The Dragon Round (26 page)

When the harpooners pause, the dragon drops its head to its chest. The men from the
Gamo
scatter. A gob of acid splashes over the cannons. Bodger and Gibbery follow the other men who've decided, despite their officers' orders, to cede the beach to the dragon. Solet crouches behind a tree. Ynessi never cede anything.

The green drops to all fours and slams Sumpt to the beach. There's a horrid snap. Sumpt screams. His head lolls back so he can see Solet. “Shoot me,” he sobs.

Solet doesn't move. The gray says, “Eeee!” which captures the other dragon's attention. The green finds its last reserve of strength, lifts Sumpt up to show him to the gray, then chews his head off and lays the body before her.

The gray hisses.
You just can't please some women
, Solet thinks. He slides farther into the woods to give them some privacy. A stick pops behind him. He checks whether the fire is getting closer. It's dying out instead.

Almost tenderly the green bites apart the net around the gray and pulls it off. Half freed, the gray rolls onto her belly, breathing heavily. The green pins her with a hand between her shoulders. With his other he rips away the rest of the net and lifts her tail.

Mylla releases Barad's hand. The gray is small beneath the thrusting, snorting green. Mylla looks to see if Solet's out of harm's way. It takes her a moment to make him out in the woods, then to make out the leaves moving deliberately behind him. She says, “Come on!” and pulls Barad's sleeve. They circle far around the dragon to reach her cousin. In her other hand a small, thin knife appears.

Bodger stops to watch the green
from the woods. He says, “We should go back to help. One more shot should do it.”

“Help who?” Gibbery says, “Solet? The Shield? I think it's time we took a break from the sea. Let me show you the ways of the woods. I'll start you off with simple snares. Soon you'll be able to feed your whole family.” They pick their way around the fire and into the night.

With the green distracted, the
Gamo
pushes out her oars. The ship digs its blades into the shallows and heaves itself off the beach. Solet is incredulous, the rowers are commanding themselves, and he doesn't hear the leaves whisper behind him. A rock slams down on his head. His knees fold.

A voice says, “You don't deserve to get off so easy.”

The rock falls again. Solet falls onto his side. He waves feebly with his finger blade. Another blow goes through his temple and lets the tide into his head. It fills him up and rushes over him.

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.

Mylla can't imagine a worse death, and she saw Sumpt die. As the rider returns west, Mylla says, “Why are you doing this?”

The rider says something she can't make out, the wind is so loud.

Nearing the beach where the
Pyg
has burned nearly to the waterline, she says again, “Why are you doing this?”

He says in her ear, “You remind me of someone I know. Can you swim?”

“Of course. I'm Ynessi. Wait!”

The dragon dives again. They skim the water toward the beach. She tries to take control of the dragon. She clings to the dragon with her legs, leans over, and braves the spikes to hold its neck. The dragon slows. First he grabs her goggles, but they come off in his hand and slide over his wrist. Then he grabs her by the back of her pants and slides her half off.

“Don't go to Hanosh,” he says.

Turning sharply finishes the job. She skips off the water, flips, half loses her pants, and splashes to a stop.

The officers and archers weren't expecting the dragon to return and so they had gathered in a tight clump in the light to discuss what to do. The dragon blasts them, and they decide to run around burning and screaming.

I don't care
, Mylla thinks,
I'd
rather sink than call Barad for help
. She doesn't have to. He sees her, throws off his candlebox, and swims out. He's huffing so hard by the time he reaches her, though, that she has to save him. They collapse in the shallows to avoid being seen. She pulls up her pants, rakes her soggy hair off her face, then rakes his off his face and says, “We have to find him. The dragon rider. We'll go to Hanosh. Are you with me?”

He nods. She had him at “we.”

“First, though, we'll go to Yness,” she says, “to get Solet's brothers.”

Jos, wreathed in flames, runs by and flings himself into the surf. A cloud of steam stinking of burned hair wafts over them.

“And his sister Thea,” Mylla says.

6

Midafternoon the next day Jeryon spots the island. The weather's lousy, dank and misty, the sun a mere suggestion. Jeryon's new goggles keep fogging.

The previous night, after flying a mile toward Hanosh, Gray tugged for home, and he gave her his head and they flew down the coast. Hanosh could wait a few more days. After spending the night a
few hours south of Solet's beach, Jeryon longs for his lumpy bamboo bed a wall away from the poth.

A week hasn't passed, but it feels much longer as the magnitude of what he's done bleeds through his exhaustion. So many dead. That wasn't the plan. What can he possibly tell her? He doesn't lie. He could argue they worked for the Shield and his former mates, but they weren't soldiers, nor is he. He can't understand how he enjoyed watching Tuse suffer. He can't fathom how he crushed Solet's skull. He tries hard not to admit it thrilled him. Instead he feels released.

He doesn't need Hanosh anymore. Why risk all by going there? What more could he do? He doesn't have to finish the job. He's already cost the company four ships. The reasons why will come out, and the other companies will make sure the Shield suffers further. Livion won't escape. That he can count on.

He only needs a boat. He could buy one outside Yness and tow it to the island. He and the poth could then ride it into the sunrise. He could talk her out of going to Ayden by saying they'd take the dragon. In the Dawn Lands, she'd never find out for sure what's happened.

Jeryon soars over the island to make a more dramatic descent to the cabin and notices a galley on the flats where the poth washed up. At first he thinks it's a pirate ship, then he sees the burned mast and the scorched remnants of deck and knows it's the
Hopper
. He doesn't want to be spotted by the men lounging on the galley and the beach, so he pulls the dragon up until the mist obscures the galley and races for the Crown along the treetops.

If they've done anything to the poth, he doesn't want them to know he's there. His vengeance would be swift. His remorse disintegrates. Having killed before makes it surprisingly easy to consider afterward.

When Gray lands, she becomes very agitated, as if looking for something. He takes two spears and dismounts then stays behind her
for cover as she rushes from spire to spire. Men from the
Hopper
may be waiting. He'd prefer that to another dragon.

At the spire where Jeryon and Everlyn found Gray's egg, she curls around it, groaning. He wonders if she's hurt, and she's come here because instinctually it's the place she feels most safe. She rolls on her belly then pushes herself up into a crouch, bent nearly double. Her stomach heaves. Having seen what the green dragon did in a similar posture, Jeryon flees around a spire behind her where he couldn't be drenched with acid. She squeals and her tail whips up. She squeals again as if in pain. Jeryon peeks around the spire and sees the first egg slide onto the bare rock. Another follows and a third, a tiny cairn mortared with strands of gray mucus.

Her head snaps around. She gives him a ferocious look. He ducks behind the spire, presses his back to it, and tucks his spears against his chest. He doesn't have a command, he realizes, that means
Don't eat me
. When he peeks around the other side of the spire, she's putting the eggs in the hole where hers was.
Amazing
, he thinks. He'll keep them apart when they're hatched. They could create an armada.