Laurence paused over the papers then put one sheet out with the lamp upon it. ‘Is it large enough for you to see? It is the tax roll for the last year. I expect the French will plunder the wealthier estates and villages first, so we will look for them there.’

‘Yes, I can read it,’ Temeraire said; it was only a little difficult. ‘Shall I tell you all the richest ones, in order?’

As they pushed gradually southward, the raiding parties grew steadily larger and more desperate. They were no longer small bands, out to forage for themselves as much as for the beasts, but were now urgent support for dragons headquartered now at small outposts and encampments throughout the heart of England, formed to distribute the burden of their feeding. If the cattle did not arrive daily, the dragons would soon go hungry; and some number of them would have to be transferred, southwards, or even perhaps back to France.

Already the disruption of the supply was having an effect. Without the small parties bringing in regular provender, the soldiers faced more effort to keep themselves fed, as well as their dragons, and this made them all the more ruthless. Villages and farms and estates were now stripped to the bone and often torn apart in the search for hidden stores; or sometimes to no other end but wanton destruction. If any villagers sought to protect their homes and livelihoods, they were often murdered or abused, or at best left to starve with a burning house.

These brutalities soon roused the countryside from a sullen, small resistance, to open hatred. No one fled from the dragons now when they landed, they marched out their cattle to feed them instead, and daily the plumes of beacon-fires rose. The little feral dragons of the mountains, who ordinarily raided farms for their meals, had been recruited to their cause by hunger and through Temeraire's persuasion to collect far-flung intelligence. They darted from one beacon to another, where the townspeople provided them with a sheep or goat, and in return they carried the information back to Laurence's encampment. Laurence thought it likely he knew more of the movements of the French than their own generals did, and daily he sent long letters back to Jane and to Wellesley.

A little blue feral came darting into camp one evening in Cumbria, while they sat mostly dull and quiet, sharpening bayonets or drinking watered whiskey at their small fires. In an incongruously deep voice he announced, ‘The French are coming this way, with guns, and twelve dragons.’

‘Leave the camp,’ Laurence said, standing, and put back on his sword. ‘No, everything; we need the time more than the supply. Leave the fires burning. All aloft, gentlemen, at once,’ he said sharply, when everyone hesitated for a moment, and spurred them into action.