Victory of Eagles. Naomi Novik

to fight Napoleon and we need to take the cows with us.’

      Lloyd did not seem to understand him at first; it required the better part of an hour to work it into his head, that they were all leaving the grounds and did not mean to come back. When it did, he became desperate, and began to beg and plead with them in a very shocking way, which made Temeraire feel wretchedly embarrassed: Lloyd was so very small, and it felt like bullying to say no to him.

      ‘That is quite enough,’ Temeraire said at last, forcing himself to be firm. ‘Lloyd, we are not going to hurt you or take away your food or your property, so you have no right to carry on at us in this way, only because we do not like to stay.’

      ‘How you talk; I'll be dismissed from my post for certain, and that's the least of it,’ Lloyd said, almost in tears. ‘It's as much as my life is worth, if I let you all go out wandering wild, pillaging farmers' livestock every which way—’

      ‘But we are not going pillaging, at all,’ Temeraire said. ‘That is why I am asking you where the cows come from. If the Government would feed them to us here, they are ours, and there is no reason we cannot take them and eat them somewhere else.’

      ‘But they come from all over,’ Lloyd said, and gesturing to his herdsmen added, ‘the drovers bring a string every week from a different farm. It is as much as all of Wales can do, to feed you lot; there's not one place.’

      ‘Oh,’ Temeraire said, and scratched his head; he had envisioned a very large pen, somewhere over the mountains perhaps, full of cows waiting to be taken out and carried along. ‘Well,’ he decided, ‘then you all will have to help: you will go to the farms and fetch the cows and bring them along to us. That way,’ he added, with a burst of fresh inspiration, ‘no one can complain to you, or sack you, because you will not have let us go off at all.’

      This solution did not immediately promote itself to the herdsmen, who began to protest: some of them had families, and none of them wished to go to war. ‘No, that is all stuff and nonsense,’ Temeraire said. ‘It is your duty to fight the French as much as it is ours; more, because it is your Government, and it would press you if you were needed. I have been to sea with many pressed men; I know it is not very nice,’ he added, although he did not entirely see why they did not like to go; anywhere was better than this loathsome place, and at least they would be doing something, rather than sitting about, ‘but if Napoleon wins, that also will not be very nice, and anyway, I dare say the Government will stop your wages if they learn that you are sitting here with no dragons about. And if you come, we will give you a share of the prizes we take.’

      Prizes proved to be a magical word with men as well as dragons, as did the general conviction, arrived at through a deal of quiet muttering, that if they did not go with the dragons, they should certainly be blamed for the desertion; but no one could complain they had not done their duty if they followed the beasts. Or at least, it would be more difficult to find them.

      ‘We might be ready soon as next week,’ Lloyd said, with one last gasping attempt. ‘If you'd all just have a bite to eat, and a bit of sleep first—’

      ‘We are leaving now,’ Temeraire said firmly, and rising up on his haunches called out, ‘Advance guard, aloft; and you may take your breakfast with you.’

      Moncey and the small dragons gleefully leapt onto the herd, first for once, and went eating as they flew; it was perhaps a little messy, but much quicker to eat as one went. Minnow swallowed the head of her cow, and waved a wing-tip. ‘We will see you at the rendezvous,’ she called down. ‘Come on then pips, off we go,’ she said to the other courier-weights and they all stormed away rapidly northwards and east, along the planned route.

      ‘Now can we eat?’ Requiescat said, watching after them plaintively.

      ‘Yes, you may all eat, but have half now and take the rest to eat along the way, otherwise you will fly slowly, and be hungry again anyway at the end of it,’ Temeraire said. ‘Lloyd, we are going to Abergavenny, or outside it, anyway; do you know where that is?’

      ‘We can't drive the herd all that way by tomorrow!’ Lloyd said.

      ‘Then you will have to bring them as close as you can and we will manage somehow,’ Temeraire said; he was done listening to difficulties. ‘I have seen Napoleon's army fight, and within a week they will be in London, so we must be, also.’

      ‘We are a hundred fifty miles from London,’ Lloyd protested.

      ‘All the more reason to travel fast,’ Temeraire said, and flung himself into the air.