The Dragon Round (Dragon #1)(50)

“Faster,” Rowan mutters.

Flames burst below. Patches of deck darken. The dragon rears its head.

Tuse jams the harpoon home, stops, and scans the galley. Rowan follows his eyes.

The mast is burning like a candle. The sail is about to collapse. The oars are flopping uselessly. Tuse looks at Rowan. He smiles grimly, then hangs the firing rod on its hook, turns to face the dragon, and puts his arms out.

Rowan yells, “What are you doing? Shoot it! Shoot the rider!” Rowan races forward.

Bearclaw says, “Come back, boy!”

He’s small, and the captain is huge, but Rowan knows how to tackle. He’ll save the captain from his madness and get the key. He runs through the dragon’s shadow. Tuse watches it come. The dragon doesn’t enflame him, though. Instead, it flips its back legs forward and snatches Tuse off the deck. The captain screams, the dragon lifts and whirls, and they head south.

Rowan leaps onto the foredeck. He quickly finishes loading. He raises the harpoon as high as it will go. The dragon is a hundred yards away and bobbing each time Tuse kicks. Rowan points the cannon more than he aims. A wave lifts the bow and gives him the extra distance he needs. He takes up the firing rod and stabs the touch hole.

The charge sizzles, and the iron bloops into the falling wave.

“Why didn’t he fight?” Rowan says. “Why did he leave me?” Then he spots something shiny hanging on the firing rod hook. It’s the key. The captain did fight, Rowan realizes, by surrendering himself.

A half-mile away the dragon dives and just above the water drops the tiny speck that is the captain. Rowan is about to yell for someone to get the galley’s dinghy so they can save him when the dragon circles, dives again, and plucks Tuse from the water before continuing south.

The fight isn’t over, though. Rowan runs to the hatch with the key. He’ll free the rowers, even that weasel Bearclaw. They’ll help put out the fires. Then he’ll persuade Edral to follow the rider. The rest can have the dragon. He wants his captain.

3



* * *



Where they’re going Tuse has no idea, and he wonders if Jeryon knows himself. The first time he soared to a thousand feet, Tuse grabbed the dragon’s ankles in case he were dropped. By the fourth time he decided Jeryon was looking for his destination. The trip isn’t so bad except for the uncertainty, the numbness in his shoulders and arms, the vomit covering his blouse, and the frequent dunkings as the dragon rests its claws. Fortunately, Livion made all the Shield’s crewmen learn how to swim, and the waves wash away some of the vomit.

During one dunking he looks north. The pillar of smoke from the Hopper has dissipated. He hopes his crew and not the sea put out the fires.

When an island comes into view hours later and the dragon settles into a gentle descent, gliding out of exhaustion, that’s when Tuse is most frightened. The water’s full of rocks, bars, and reefs and shallow where it’s not. The dragon flexes its claws to keep its grip. Blood trickles down his chest from the points where it does. He can’t lift his arms anymore. He can clench his fists.

He gave up his body to save the boy. He won’t give up his life as easily.

The dragon heads for a beach with more crabs than Tuse has ever seen and a well-worn trail leading into the trees. He braces himself. If he can land on his feet he’ll race up the trail and try to disappear into the woods. At the last second, though, the dragon veers to larboard along a cliff face, skirts the northern side of the island, and dives for an opening along the rocky eastern shore. He sees no trails. Spray blasts over one side, craggy oaks loom over the other, and the shadow of the island’s great column descends like a pestle into a mortar.

The few crabs here scatter as the dragon drops Tuse heavily in the weeds and lands beyond him. He jumps up and bolts for the tree line. The dragon scuttles in front of him, elbow spikes cleating through the scrub. Its quickness defies its ungainliness on the ground. Tuse cuts left, and the dragon corrals him with a wing. He cuts back the other way, and the dragon’s tail hooks him so he falls. Jeryon turns the dragon to face Tuse and dismounts.

Jeryon draws a dragonbone knife with a bamboo handle. Why would the captain fly him here just to slit his throat? He’s not the throat-slitting type anyway. Tuse is hardly relieved when Jeryon removes a coil of cord from a saddlebag. He might be the strangling type.

“Hands behind your back.”

“What are you going to do?” Tuse says as Jeryon slides behind him.

“You should be asking, What is she going to do?”

The dragon says, “Eeee!”

“I just want to talk,” Jeryon says.

“You tore off Press’s head.”

“She did that,” Jeryon says, “not me.”

The dragon stretches out its neck and licks the tip of Tuse’s nose.

Tuse falls on his belly and spreads his arms and legs. Jeryon ties his hands behind his back then he pulls off Tuse’s boots and ties his ankles to his hands. Jeryon searches him thoroughly, including, strangely, the hems of his pants. He has nothing.

“You don’t have to do this,” Tuse says.

Jeryon removes two waterskins from his saddle and pours them down the dragon’s throat. The dragon bobs its head and Jeryon gives it some from a third. Then he takes a long pull himself.

“Can I have some water?” Tuse says.