The Dragon Round (Dragon #1)(8)

Solet hears Livion pipe, and the drummer beat double-time, and the rowers groan, reaching the outskirts of their endurance. The crossbowmen aim over his head, and he kneels to avoid taking a bolt in the nape of the neck.

We’ve picked the lock, Solet thinks. Time to lift the lid. “No wasted shots,” he calls out.

The rowers’ deck responds with a scream and another. They sound like pirates trying to terrify a prize.

Solet counts off the yards: four hundred, three hundred . . . At two hundred the dragon drops to the height of the stern deck, wingtips skipping off the water. Its eyes slit. Solet avoids its gaze. He hears Livion piping. The galley swings to larboard. At fifty yards the dragon rears its head. It drops its jaw impossibly wide. Its teeth shimmer.

“Fire!” Solet cries.

The cannons boom. Bolts shriek. Beale’s harpoon only pricks the dragon’s thickly scaled right shoulder before spinning away. Solet’s rips through the membrane at its wingtip and keeps on going. All but one of the bolts misses the dragon’s head, glancing off its cheek or neck, but the one pins the dragon’s tongue to the floor of its mouth. The dragon half chokes on a gout of flame. Drops of fire spatter the deck and men as the dragon roars over the foredeck like an avalanche, scrambling for lift.

Jeryon stands at the front of the stern deck as Solet calls out “No wasted shots.” He’s considering whether to put up the sail again to protect the deck from its breath—could they cut away the flaming sail and let the wind blow it overboard before the mast and yard were damaged?—when the dragon drops. Jeryon sees where its line of attack will take it and thinks, The rigging. “Livion!” he yells. “Larboard! Again. Now!”

Livion sees the danger too and pipes insistently. He pushes the oar as far as it will go. The prow slides off the dragon’s line of attack. He watches Solet and Beale swivel their cannons to compensate, intent on their target. The oars don’t respond, then only Tuse is screaming and the Comber turns more sharply.

The dragon’s jaw drops, and Solet cries, “Fire!”

The dragon’s face jerks to the side, a bolt buried in its tongue. Flames spurt from the corners of its mouth. It blasts over the deck, and that’s when it sees the mast and yard. It bucks, trying to heave itself over them, but its shoulder strikes them where they meet, and catches. For half a heartbeat, the mast bends, lines groan, and the prow rears up as this great fly tries to escape the ship’s web, then the top of the mast snaps off and the dragon hurdles the stern deck. The wind from its wings crumples Jeryon and folds Livion over the steering oar, which levers its blade into the air.

On the rowers’ deck, Tuse hears Solet call out, “No wasted shots!” and he calls out himself, “You hear that? Pull harder! Ram her down its throat!”

Bearclaw screams, and the other prisoners take up the cry, an ululation born of exhaustion and blood fevered with powder. The brothers, as one, suck in a huge breath and let out their own barbaric yawp. Tuse, caught up in the moment, himself hollers. Somehow, through this, he hears Livion piping, and yells, “Quiet! Larboard! Hard! Hard!!” The rowers recover themselves and dig in. The Comber turns, then the dragon’s shadow swamps the rowers’ deck. When it smacks the mast, Tuse is flung over the drummer. The ship is wrenched to a stop.

Half a heartbeat later Tuse hears a snapping as horrible as a skull being crushed. The top half of the mast crashes through the open deck onto the rowers in the larboard quarter. One man kicks as his legs refuse to admit his torso has been crushed.

On the stern deck Jeryon looks up as the top of the mast falls into the rowers’ deck, dragging the yard behind it and toward him like a cleaver. It slices into the stern deck, grinding to a stop just before it reaches his head. He spits splinters off his lips.

The dragon is rising away. Jeryon gets up and yells to Solet, “Reload!” He looks down at the carnage in the rowers’ deck. He hears the moans of pain. “Tuse!” No answer.

Bearclaw cranes his head from under the walkway and says, “Captain. Hey. Your whipper’s conked out on the deck.” A hand emerges from the shadows and slaps Bearclaw’s bloody face. Tuse follows, the top of his head sticking out of the deck.

“We have to maneuver,” Jeryon says.

Tuse makes a quick accounting. “We’ve lost a dozen oars. Don’t know how many men. I have at least another dozen, though, to larboard. We’ll make do.”

The starboard quarter oars rise out of the water to keep the boat balanced. He’ll use them to make sharper turns when the time comes, Jeryon thinks. Smart.

“It’s coming around,” Livion says.

“Same as before,” Jeryon says. “To start.”

He stamps on the stern deck and yells, “Poth! Poth!” Her cabin door rattles, wedged shut. Jeryon calls again. The door bursts open, and Everlyn tumbles out. Jeryon says, “The medicine?”

“Good,” she says. “Me too.”

“They need you below,” Jeryon says. He points to where the mast fell.

She looks into the rowers’ deck. “I’ll get my supplies,” she says.

“And the saw,” Jeryon says.

The prow traces the dragon’s trail across the sky. It’s flying much higher now. Two hundred yards, three, four. It comes around west and heads north. Jeryon pulls in his gaze to look over the galley. “This is going to cost us another hour,” he says, “but we can make it up.”