ahead, red velvet curtains streaming from their grasp.
Another twenty minutes' flight brought the Army visible: a sea of redcoats in the churned mud and snow of camp. Temeraire took on height as they came in, so he had a clear lane before him, and then drawing breath roared. The air before them was cold and full of fragile wisps of white cloud, and these gave an ephemeral physical form to the terrible ringing force of the divine wind, breaking before its force into wide striated ripples, very much like the haze of heat which might appear over packed ground or sand in high summer. They melted away nearly at once again, but below, the dragons of the Corps were all putting their heads up from their clearings to watch them coming on, and roaring out in answer, glad greetings, and Temeraire banking took them down in a broad field, on the Army's left flank near about Plumstead.
"Laurence," Temeraire said, as they were settling, "pray will you tell the generals that I am very happy to come and speak to them, but they will need to clear some room at their tent, if it is that large one in the middle of camp, and also they had better do something about the horses."
"I must prepare you, they will certainly not be in the least happy to have you come," Laurence said, "nor take any act towards easing that end."
"Then," Temeraire said, "we will all go away again, and they may fight Napoleon without us. They have asked us to come, and they need our help; they may not treat us like slaves. And we will manage to feed ourselves, I dare say, somehow or other, even if they do not like to keep giving us cows."
Laurence hesitated; he wished to voice some protest, and speak of duty, but justice silenced him. It was surely in no wise Temeraire's duty, nor the duty of any of those dragons, who had never been asked for an oath, nor received any recompense for service. His own duty, he saw less clear. If he were ordered to remain, to serve whether in the field or a sentence of death, there could be no alternative. But he feared the duty demanded of him would be rather to persuade Temeraire to stay - against the dragon's own interests, if necessary.
He was brought to the same tent again, now much altered: the map-tables occupied the lion's share of the floor, unfolded wide, and littered with markers and figures. A steady low arguing was going on in a back chamber which had been added on, through a fresh-cut flap, querulous voices and frightened, and only a few with any note of decision; Laurence could hear Jane's voice rising clear and ringing above them all. He was kept standing silently, trying not to overhear.
A group of young lean unsmiling officers were working over the tables; they looked at Laurence with cold disdain, and then paid him no attention. At length a colonel came out and said to Laurence, icily, "I am to tell you that you will be pardoned, if you can make the dragons fight."
That the remark gave him no pleasure was evident. "Damned disgrace," one of the young men in the corner muttered, without looking up.
"Bring me sixty dragons the hour before a battle and I will pardon your treason, and murder, too," Wellesley said, coming out of the back room. "I don't know what sort of genius of disaster you are, Laurence, but if you can be aimed at Bonaparte instead of us, you are worth not hanging. Can you make the beasts obey?"
"Sir," Laurence said, "I have brought you no dragons; you would better say, the dragons brought me. They do not obey me but Temeraire - "
"And the creature obeys you, that is good enough for me," Wellesley said. "I am not in a mood to have my time wasted with legalities. Do your damned duty, or I will have you hanged, before I go and get myself shot on the field." He snatched a paper from the table and scribbled upon it a few hurried lines, which could have been interpreted in nearly any fashion one chose, and thrust them out.
Laurence looked at the paper, life, liberty, duty all in one; and was nearly grateful to Wellesley for the bribery and threats, distasteful in themselves, which could only make the command easier to refuse.
"You will forgive me, sir," he said, "I cannot make you