Across the water, Lien, was being supported away over the water by her escort, a couple of Petit Chevaliers, labouring mightily to keep her in the air.

The last of the French dragons broke away and fled. The men still upon the field threw down their guns, and most of them sank to their knees, or to all fours, broken with exhaustion. Nineteen eagle standards lay trampled and mired in the blood-churned mud, amid twenty thousand corpses.

The day was won.

Chapter Sixteen

‘Laurence, I will do you credit; I have never in my life met any man more desirable to hang, and less convenient,’ Wellesley said.

‘Oh, and after everything we have done,’ Temeraire said, indignantly.

‘It was no more than you ought, and less than some,’ Wellesley fired back. ‘It is a damned pity you could not get yourself decently killed on the field.’

Laurence put a restraining hand on Temeraire's forearm. ‘Yes, sir; and the same could be said of many other.’

Wellesley—or rather Wellington now that he had taken the new name with the ducal coronet that was his reward—snorted. They sat on the portico of Temeraire's own pavilion on his first opportunity to take up residence. Laurence had built it for him months before, but their journey to Africa and their ensuing imprisonment had intervened, and in the interim it had become a general residence. Even now, a few other dragons napped in corners, and nearby Perscitia lectured her former militia. She had brought the men along with her after the battle, those who could be bribed with a share of her treasure—for their skills in the mixing of mortar: they were putting up another pavilion.

A tremendous crash heralded the arrival of another load of bricks. Requiescat assisted the construction, and fired with enthusiasm, had carried alone what looked to be nearly five tons.

Wellington looked broodingly at the heap, and at the foundations for the next pavilion, which were being excavated by Minnow and half a dozen of her fellows: earth was flying at a prodigious rate. ‘Where are you getting that brick?’

‘We have bought it,’ Perscitia said, overhearing his question, ‘so you needn't try and complain that we are stealing. We have sold our eagles and have capital.’

‘And God help us all,’ Wellington said, tapping his fingers against his thigh. ‘You ought to be made to pay damages out of it. Do you know I almost had a mutiny on my hands the next day? Not one drop of beer or rum to be found, among a hundred thousand men, and a good ten thousand casualties—’

‘If you did not like it,’ Perscitia said, ‘you ought to have managed the battle more neatly; then I should not have needed to find a way to stop those French dragons for so long.’