Even so, it was better by far than the stone wall he had sheltered against last night; the ground beneath was heaped with leaves and even some hay, and nearly clear of snow. He landed, and crawled with some difficulty beneath the roof. Once within, the close quarters were all to the better; he was out of the worst wind, and by lapping his wings to either side and tucking his head beneath them, he warmed a little.

He slept almost at once and deeply, exhausted with worry and effort. He was aware of nothing until he stirred some hours later, still in the dark, coughing and puzzled by his own warmth: he was uncomfortably warm. That seemed unimaginable, but when he tried to move his head out to see what was burning, he could not: something was keeping his wing in place. He managed to wiggle the wing-tip down a little, and discovered in alarm that while he slept, the heavy logs had been put up to complete the walls, and beyond them a great fire was crackling up from heaped tinder which had been buried beneath the snowbanks. He uttered a cry as a burning ember fell upon his back, between his shoulder blades, and looking up discovered the whole roof was heaped with tinder also. The hay beneath him was catching.

Voices were shouting to one another over the crackle of the fire, in Russian. Temeraire peered out between the logs with one eye and saw shadows moving, men with pitchforks, and he called out, “Help! Help!” in that language, and saw them turning to stare and cross themselves. But none of them came near, and he realized, despite a peculiar groggy dullness, that they had set the fire deliberately: they meant to burn him alive.

He tried to draw breath to roar, but the smoke rasped his throat and set him coughing instead. He tried to wriggle, but the logs had been driven deep, and there were so very many of them. His wings were cringing against his body as more cinders began to rain upon him. He had no other choice; he set his legs beneath him and pushed: sharp searing pain along his wing-blades where the heat scorched the delicate membranes, and the roof pressed as heavily upon him as though they had loaded it with boulders. He pushed once, twice; he had to stop, coughing dreadfully—a third push, and the roof creaked and groaned.

The men began shouting; they ran in closer, and thrust pitchfork-jabs at his head and his forelegs; he squeezed his eyes shut with a cry as one sharp point sliced the flesh and skin tight along the muzzle-bone, only just barely catching upon the heavy ridge of bone beneath his eye. The man drew back for another attempt, and Temeraire with real desperation gathered all his strength and heaved up, straining.

The roof cracked abruptly above him. Heaped stones like hot coals came raining down upon his body, and the flames roared suddenly roasting-hot everywhere all around him. He tried to leap aloft, but his legs and wings were unwilling to answer; he floundered up and forward, smashing through the collapsing structure, gasping for the clear, cold air. Clouds of steam and smoke boiled furiously out of the furnace of the fire. Temeraire blundered away through them, his whole body scorched and stinging, until he could fling himself into the snow and roll over onto his back, writhing vigorously to try to cool the burns.

But the men came again, shouting, and Temeraire had to roll back to his feet. They were running towards him, carrying scythes, pitchforks, axes all raised; the metal glowed orange-red in the firelight. Temeraire pushed himself with an effort up on his haunches, and opened his wings wide; he spread his ruff and roared out his pain, furious, and as a breaking wave they crumpled to the earth before him, and lay still.

Those men further behind slowed, halted, their heads tilting back as they stared upwards at his full breadth. They dropped their weapons and torches and they ran. Temeraire dropped to four legs and stood trembling and panting. His wings stung dreadfully; he gingerly brought them forward and could see the orange-dyed snow through the burns, his membranes pierced in many places by ragged holes like worn-through sailcloth.

He dug himself into a snowbank for a little more relief, but soon he was cold again despite the burns. He shivered in the frigid air, and he could not keep himself pressed into the snow for long. He even crept back a little towards the raging fire afterwards to warm himself, and curled into a heap near it: exhaustion trembled through him, and yet he could not sleep. The men might come back; they might return with guns. He flinched as the last corner of the false barn crashed down into the rising bonfire, orange sparks erupting in a blaze of fireworks-glory.

He thought of trying to fly away some distance, but he did not want to try his wings. They stung so, and ached along all the ribs, and his throat was rubbed-raw and painful. And the night was so very cold.

But he had evidently closed his eyes; he was sleeping. He opened them again at an unpleasant clanging noise, very close by, and reared his head up and away from a sharpened iron pike planted point-downwards in the snow, scarce inches from his eye. The man holding the shaft stared up at him, a face ringed in fur like a lion, and then in the next moment was already running away, his heels kicking up clods of snow behind him. Another man was still standing by the head of the pike, a drawn sword in his hand, which he had used to deflect it.

Temeraire gazed down at him dully: it was Tharkay, although that it did not make any sense, of course. However, there was a more pressing matter: there was a horse running away, too, in the distance. “Is that your horse?” Temeraire asked. “Would you mind a great deal if I eat it?”

He could only hope that the answer was not yes, because he could not bring himself to wait to hear it: in a few moments more the horse would be out of sight in the trees ahead, and perhaps lost. His wings stung and ached dreadfully when he unfurled them, and he had to overfill his breath to keep aloft—he felt ungainly, a lumbering hulk in the air, but none of that really mattered; the world had narrowed to a line of small hoofprint indentations in the snow, shadowed deeper blue, and the dark body of the running horse ahead.

He devoured her hooves and tail one and all; he only remembered to spit out the saddle because the stirrups caught on one of his teeth. The hot blood ran comfortingly down his sore throat. When he had swallowed the last bite, he could be a little ashamed, and looked around guiltily as Tharkay trudged towards him, breaking a path through the snow. “I am very sorry,” he said apologetically. “And I will certainly get you another horse, as soon as ever I can; at least, once there are other things to eat. But what are you doing here?”

“Looking for you,” Tharkay said. “Or rather, for the army you are with: I supposed that a message should reach you quicker, if I found the lines of communication, than I could bring it to Vilna myself. I was able to hire a dragon to bring me to Kiev, but no beast would go further north than that, nor any closer to the Russian Army.”