‘It does not name you a coward,’ Tharkay said. ‘Whatever has Bertram Woolvey done?’

The grounds near the house were wooded; cedars stood fragrant amid the silent denuded oaks and plane trees, all crusted with frost. These yielded to broad, hard-frozen meadows; their boot heels crushed the grass like sand underfoot. If their desire to observe the stars had been truth, they would have been served well: the night was clear and cold and still; the wind had died, and there was no moon.

The dragon interlopers were snoring peacefully, if a noise like mill wheels grinding could be described so; it was audible for a quarter of a mile. It did not hold the same hollow-chested resonance of the voices of the great combat-weight beasts, and there were few men about, and no fires: it looked to be a company of courier dragons with their solitary captains sleeping huddled against their sides.

Laurence thought himself well used to the company of dragons by now, he had not minded the streets of Peking, or the pavilions where the great beasts slept in vast coiled heaps; but in the near absence of light, the persistent low growling noise was magnified, and he could not wholly repress the shudder which climbed his back as they walked from one stand of trees to another, carefully crossing the meadows where the dragons slept.

His intellect might know these were thinking creatures, who would much rather capture than kill him, but his belly did not. It knew only that near-by lay a dozen beasts, which in the ordinary course of animal life would have made an easy meal of him.

Laurence calmed himself, in cool reasoning terms, before every outline became a dragon, and every grumble of rustling leaves a prelude to attack. They had yet to keep moving on steadily, through pitch impenetrable enough that Laurence put out his hand before his face, to keep from running into any branches.

Woolvey's breath rasped loudly ahead of him, short ragged breaths, and his occasional stumble. Tharkay had taken the lead, but Woolvey kept moving. Laurence paced breath to footsteps and doggedly followed: as near to blind as he ever hoped to be.

A flicker, some vague impression of movement, made his head snap sideways, and he stopped for a moment, trying to make it out. It was a hopeless attempt, he could see little more than a dark snaking blot reaching into the sky.

He quickened a few steps to stop Woolvey, and gave a soft hiss to make Tharkay turn. Crouching, they waited, listening. The dragon heaved a great yawning sigh and murmured something in French. Then with a quick flurrying leap, a leathery flap of wings, it was aloft. They did not move while it was overhead, and stayed a while longer, meek as rabbits, before they could make themselves resume.