“But it is far more pleasant to do the fighting, and have someone else bring your dinner,” Temeraire said. “I do not understand why anyone should agree to do it.”
Chu shrugged. “They are paid twice, of course.”
“Oh,” Temeraire said, with a nearly longing sigh. “Twice?”
“General,” Laurence said, listening to their exchange in some surprise; it had not occurred to him that dragons might be paid at all, “might it be possible to bring on a few more such dragons to aid with our own company’s supply?”
Chu immediately bowed to him formally and said, “It will be done at once,” and vanished off issuing orders before a startled Laurence could even say he had only meant to ask, and not to command. By dawn the next day three more blue dragons had joined their own party, bringing carrying-harnesses, and the much-relieved ground crewmen were given leave to be carried on their backs.
Laurence began to suspect that he had merely given Chu an excuse for what the general must have longed to do: the blue dragons and their crews managed to snatch away all the supply meant to go in the belly-netting while the British dragons were refreshing themselves at the fountain, and they were already packed and waiting expectantly for boarding before anyone had seen what they were about. Harcourt uncertainly said, “Well, I suppose it would be churlish of us to insist they give us back our baggage,” and the dragons went aloft with only their officers, with a marked increase in speed.
“I would be glad to be enlightened,” Chu said to Temeraire as they flew that day, “why the rest of those men may not go and ride aboard the porters also.”
“Well,” Temeraire said, “the officers are needed in battle, of course: if we should be attacked by surprise, we would not like to be taken aback.”
“Ah,” Chu said. “And may I inquire why we are to expect an ambush under the present circumstances?”
This was a fair-enough question. Their company had ceased to grow day by day, but it did not need to grow any further; it was difficult to envision so massive a force meeting with any kind of truly unexpected attack. Laurence had not known what three jalan would be, neither had any of them: it was staggering to think that a company of this size might be so casually assembled, and sent to deal with a mere provincial unrest. He did not think he had heard of forty dragons being brought together in England since the Armada.
“We had sixty at Shoeburyness,” Granby said that night, over their own helpings of porridge, “during the invasion; and Napoleon brought over a hundred, though he had to send a good number of them back. So it’s been done, but not at the drop of a handkerchief, I will say.”
It was plainly the substitution of porridge for raw cattle which made so vast a difference in what force could be fielded, Laurence supposed: he would have expected it to take more of a toll on the size and strength of the beasts, but though none of the Chinese soldier-dragons approached the sheer massive bulk of Kulingile or Maximus, they were by no means undersized.
“For my part, I should not mind sending our men onto those porters,” Sutton said: Messoria’s captain, the oldest of them, and a fellow of much seniority. “I expect Chu would like us all to fly lighter, and I cannot blame him; we are bounding their speed.”
Captain Berkley grunted his own agreement, setting down his mug of beer. “I will tell the fellows to strip Maximus bare,” he said, “and have them go aboard those blue dragons: I can cling on to a neck-strap well enough by my own solitary self. Do you suppose they will really let us take these beasts, after this rebellion of theirs is put down, only because we’ve pranced about and waved a sword with them?”
“If so, I would call the help cheap at the price,” Sutton said, and all the aviators murmured in agreement. “I would be glad to see Boney’s face if we show up on his eastern doorstep with these forty fellows at our backs: a nasty shock for him, I would say, and all the more so with the Army in the Peninsula nipping at him from that side. He won’t be looking for us to have so many beasts, not after—”