The Pyg’s crew comes alive, to Solet’s satisfaction.
The dragon swerves down and out of the cloud and straight into a harpoon fired from the Kolos. The iron finds the hollow beneath the dragon’s left shoulder, and the dragon swerves toward the Pyg. The harpoon chain, painted bright red, clatters as it unspools. When the paint changes to white a sailor locks the winch. A harpooner on the Pyg buries an iron in its right thigh. Again red chain unspools as the dragon retreats from the pocket, turning the Kolos’s bow. The white chain appears, the winch is locked, and the Pyg’s deck strains. The galleys backrow at right angles to each other, stretching the dragon between them and too far away for its breath to reach either. Perfect.
The dragon’s wings, bigger than sails, gulp huge bowls of air and drag the galleys toward shore. Solet didn’t think that was possible. It has to tire soon.
The deck around the winches puckers. The galleys are drawn closer together. Harpooners on each galley fire, landing shots in its left leg and right side, enraging the dragon and holding it more securely. The winches settle. The steersmen lean on their oars and pipe for the galleys to row back and away, which spreads the dragon out again. The galleys are still moving toward shore, though.
Now archers, who aren’t sailors doubling as crossbowmen and who can fire more frequently and accurately, move up and shoot at the dragon’s eyes. Arrows whisker its snout. The Pyg’s pepper pot gives it another whiff.
Mylla winces as the harpoons pull out the dragon’s hide, and the creature gags on the pepper. Its roars are horrible. She thinks she hears words, threats promising the worst sort of death. Its head and neck twist wildly. It heaves more furiously and to her horror the bows of the galleys lift a bit and the crews brace themselves. She has to be like Solet, though: However impressive dragons are, and in the old books she’s read dragons are spell-weaving, mysterious, and wise, in reality they are just big cows waiting to be slaughtered.
Solet says, “Jos, take us behind it. Mylla, tell our harpooners, on my signal, to pin its wings.” It can’t stay up with three galleys on it, he thinks, not with three. Jos pipes and the galley glides around the struggling dragon. Solet raises his fist, and the harpooners raise their firing rods.
When the dragon flings out its wings, he hammers the rail. One iron bursts through the right wing and falls into the water. The dangling chain widens the hole in the membrane with each flap. The second iron catches in the thicker membrane near the dragon’s left elbow. Solet orders, “Backrow halftime.” The chain unspools. When it turns white, the winch is locked, and the galley pulls the wing back until the dragon can barely stay aloft.
This is almost too easy, Solet thinks. The shipowners have to be impressed.
The dragon, desperate for lift, changes tactics and lunges, pulling the Gamo and causing the Pyg and the Kolos to lurch. The Pyg’s rowers lose their coordination for a moment, the dragon lunges again, and the chains connecting them slacken considerably. As the Pyg’s oars find the water together again, the dragon’s head lowers against its chest, its belly heaves, and its head flips up. A huge, yolky gob flies from its mouth and splashes just ahead of the Pyg’s bow.
The yolk doesn’t splatter. It spreads. Waves sloshing over it burst, and the spray wafts over the harpooners, who frantically rub their hands and faces.
Peering beneath the dragon’s wings, Mylla says, “What was that?”
Solet shakes his head. “Vomit?”
“Acid,” Jos says. “Same idea, though.”
Mulcent says, “Why is it not breathing fire?”
How long he has been standing beside them on the stern deck, still as a piling, Solet doesn’t know, but this is no place for him. “To the mast,” he says, “or to your cabin.”
“We sell phlogiston,” Mulcent says. “What use is . . . regurgitation?”
Solet’s hand is waving to larboard as Jos maneuvers them directly behind the dragon so they can pull it away from the Pyg. He says, “This is hardly—it still has hide and bone.”
“The profit is in the phlogiston,” Mulcent says. “Hide and bone won’t recoup the repair costs you will inevitably incur. Cut it loose.”
“It’s too late for that,” Solet says. “This isn’t some gamefish. It’s a dragon. It’ll swallow you whole if we let it go.” The dragon lunges again to make his point, throwing them off balance.
“Cut it loose,” Mulcent says, regaining himself, “so we can cut our losses.”
“I’m captain of this ship,” Solet says. “Mylla, two more harpoons.”
“And I own these ships,” Mulcent says. “You’re just a foreman in fancy pants.”