The Dragon Round (Dragon #1)(63)

Solet remembers something his uncle told him when he was a boy. They were watching a huge storm blow in. Solet said he felt bad for the fish. His uncle said the fish didn’t care. They wouldn’t even know there was a storm. They were safe underwater. That night he dreamed of being a fish, swimming around safe from those above. He swims again now, letting the tide take him farther from shore, plunging ever deeper.

Jeryon caves in Solet’s skull with one last blow to make sure he’s dead and leaves the rock amid the gore. He shakes the splatter off his hands and arms, face and neck, as the green backs away from Gray, its business quickly done. It rolls onto its side and throws its head back, offering her its neck. Gray leaps on it, tearing and gnashing until tooth grates through bone and the green’s head rolls aside. Then Gray moves to its belly and feasts on its innards. She ignores Sumpt’s corpse.

Something settles into the brush off to his side. A branch bends. The leaves behind him whisper. Jeryon rolls aside so only his forearm is slashed by the knife coming at him from the shadows. He pulls himself around a tree. The knife lunges at his knees, but his dragonskin pants stop the blade. Using the tree as both shield and crutch, he stands, but the knife slashes his fingers and a wood and metal box slams his head. He falls on his back. The knife darts at his throat, and he catches the hand bearing it just as it pricks the skin.

A girl straddles him, her eyes as thin and sharp as her blade. He grabs her wrist. She puts her other hand behind her knife and leans on it. He brings up his other hand to hold her off.

The box, a black shadow, hovers above her, but the boy holding it either can’t get a clear shot at his face or is ambivalent about smashing someone while he’s looking at him. If he rolls the girl and gets on top of her, he’ll get the box in the head again.

As the knife inches toward his eye, he realizes he’s seen it before. It’s a flat fingernail knife with a bone handle. He doesn’t want to do this, she’s just a girl, he’s just a boy, but he has to. He whistles.

Mylla’s weight slackens. She knows that tune. It gathers the crew. Why would he whistle it now? She hears a scraping on the sand, then through the underbrush.

Barad takes a step backward and adopts a defensive stance. The gray dragon’s head rises over him, and its mouth opens. He quavers, but doesn’t break.

Mylla jumps off the man and says, “Call it off! Call it off!”

The man stands and touches the boy on the shoulder without taking his eyes off the girl’s knife. The dragon sits and looks at him. The man whispers, “Move away slowly. There you go. Stand beside the girl.” He says to her, “I didn’t come for you.”

Mylla screams at him, “You killed Solet!”

He says, “He killed me a long time ago.”

She screams again, “You killed him!” He starts to protest again when her eyes flick toward the beach. He sees this and smiles. He knows what she is doing: letting the others know where he is.

“Clever girl,” he says and leaps at her. He grabs her knife hand, spins her around to pin her to his chest and drags her, kicking and screaming, to the gray. He climbs into the saddle and sits her before him.

“They’ll put an arrow through me to get to you,” she says.

He’s unconcerned. “Don’t move,” he says, “or you’ll slide off the saddle and tear open your crotch on her spines. Don’t you move either,” he says to Barad, “or I’ll slide her off the saddle myself.”

Barad stops advancing. Mylla stops struggling. As the rider takes her knife, Barad flashes her, “I’ll find you.”

She says, “I know.”

The rider takes the dragon’s reins, kicks her flanks, and turns her onto the beach.

Two archers are moving into a position to shoot, directed by some officers armed with discarded bows. He pressures the dragon with his knees and pulls the reins again, and the dragon lifts off. The rider jerks the reins so she veers this way and that. The girl pushes into him and grabs his arms so she doesn’t fall. Bits of gore unstick themselves from the dragon’s head and spit into their faces. Jeryon easily avoids the arrows shot at them and heads out to sea.

This is not how she imagined her first time riding a dragon. The strange man holds her like a crate waiting to be stacked. He stinks of fish and earth. His beard scratches her skin. His breath is too hot and quick. And she’s not in control. Every time the dragon’s wings are buffeted, he tightens his grip and she shrinks a bit.

Once she’s convinced he’s not planning to throw her off the dragon, she asks, “Where are you taking me?”

The rider says nothing.

“Who are you? You’re Hanoshi. I heard it in your voice.”

The rider starts to say something and stops.

She can’t enjoy the view because there isn’t much of one, despite Med rising. So she memorizes how he controls the dragon, feeling when his legs tense, watching how he works the reins, and leaning herself when he uses his weight.

A few minutes later she spots the Gamo’s wake, milky in the moonlight, and dives. Mylla’s scream is clenched by her throat. She tries to grab the reins, but her brain no longer speaks to her arms. As they approach the stern deck, the rider yells, “Comber!” and the dragon scours the galley with flame from the steering oar to the foredeck. The rider brings the dragon around twice, setting the shutters on both sides of the rowers’ deck alight. The oars collapse like the legs of a man whose neck has been snapped. With the rowers shackled to their benches and the oarmaster and his team trapped below, there’s no one to put the fires out. The rider spirals the dragon up to watch the ship become fully engulfed, collapse in on itself, and sink, leaving only a tower of smoke quickly dissipating into the night.