But it was a novel expression to those men themselves, used to the European mode where dragons were encouraged to bind all their affections up in their captains, in hopes of giving that one hand a strong rein to pull upon. Laurence knew many crewmen thought it unremarkable to have gone ten years in service on a dragon, without ever once exchanging any conversation with the beast, direct; even most lieutenants spoke with them only rarely. He mounted back up hearing approving murmurs, mingled with the same anger he felt himself: the misconduct of Obituria’s captain had left them, too, exposed to the danger their dragon had faced, and there was not a man who did not feel that Flinders need not have died.

“I will certainly have words with Obituria,” Temeraire said, as he pushed aloft again with a few stifled hisses of discomfort to belie his earlier bravado. “I do not see what business she had going off in that fashion. Oh! And as for Fidelitas—!”

They reached fighting-altitude above a battlefield much altered by their handiwork, and the passage of three-quarters of an hour. Dyhern and the Prussian dragons holding the right still struggled against the more numerous and nimbler French—but they were making a far better showing than at the disastrous battle of Jena, where so many of the Prussian dragons had been brought low.

The Prussians had indeed turned the French strategy back upon them: the big dragons had exposed themselves early on, pretending to cleave to their old formation-flying habits, but their captains had been hiding below, safe in the belly-netting. As soon as the French boarding parties had dropped onto their backs, the heavy-weights had raced at top speed to the back of the lines, where the French boarders were seized at once by the many eager hands of their ground crews and imprisoned. It was a blow even larger than the mere loss of numbers: the French could ill afford to spare trained veterans at present from any part of their army, and with so many young and half-trained beasts among them, skilled aviators were an especial loss.

By now the French had belatedly grown wary of this maneuver. The boarders had ceased to go, and in their absence, the sheer muscle of the Prussian heavy-weights made a solid wall which even the numbers of the French dragons could not penetrate. Many of the young French beasts felt all the natural hesitation of a twelve-ton beast confronted by one of eighteen tons, spiked and plated in the bony armor common among Prussian heavy-weights. They had thus reached a stalemate, and below them the Russian and French guns were arguing the question back and forth, with an equal lack of resolution.

But on the left, the hole Temeraire’s assault had opened was proving worth the cost: the French flank was weakening, and from their lofty distance Laurence could see the wreckage of two French infantry squares, broken by the explosion of the guns and trampled by the Russian light cavalry; another gun emplacement was being overrun, and Russian guns had been dragged forward and now unopposed were rapidly clearing away the French dragons from the air.

“We will let them work,” Laurence said, watching the guns boom and thunder. “Temeraire, we can turn against the center, I believe. Mr. Forthing, signal a charge; Iskierka to take point, if you please. We will keep to the rear—”

“Oh, Laurence!” Temeraire protested.

Laurence continued firmly, “—and make a feint at threatening their guns on that hill near the green barn. We have put some fear in their bellies, I hope, and we may do more good there, by drawing away a significant portion of their force for an unnecessary defense.”

But Temeraire’s entire frame quivered with restive unhappiness all the while he hovered and darted around the hill, even though he was keeping a full six French dragons thoroughly occupied—two of them heavy-weights, and the French aerial center weakened materially thereby. Laurence was thoroughly satisfied with the arrangement, but Temeraire plainly not—and least so when he had to watch Iskierka lead a dazzling and ferocious charge straight at the French center, only to plunge with startling speed beneath the braced and waiting lines, and come up from beneath them.

The French were so entirely taken by surprise by that dive—contrary to all received wisdom, as putting the British dragons vulnerable below their claws—that they did not act to seize the advantage it offered them swiftly enough. Iskierka as quickly looped back up between their two ranks, followed by the full company, who then broke into two groups: middle-weights twisting to pounce upon the French light-weights in the forward rank, while the light-weights and heavy-weights together fell upon the larger beasts to the rear.

It was a daring maneuver—one which Temeraire himself had proposed, but it was perhaps not wonderful that its success should not be enough to content him when he was forced to see his design enacted by another. His ruff lay so flat against his neck that he looked nearly an Imperial dragon again. “I do not see why Iskierka needs to be flaming off in that showy way,” he said, “and she quite nearly fouled Latinius’s wing, on that last turn,” this referring to the small Grey Copper from Fidelitas’s formation, who was hanging on Iskierka’s coattails and making clawing passes at the eyes of her recoiling targets, with every evidence of high delight.

Laurence laid a comforting hand on his neck, and told Forthing, “Pass the word to Requiescat.” The massive Regal Copper smashed through the wavering French light-weights. Dragons scattered in every direction as he rolled onwards over them, and the British middle-weights turned eagerly to join the others in their assault in the remaining French forces.

Their own boarding parties now began going over. So many of the French dragons were unharnessed as to make the usual practice, aimed at capturing a beast’s captain, ineffective. Instead men on long tethers leapt over, in moments planted spikes deep into the unharnessed dragon’s bare back, and flung heavy cables over the side before they swung off themselves and were pulled back to safety. The crew of the light-weights seized the dangling ends and their dragons swiftly looped over and over around the enemy beast. Thus entangled, the French dragons had to flee or have their wings pinned, and more than one beast lost its wind and plummeted to the ground in a dreadful crash.

Laurence watched the operation without pleasure. The same technique had been used in the medieval age by the dragon-slayers of the Norman court, who mounted on their own beasts had undertaken a ruthless culling of the wild beasts of the British Isles. The method had for a thousand years made harnessed dragons with their large crews inevitably the masters of the unharnessed, at least in the West; and these French dragons were too young and unpracticed to have mastered the Chinese dragons’ skill at defending one another from similar attacks.