as well as he could manage alone, and went back to his cave to think. Perscitia came up to see him, to present an interesting mathematical problem, but he only glanced at it and said, ‘No. Help me find Moncey; I want to know what has been happening with the war.’
‘Why, I don't know,’ Moncey said, surprised, when they had tracked him down, lazing in a meadow on the mountainside with some of the other Winchesters and small ferals. They had been playing a bit of a game, where they tossed branches upon the ground and tried to pick up as many as they could without dropping any. ‘It's nothing to do with us, you know, not here. The Frenchy dragons and their captains are all kept over in Scotland, further up. There won't be any fighting round here.’
‘It is to do with us, too,’ Temeraire said. ‘This is our territory, all of ours; and the French are trying to take it away. That has as much to do with us as it would if they were trying to take your cave, and more, because they are trying to take everything else along with your cave.’
The little dragons put down their sticks and came closer to listen, with some interest. ‘But what do you want to do?’ Moncey said.
Numerous official couriers were crossing the countryside in every direction, at all speed, and the afternoon was not entirely spent before Moncey and the other Winchesters were able to return, full of as much news as Temeraire could wish for. If the numbers reported were a little inconsistent, it did not matter very much; Napoleon had landed a great many men, all near London, and there had not yet been any great battle to throw him off.
‘He is all over the coast, and the fellows say there is this Marshal Davout fellow poking about in Kent, to the south of London, and another one Lefèbvre, who is already somewhere along this way,’ Moncey said, pointing out the countryside west of the capital, and nearest Wales.
‘Oh, I know that one, he was at the siege of Danzig,’ Temeraire said. ‘I do not think he was so very clever, he did not make a big push to have us out, not until Lien came and took charge of everything. Where is our army?’
‘All fallen back about London,’ Minnow said. ‘Everyone says there is going to be a big battle there, in a couple of weeks perhaps.’
‘Then there is not a moment to lose,’ Temeraire said.
They passed the word for a council meeting, and everyone came promptly: the other big dragons considerably more respectful now, even if Ballista still was patronizing, ‘You are upset, of course, and no wonder; but I am sure if you tell them you would like another captain—’
‘No,’ Temeraire said, the resonance making his whole body tremble, and looked away, while everyone fell quiet. After a moment he was able to continue. ‘I am not going to take another captain,’ he said, ‘and a stranger; I do not need a handler as if I were one of Lloyd's cows. I can fight on my own, and so can any of you.’
‘But what is there to fight for?’ Requiescat said. ‘If the French win, they aren't going to give us any bother, it will only mean someone else taking eggs; they'll be just as careful.’
There was a murmur of agreement, and Moncey added, a little plaintively, ‘And I thought you were always on about how unfair the Admiralty are, not letting us have any liberty.’
‘I do not mean to speak for the Government,’ Temeraire said. ‘But this country is our territory as much as it is any man's; it belongs to us all together, and if we simply sit here eating cows while Napoleon tries to take it away, we have no right to complain of anything.’
‘Well, what is there to complain of, then?’ Requiescat said. ‘We have everything as we like it.’
‘So you will quarrel over a wet unpleasant cave, but you will not fight to sleep in a pavilion, which is never wet or cold, even in winter?’ Temeraire said, scornfully. ‘You only think you have things as you like them to be, because you have never seen anything better, and that is because you have spent all of your lives penned up here or in coverts.’
When he had described pavilions for them a little more, and the dragon-city in Africa, he added, ‘And in Yutien, there were dragons who were employed as merchants. All of them had heaps of jewels – only tin and glass, Laurence said, but they were very pretty anyway; and in Africa they had gold enough to put it on all of their crew members.’ There were not many dragons present who did not sigh at least a little; those who wore their small treasures looked at them, and many of the unadorned looked at them, wistfully.
‘It all sounds a lot of gimcrackery to me,’ Requiescat said.
‘Then you may stay here and have my cave, which is not a quarter as nice as a pavilion,’ Temeraire said coolly, ‘and when we have beaten Napoleon and taken many prizes, you shan't have a share; Moncey will have more gold than you.’
‘Prizes!’ Gentius said, rousing unexpectedly. ‘I helped in taking a prize once. My captain had a fourteenth share. That is how she bought the picture.’
Everyone knew of Gentius's painting, and an impressed murmur went around: this example proved better than hypothetical jewels in a country which none of them had seen.
‘Now, now, settle down,’ Ballista said, thumping her tail, but with a considerably more lenient air. ‘Look here, I suppose no one much wants the French to beat us, we have all had a go with them before, if we were ever in service. But the corps don't want us unless we take harness and captains, and we cannot just wander into battles: we will get circled and shot up. That is no joke, even for us big ones.’
‘If we fight thoughtlessly and singularly, we will,’ Temeraire said, ‘but there is no reason we must do that, and we cannot be boarded if we have no harness, or—or anyone to capture. We will form our own army, and we will work out tactics for ourselves, not stuff men have invented without bothering to ask us even though they cannot fly themselves. It stands to reason that we can do better than them, if we try.’
‘Hm, well,’ Ballista said to his convincing argument, and the general murmur of agreement found it so too.
‘All right, all right,’ Requiescat said. ‘Very nice storytelling, but it is all a hum. Treasure and battles are well and good, but what d'you mean to do for dinner?’
The next morning, they landed together on the grounds at the feeding time. The cows in their pen were bellowing invitingly, and their delicious grassy scent made Temeraire's tongue want to lick the air. But the other dragons all kept the line with him: no one even turned their nose toward the running cattle. The herdsmen prodded the cows forward with no results, and then looked at each other and back at Lloyd, in confusion.
Lloyd began pacing up and down the line of dragons looking up at them all in bafflement, saying entreatingly to one after another in turn, ‘Go on, then, eat something.’ Temeraire waited until Lloyd came up to him, then bent his head down and said, ‘Lloyd, where do the cows come from?’
Lloyd stared at him. ‘Go on, eat something, old boy,’ he repeated feebly, so it came out as a question more than a command.
‘Stop that; my name is Temeraire, or you may call me sir,’ Temeraire said, ‘since that is how to speak to someone politely.’
‘Oh, ah,’ Lloyd said, not very sensibly.
‘You have heard that the French have invaded?’ Temeraire enquired.
‘Oh!’ Lloyd said, in tones of relief. ‘None of you need worry anything about that. Why, they shan't come anywhere near here, or interfere with your cows. You shall all be fed, the cows will come here every day, there's no call to save them, old boy—’
Temeraire raised his head and gave a small roar, only to quiet him; snow tumbled down the slope on the other side of the feeding grounds, but it was not very much, a foot perhaps, scarcely deep enough to dust his talons. ‘You will say sir,’ he told Lloyd, lowering his head to fix the groundsman securely with one eye.
‘Sir,’ Lloyd said, faintly.
Satisfied, Temeraire sat back on his haunches and explained. ‘We are