Black Powder War Page 0,90

out of his own purse, and to their even greater satisfaction enlightened them a little.

"We mean to make a push south, through the Thuringian forest passes," he said. "General Hohenlohe will advance through Hof towards Bamberg, while General Brunswick and the main army go through Erfurt towards W眉rzburg," he went on, pointing out the locations on a great map spread out over the dinner table, the destination towns near the known positions where the French Army had been established over the summer. "We have still not heard that Bonaparte has left Paris. If they choose to sit in their cantonments and wait for us, all the better. We will strike them before they know what has happened."

Their own destination, as part of the advance guard, would be the town of Hof, on the borders of the great forest. The march would not be quick; so many men were not easily supplied, and there were some seventy miles to cover. Meanwhile along their route supply-depots had to be established, particularly with herds for the dragons, and the lines of communication secured. But with all these caveats, still Laurence went back to the clearing with much satisfaction: at last, to know something and to be moving was a thousand times better, no matter how slow it would seem to abruptly be bounded by the speed of infantry and cavalry, dragging their guns along in waggons.

"But why do we not go farther out ahead?" Temeraire said, when an easy two hours' flight had brought them, the next morning, to their new covert. "It is not as though we are doing anything of use here but making ourselves some clearings; even those slow dragons can manage flying a little longer, surely."

"They don't want us getting too far off from the infantry," Granby said. "For our sake as much as theirs; if we went off on our own and ran into a troop of French dragons with a regiment of their own infantry and a couple of guns to back them up, we shouldn't enjoy it above half."

In such a case, the enemy dragons would have a clear advantage, the field guns giving them a space of safety in which to regroup and rest, and providing a zone of danger against which the dragons without infantry support could be pinned. But despite this explanation, Temeraire still sighed, and only grumblingly reconciled himself to knocking down some more trees, for firewood and to clear space for himself and the Prussian dragons, while they waited for the marching infantry to catch up.

In this creeping manner they had covered barely twenty-five miles in two days, when abruptly their orders were changed. "We will be massing first at Jena," Prince Louis said, shrugging ruefully at the vagaries of the senior officers, who continued to meet daily, ferried back and forth by dragon-couriers. "General Brunswick wishes to move all the army together through Erfurt instead."

"First we move not at all, and now we change directions," Laurence said to Granby, with some irritation; they had already gone farther south than Jena and now would have to travel some distance northward as well as west; with the slow pace of the infantry it might mean half-a-day lost. "They would do better to have fewer of these conferences, and to more point."

The army was not assembled around Jena until early October; by then Temeraire was hardly the only one irritated with the pace. Even the most stolid of the Prussian dragons were restless at being held on so short a rein, and strained their necks out westward daily, as if they might win a few more miles by wishing for them. The town was upon the banks of the great Saale River, broad and unfordable, which would serve well as a barrier to defend. Their original destination of Hof lay only twenty miles farther south along its course, and Laurence, studying the maps laid out in the impromptu captains' mess organized in a large pavilion, shook his head; the change of position seemed to him a retreat without cause.

"No, you see, some of the cavalry and infantry have been sent ahead to Hof anyway," Dyhern said. "A little bit of bait, to make them think we are coming that way, and then we pour down on them through Erfurt and W眉rzburg, and catch them still in parts."

It sounded well enough, but there was a small obstacle to the plan, shortly discovered: the French were already in W眉rzburg. The news traveled round the camp