He did not feel any kind of black mood or anger, such as had occasionally fallen upon him after a defeat; only a great distance. He spoke calmly to his men, and to Temeraire; he had managed to get his hands on a map, at least, of their route to the Baltic Sea, and spent most of his hours studying how to skirt the towns, or how to get back on course after a patrol had forced them to flee out of their way, to a temporary safety. Though Temeraire could cover ground by far more quickly than infantry, he was by far more visible as well, and their progress northward did not much outstrip the rest of the army after all their dodging and evasions. There was little left in the countryside to forage, and they were all going hungry, giving whatever could be spared to Temeraire.

Now, in the ruins of the castle, the men slept, or lay listless and open-eyed against the walls, not moving. Martin and Dunne came back after nearly an hour with one small sheep, shot neatly through the head. “I’m sorry for having to use the rifle, sir, but I was afraid it would get away,” Dunne said.

“We didn’t catch sight of anyone,” Martin added anxiously. “It was off alone; I expect it had wandered away from its herd.”

“You did as you ought, gentlemen,” Laurence said, without attending very much; if they had done anything badly, it would still hardly have been worth reproaching them.

“I take it first,” Gong Su said urgently, catching his arm, when Laurence would have given it straight to Temeraire. “Let me, it will go further. I make soup for everyone; there is water.”

“We haven’t much biscuit left,” Granby ventured to him very quiet and tentatively, at this suggestion. “It would put heart into the fellows, to have a taste of some meat.”

“We cannot risk an open flame,” Laurence said with finality.

“No, not open fire.” Gong Su pointed to the tower. “I build inside, smoke comes out slow, from this,” and he tapped the crevices between the bricks in the wall beside them. “Like smokehouse.”

The men had to come out of the closed gallery, and Gong Su could only go in to stir for a few minutes at a time, coming out coughing and with his face covered with black, but the smoke seeped out only in thin, flat bands which clung to the brick and did not send up any great column.

Laurence turned back to his maps, laid out on top of a broken table-sized block of wall; he thought a few more days would see them to the coastline, and then he would have to decide: west for Danzig, where the French might be, or east to Königsberg, almost surely still in Prussian hands, but farther from home. He was all the more grateful, now, to his meeting with the embassy secretary in Berlin who had given him the now-priceless information that the Navy was out in the Baltic in force—Temeraire had only to reach the ships, and they would be safe; pursuit could not follow them into the teeth of the ships’ guns.

He was working out the distances for the third time when he lifted his head, frowning; men were stirring a little across the camp. The wind was shifting into their faces and carrying a snatch of song, not very tuneful but sung with great enthusiasm in a girl’s clear voice, and in a moment she came into view around the wall. She was just a peasant girl, bright-cheeked with exercise, with her hair neatly braided back beneath a kerchief and carrying a basket full of walnuts and red berries and branches laden with yellow and amber leaves. She turned the corner and saw them: the song stopped mid-phrase, and she stared at them with wide startled eyes, still open-mouthed.

Laurence straightened up; his pistols were lying in front of him, weighting down the corners of his maps; Dunne and Hackley and Riggs all had their rifles right in their hands, being that moment engaged in reloading; Pratt, the big armorer, was leaning against the wall in arm’s reach of the girl; a word and she would be caught, silenced. He put his hand out and touched the pistol; the cold metal was like a shock to his skin, and abruptly he wondered what the devil he was doing.

A shudder seized him, shoulders to waist and back; and suddenly he was himself again, fully present in his own skin and astonished by the change of sensation: he was at once painfully, desperately hungry, and the girl was running away wildly down the hill, her basket flung away in a hail of golden leaves.

He continued the movement and put the pistols back into his belt, letting the maps roll up. “Well, she will have everyone in ten miles roused in a moment,” he said briskly. “Gong Su, bring the stew out; we can have a swallow at least before we must get about it, and Temeraire can eat while we pack. And Roland, Dyer, do you two go and collect those walnuts and crack the shells.”

The two runners hopped over the wall and began to gather up the spilled contents of the peasant girl’s basket, while Pratt and his mate Blythe went in to help carry out the big soup-pot. Laurence said, “Mr. Granby, let us see a little activity here, if you please; I want a lookout up on that tower.”

“Yes, sir,” Granby said, jumping at once to his feet, and with Ferris began rousing the men from their own separate lethargies to begin pushing the broken stone and brick into something like steps up the side of the tower. The work did not go quickly, with the men all tired and shaky, but it gave them more life, and the tower was not so very high; soon enough they had a rope thrown over one of the crenellations of the parapet, and Martin was scrambling up to keep watch, calling, “And don’t you fellows eat my share, either!” to more laughter than this feeble sally deserved. The men turned eagerly to get out their tin cups and bowls as the cauldron came very carefully out, not a drop spilling.

“I am sorry we must go so quickly,” Laurence said to Temeraire, stroking his nose.

“I do not mind,” Temeraire said, nuzzling him with particular energy. “Laurence, you are well?”

Laurence was ashamed that his queer mood should have been so noticeable. “I am; forgive me for having been so out of sorts,” he answered. “You have had the worst of it all along; I ought never have committed us to this enterprise.”

“But we did not know that we were going to lose,” Temeraire said. “I am not sorry to have tried to help; I would have felt a great coward running away.”

Gong Su ladled out the still-thin soup in small sparing portions, half-a-cupful to each man, and Ferris doled out the biscuit; at least there was as much tea as anyone could want to drink, situated as the castle was between two lakes. They all ate involuntarily slowly, trying to make each bite count for two, and then Roland and Dyer went around with the odd unexpected treat of fresh walnuts, a little young and bitter, but delicious; the purplish sloes, too tart for their palates, Temeraire licked up out of the basket as a single swallow. When all had eaten their share, Laurence sent Salyer up in Martin’s place, and had the midshipman down for his own meal; and then Gong Su began heaving the dismembered joints of the sheep’s carcass out of the cauldron one at a time directly into Temeraire’s waiting jaws, so the hot juice would not run out of them and go to waste.

Temeraire too lingered over each swallow, and he had scarcely consumed the head and one leg before Salyer was leaning over and shouting, and scrambling down the rope. “Air patrol, sir, five middle-weights coming,” he panted; a worse threat than Laurence had feared: the patrol must have been sheltering just at the nearby village, and the girl must have run straight to them. “Five miles distant, I should think—”

The meal behind them and the immediate danger before gave them all a burst of fresh energy; in moments the equipment was back aboard, the light mesh armor laid out: they had left behind the armor plates, several escapes ago. Then Keynes said, “For the love of Heaven, don’t eat the rest of the meat,” sharply to Temeraire, who was just opening his mouth for Gong Su to tip in the last mouthfuls.