The Dragon Round (Dragon #1)(58)
Through a rent in the dragon’s wing, Mylla sees Barad flash the strangest thing: “He’s coming.”
3
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Bodger, the Gamo’s larboard harpooner, reloads. He barely feels the shrapnel embedded in his skin, he’s so furious that his first shot went through the wing. After an engagement, the captain, mates, and harpooners discuss every shot, and a miss will cost him part of his monthly. Worse, Gibbery, the starboard harpooner, is offering him smug suggestions for improvement. Gibbery could care less if he hits nor does he care about money, which he gambles away. He loves the hunt, and he’d be just as happy with a shortbow in the woods, waiting for a turkey to waddle by. Bodger doesn’t have that luxury. He has family, most too young or too injured to work. He decides he’ll shoot the dragon’s rump. A cheap shot, but at this point they just have to hold it.
“What is that?” Gibbery says. A thick gray line waves in the sky.
“Another dragon,” Bodger says. This one’s much smaller than the green, but he bets it will circle around the green and give him a perfect target. He pivots the cannon and readies the firing rod. This prize is all his. And the bonus for taking it.
Mulcent stalks to the porthole, which gives a view of the darkening sea, the dismal shore, and the first glimpses of the southern constellations. The Crow. The Cup. The Water Snake. His brother had known them all. From the time they were boys, all his brother had dreamed about was sailing the world like their grandfather and father. He’d made a list of the cities he would visit, creatures he would see, and tastes and smells he would experience. Mulcent, though, knew the real adventures were in the counting books, plus they offered no chance of drowning the way his brother eventually did.
He puts his goggled eye to the spyhole in the door as an explosion lights up the dragon’s wings, then debris shreds them. The Gamo jerks back, and Mulcent’s nose is mashed against the door. Blood trickles over his top lip. He has to put a stop to this misadventure. He figured Solet’s reports underplayed the risks he took, but not by this much.
Sumpt staggers into view, his bottle near empty, debris fluttering around him, pepper getting into his unprotected eyes. Mulcent’s guards try to corral him, and Mulcent takes the opportunity to slip out.
“Magnificent!” Sumpt says to the air as Mulcent passes them. “What a creature. I will have its foot for a wastebasket.”
Mulcent runs to the foredeck where he sees Bodger bent over his cannon, firing rod in hand. No more chains, Mulcent thinks. He rushes the harpooner and grabs his arm.
The harpooner, shorter than him, but solid as an iron, wheels around in confusion, then pushes Mulcent forward. They fall together off the foredeck. Mulcent feels every breath he’s ever taken crushed from his body. Over the man’s ham of a shoulder he sees a small gray dragon rip past the bow and up the larboard rail. Was someone riding it? This harpooner just saved his life. He should be rewarded in some way. Fortunately Mulcent travels with a sleeve of commemorative coins for just such an occasion.
With the Pyg’s chains broken by the explosion, the Gamo heaves toward shore, and the green dragon twists between it and the Kolos. The Pyg emerges from behind the dragon’s wing, backrowing and turning sharply in order to drag its shattered bow to shore before the galley goes under.
Mylla flashes Barad, “Who is ‘he’?” He doesn’t respond with his candlebox. Instead he points behind her.
She turns as the dragon tears over the stern deck. She yells, “Someone’s riding it!” It isn’t possible. The tales she read often featured people riding dragons, but no one ever had, at least not for long. She would do anything to ride a dragon. She notes the saddle, the packs, the spears, the bearded man in his strange black outfit, the object he drops to the stern deck, before everything speeds up again and the gray heads for the Pyg.
“Barad!” Mylla yells, as if the boy could hear her, then flashes, “Look out!”
The gray dragon swathes the Pyg’s stern deck with flames. Her captain leaps over the side, nearly incinerated by the time he splashes into the water. Her steersman disappears altogether. Barad leaps to the main deck, but she can’t tell if the flames caught him. “No!” she whispers and immediately hopes Solet and Jos didn’t hear that.
The Pyg’s oarmaster, Kley, unaware of the casualties on the stern deck and not hearing any piping to straighten out the galley, lets the rowers continue turning until the galley’s stern is aimed at the Gamo and they are headed right for each other. Before Solet can open his mouth, Jos pipes “all stop” as loud as he can, over and over, until both the Gamo and the Pyg drag oars. The Pyg pulls up twenty yards from the Gamo’s larboard side.
Solet claps Jos on the back. He doesn’t know what he’ll say to his sisters, but one of them will have this man. He may not be of the sea, but he certainly owns it.
Through the smoke and confusion Mylla sees flashing from the Pyg’s waist: “You all right?” She sighs with relief.
Solet sees the flashing and the sigh. Well played, Barad.
One of the Pyg’s stern shutters flips up. A face appears: the powder boy. Solet yells, “Kley is captain. And first mate. You’re his eyes. Get to shore.” The powder boy relays the message to the oarmaster. The Pyg pivots and heads inland double-time. They might actually make it, Solet thinks, and I am going to salvage this day.