I should very much like Keynes to come here, and also Gong Su, and Emily Roland, who has my talon sheaths, and the rest of my crew; and also we need some surgeons for the wounded men. Dorset had better come too, and some other dragon-surgeons.

You had all better not stay where you are at present

‘Temeraire, you cannot write so to your superior officers,’ Laurence said, breaking off. He had forgone any attempt to explain that the commission would certainly be revoked instantly and had swallowed many protests already on the language of the letter, in favour of getting its urgent news sent quickly. Jane would understand it, at least; but there were limits.

‘But they really had better not,’ Temeraire said, surprised. ‘They have not enough soldiers, not anywhere near, because they are moving too slowly.’

Laurence persuaded him at last to soften the language:

Napoleon will be attacking you on Saturday, with nearly all of his army; the French are going very quickly because they are all being carried about by dragons, and the reinforcements from Wales will not reach you in time. Our couriers have seen them on the road and they are only travelling fifteen miles in a day.

‘But what if they do not realize that it means they ought to retreat?’ Temeraire objected.

‘They will understand, I assure you,’ Laurence said; he did not bother to say that they would very likely not believe it, and that nothing would come of Temeraire's advice.

In this at least he was thoroughly wrong: a great deal came of it, if nothing very desirable. Laurence awoke the next morning, on his dragon-arm pallet, to a furious yelling outside the sheltering membrane of Temeraire's wing. He was not allowed to get to his feet for he was snatched up at once and put on Temeraire's back, near the breastplate-chain. Temeraire pushed himself up to his feet, just as a couple of courier-weights came bounding in urgently from the camp boundary-line, half-flying and half-leaping, and gasped out, ‘Temeraire, she hasn't the watch-word, but—’

‘I do not need any silly watch-word,’ Iskierka said, padding into the clearing. She coiled herself back on her hindquarters and snorted a thin stream of fire for emphasis, and the whole mess of the Turkestan ferals came tumbling along behind her.

‘What do you want?’ Temeraire said, very ungraciously. He did not see why Iskierka had to come, showing away and making a great noise.

‘To fight,’ Iskierka said, as if the answer were obvious. ‘We are supposed to be in a war, but there has not been any fighting for four days, and I have not even been let to go flying anywhere and,’ she hissed smoke again, ‘they came and lectured my Granby, when I went out for just a bit of hunting.’

‘Well, there is about to be a great deal of fighting back there,’ Temeraire said, ‘so you ought to return now.’