‘Ha,’ Jane said with satisfaction, when she had landed with Excidium only a little while later, and had the plan explained to her while the men finished painting Requiescat with the false harness-stripes. ‘Yes, very clever. They will smoke it soon enough, but while the trick lasts, they will be jumping over to board you big ones by the dozen. All right, gentlemen,’ she looked over at Temeraire, ‘here are your orders, then: you unharnessed fellows will go in first, and at close-quarters. If you can draw their boarding-parties they will be undermanned when we come in. We have the advantage in weight; he has only eight heavyweight beasts brought up from the coast, as yet. I dare say he has had to send the rest back, for lack of food.’

‘And when you have come in?’ Temeraire asked.

‘Then I cut you loose against the flanks of their infantry,’ Jane said. ‘If we are fighting aloft together we will only get ourselves into a tangle, but you cannot do anything but good against them closer to the ground, so long as you keep out of the line of fire of our artillery.’

‘And keep out of range of our acid, too,’ Excidium added, and leaped into the air.

‘We have acid ourselves,’ Gentius muttered, from where he perched aboard the big Chequered Nettle, Armatius.

Temeraire turned his head and asked, ‘Are you all quite secure?’

Laurence checked his borrowed cutlass and pistols one last time. ‘We are,’ he answered, and they sprung aloft with a great surging rush of wind.

Bonaparte's Armée de l'Air was easily seduced into trying the strategy, which had served them so well at Jena: the cloud of smaller dragons rushing the heavyweights loaded with men. Laurence looked away; thirty Frenchmen had flung themselves with enthusiasm and courage onto Requiescat's back, to face the large company they expected, and a shrug of the great Regal Copper's shoulders had thrown them off, grasping with futility; a few of them cried out as they fell, dreadfully, until the noise ended below.

‘Ow!’ Temeraire said, suddenly jerking, and Laurence looked back to see that he too, had been boarded; but one of the men, an ensign, had saved himself by stabbing a knife into flesh and clinging on to the hilt. ‘Ow, ow!’ Temeraire added, as the French officer drew another blade, and began crawling grimly upwards stab by stab.