Poole had suggested the tactic at the conference Laurence had held with his officers, three nights ago, with an air of challenging him to object—as though he thought Laurence some sort of idle romantic, instead of a serving-officer who had been at sea since the age of twelve, and at war nearly all his life. He wondered in grim amusement how Poole himself would have liked to be on the deck of a sixty-four taking a broadside, trying to keep his feet on blood-washed oak. Laurence did not have the kind of squeamishness which consisted in a refusal to harm the enemy upon the battlefield, in open and honest combat.

But there was still nothing like pleasure in seeing half-trained young dragons flung down, and they were going at a shockingly rapid pace. Ten French light-weights were felled in less than a quarter of an hour, and then Cavernus made a daring effort on one unharnessed Petit Chevalier. She dropped a dozen boarders on the heavy-weight dragon’s back, then she rounded up the ferals to help: every small dragon seized on the dangling ropes and whipped around the Chevalier, who grew clumsy with alarm and fouled wings as they drew more than twenty loops around him: he might have bulled his way loose at first, but the ferals were beating about his head, and abruptly his wings were pulled too tight against his body.

He dragged a breath, struggled—one of the ferals took a sharp tumble, another was raked by outflung talons—and fell, fell, roaring in terror, to smash upon the ground below, crushing an entire company of cavalry beneath his massive bulk.

The French aerial line broke: dozens of unharnessed dragons fleeing away towards the Elbe, their panic infecting the harnessed beasts and carrying many of these along with them; the remainder milling in uncertain confusion only to be harried away by Iskierka, pouring out flame as she descended on them. The center was theirs.

“Signal bombardment,” Laurence said, and all the harnessed British dragons circled back, finding their formations, and began to sweep back and forth over the French infantry, freely dropping their incendiaries among them. The French were trying to turn their guns skyward; Fidelitas—now returned to the field—led his formation in a raking pass across two emplacements, and Cavernus went after another. But there were other guns beginning to threaten their position, and in any case Laurence judged the beasts would by now have spent the better part of their incendiaries. “Withdraw to heights,” he said, and as the first gun-crew began their firing sequence, the British dragons were already circling up and higher, out of range.

They were also beyond the range of doing much damage direct, but Laurence was satisfied: they had established a secure command of the air. “Temeraire, if you please, send one of those ferals round to ask Dyhern if he could use a formation or two: we will spare him Cavernus and Fidelitas, if he requires their aid,” he said.

“Very well,” Temeraire said unenthusiastically, and collared one of the circling Scots, who had got herself a table-cloth out of the wagon-carts and thrust her head through it, so it now hung on her like a sort of capelet. “Oh, all right,” she said, rather grumbling, but she went off in a hurry.

Meanwhile, the guns kept firing a steady barrage to keep them far aloft, but these were no longer trained upon the allied forces, steadily pressing their advantage, and then Laurence distantly heard as the Prussian cuirassiers shouted as one. Their horses were hooded and blinkered and nose-muffled from any glimpse of the dragons above; they made a thundering roll of a charge across the field, into the lessened hail of iron, and fell upon the guns. Laurence lowered his glass. He had seen enough: the day was theirs.

—

Laurence saw Temeraire settled in the field-covert with a side of beef and a bowlful of hot beef blood, sent over by way of thanks from the Prussian corps. “Mr. Keynes said he will look in on us in an hour, Admiral,” O’Dea said, “and we will trust in the saints to keep himself,” meaning Temeraire, “from taking blood-poisoning before then, or going mad from lead in the humors; like as not the knife has missed a ball here or there.”

This provoked Temeraire to say uneasily, “I am sure there cannot be much lead left in me, after all of that wretched rooting about. Laurence, is going mad very uncomfortable?”

Laurence sighed privately. He would have been glad for a different ground-crew master, if he had dared ask for a replacement: O’Dea was clever enough, but untrained, and given to excess of both drink and poetic lamentations. In his case, Laurence would have had no compunction in removing him from the rôle and keeping him on as a personal secretary instead. But the Admiralty would surely have assigned them another scowling half-spy, or a man who would resist every advancement in practice. If O’Dea did not know his work as well as he ought, at least he had less to unlearn, and seven months’ observation of the habits of the Chinese legions made him nearly as much an expert as any man in Britain.

“If you can feel any other metal remaining, pray inform Keynes; I am certain you will have no ill-effects before he comes. I will return directly I have seen my staff, and attended to the wounded,” Laurence said, and went to collect Granby.

Iskierka had established a handsome bonfire in her clearing, for her crew, and was also eating; she was pleased with herself, as indeed she had a right to be. By her count, which was only a little exaggerated, she had told for some eight beasts, most heavy-weights, besides keeping their forward line clear and leading their telling strike. She had paid little for her daring: a few glancing musket-balls, fired from enemy dragons more interested in evading than fighting her, and one raking scratch already closed by the time she had come to earth—now poulticed and bandaged for the night by her surgeon, in an excess of caution which had provoked Keynes to mutter about mollycoddling. “And you may tell Temeraire for me that he did not do so badly, himself,” Iskierka said. “I liked what he did with those cannon: it was quite handy, although I do think he might have been more clever about getting shot.”

“A rotten mess,” Granby said, when they were far enough from the clearing to be out of earshot from his crew, along the paths: their field-covert sprawled nearly two miles over a long stretch of foothills, with most dragons crammed in three and four to a clearing, but Temeraire and Iskierka were established on the upper heights, in prime clearings, and a considerable distance from the central farmhouse where Laurence had established his command. “Damn Poole, anyway; he ought to be broken the service.”

“I cannot say so, John,” Laurence said.