Warren caught Laurence by the arm and together they staggered back from the entry. The gunpowder smoke was bitter and acrid, overlaid on the rotting-sweet stink of the mushrooms; already Laurence could scarcely breathe for the slaughterhouse thickness of the place, and he heard to all sides men heaving, like the lower decks of a ship in a roaring gale.

The feral did not immediately renew the attack. They cautiously crept forward again to peer out: he had settled himself in the clearing outside; by bad luck, far back enough to be out of firing-range of their rifles, and his pale yellow-green eyes were fixed malevolently upon the fissure. He was licking at his hacked-about talons, and making grimaces with his mouth, pulling his lips back from his serrated teeth and forward again, spitting occasionally a little bit of blood upon the ground, but plainly he had taken no great harm. As they watched, he raised his head up and roared again thunderously in anger.

“Sir, we might put gunpowder in a bottle,” his gunner Calloway said, crawling over to Laurence, “or the flash-powder, maybe, would give him a start; I have the sack here—”

“We are not going to frighten that beauty away with a little flash and bang, not for long,” Chenery said, craning his head back and forth to study their enemy. “My God. Fifteen tons at least, or I miss my guess: fifteen tons in a feral!”

“I would call it closer to twenty, and damned unfortunate, too,” Warren said.

“We had better save what you have, Mr. Calloway,” Laurence said to the gunner. “It will do us no good only to startle him away briefly; we must wait until the dragons return, and reserve our fire to give them support.”

“Oh, Christ; if Nitidus or Dulcia are the first back,” Warren said, and did not need to continue: the little dragons would certainly be frantic, and wholly overmatched.

“No; they will all be loaded down, remember?” Harcourt said. “The weight will tell on the light-weights more, and keep them back; but however are they to fight when they get here—”

“Lord, let us not be borrowing trouble, if you please,” Chenery interrupted. “That big fellow is no trained flyer; a nice thing if four dragons of the Corps couldn’t black his eye in a trice, even if Messoria and Immortalis don’t come along. We have only to keep quiet in here until they come.”

“Captain,” Dorset said, stumbling back towards them, “I am—I beg to recall your attention—the floor of the cavern—”

“Yes,” Laurence said, recalling the earlier sample which Dorset had shown him, of the dung upon the floor of the cave, elephant and dragon, where neither animal could have managed entry. “Do you mean there is another way into this cavern somewhere, where it could come in upon us?”

“No, no,” Dorset said. “The dung has been spread. Deliberately,” he added, seeing their confusion. “These are cultivated.”

“What, do you mean men, farming the things?” Chenery said. “What the devil would a person want with the nasty stuff?”

“Did you say there was dragon dung?” Laurence said, and a shadow falling over the mouth of the cave drew their attention outside: two more dragons landing, smaller creatures but sleek, wearing harness made of ropes, and a dozen men armed with assegai, leaping down off their sides.

The new arrivals all stayed well out of rifle-range, conferring. After a little while, one of them came towards the entry cautiously and shouted something in at them. Laurence looked at Erasmus, who shook his head uncomprehending and turned to his wife; she was staring out the door. She had her handkerchief pressed over her mouth and nostrils to hold out the smell, but she lowered it and edging a little closer called back, haltingly. “They say to come out, I think.”

“Oh, certainly.” Chenery was rubbing his face against his sleeve; some grit had entered his eyes. “I am sure they would like it of all things; you may tell them to—”

“Gentlemen,” Laurence said, breaking in hastily, since Chenery had evidently forgotten his audience, “these are no ferals after all, plainly, but under harness; and if we have trespassed upon the cultivated grounds of these men, we are in the wrong: we ought make amends if we can.”

“What a wretched mischance,” Harcourt said, agreeing. “We should have been perfectly happy to pay for the damned things, after all. Ma’am, will you come out and speak to them with us? We should of course understand if you do not wish it,” she added, to Mrs. Erasmus.

“A moment,” Warren said, low and cautiously, catching at Harcourt’s sleeve. “Let us remember that we have never heard of anyone coming through the interior; couriers have been lost, and expeditions, and how many settlements have we heard tell of, destroyed, in just this region north of the Cape? If the dragons are not feral, then these men have been responsible, viciously responsible; we are not to rely on their character.”

Mrs. Erasmus looked at her husband. He said, “If we do not conciliate them, there will surely be battle when your dragons come back, for they will attack in fear for your safety. It is our Christian duty to make peace, if it can be done,” and she nodded and said softly, “I will go.”

“I believe I am senior, gentlemen,” Warren said, “as our dragons are not here,” a specious claim, as precedence in the Corps went by dragon-rank regardless, with no such qualifier involved, outside flag-rank. Coming from the Navy, with its rigid adherence to seniority, Laurence had often found the system confusing if not outright maddening, but it was a pragmatic concession to reality: dragons had their own native hierarchies, and in nature the twenty-year-old handler of a Regal Copper had more authority, on the battlefield, over the instinctive obedience of other dragons, than did a thirty-year veteran on the back of a Winchester.

“Pray let us have no nonsense—” Harcourt began impatiently, when her first lieutenant Hobbes broke in to say, “It is all a hum; you shan’t go at all, none of you, and you ought know better,” a little reproachfully. “Myself and Lieutenant Ferris shall escort the parson and his lady, with their permission, and if all goes well, we will try and bring one of the fellows back here, to speak with you.”

Laurence could not like the arrangement in the least, but for its keeping Catherine out of harm’s way, but the other captains looked guilty and did not argue. They cleared back from the entrance, the riflemen covering the open ground from either side. Mrs. Erasmus cupped her hands over her mouth and called a warning, then Hobbes and Ferris stepped out, one after another, cautiously, each with a pistol held muzzle-down and ready, swords loosened on their belts.

The strangers had stood back again, spears held lightly, the tips pointing towards the ground, but gripped ready to pull back and let fly. They were tall men, all of them, with close-cropped heads and very dark coloring, skin so deep black it had almost a bluish cast in the sunlight. They were dressed very scantily, in loincloths of a remarkable deep purple, decorated in a running fringe with what looked like gold beads, and wore thin laced leather sandals which left the tops of their feet bare, and rose to mid-thigh.

They did not move to attack, and when Hobbes turned and beckoned, Reverend Erasmus climbed out of the cave, and gave his wife his hand to assist her. They joined the lieutenants, and Mrs. Erasmus began speaking, slowly and clearly: she had taken a mushroom from the cave, and held it out to them to show. The red-brown dragon stooped suddenly, its head bending towards her, and spoke; she looked directly up at him, startled but not visibly afraid, and it jerked its head back with an ugly, squawking cry: not a roar or a growl, wholly unlike any sound Laurence had ever heard from a dragon’s throat.

One of the men reached out and catching her by the arm drew her towards him. His other hand pressed her forehead backwards, bending her neck in an awkward exposed curve, and his hand pushed her hair away from her face, where the scar and the tattoo marred her forehead.