‘I did not growl at their orders,’ Temeraire said after a moment, still angry, but he drew away his head a little, and all around the circle chests rose with postponed breath. ‘I did not growl at the orders, and will not, no matter how stupid they are. But as for hanging … If anyone should try to take you from me again, I shall growl at them, and worse, and it is no use telling me I ought not.’

‘As one might expect—’ Maclaine began, a little faintly, only to be interrupted by Wellesley.

‘Damn you, Maclaine, stop baiting the damned bear to see it dance.’ Wellesley seized the moment and addressed the others, still silent and shaken. ‘This is all nonsense. I do not believe for a minute that Bonaparte has come up with a man less than all of his army, whatever phantasy the scouts have brought you. We can get forty thousand men at Weedon, with their guns and supply, and if we give Bonaparte one of his precious pitched battles without every last one of them, then we are a pack of fools.’

‘Then what do you propose we do?’ Dalrymple snapped. ‘Stand aside and wave him on to London?’

‘London was lost three days gone,’ Wellesley said, ‘if not two weeks, when Nelson was sent to Copenhagen with twenty ships, and Bonaparte saw his main chance. The sooner we swallow it, the better. Get the army on the road tonight, at once. They have been lying about with nothing to do but get drunk, gamble and whore for a week, they can give up a little sleep.’

Cries of protest began rising; accusations of defeatism and surrender. Wellesley raised his voice and kept going, ‘Waste munitions and men and beasts to hold a lost position?—We ought to be hanged for traitors if we do it. To Scotland—To Scotland and the mountains, damn you all! He can't hold the country and keep the Channel open. Let him have England for a month, let him spend men and dragons trying to hold it, and march for Loch Laggan. We will have a hundred thousand men by Christmas, and will come down on him when we choose, not when Bonaparte—’

‘And let him milk London dry, and wreck the country in the meantime?’ one man shouted.

‘Send men on to London to warn the tradesmen and the bankers out of the city with whatever they can manage,’ Wellesley said. ‘Half of them have gone running to Edinburgh already, after the King; let the rest of them go too.’

‘If they choose to,’ someone said, ‘instead of stay and shake Bonaparte's hand as he comes in.’

‘If they mean to stay, they'll stay,’ Jane said. ‘You won't make 'em less eager by letting Bonaparte beat you beforehand. Scotland is the first damned sense anyone has made. We needed these sixty beasts, Maclaine, but you cannot throw sixty dragons like roundshot and hope they land somewhere useful. In a week I will have worked out a way to use them, and by Christmas I will know how to do it properly. Tomorrow we can do no more than cut them loose on his flank and let them do as they like.’