a few more of his laborious steps, he would be placed to try and stab at Temeraire's spine. "Take hold the harness," Laurence said, to his small crew, and called forward, "Temeraire! We are well-secured, turn over and shake him free - "
The world spun sickeningly, and for all his effort Laurence's hands pulled loose from the harness, and left him dangling by the carabiner straps as they turned, once and twice spiraling, and righted again; all of them a little green from the close and rapid turn, and the two knife-hilts standing up alone from Temeraire's back, the small cuts trickling a little blood down his side.
"That has torn it, sir," Emily said, pointing; and Laurence nodded. The French had noticed their lack of success, and the loss of men: they were no longer trying to board, but turning a steady rifle-fire upon the beasts instead. Quicker than he might have hoped; but their attempts had borne some fruit, at least, and many of the French middle-weights and light-weights, who had so daringly come in close to the decoyed British heavy-weights, had paid for it dearly as well: blood ran freely down many a side, black and steaming in the cold air.
"Throw out a signal, Mr. Allen: we are made," Laurence said, and leaned forward. "Temeraire, you had better pull away now, and go for their flank - they have a weakness, there on their right; do you see it?"
"No," Temeraire said, rather reluctantly detaching himself from the P锚cheur-Couronne he was presently mauling about, who had with more valor than sense made a run directly at him. But the movement of men below caught his interest, after a glance. "Wait; I do, where that ditch is in their way, and they are having to go around - "
"Yes," Laurence said: the French lines were compressed, awkwardly, where the men were crowding to advance, and they made an ideal target for an aerial strike, which should drive a hole into Napoleon's flank not easily repaired. "Quickly, before they have got past - "
"Alors, la prochaine fois vous feriez mieux d'y reflechir a deux fois," Temeraire said to the smaller beast, before with a final lecturing shake he let it flee, and turning towards his fellows gave a roar unlike any Laurence had heard from him before: an odd inflected sort of sound, rising and falling in almost an eerie musical way. It pulled the attention of the other unharnessed beasts quickly, and they came peeling away from their individual battles with the French beasts, as the formal ranks of the Aerial Corps charging forward took their place.
As Temeraire banked away, Laurence turned in his straps to watch: the ranks of the harnessed beasts of the Corps were coming, not in their usual arrow-head formations, but drawn out into a single thin line of light-weights and courier-beasts and middle-weights. At intervals there was a small cluster: two middle-weights in front with a heavy-weight behind, like knots on a string; Maximus made one of them, red-gold and roaring, behind Messoria and Immortalis.
As the two forces met, the middle-weights clawed their way into the cloud of French light-weights, opening room for the heavy-weights to bull through behind them; the lighter British dragons engaging also, but only a little, slashing and continuing on, so the whole line advanced together through the French ranks, scattering them above and below.
It was as neat an answer as could be imagined, to the harrying French strategy, and now the heavy-weights were through and swooping with their tremendous loads of munitions: bombs and spikes dropping like a black iron rain down upon the French infantry and their gun emplacements. Laurence could see Excidium, those vast purple-and-orange wings spread wide as the Longwing darted low with a protective guard of two heavy-weights, and another who must have been Mortiferus, with a yellower cast to his wing-tips, on his flank. Their acid caught morning sun and sparkled, descending, and a hot grey cloud of smoke and agony rose in its wake.
The gap in the French defenses did not last for long; the French dragons regrouped and flung all their heavy-weights in a mass after the Longwings: three Petit Chevaliers, a couple of Defendeur-Braves, a marbled orange-yellow Chanson-de-Guerre. Together they massed some hundred tons and more, and descending with ferocity they could not be turned aside. Excidium and Mortiferus were forced back up into the safety of the British line, the other British heavy-weights turning to cover their escape, and the quick