Temeraire turned and spoke to the ferals. Gherni led a handful of the smallest down to pull old dead trees from the forest. They shook needles, soil and squirrels out of the logs as they lifted them up, and carried them by twos and threes to the camp. The men were breaking up the ground for ditches and did not at first notice the activity at their backs, and then only flinched as the first logs were put down. They stared up at the dragons clutching their shovels and pickaxes in their hands. Lester, who had just landed, stared back at them curiously, and then poked his head over to look at the ground and ask them something in his own tongue.

‘He wants to know why they are digging,’ Temeraire said, and, ‘No, no—’ he called, and then went down himself to stop Lester from picking one of them up, with the plan of shaking him for answers, as if this would enable the man to speak the dragon tongue.

‘It is for a midden, stop being so foolish,’ he informed Lester, and then turned his head back to Laurence, ‘I suppose we may help them with this also? I can do what Lien did at Danzig.’

Lien had used the divine wind at Danzig to help the French dig their siege-trenches, breaking up the frozen ground to make it easier for them to move. But it took several attempts, and the ruin of some fifty trees brought down by excess, for Temeraire to manage the same effect. ‘It is not,’ he panted, having taken a moment to breathe, ‘quite as easy as it looks. I see how it ought to be easier to roar just a little, than all-out; but it is not. I do not understand why. Not,’ he added hastily, ‘that I cannot do it perfectly well. If Lien can do it, so can I.’

‘Since you are having trouble, I will help, too,’ Iskierka announced, landing beside them, and before anyone could stop her, she had put her head down and blasted flame out onto the icy ground.

A great cloud of steam arose from the centre of her strike, but for the most part the flames licked and billowed over the hard surface. Thankfully the ditch-diggers had established themselves at a safe distance, and were watching rather nervously with their officers, unsinged. But the fire had caught in the heap of trees that Temeraire had knocked down.

‘Now see what you have done,’ Temeraire said. ‘Quickly,’ he called up, ‘fetch earth to put out the fires.’

‘Wait,’ Perscitia said, landing. ‘If we lay the logs where you mean to dig the ditches, they will melt the ground, and the men can get warm too, while they wait.’

‘See, it has all worked out for the best,’ Iskierka said to Temeraire, brazenly adding, ‘I meant it so.’