‘From there, two hours flying towards London without any challenge, so we were on Bonaparte's doorstep by the time we came on any other beasts; and then it was Davout's advance guard out gathering cattle: two Grand Chevaliers and another half a dozen heavyweights. Of course all of them went directly for her; I think I saw sixty men jump for her back at once. Arkady grew remarkably less deaf, after that, and we managed to get away; but the French already had Granby trussed like a chicken on one of the Chevaliers and were racing him away as fast as they could go, with Iskierka flinging herself madly after them.’

‘I knew I ought never have let her have Granby,’ Temeraire said stormily. ‘Look how she has lost him, and not even in a real battle. We ought to get him back and leave her to them, and good riddance.’

Laurence exchanged a glance with Tharkay: it was by no means good riddance to lose their one fire-breather to the French, no matter how recalcitrant. ‘Did you see where they went?’ Laurence asked, low.

‘Straight for London,’ Tharkay said.

Chapter Ten

‘I am now an officer too, though,’ Temeraire said, ‘so I do not see why I must wait.’

‘You could be a general, and it would not make you any smaller,’ Laurence said. ‘A twenty-ton dragon must give over trying to sneak, and that is our only hope at all of getting Granby out.’

‘But what if you should be captured,’ Temeraire said, ‘and then I would be just as wretched as Iskierka: it is my duty to keep you safe.’

They had very nearly fought this battle before, in Istanbul, and so his protests were an expression of unhappiness rather than fresh and determined objections. ‘We have not time to quarrel; Granby's liberty if not his very life may depend on quick action,’ Laurence said gently, and Temeraire sank to his belly with his ruff pinned back, threshing the matted straw of the meadow uneasily with his claws and raking up dust and furrowed earth with it.

Laurence was grateful for familiar conversation, if a little guilty, for it allowed him to practice a degree of deceit: he knew that under ordinary circumstances, he would not go, however much he might wish to. If he were captured, Temeraire would become a prisoner, and in their already dire straits the risk should not be run, not for so slim a chance as they faced to free Granby and Iskierka.

But circumstances were not ordinary. Laurence was a man already dead by law. He could not value his own life very high; and so as long as he were killed instead of captured in the attempt, which he had some right to hope he might be, Temeraire would not be lost to Britain: he had made the agreement with Wellesley, and now was bound directly.