so advantageous a position - "
"And if we are forced to yield it?" Wellesley said, dryly; there was marshy ground on their western flank, sodden with snow; but no-one would discuss this difficulty.
"He has moved quicker than we had expected, but we must not let this throw us into disarray," General Dalrymple continued. "That is how the Prussians ran into trouble - letting him cast them into confusion, changing their minds and their ground ten times a day."
"Sir, I beg your pardon," Laurence said, unable to restrain himself. "That a lack of decision plagued the Prussian army, I cannot deny; but they were outfought, sir, on open ground - "
"With this trick of horse-blinders you have gone on about, in your report," Dalrymple said. "You may set your mind at ease," he added, in ironic tones, which said without a word how little he trusted Laurence's anxiety, "we have not discounted what of your intelligence could be confirmed; our horses have their own damned hoods now, and if Bonaparte thinks he will stampede us with a few dragon-charges, he will soon learn otherwise."
"And this time, Bonaparte has let his thirst for speed outpace his sense," another general said. "All the scouts agree, even the beasts," he added coldly in Jane's direction, before she had said a word, "that he has not brought up all his army yet. He has some thirty thousand men, not fifty; we are not far short of him even without our levies and reinforcements."
"You will be a damn sight shorter by morning," she answered, "if you mean to lie here and be bombarded. And my scouts have made thirty thousand, but that does not mean there are not more to come."
"You have caterwauled without a stop how we must have these sixty more dragons," another officer, a colonel, said belligerently, "and swallow treason and 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 round-shot on our heads. If they are of no use here, they are of no use 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, and not looking up. He beckoned to his aide and thrust out a map to 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 Lef猫bvre'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 should have sixty less dragons, and Lef猫bvre 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, and Temeraire growled, deep in his throat, and lowered his head with his ruff up sharp.
Briefly, he had perhaps become to them only 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 lowered head with the eyes half-a-foot across and glittering yellow-slitted like lamps, over a jawful of serrated teeth with the smallest the size of a man's hand. It was too palpable a reminder that they were in the presence of a creature who could have, with a stroke, killed them all, and with very little effort to himself. To Laurence, Temeraire could never seem viscerally a threat; but he had handled the dragon from hatchling to maturity, and remembered him a creature scarcely larger than a dog.
"Laurence has oaths and duty to you, and he would let you hang him, although I do not understand why," Temeraire said after a moment, low and angrily. "And I cannot make him come away with