Victory of Eagles Page 0,30

his head and gave a small roar, only to quiet him; a bit of snow came tumbling down the slope on the other side of the feeding grounds, but it was not very much, a foot perhaps, scarcely deep enough to dust his talons. "You will say sir," he told Lloyd, lowering his head to fix Lloyd securely with one eye.

"Sir," Lloyd said, faintly.

Satisfied, Temeraire sat back on his haunches and explained. "We are not staying here," he said, "so you see, it is no help to say the cows will be here. We are going to fight Napoleon, all of us; and we need to take the cows with us."

Lloyd did not seem at first to understand him; it required the better part of an hour to work it into his head that they were all leaving the grounds together and did not mean to come back, and then he began to be desperate, and to beg and plead with them in a very shocking way which made Temeraire feel wretchedly embarrassed: Lloyd was so very small, and it felt bullying to say no to him.

"That is quite enough," Temeraire said at last, forcing himself to firmness. "Lloyd, we are not going to hurt you or take away your food or your property, so you have no right to go on at us in this way, only because we do not like to stay."

"How you talk; I'll be dismissed my post for sure, and that's the least of it," Lloyd said, almost in tears. "It's as much as my life is worth, if I let you all go out wandering wild, pillaging farmers' livestock every which way - "

"But we are not going pillaging, at all," Temeraire said. "That is why I am asking you where the cows come from. If the Government would feed them to us here, they are ours, and there is no reason we cannot take them and eat them somewhere else."

"But they come from all over," Lloyd said, and gesturing to his herdsmen added, "The drovers bring a string every week, from another farm. It is as much as all of Wales can do, to feed you lot; there's not one place."

"Oh," Temeraire said, and scratched his head; he had envisioned some very large pen, somewhere over the mountains perhaps, full of cows waiting to be taken out and carried along. "Well," he decided, "then you all will have to help: you will go to the farms and fetch the cows and bring them along to us, and that way," he added, with a burst of fresh inspiration, "no-one can complain to you, or sack you, because you will not have let us go off at all."

This solution did not immediately promote itself to the herdsmen, who began to protest: some of them had families, and none of them liked to go to war. "No, that is all stuff," Temeraire said. "It is your duty to fight the French as much as it is ours; more, because it is your Government, and it would press you if you were needed; I have been to sea with many pressed men. I know it is not very nice," he added, although he did not entirely see why they did not like to go; anywhere was certainly better than this loathsome place, and they would be doing something, and not only sitting about, "but if Napoleon wins, that will also not be very nice, and anyway, I dare say the Government will stop your wages if they learn you are sitting here with no dragons about. And if you come, we will give you a share of the prizes we take."

Prizes proved a magical word with men as well as dragons, as did the general conviction arrived at among the men through a deal of quiet muttering, that if they did not go, they should certainly be blamed, but no-one could complain they had not done their duty, if they followed the beasts when they ran off. Or at least, it would be more difficult to find them to complain.

"We might be ready soon as next week," Lloyd said, one last gasping attempt. "If you'd all just have a bite to eat, and a bit of sleep - "

"We are leaving now," Temeraire said, and rising up on his haunches called out, "Advance guard, aloft; and you may take your breakfast, too."

Moncey and the small dragons all gleefully leapt onto the herd, first for once, and went