He trailed off; he could tell, from the doubtful flick of Grig’s ears, and that dragon’s glance over at his fellows, that the greys would very likely do none of this. “Wait a moment,” Temeraire said, struck by a sudden thought, and called, “Ricarlee, will you come here, if you please,” and presented the two small dragons to each other, which was made possible by Grig’s English—although this had been acquired to spy upon them in the last campaign, which Temeraire had not quite forgiven. Still, it was handy that the greys were better than most dragons about languages.

“Ricarlee and his fellows have grown very smart about harrying the French,” he said, which made the feral thrust out his chest proudly, “and there are a great many of them, and they are nearly your size. Ricarlee, I should like you to pair off each of your fellows with one of the greys, before you come to the field. Then,” he said to Grig, “you may tell your friends they need only do whatever they see their partner doing, and stick with them through the battle.”

Grig nodded thoughtfully. “And naturally the Scots will report if anyone runs away and just hides through the battle, and they will have to eat last.”

“Yes, I suppose,” Temeraire said, a little taken aback; he had not thought of it that way, and it seemed very peculiar to him that any dragon would hide during a battle—although he recalled that Perscitia did not quite like fighting, either; but then, she was a very peculiar dragon.

“I will tell everyone, you may be sure,” Grig promised. “We will do our share, and,” he sidled up a little, with his head slanted, “perhaps those who distinguish themselves particularly, who assist you in some notable fashion, such as keeping others in order, will be entitled to a little more consideration, after the fighting?”

“Oh,” Temeraire said, a little anxiously. He did not know if Laurence meant to include the greys, in the distribution of prizes—they were pretty sure to get a prize in this battle, Temeraire felt. “I certainly cannot make any promises,” Temeraire said, as he dismally contemplated dividing the same thousand shares among more dragons, but privately he had the sinking feeling that Laurence would do just that.

—

Laurence for his part would have been glad for any hope of his having prizes to award after the coming engagement. While the dragons took their meal, he himself swallowed some bread and cold meat and drank a little wine, writing all the while: messages for the Admiralty, and for Jane; if Napoleon smashed them here, she must be warned before another five hundred dragons appeared on her doorstep. “I’ll reach her, never fear,” Minnow promised, as she ducked her head into the letter-harness. Laurence did not care to lose even a single beast at present, but Winchesters were so small they could do very little good in combat even against other light-weights, and Minnow was clever enough to slip her way along the coast past Napoleon’s forces. Captain Wesley and his Winchester Veloxia had already gone for Whitehall; they would make for Berlin, and see the message relayed from there.

Then the dragons were finished eating, and everywhere the harness went on. The ground crews would have to be left behind, to march with the infantry; likely a good deal of equipment and matériel would be lost. But there was no help for it. Winters came hurrying with Laurence’s flying-coat, struggling under the weight; Laurence took it from the small girl and shrugged into the heavy leather, checked his pistols and his sword—he would never forget having gone aloft with only a dress-sword in his belt, but his beloved Chinese blade was a satisfying weight there now—and stepped into Temeraire’s ready talons to be put up.

The weather was extraordinarily beautiful, and the sky studded over with small puffs of charming white cloud which sadly shortened their field of vision. Laurence rarely took his glass from his eye, and the lookouts kept their own out, straining for a first glimpse. Beneath him, Temeraire’s wing-muscles beat in steady lapping strokes, working nearly to his limits—his speed was extraordinary for a heavy-weight, but he was in armor, although with a quarter the usual weight of incendiaries. Only the fastest of the dragons had come with him: Iskierka, their light-weights, and the Cossack ranks behind them in their clannish groups, some forty dragons each carrying ten men crammed aboard. There would be no real hope of defeating Napoleon: they could only try to hold him long enough for more of their forces to concentrate upon the field.

It was three hours to Dresden at their break-neck pace; it would be another hour before the rest of the force could join them. Laurence put firmly from his mind the unwanted awareness that those desperately needed dragons would arrive under the command of an officer who hated and despised him, and who would be glad of almost any excuse to see him brought low. There was no use in entertaining the thought; Fidelitas was by far the senior of the dragons in the second wave. For a moment he had entertained leaving Granby and Iskierka back to command it—but only for a moment. If there was anything to be gained in the space of that first hour, it would only be gained by the most ferocious defense they could put forward.

“Smoke off forward wing, one point to starboard,” Belleisle called urgently—one of his lookouts. Laurence immediately turned his glass in that direction. At first he was uncertain: smoke, or only a wisp of cloud in shadow? But the thin grey wisps were rising from the ground: smoke.

“I think we will go to battle-stations, Mr. Forthing,” Laurence said.

“Aye, sir,” Forthing said, turning to pass the word to Challoner, but this was scarcely required: every man was already in motion, their speed a mark of how tightly wound their spirits: like arrows held at the limits of their bow reach, ready to be loosed.

The smoke gathered rapidly ahead of them, not only from their drawing nearer: the city was burning. “Laurence, that is Accendare there on the other side of the city,” Temeraire said, “I am sure of it,” and Laurence scanning the sky managed to pick her out briefly. The Flamme-de-Gloire was nearly the largest dragon to be seen, and stark in her yellow and black as for a moment her wings hung open against the sky in their direction.

“She has never done all that herself,” his midwingman Ashgrove blurted out, aghast. He was a young officer, and had come from a dragon run on rather looser lines of propriety than Laurence liked to see; but the remark was not unprovoked, as their passage brought the city further into view: a city bathed in flames. Easier to have counted those houses which were not burning, many of them emitting soldiers forced to flee stumbling through the lanes and alleys of the city. Napoleon had evidently declined to fight through the streets; he was smoking out his enemy—a brutality that bid fair to be as effective as it was callous. But Laurence, too, could not imagine how Accendare, for all her fearsome reputation, had single-handedly fired the entire city, its houses largely built of stone and well-supplied with water.