Laurence walked back from the house alone, his feet sure on the familiar lanes despite the dark. He heard no sound but the occasional sighing of the wind, shaking the few dried leaves left on autumn branches like rattles, and drifting the smell of the dragons and smoke near. The ground-crews of the harnessed dragons were making a little camp, not entirely comfortless; fire was easy enough to come by when Granby needed only ask Iskierka to oblige them. The other captains stood by it, warming their hands and talking in low voices, tracing the course they should take in the morning.

Some of the dragons who had guarded the rear of the retreat were still arriving, and others were already deep into their dinners, as the lean bodies of deer were stretched out limp upon the ground. Iskierka was doing the hunting, to the satisfaction of all except the smaller creatures of the forest, who fled out into the open with the panicked deer when she belched a roaring tongue of flame over the timber: mice, rabbits and sparrows, and even a few poachers from the village escaped with their snares.

‘Wellesley will pick up ten thousand men at Manchester,’ Jane was saying, ‘and twenty at Ripon, and so on, making his way to Scotland. It will be a precious slow trip, but we needn't expect our friend to come after us again so soon.’

‘But can we keep the beasts fed along the way?’ a woman's voice asked from above, as another Longwing settled. ‘Mort, be a love and set me down.’

Laurence had never met Captain St. Germain before; she had long been assigned to Gibraltar. Mortiferus put her down beside the fire. She was a very tall and fat woman with delicate features, a mop of fair hair curling in wisps about her face and pale-lashed blue eyes; in complete effect rather like a Rubens.

‘The country gentlemen may find venison thin on the ground for a few winters, but we will manage somehow,’ Jane said. She looked around at a small shriek; the servants from the house had come down the lane with lanterns and baskets of food, and one of the maids had fainted, upon seeing the dragons. ‘Why, I call that handsome, Laurence; I hope you have given them our thanks,’ she said, and waved her men forward to go take the food off their hands.