you are here," George said. "He is sick, Will: three stone down since August, and the doctors have said he must keep quiet, do you understand, perfectly quiet, if we want him to see another year. He cannot even oversee the estate manager anymore; why do you think I am here? and no wonder, with the worry he has had. If you need money, or someplace to sleep - "
"I am not here for myself," Laurence broke in on him at last, feeling stiff and strange; the idea of his father ill, reduced, seemed unreal. "I am here with the Corps; we must requisition the deer, to feed the dragons. There are nine at present," he added, "and will be more before morning; I did not want you to be alarmed."
"Nine - " George looked towards the deer park, and saw the lights, the shadows of many dragons moving. "Then, you are not lying," he said slowly. "What has happened?"
The news could hardly be concealed. "Trounced us, outside London," Laurence said. "The army is strung out from Weedon to here, and he took ten thousand prisoner. We are falling back on Scotland."
"My God," George said, and they stood together in silence a moment. "Are you staying by the wood?" When Laurence had nodded, George said, "Well - you may take whatever you need of the deer, of course; it is the King's right. There are the stables, and the farmhouse - I will send food down to you all from the kitchens, and your commander, we can give him a bed - " It was all a long string of delaying tactics, and at last he came to it and finished, awkwardly, "I am still not going to have you in, Will; I am sorry."
"No," Laurence said. "No, of course." He might have insisted, for himself or his fellows: it was their right as officers to be quartered, when there was room in the house. But he could not bear to do so. Jane might, if she chose; he could not, himself, force his way in.
"Will you tell me - will he come through here?" George asked him, low. "Ought I send Elizabeth and Mother and the children away, to Northumbria perhaps - "
"I imagine he will send men to take cattle, for his beasts," Laurence said, "but if he marches, he will march up the coast; he cannot leave our outposts behind his flank." He drew his hand across his forehead, tiredly. "I am sorry, I cannot be sure of the counsel I am giving you, but I think there is no place much safer than here, unless you send them to Liverpool and by ship to Halifax."
George nodded again, and turned and went up the stairs. He hesitated at the door, as if he would have spoken again; but in the end he said nothing. He went back inside, and the door shut behind him.
Laurence walked back alone from the house, his feet sure on the familiar lanes despite the dark; no insect sounds or any noise but the sighing of wind, occasionally, shaking the few dried leaves like rattles, drifting the smell of the dragons near, and of smoke. The ground crews of the harnessed dragons were making a little camp, not comfortless; fire at least was easy enough to come by when Granby only needed ask Iskierka for a little. The other captains were standing by it, warming their hands and talking in low voices, tracing the course they should take in the morning.
Some of the dragons were still arriving, who had guarded the rear of the retreat, and others already deep into their dinners, the lean bodies of deer stretched out limp upon the ground. Iskierka was doing the hunting, to the satisfaction of all except the smaller creatures of the forest, who fled out into the open with the panicked deer when she belched a roaring tongue of flame over the timber: mice and rabbits and sparrows, and a few poachers from the village fleeing with their snares.
"We will head onwards to Scotland, to Loch Laggan," Jane was saying, "and wait there for the army to regroup. It will be a precious slow trip for them, but Wellington will pick up twenty thousand men at Weedon Bec guns, and another twenty in Manchester."
"But can we keep the beasts fed along the way, and while we wait?" another woman's voice asked from above, as another Longwing settled. "Mort, be a love and set me down."
Laurence