He washed, as well as he could manage alone, and went back to his cave to think. Perscitia came up to see him, with an interesting mathematical problem, but he looked at it and then 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 were playing a bit of a game, where they tossed tree-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, farther 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 is as much to do with us as if they were trying to take your cave, and more, because they will take everything else along with your cave.”
The little dragons put down their sticks and came nearer to listen, with some interest. “But what do you want to do?” Moncey said.
The official couriers were crossing the countryside in every direction, at all speed, and the afternoon was not yet gone before Moncey and the other Winchesters were able to return, full of all the news which Temeraire could wish. If the numbers reported were perhaps a little inconsistent, that did not matter very much; Napoleon certainly had landed a great many men, all near London, and there had not been any great battle yet to throw him off.
“He is all over the coast, and then the fellows say there is this Marshal Davout fellow poking about in Kent, south of London, and another one, Lefèbvre, who is already somewhere along this way,” Moncey said, pointing out the countryside west of the city, 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 another council-meeting, and everyone came promptly: the other big dragons considerably more respectful now, if Ballista still was patronizing as she said, “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, “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. “Even if the French win, they ain’t going to give us any bother, it will only be someone else taking eggs, just as careful.”
There was a murmur of agreement, and Moncey added, a little plaintively, “And I thought you were on about how unfair the Admiralty are, and not letting us have any liberty.”
“I do not mean to say anything for the Government at all,” 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 only sit here eating cows while Napoleon is trying to take it away, we have no right to complain of anything.”
“Well, what’s there to complain of, then?” Requiescat said. “We have everything as we like it.”
“So you would quarrel over one wet unpleasant cave instead of another, but you would not like 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, because you have never seen anything better, and that is because you have spent all your lives penned up here or in coverts.”
When he had described pavilions for them a little more, and the dragon-city in Africa, and added, “And in Yutien, there were dragons who were merchants, and 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 their crews,” there were not many dragons who did not sigh at least a little, and those who had some little bit of treasure on them looked at it, and many of the rest 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 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 Gentius’s painting, and a really impressed murmur went around: this was better than hypothetical jewels in another 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, anyway; we have all had a go with them before, if we were ever in service. But the men don’t want us unless we take harness and captains, and we cannot just go wandering into battles: we will get circled round and shot up. That is no joke, even for us big ones.”
“If we fight thoughtlessly, just one alone at a time, we will,” Temeraire said, “but there is no reason we must, and we cannot be boarded if we have no harness, or—or anyone to capture. We will be 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 we can do better than that, if we try.”
“Hm, well,” Ballista said; this was a convincing argument, and the general murmur of agreement found it so.
“All right, all right,” Requiescat said. “Very nice story-telling, but it is all a hum. Treasure and battles are well and good, but what d’you mean to do for dinner?”
They landed all together on the grounds the next morning at the feeding time, the cows bellowing invitingly in their pen, and the delicious grassy scent made Temeraire’s tongue want to lick out at the air. But the other dragons all kept the line with him: no one even put their nose out towards the running cattle. The herdsmen prodded the cows forward, with no results, and looked at one another and back at Lloyd, in confusion.
Lloyd began going up and down the line looking up at them all in bafflement, saying to one after another in turn, “Go on, then, eat something,” entreatingly. Temeraire waited until Lloyd came up to him and 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 say 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 inquired.
“Oh!” Lloyd said, in tones of relief. “None of you need worry anything about that. Why, they shan’t come anywhere near, or interfere with the 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; a bit of snow came tumbling 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 Lloyd securely with one eye.