have finished with this back-talking: since you have spent half the day flying hither and yon, I mean to profit by it, at least. Where is Davout bivouacked, and how many soldiers does he have on the road in reach of us?"
"But I told Hollin to tell you," Temeraire said. "They have all gone back to London."
"There were thirty thousand men behind us yesterday morning," Wellesley said. "I don't care if Bonaparte is chasing them with whips from morning to night and using dragons for supply, they cannot all have got back to the city in a day: you must at least have seen some sign, pickets or fires - "
"Sir," Laurence said, "there was no sign that any of us saw, either the beasts which flew off earlier, or when we pursued them; we saw Davout's regiments making camp around London, and Murat was in the city also."
"And I have already told you all," Temeraire said, "they can go fifty miles in a day, we have seen them do it, so - "
"It is one thing to move a brigade or two by dragon-back," Wellesley said impatiently, "another to move an army: you cannot put much more than two hundred men even on the largest beasts."
"That is not how they do it," Perscitia put in, unexpectedly. The other dragons had all been listening in to the conversation and the lecture with gossipy interest, though hanging back a little; now she put her head forward to interject. "They do not just take a hundred men and fly with them straight, all day. They take a hundred men and carry them as far as they can in an hour, and put them down, and those men start marching from there. And then the dragons go back and get the next hundred men, who you see have been marching all this time, so they are not all the way off, and the dragons take them forward for - "
"Wait, they fly back?" Requiescat said, and with much irritation Perscitia had to interrupt to claw a picture into the dirt, showing how the companies would each in turn be carried leap-frog over those in front of them, each receiving two hours of the dragons' time.
"And so on, until they have carried everyone a little way, and given them all a rest," Perscitia said, "and so the men can walk thirty miles instead of twenty, and the dragons fly everyone twenty miles on top of that, so the whole company has moved fifty miles, together."
She finished triumphantly, and Requiescat said, "Well, it seems like a lot of bother to me, just for an extra twenty miles; even I can make that in an hour or two," and she huffed in indignation.
Wellesley had a better appreciation of her explanation, however, and studied the diagram with a fierce, hawk-like intent. "So this is what Roland has been going on about, then?" He looked at Laurence and said sharply, "And can your beasts manage the same?"
"If the men would go aboard," Laurence answered him.
"They will go aboard if I have to shoot them," Wellesley said.
For all his harsh words, however, the next morning he took the Coldstream Guards apart, and addressed them personally; the seven Yellow Reapers and three Grey Coppers were lined up some distance behind him, facing away so their jaws and teeth could not be seen. They had been rigged out with rope and sackcloth, and his aides were all busily climbing over the dragons - to no purpose but the dramatic, as the rigging had already been thoroughly tried by the dragons themselves tugging on it.
"Men," Wellesley said, "this is a damned sorry state of affairs we are in. That Corsican upstart sleeping in the King's bed, and his bully-boys stealing cattle and wrecking the harvest: it is more than any red-blooded Englishman can bear, and we are not going to bear it, either, for much longer."
"That's right," a couple of men called back; a "hear, hear" and scattered mutterings of agreement.
"Every one of you knows they cannot outfight you, and we have learned they are not outwalking you, either: it is all one of Boney's tricks. Those damned lazy Frenchmen are being carted around half the day on dragon-back, that is how they have been getting the jump on us," Wellesley said, jerking his head back towards the dragons. "It is time we put a stop to it, and your colonel has solicited the honor for your regiment to go first.
"It is