He could not see much better from above after all. Pockets of mist sat like seething cauldrons in every low valley, and great towering clouds were rolling majestically in from the sea, so high they engulfed him as much as the ground below, and filled with gusts of sharp rain that pattered noisily on his wings. As they flew on towards the battlefield, he began to glimpse the soldiers of their companies on the march, all arranged a little differently, like patches of cloth in odd sizes, some long like ribbons and only five men across, others great crowds upon the field.

All of the shapes rippled smoothly over the ground, columns of white and black and blue and red, gliding over the hills, and down into the valleys to be swallowed up in the fog. Even so, he could still hear the strange noise they made marching along. It was less a thumping, which he might have expected, than a regular hiss as their clothing or their boots brushed against one another. The wet ground muffled their steps. The trumpets sounded, a joyful encouraging noise no matter who had blown them; and the cannon spoke in orange flame to announce that the battle had been joined, somewhere.

The French dragons were somewhere farther back, Temeraire supposed, peering uselessly; trees lashed with fogbanks barred his view of the French rear. ‘There,’ Laurence called, and Temeraire followed the line of his arm to see their own centre established.

Temeraire was pleased that, to his eye, their force was by far the more handsome. A great many of the Frenchmen wore long drab coats, with scarcely a touch of colour, or otherwise white breeches and white shirts—none too clean Temeraire noted—with very ordinary dark blue coats. He much preferred the vivid red coats which dominated their own army. Several companies of soldiers in the centre wore colourful, patterned skirts, and of course their union flag was by far the more interesting.

‘And if they do have eagles,’ Temeraire said to Laurence, ‘all the better for us to take them away. Laurence, do you not like those skirts they are wearing, over there?’

‘Those are the Scots Greys cavalry,’ Laurence said, looking through his glass, ‘and those are the Coldstream Guard, beside them. If anyone can hold the centre, they will; but good God. Bonaparte will pound them without mercy.’

‘We will keep the dragons off,’ Temeraire said. ‘I am only a little worried that at the end we are meant to encircle Bonaparte, and not his aerial support. What if Lien should escape?’ Privately, Temeraire felt it was rather peculiar to take so many pains to capture Napoleon and not Lien, who was a good deal larger, and possessed the divine wind.