The harpooner, shorter than him, but solid as an iron, wheels around in confusion, then pushes Mulcent forward. They fall together off the foredeck. Mulcent feels every breath he’s ever taken crushed from his body. Over the man’s ham of a shoulder he sees a small gray dragon rip past the bow and up the larboard rail. Was someone riding it? This harpooner just saved his life. He should be rewarded in some way. Fortunately Mulcent travels with a sleeve of commemorative coins for just such an occasion.
With the Pyg’s chains broken by the explosion, the Gamo heaves toward shore, and the green dragon twists between it and the Kolos. The Pyg emerges from behind the dragon’s wing, backrowing and turning sharply in order to drag its shattered bow to shore before the galley goes under.
Mylla flashes Barad, “Who is ‘he’?” He doesn’t respond with his candlebox. Instead he points behind her.
She turns as the dragon tears over the stern deck. She yells, “Someone’s riding it!” It isn’t possible. The tales she read often featured people riding dragons, but no one ever had, at least not for long. She would do anything to ride a dragon. She notes the saddle, the packs, the spears, the bearded man in his strange black outfit, the object he drops to the stern deck, before everything speeds up again and the gray heads for the Pyg.
“Barad!” Mylla yells, as if the boy could hear her, then flashes, “Look out!”
The gray dragon swathes the Pyg’s stern deck with flames. Her captain leaps over the side, nearly incinerated by the time he splashes into the water. Her steersman disappears altogether. Barad leaps to the main deck, but she can’t tell if the flames caught him. “No!” she whispers and immediately hopes Solet and Jos didn’t hear that.
The Pyg’s oarmaster, Kley, unaware of the casualties on the stern deck and not hearing any piping to straighten out the galley, lets the rowers continue turning until the galley’s stern is aimed at the Gamo and they are headed right for each other. Before Solet can open his mouth, Jos pipes “all stop” as loud as he can, over and over, until both the Gamo and the Pyg drag oars. The Pyg pulls up twenty yards from the Gamo’s larboard side.
Solet claps Jos on the back. He doesn’t know what he’ll say to his sisters, but one of them will have this man. He may not be of the sea, but he certainly owns it.
Through the smoke and confusion Mylla sees flashing from the Pyg’s waist: “You all right?” She sighs with relief.
Solet sees the flashing and the sigh. Well played, Barad.
One of the Pyg’s stern shutters flips up. A face appears: the powder boy. Solet yells, “Kley is captain. And first mate. You’re his eyes. Get to shore.” The powder boy relays the message to the oarmaster. The Pyg pivots and heads inland double-time. They might actually make it, Solet thinks, and I am going to salvage this day.
“Mylla, flash the Kolos. Kill the green. And the rider. I want the gray.” Mylla smiles and leans over the rail to flash past the dragon.
With only the Kolos pulling, though, the dragon regains some lift, maneuverability, and, worse, heart. It shortens its wings to minimize the effects of the damage they’ve taken and lunges at the Kolos. The chains between them slacken. Its head drops to its chest.
Gibbery pulls Bodger off Mulcent. The harpooner is immediately filled with buyer’s remorse. Forget the bonus Mulcent stole from him. Forget his job. He’ll be lucky to escape the gibbet for touching an owner. Who will feed his family then?
The gray dragon circles behind the green, heading around the Kolos.
“Shoot that little gray,” Gibbery whispers to Bodger, “and the owner will forget everything.”
“No,” Mulcent says. He stands up and adjusts his goggles. “Shoot the rider, and your reward will be even greater. I want that dragon.”
Greater? Bodger thinks.
Solet orders, “Backrow, larboard!” Jos pipes. The Gamo responds instantly, jerking the dragon. Its gob of acid flies wide right of the Kolos, only splattering a few oars and sending up a caustic spray.
A cheer from the other monoreme is cut short when the green sees the gray flying behind her. It loses all sense of itself. It roars and digs through the air toward the gray, dragging the Gamo so hard its oars get disordered. The Kolos backrows, trying to keep its distance, and its harpooners blast two irons into its belly, but the dragon won’t be dissuaded. It lands on the foredeck, crushing the cannons, and crawls down the galley as if it were a bridge, dragging its chains and crushing men and deck with every step.
Solet stamps at the deck of the Gamo with his heel and orders again, “Backrow, double-time.” Jos pipes. With every step the dragon takes, the Gamo is pulled closer to the Kolos, which is so low in the water it will act like a ram.
Archers flee to the Kolos’s stern deck, and her captain orders them to shoot the rider, but the gray is darting too quickly and the galley is rocking too severely for them to hit it.
The Gamo’s aft oars organize themselves and pull. The dragon’s foot slips off the side of the Kolos and snaps some dangling forward oars, their rowers crushed beneath the smashed deck. Its eyes never leave the gray.
Jos says, “The little one must be in heat.”