The crossbowmen aim as best they can, bolt points bobbing with the ship and their racing hearts. “Steady,” Solet says. The dragon extends its claws. It’s going to snatch me, he thinks. Please don’t let it take me to its nest.
Jeryon says, “Double-time.” Livion pipes. The ship jerks away again, leaving only blue water beneath the dragon.
As Jeryon had hoped, the dragon pulls up, thirty yards dead ahead and thirty yards off the waves, flinging out its huge wings and blocking the sun. It hangs there a moment, beating the air with quick, short thrusts. Solet drops the crossbow and yanks the firing rod of his cannon out of its brazier. The dragon’s head rears. Its jaw drops.
“Fire!” Solet yells. Steel rips toward the dragon’s right elbow. Liquid fire splashes behind Solet and washes three crossbowmen into the rowers’ deck on the larboard bow; the drumming stops again. Half the bolts fly high. The other half stick in the membrane of its wing. Beale’s harpoon clanks off its humerus, but Solet’s finds the mark, bearing into the joint. The dragon flinches and flaps, and the joint snaps. The outer half of the wing collapses, and the dragon falls toward the Comber. It breathes again, but the flames miss the galley, mixing a huge plume of steam with the smoke billowing from the ship. To Solet’s alarm, the fire floats, spreading around them.
The dragon’s foot reaches for the foredeck. Beale leaps off it and lands on Topp. In a tangle, they crawl along the starboard rail as the foot crushes Beale’s cannon. The ship’s bow sinks sharply and Solet is knocked down by the waves coursing over the foredeck. His crossbow is pushed toward the edge of the foredeck. Solet dives for it, slides it around to point at the dragon, and fires while on his belly.
The bolt deflects off a claw and under the cuticle, a tender spot for any creature, however immense. The dragon roars and springs from the boat, which forces the foredeck down again. Waves carry a scrabbling Solet into the sea. The dragon’s right wing flaps uselessly, and the creature lands with one foot on the forward walkway, which somehow doesn’t shatter, and the other on the starboard rail, splintering it. When it tries to grab the larboard rail with its right wing hand, the limb doesn’t respond, and the dragon topples onto the remains of the main mast and impales itself.
Jeryon watches the whole ship get swamped by the dragon’s weight. Water surges over the gunwales and into the rowers’ deck, which smothers the fires, but pours salt over the wounds of the injured. The screams below achieve a higher pitch.
The Comber bobs back up and bounces the dragon off the mast, an immense hole in its breast. It flaps once and flings itself off the galley, one wing full of air, the other full of sailors swept up by it. The dragon makes two more desperate flaps before collapsing into the sea to starboard and driving the Comber away with a huge wave. An umbilicus of blood stretches between them.
Jeryon orders, “Backrow! Larboard.”
Livion pipes. He doesn’t know what’s become of Tuse and all the larboard oars dangle lifeless from their oar holes, but there are enough brothers left on the starboard oars to respond. Unlike the inexperienced, untrained prisoners, they know the piping. The stroke is erratic to start, but after a few pulls the Comber moves farther away from the dragon—and the men in the water.
The two men floating motionless closest to the dragon appear to be dead until it picks them up. Resurrected, they flail and cry as it bites through their torsos, dribbling their heads and lower legs from the sides of its mouth.
Beale, Topp, and two others struggle to stay afloat. Like most sailors, they can’t swim. Like most drowning people, they can’t scream. Livion can’t spot Solet.
Lest they circle around, Jeryon orders, “Oars up.” Livion pipes and the ship drifts to a stop, the dragon dead ahead again. “You have the ship,” Jeryon says. “Don’t get us any closer.” He slides to the deck.
Livion sees the dragon breathe again. Flame arcs toward the captain as he runs forward. It bursts on the starboard bow an instant after he passes by, incinerating a sailor trying to throw a line to his fellows in the water. A pool of flame forms around the burning gunwale. Drops splatter Jeryon’s black coat and Livion watches him doff the smoldering garment before leaping onto the foredeck and reloading the remaining cannon.
The poth clambers onto deck, drenched, her long black hair trailing from her ravaged bun, her gray streaks tinted with blood. She needs more bandages, but the flames creeping along the starboard rail and walk are a more pressing concern. As she reaches for a bucket of sand beside the rail to put them out, a hand grasps her wrist through the rail. She starts and pulls back. The hand won’t let her go. Another appears on the rail. She’s readying the bucket to hold off the boarder when the rest of Solet appears, standing atop the ladder on the hull.
She says, “I thought sailors couldn’t swim.”