to either side over the hard icy surface. Happily the ditch-diggers were by now established at a safe distance, watching rather nervously with their officers, and were not singed; but the fire caught in the heap of fallen trees which Temeraire had knocked down.
"Now see what you have done," Temeraire said. "Quickly," he called up, "fetch dirt, and put out the fires."
"Wait," Perscitia said, landing. "If we lay the logs down where you mean to dig the ditches, they will melt the ground, and the men can get warm while they wait."
"See, it has all worked out for the best," Iskierka said to Temeraire, brazenly adding, "I meant it so."
He flattened his ruff and said, "Then you may help put the logs in place, since you have so very cleverly set them on fire before they were lined up properly."
Laurence dismounted as they worked, and went to speak to the sergeant and his men and explain the scheme. "They won't come this way?" was all the man wanted to know, wiping a nervous dirty hand over his blond moustaches, and leaving them streaked and muddy.
"If they do, they will do you no harm," Laurence said, with no more patience, "and they are saving you an afternoon of hard labor after marching. When the fire in the logs has died down, you will find the ground easier to dig, and you may chop up the remains for tinder and sleep warmer tonight than you had any hope of doing."
Wellesley rode up on his dark horse, wrestling to keep it under control, the animal skittish and shy of flames and dragons both. "What the devil are you doing, then?" He did not wait for an answer, but threw an eye over the works and snorted. "Clever as foxes, I see. Well, don't stand there, man," he said to the sergeant. "Go and clear the rest of that brush. Goren, we'll have the wounded over here, nearest the fires. At least they can't get up and run away from the dragons like ninnies: half of 'em haven't legs anymore. And as for you and that beast of yours," he added to Laurence, grimly, "finish here and be at the clearings in an hour, no more: I have words for you I don't care to have interrupted."
The horse and the general wheeled away, aides in train, and Laurence went back to Temeraire, who was pushing the last few logs into place with a broken-off branch, to save his talons from singeing: the fire was still very hot. Demane was already off his back and vanished, as he was wont to do given even five minutes in reach of the ground. "Roland, go and fetch him out," Laurence said, and waited tapping his thigh until she came out of the woods some ten minutes later, half-dragging Demane along: he had a string of rabbits and squirrels already gathered from the wreckage the dragons had made, and looked surly to have been interrupted.
"Go set up a tent in camp, if you can," Laurence said, "and then see what you can do in the way of forage for the dragons. Janus, I am sure you can be of use to Mr. Fellowes, or Mr. Dorset."
"Aye, sir," Janus said.
"You may keep working here until it is done," Temeraire said to Iskierka, rather smugly, "since it was all your notion," and carried Laurence over to the clearings, where Ballista was already improving their comfort by smashing up shrubs and thornbrake with her barbed tail. Perscitia had managed to establish a remarkable bonfire, by setting several of the fallen trees into a tent-pole shape, and using the crushed and pounded wreckage for tinder, although she was now eyeing the towering blaze a little nervously: it had grown a good deal higher than her head.
"A handsome signal," Wellesley said sarcastically, when he came. "It is kind of you to spare Bonaparte the trouble of having to find us in the dark."
"You have a dozen fires lit just over the hill in the other part of camp, so I do not think it makes much difference that this one is a little bigger," Perscitia said, in defensive understatement. "And," she added with sudden inspiration, "this is so bright the Fleur-de-Nuits cannot come near us: it will hurt their eyes too much to see anything else around."
Wellesley only snorted at this justification, and turned to Laurence. "And I suppose you have another such clever explanation you would like to feed me - "
"Sir,"