On Livion’s last ship, a bireme called Wanderlust, a great yellow dragon lit on her stern deck and levered the prow out of the water. He remembers his captain hacking at its foot with an axe, screaming, “To me! To me!” and the creature biting him in two. His legs remained standing before the dragon licked them up, then tore the ship to pieces.
“Livion,” Jeryon says, “tell the sailors without crossbows that they’re on fire duty. They should have buckets of water and sand at the ready. Put some on each rail and some on the rowers’ deck. Then get on the oar again. Solet, you have the foredeck. Tuse, put us at regular time. We’ll conserve what energy the rowers have left. And keep the turns sharp. Quickly now.” He nods to dismiss them.
As they’re leaving, he grabs Solet’s arm. The door closes. Jeryon says, “Who fired that cannon?”
“Beale,” Solet says. “Poor gun maintenance.” He doesn’t say that he’s overheard Topp trying to get Beale to stand out so they’ll get promoted. A captain doesn’t play all his cards at once.
“And poor supervision,” Jeryon says. “A pity. I was going to report to the Trust that he could be a mate someday. And you could be a captain.” He pats Solet on the shoulder blade. “We may have to celebrate our survival with some floggings.” He nudges Solet to the door.
Jeryon checks the porthole and does some quick calculating. The dragon’s only a mile away.
Topp says, “They have the right idea.”
Scores of fins, an enormous school of hammerhead sharks, flow around the galley and past the bow.
“Wish I could swim that fast,” Beale says.
“Thanks to you, we might have to try,” Topp says.
“I didn’t do anything, Topp. Or nothing. And if I did, I don’t know how I did it.”
Topp shakes his head. His look softens. “You do know how to use that cannon, Beale,” he says. “Make it up to us. Make your shots count.”
The drumbeats drop by half and the ship slows to what feels like a dead stop. The dragon springs toward them.
On the stern deck Jeryon can smell the dragon now: old earth thrown on a fire to smother it. And he can hear its wings snap. A sail could only dream of such command over the wind. The Comber feels like a piece of driftwood.
He watches the sailors perform their various tasks and those who have completed them are checking their buckets, their weapons, even their oars. Simply having a plan, he thinks, is sometimes the best plan. It lets people concentrate on the present instead of dwelling on the future.
Livion, having nothing to check except his grip on the oar and whether his silver whistle is still hanging around his neck, makes awkward conversation. “How do you know so much about dragons?” he says.
“I read your report after you were assigned to the Comber,” Jeryon says, “which pointed me to others. I was impressed with how detailed yours was, although you didn’t elaborate on what you’d done.”
“I just led the survivors back to shore, but everyone did their part. I couldn’t take credit for it all.”
“The modesty of a second mate who suddenly finds himself in command?”
Livion shrugs. The modesty of one who lived.
“You’re lucky those men spoke up for you,” Jeryon says. “They’re the ones who put you on the Comber. You’ll never get anywhere by leaving yourself out of your reports.” He adds, “I hope I can speak up for you in mine.”
“I’ll do my best,” Livion says.
Jeryon sees he means it. There’s a chance for him yet.
The dragon’s now a hand long. “It’ll pass us to larboard,” Jeryon says. “Pipe Tuse: Larboard turn on my mark.”
Livion blows the alert.
Jeryon raises his fist to Solet, who’s little more than a thumb’s width tall at this distance. Solet says something to Beale and the crossbowmen, whom he’s spread across the front of the ship. Each has a weapon in hand, another loaded at his feet. They shout as one, “Aye!” Solet raises his fist too.
The dragon blooms into enormity in what feels like seconds. Its shadow passes them first, a black mass wider on the water than the Comber is long. Its wings come next, the color of night wine and just as fluid, but strangely delicate. When the sun catches their membranes, they glow like polished rosewood.
That was probably its original color, Jeryon thinks. Dragons blacken with age. This one’s getting on in years. It’ll know its business.
It comes abeam of the stern deck, flying twice as high as the mast, tail gently whipping behind. The dragon turns its head to better appraise Jeryon and, chillingly, so Jeryon can appraise it: wide mouth, teeth longer and sharper than a whale’s, the acrid smell of phlogiston burning through the stench of the poth’s medicine. There’s something gray lodged between its teeth and gum. Half a shark.
Its head is bigger than me, Jeryon thinks. Rain barrels could fit in its bulging eye sockets. The two skinny claws on its wing digits would make for decent short bows.