Laurence had expected something of the sort, from the tenor of Wellesley's summons, and heard it with dull acceptance. The strategy was sound, coldly speaking. If Bonaparte began to lose men quicker than he could replace them, and found his supply growing short, he would have to accept a battle on whatever terms it was offered him, or withdraw entirely.

But dragons were not usually put to such a use in civilized warfare; Wellesley knew it, and so did he. Pragmatism alone held them too valuable to risk and too expensive to supply, save against a more substantial target of strategic importance. However, it was not pragmatism but sentiment that with a single voice called the exceptions inhuman. Little aroused greater horror and more condemnation from ordinary men than the prospect of dragons set loose against them. Men had been court martialled and hanged for it, even by their own side.

‘Pillaging,’ Wellesley added after a moment, ‘of course, cannot be tolerated—’

‘There will be none,’ Laurence said, ‘save what must be requisitioned to feed the dragons. Is there anything else?’

Wellesley looked at him narrowly. ‘Will you do it?’

There was little enough Laurence could do, to repair what he had done; he could not restore the lives of the slain, or raise sunken ships from the Channel, or make recompense to all the ordinary countrymen whose livelihood and possessions had been raided away by an invading army. He could not repair his father's health, or the King's, or Edith's happiness. But he had already stained himself irrevocably with dishonour, for the sake of an enemy nation and a tyrant's greed; he could stain himself a little more for the sake of his own, and shield with his own ruined reputation those who still had one to protect.

‘I do not need written orders for myself,’ he had answered Wellesley. ‘But I require them for those other officers of the Corps involved: you may say merely that they must follow my orders.’

Wellesley had understood very well, what Laurence offered him, and he had not refused it. The orders were written, and he had left Wellesley in his tower, and gone down and down, to the waiting covert.

It was a silent, grim camp in the morning, as they harnessed the dragons and the crews went aboard. Twice or more, Laurence thought Harcourt almost meant to speak to him, but in the end they mounted up and flew with no words exchanged. The cold wind in Laurence's face was welcome, and the steady beat of Temeraire's wings, and the silence. His small crew did not address him, and sitting forward on Temeraire's neck, they might have been alone in a wide-open sky; the rolling unmarred moors beneath them knew nothing of war or boundaries.