He led them all aloft, high aloft, and spreading out along in parallel to the French line they let the bundles go: Iskierka shot after them eagerly, flames licking from her jaws in one burst after another, and the unraveling bundles caught with bright blue and yellow flames as they fell through the air.
The French dragons recoiled from the fireballs dropping into their faces, fouling their smooth line. “Now, at once,” Laurence said urgently, pointing at the weaknesses in their line. “That Chanson-de-Guerre, and that Defendeur-Brave—”
“Ballista, do you see?” Temeraire called, and she waved her tail like a flag to show she had heard: a swarm of Yellow Reapers dashed after her as she charged the marbled yellow-brown Chanson-de-Guerre. “Quickly, with me,” Temeraire said, to the lightweights, “and do you want to come with us?” he asked Perscitia.
“No, I do not,” she said, hastily circling away, “and anyway,” she called back over her shoulder, “I will go see if I can make more of those bundles; although I think I have used all the spirits that were in the supply-waggons—”
Temeraire did not have time to listen to any more: they were hurrying down straight for the Defendeur, who had swerved to avoid a particularly large one of the fireballs, that had left a thick trail of smoke behind. His flank was open now and unprotected for a moment by the line, and the Grey Copper Rictus darted in and opened a great slash along the line of his shoulder, nearly severing one strap of his harness.
The Defendeur bellowed in pain and hunched himself towards the wound: a wide gaping slice stark red against the golden brown and green of his hide. “Hah!” Rictus called, and then squalled as the Defendeur snapped out his hook-ended tail and caught him full in the belly: a more dreadful and dangerous wound, on so much smaller a beast, and Rictus was borne crying away by one of the Anglewings.
But he had opened an avenue for attack, and Velocitas flung himself to the Defendeur’s rear, baiting the slashes of his tail and swerving this way and that, so the other Anglewings and the Grey Coppers could make darting attempts on the Defendeur’s head; and when the riflemen had all been flung off their feet, Minnow threw herself into the melee, landed upon the big dragon’s back, and snatched away one of the men in her talons.
“There, that’s your captain,” she called, waving the poor man, and the French dragon roared furiously and went after her in a rush, bowling over one of the Anglewings and breaking the French line completely, as Minnow raced away towards the British clearings with her prisoner.
“That is a little hard,” Temeraire said, feeling rather sorry for the poor dragon, and making a note Minnow should never again ride upon his own back, while Laurence was there; he had not thought she was quite so unscrupulous as to steal in the middle of a fight. But he could not deny it had been very handy, at getting the big dragon away, and now he himself might clear away great swaths of middle-weights, just by roaring to either side of the gap the heavy-weight had left.
Requiescat was engaged with the Grand Chevalier in the next section of the line, and though he might have had a little edge in weight, her advantage in having a crew was telling against him: a steady rifle-fire was peppering his massive sides, and had left a great many small holes visible in his wings, and she cleverly took every opportunity to position herself higher aloft, where he was forced to dodge one bomb after another which her bellmen flung against him. Temeraire saw that on their flank, too, the harnessed dragons of the Corps were only just barely holding off the vast right wing of l’Armée de l’Air, also advancing, and they would soon all be forced into a tangled mess together.
“There are ships coming,” Majestatis said, looping nearby.
“What?” Temeraire said.
“Ships,” Majestatis said laconically. “Out to sea. You can see them if you go over that cloud.”
And then the trumpets were at last, at last sounding the order to yield the center, with a shrill note, and there was no time to look; the squares below were falling back into column and marching away, and Temeraire had at once to be sure everyone was flying away properly, to either flank as they were meant to do. “Remember, we are to meet again behind their lines!” he called urgently, nipping an over-excited Anglewing who had started to fly the wrong way.
The French soldiers were charging forward more quickly now, and their dragons were stooping. “Surely we ought not just fly away—they will have our men in a moment,” Temeraire said urgently over his shoulder to Laurence.
“Go!” Laurence said; he was looking through his glass at the sea. “Go at once! You must get clear of the center, and aloft—”
Temeraire pulled away, with a last anxious look over his shoulder; but as he did, he was startled to see the last of the Coldstream Guards throwing themselves flat upon the ground instead of marching away farther, and then a roar of thunder erupted from the fogbank, smoke and orange flame.
He broke over the top of the cloud-bank and saw them in that moment: sixteen ships-of-the-line, and the enormous gold-blazoned Victory at their head, with Nelson’s admiral’s flag flying from the mast. All of them together were unleashing their full broadsides directly into the front rank of the French dragons and men, clouds of black smoke enveloping them even as the fog at last spilled off their sails and prows.
The French dragons came down in shocking numbers. The heavy-weights, one target after another, were struck with cannonballs: wings shattering and bones cracked, they came down into their own infantry below them. A few only managed with faltering beats to carry themselves out over the remaining laggard lines of British infantry and smash them. The great Grand Chevalier crashed through the lines and dragged so far along the ground that she ended at last in the surf, shattered and still, her head rising and falling limply with the choppy waves as they crashed upon her shoulders.
Temeraire felt a queer, confused shudder of sympathy, his wings wanting to come forward, as if to protect his own breast. The trumpets were blowing again, and the British artillery on the flanks, whose force had all this while been blunted, opened a deadly hail of canister-shot against the rear and flanks of the French infantry, chasing them forward into the endless rain of cannon-fire from the ships.
“Temeraire!” Laurence called, and he started: Excidium was roaring out the signal, distantly, and he was not yet in place! He flung himself hastily back—he no longer felt tired at all, the urgency of the moment trembling along his wings. He gathered up the others who also had been distracted by the dreadful spectacle, all of them flying to join the dragons of the Corps in a great single body, nearly a hundred of them all together, and as one they roared and charged the French reserves.
The French soldiers were already reeling from so visible a disaster—the falling dragons could be seen for a good mile, and the wind was blowing harder now, clearing at last the clouds and fog. Nelson’s flagship was plainly visible off the shore, the admiral’s flag streaming out brilliant white and crossed with red, and the ships in line-of-battle ranged alongside Victory—the Minotaur and the Prince of Wales, and all the rest of the fleet returned from Copenhagen, and some six prizes beside them, each one pounding away now at the shore.
The French broke, at the attack from their rear, and fled; but there was nowhere to run but into the waiting maw, a withering cross-fire of Navy and Army guns at the ready to receive them. The British infantry marched at a steady trot into the emptied space, and Temeraire heard Lien at last—she was calling frantically as the infantry divided her and the last French aerial reserves from Napoleon and his Guard.