‘You have caterwauled without pause on how we must have these sixty more dragons,’ another officer, a colonel, said belligerently, ‘and how we must swallow treason and tolerate unhandled beasts to have them, and now you talk as though we have nothing to do but sit and bear it while the French drop roundshot on our heads. If they are of no use here, they are of no use to us at all.’

‘We have seen a great many of the French along our way from Wales,’ Temeraire said, putting in his own oar, ‘and of course we can stop the Fleur-de-Nuits, if we can only see them, but at night that is difficult.’

‘Difficult? So is winning battles difficult,’ General Dalrymple said, scowling without looking up. He beckoned to his aide and thrust a map at Laurence. ‘You will take the beasts here, a mile out past camp,’ he said, ‘and hold the Fleur-de-Nuits there, until morning—’

‘That is very silly; the Fleur-de-Nuits will go right around us if we are a mile out,’ Temeraire said.

‘A couple of rounds against Lefèbvre's rear-guard, and now you try to tell us our business,’ Dalrymple said to Laurence. ‘By God, I have half a mind to—You will obey orders, damn you. You will do as you are told and be grateful for the chance—’

‘If I had done as I was told,’ Temeraire said, ‘you would have sixty less dragons, and Lefèbvre would have a good deal more food, and tomorrow Napoleon would likely beat all of you for good. So that is a very stupid thing to say. Whyever ought I do as I am told?’

‘If you do not, we will hang—’ the belligerent officer began, and Jane said, ‘Maclaine!’ too late; Temeraire growled, deep in his throat, and lowered his head with his ruff up.

He had briefly become simply another voice in their deliberations, if a queer, more resonant one speaking from aloft. But what contempt the little familiarity had produced, vanished in the face of that growl, the great glossy head with the eyes half a foot across and glittering yellow like lamps, and the jaw full of serrated teeth – the very smallest of which was the size of a man's hand. It was a palpable reminder that they were in the presence of a creature who could have, with a stroke, killed them all with very little effort. To Laurence, Temeraire could never seem viscerally a threat; but he had handled the dragon from hatchling to maturity, and remembered him as a creature scarcely larger than a dog.