‘Wait, wait,’ Perscitia cried shrilly from a distance, and Temeraire looked over, surprised to see her flapping madly towards them. She looked very odd. Her artillery crew were upon her back, tied on with ropes; they in turn were helping to hold on to enormous bundles of carrying-harnesses, which had been used to bring the army hence. The harnesses had been made hastily of silk and linen, Dresses, curtains and tablecloths all sacrificed to the cause, many in bright colours, so she looked as though she were wearing an enormous fringed skirt dangling over her sides and legs, just barely shy of her wings.

‘We are not going to retreat!’ Temeraire said, indignantly. ‘We have not lost the battle; and we shan't, either,’ he added determinedly.

‘No, no,’ she said, panting, as she came up to them. The harnesses were really so hopelessly tangled up that they could not have been picked in less than an hour. ‘Take—’ she said, gulping for breath, and waggled some of them at him.

Dubiously he took a bundle of it in his claws, and discovered it was wet; and it did not smell very nice, either, like the smell when grog was passed out, aboard a ship. ‘What have you done with them?’ he said, and then, ‘Ow,’ jerking his head back; there was also something sharp and bitter, which stung his nose.

‘Liquor,’ Perscitia said, finding her breath, as other dragons came and took more of the bundles from her, ‘and also some tar, I think; and there is some pepper on them too, so do not sniff them. Where is Iskierka? She must—Oh, there you are. No,’ she said, resisting as Iskierka reached for the cloth, ‘you shan't take one, you must set them all alight, as we drop them—’

‘Oh, that is easy,’ Iskierka said. The Anglewings each snatched a bundle, and the Grey Coppers, and a good many of the ferals: all the quicker dragons, the little ones.

‘Hurry, hurry,’ Temeraire called. The French dragons were coming on slow, but they were coming, and down below their infantry was already engaged in a dreadful struggle, bayonet-to-bayonet, which was spilling blood over the field and weakening the British squares. the French design plainly meant to leave them vulnerable to aerial attack.

He led them high aloft. Then, spreading out along in parallel to the French line they let the bundles go. Iskierka shot after them eagerly, flames licking from her jaws in one burst after another. The unravelling bundles caught with bright blue and yellow flames as they fell through the air.

The French dragons recoiled from the fireballs dropping into their faces. ‘Now, at once,’ Laurence said urgently, pointing at the weaknesses in their line. ‘That Chanson de Guerre, and that Defendeur-Brave—’