They caught the French fifteen minutes later, or heard them first. They were singing a bawdy snatch of ‘Au près de ma blonde, qu'il fait bon, fait bon, fait bon’ as they marched through a forested section. Then they emerged out onto the road again, the cattle followed in a bellowing string, throwing their heads uneasily as they scented the dragons aloft. The men pulled irritably on the cows' tether and tried to drag them along. They did not look up.

Temeraire craned his head back and looked at Laurence. Ten dragons came on behind them. ‘Mr. Allen,’ Laurence said, ‘signal the attack.’

Chapter Fourteen

‘I do not see what is wrong with it,’ Iskierka said, still nibbling upon the charred bones of her dinner. ‘They are stealing the cows for their dragons, it is not our fault if their dragons are too lazy to come and get the cows themselves.’

‘It is not wrong,’ Temeraire said, dissatisfied, ‘precisely.’

‘Not very sporting, though,’ Gentius said. ‘They did not even have a gun.’

‘The village did not have a gun, either, or even muskets,’ Lily said, ‘so it was not very sporting of those soldiers, in the first place.’

‘Anyway,’ Iskierka added, with an air of smug virtue, ‘we must obey our orders.’

Temeraire did not argue. It was not that he minded for himself, anyway, although it had not been a very interesting battle: they had dived, and the soldiers had fired a few shots, but then they had all run away into the woods, if they were not dead. That had lasted scarcely five minutes, and they had nothing to show for it, except of course for the cows, but those they mostly had to give back.

He was not going to say so, of course, but he rather felt Iskierka was right. If the soldiers had not wanted to be attacked, they ought not have been about other people's territory, taking their food and much more than they could eat themselves. Only, he was a little worried, because it seemed to be the sort of thing that Laurence might have minded, and he did not seem to care.

The villagers had certainly been very grateful. ‘Two months to spring. We would have starved, or near. Thank ye, sir,’ the village headman said, the half-burned cottage quite forgiven, as the others came nervously out to look over their cattle and their goods, and make their own anxious courtesies.

A few young men from Maximus's ground crew had driven back those cows that had not been killed or panicked to death in the fighting. Gladius and Chalcedony had carried back the two large carts of grain, also, and the villagers had sent word back along the road, to those others pillaged, to come and share what there was left.