“We might go another day,” Hollin suggested. “Work our way back towards the Army, sir, asking along the way, and maybe see what anyone has heard about the French. It stands to reason the generals will want to know that anyway, sir.”
Laurence knew he ought to refuse it. It was generosity offered from friendship, not Hollin’s real and considered judgment. “Thank you, Hollin; if you think it justified,” he said at last, the internal struggle lost, or at least some ground yielded. “But we shall go straight towards the camp,” he added, to win back a little of it, and tried to persuade himself perhaps Temeraire had heard, somehow, of the main body of the Army, and gone there. They might find him in Woolwich waiting—but no, that passed the limits of optimism. Temeraire was not waiting, anywhere, if he knew where Laurence was, and likely even if he had not the slightest idea. He had crossed half of Africa without the least notion and found Laurence in the middle of an unfamiliar continent; he would certainly not be discouraged by the need to search all of Britain if need be, even in the middle of a war; and as like as not get himself hurt thereby.
They flew much-interrupted, stopping at any farm with a herd of moderate size, and at any towns with a clearing large enough for a courier; but they got no news, or at least none they wanted. “Lost twenty of my sheep, but not to any dragons; to the French, damn they eyes,” one angry herdsman informed them.
“They are so close?” Laurence said, in dismay; they were yet west of London, much farther than he would have imagined the French had come even in small parties.
The man spat. “Came through here yesterday, pillaging buggers; begging your pardon sir, but it is enough to make a saint swear. Three of my best ewes going into their bellies, and a stud, all because of that lunkhead boy of mine didn’t get them into the hills in time. But there, who thought they would be here so soon?”
The mayor of Twickenham confirmed the French presence. “We have heard from Richmond they were dropped in,” he said, “dragon-back, and they have been all up and down this countryside thieving. Our lads are gone to fight them, north of here; there has been a militia mustered up round Richmond. There are some dragons with them there, sir; was a courier came here to fetch out our boys, as they had heard nothing yet of what to do. But of any loose dragons not a thing have I heard. We will be sure and keep our cattle under cover, though, you may be sure.”
He gave them dinner, very kindly, and waved away Hollin’s offer of payment, if he accepted it for the goat which went to feed Elsie. The mayor’s wife and oldest girl, a few years out of the schoolroom, ate with them, and Laurence was occasionally recalled to his manners enough to make some little conversation, but he was too burdened to be fit company. This fresh intelligence meant they must go back, at once; the generals must know the French had penetrated this far.
“There were some eagles, I hear,” the young woman ventured. “Georgie said, afore he went, the boys from Ham saw two of them.”
That was bad, very bad; two French regiments, and so far from the bulk of Napoleon’s army, that likely meant a Marshal somewhere in the area. The worst of the Marshals were competent alone; acting as the hands of their chief they were dangerous as vipers. There was nothing strategic to be won here, in the west of England, but a great deal of food; food which would keep those French dragons in the air. “Had they cavalry?” he asked abruptly, raising his head. “I beg your pardon,” he added, realizing belatedly he had interrupted a conversation which had moved on without him; Hollin and the young lady had been talking about the places which he saw on his route.
“Oh—I am sorry, sir, I don’t remember Georgie saying so,” she said, abashed at being addressed.
“But I think they do not, Captain,” the mayor said. “They came on foot here, anyway.”
If Napoleon had thrown all his lot onto air power—Laurence was not sure what it might mean. It disregarded all established wisdom about modern warfare, which held that a properly organized force of cavalry and infantry together, supported by pepper guns and artillery, could repel virtually any dragon attack. But no-one had ever heard of a dragon attack of more than fifty dragons before Napoleon’s first attempt at crossing the Channel in the year five; Laurence remembered their general astonishment at his managing to bring together a force of a hundred beasts.
He went outside after the meal, and waited politely and dully while Hollin took Miss—the name had already escaped Laurence—to see Elsie, by her nervous request; the dragon was interested to meet her, ladies not common company for dragons but for the female captains, who rarely dressed for their natural station; and Elsie was quite willing to be petted and offered a blancmange the young lady had made, which she politely licked up from the serving plate in a couple of swipes.
“Why, what a lovely plate,” she said after, with much more enthusiasm, and was visibly sorry to see it drawn back, as it had a gaily painted border in red and blue with a few small touches of silver. “I have never seen anything so pretty,” Elsie added, stretching her head to look at it again.
“Why, it is only an old—” the girl said, and then quickly swallowed the rest, and added, “which I have painted over; I am sure you may have it, if you like it so.”
“Oh,” Elsie said, and said urgently to Hollin, “Will you keep it for me? And perhaps it might be washed, and packed away safe?”
This took another half-an-hour to be done to her satisfaction, with much bobbing of heads and exchanges of compliments on both sides, a happy conversation which went past in a buzz of noise for Laurence, until at last he made an effort, and forced himself to say abruptly, “Hollin, we had better be going.”
“Oh,” the girl said. “But, shan’t you wait for him?” She pointed; and they looked to see another dragon in the sky, coming in their direction.
“A fine thing,” Miller said, “a fine thing. Expected four days ago in camp and I find you here, Captain Hollin, wandering around where you oughtn’t be, and taking a convicted felon into good society.”
Hollin flushed and said sharply, “If I have done wrong, Captain Miller, you may be sure I will explain myself to those as has the right to ask me to account for it. We have been looking for the dragon we was sent to fetch, seeing as how those fellows in the breeding ground have forgot their duty and gone, and the beasts all scattered.”
“What?” Miller said, forgetting to be pompous in his alarm. “All of them gone, out of the grounds? Where have they got to, what have they been eating—”
Miller’s courier beast, Devastatio, was markedly smaller than Elsie, who was big for a Winchester. Hollin had known better than most new young courier-captains how to see about the proper feeding of a dragon, and he had already been on friendly terms with most of the herdsmen around the bigger coverts, a further advantage. Devastatio had landed showily, nearly strutting the last few strides into the clearing, and having realized too late he was outweighed, was now trying his best to puff out his chest, and surreptitiously to climb upon a hillock. Elsie eyed him puzzledly, and then offered, “Would you like to see my plate?”
“Gentlemen,” Laurence said sharply, seeing Miller dragging Hollin through all the narrative of their search. “We have no time for this. The French have been sighted nearby, and we must go and bring the intelligence to camp at once.”