Tharkay said, ‘We will find more tomorrow,’ with a puzzling degree of confidence. The next evening he took Arkady into the lead and flew directly to an estate with several handsome dairy farms, which yielded two dozen bullocks. Tharkay watched the stupefied animals being loaded onto the dragons with an odd, wry expression, which made Laurence wonder how he had known. They were just over the border into Scotland. Laurence knew Tharkay had been embroiled in a law-suit here, although he had none of the details; and if Tharkay did not choose to volunteer them, respect dictated they could not be pursued.

The cattle completed their supply tally, but only just, and they found nothing more on their patrol, or on the flight to deliver their supplies to Loch Laggan. The farmers had grown adept at hiding their diminishing herds.

‘Damn the lot of them and Boney too,’ Jane snapped, when Laurence gave her the news, and rubbed the back of her hand across her forehead. ‘Tell him he has one week less than I said,’ she told the aide hovering at her desk. The young man, an army officer, was at once more nervous and impatient, shifting his weight side to side. ‘And no, he may not have twenty, he may have ten, and not all of those heavyweights, either. Wellesley wants you,’ she added to Laurence, and tossed him a wax-sealed packet from among those upon her desk, ‘and as many as I can spare, in Edinburgh.’

Laurence broke the seal and unfolded the orders, a single sheet, a few lines only, hastily and informally written, with no signature: Bring that fire-breathing monster, and however many more Roland will give you – the best fighters you have, and the more vicious the better.

He read it over slowly, and then folded it back up again; vicious was a cold indigestible presentiment. Jane, he thought, had not seen the contents; she would object as strongly as he would. He looked up. She had scarcely interrupted her work. ‘Frette, have Rightley take himself and ten middle-weights to Inverness, and send a note to that damned colonel saying that if he does not get his men on board tomorrow night when the beasts land, I will have him court-martialled the next morning. We have no time to waste on this nonsense,’ she said, handing off three orders at once. ‘Laurence, you may choose your beasts, anyone you like; formations make no nevermind.’

He could not burden her. ‘We may have ten?’ Laurence said. ‘Wellesley wants Iskierka,’ he added.

‘Yes,’ Jane said, distracted, ‘you may as well take her. Lord knows it is a waste to keep her patrolling if there is skirmishing to be had. Oh, and here,’ she added, giving him a letter dug out from beneath many others on her overburdened desk, ‘you may read that here, although I cannot let you take it.’

A hand had written, broadly and with many misspellings and stray capitals: