‘Yes,’ Jane said. ‘Can't get her off the field once she is on it, not until the enemy has quitted; so I had Granby rouse her when it began to get a little light, and chase off the last of the Fleurs. Then she was tired enough to sleep again for a while. She will wake up full of vim, and just what we need. Bonaparte has let Prussia go to his head, I suppose, and thought he could beat us with less than his full strength.’

‘I have just been thinking,’ Temeraire said, after a moment, ‘where do you suppose his Grand Chevaliers are? And Marshal Davout? I have not seen his standards anywhere, on the field.’

‘Returned to France, I imagine, or still on the coast ferrying,’ Laurence said. ‘And Davout—’

‘Portugal, last report,’ Jane said.

‘Well,’ Temeraire said, ‘we saw two just west of here. We stole their pigs, but they had plenty of food besides that. And Davout cannot be in Portugal at all; we saw him north of London, two days ago.’

‘What?’ Jane said; but did not wait for an answer as she ran to Excidium at once, shouting orders, and leaping for the harness and her speaking-trumpet. Excidium went up even while her ensigns latched her on. ‘Alarm!’ Laurence heard her shouting, ‘sound alarm, enemy to the north,’ and flags flashed on every dragon as their crews caught the signal from Excidium's back.

Temeraire sat up. ‘Whatever is she so worried for?’ he said, looking at Laurence rather indignantly, but Laurence had a dreadful, a sinking sensation. ‘Aloft,’ he said, ‘come; we must go aloft as far as you can.’

When Temeraire had climbed high enough to make trees and hills and farmhouses blur into the wide gentle curve of the earth, he paused, hovering, and in subdued voice said, ‘Yes; I see them.’

Davout was coming, directly for their rear, with thirty dragons and at least twenty thousand men.

Chapter Nine

Another hour, and there would have been nothing to do but stand and be pounded to pieces from either side; but the little warning was enough to try and disengage, at least, and Dalrymple at once issued the order for the retreat. Wellesley fought a brilliant rear-guard action, bloody and terrible, stretching his men to hold the full breadth of Napoleon's line while the rest of them withdrew behind that shield.

But the retreat became rout by the end: ten thousand men were left floundering in the marsh to be taken prisoner, and the rest to straggle ignominiously away north through the countryside with no more than their muskets and their boots, and often lacking those. The dragons carried the guns dispiritedly. Occasionally Temeraire would look back over his shoulder at the battlefield they had fled and the dragons in the distance, chasing, with a quivering ruff. He did not propose that they turn, but simply looked away again, put his head down, dogged, and kept flying.