a long green thread from the seam as the talons withdrew again from the fissure.