The Dragon Round (20 page)

That they remind him too is the other.

He also doesn't like the blue embroidered pants recently foisted on officers. They pull. They're hot. The cloth won't last. They're only meant to make him look fancier than the Blue Island captains. At least his blouse is light and loose, if more gold than a captain's used to be. He won't wear the blue felt hat, however. Let them dock his monthly.
They're already taking out the rent for his uniform. Nothing with a feather will go on his head.

Standing watch between the harpoon cannons, the ship's boy, Rowan, says in a hush, “Whales. Off the starboard bow.”

The kid's as hard and skinny as an iron, and as sharp too, the son of a sergeant, but this is only his third voyage and he's still soft with awe for the sea. Tuse envies him that.

“Do you think you'll scare them?” Tuse says. “Tell the ship, son.”

“Whales!” Rowan hollers. “Off the starboard bow!”

Tuse flinches. The boy smiles. Tuse says, “Actually, maybe you will scare them.”

Tuse considers the patch of rough water and, beyond it, another. Two pods are coming together. “Tell Press to pipe me some cannons, then bring us close for a calf or two.”

“You'll take a cannon?”

“Aye. I'll tell Edral.”

Rowan smiles and runs ahead of him to the first mate at the oar. The cannon, Tuse knows, is something Rowan envies him.

He should have the boy trained on it. He's been giving him a taste of every job, something he never got coming through the rowers' deck. If the crew thinks he's playing favorites, let them wonder instead why they aren't his favorite. Besides, the boy's done the job of the two most galleys carry. He wouldn't have thought it of a soldier's son.

The only thing Rowan doesn't like is powdering the rowers. Too many are former soldiers who fell on hard times, then fell into the wrong sort of business. That's a softness Tuse will have to wean him of. He should train the boy with the whip too.

Amidships Tuse flops a hatch and looks down at Edral, his blinking second mate and oarmaster. Around him the rowers are chained to their benches, straining so hard their neck muscles threaten to snap. Sweat courses through their scars and shines on their tattoos. They breathe like a great bellows, mouths wide to mitigate the stench of
rotten eggs lingering from their previous cargo. Every trip to Chorem and back is a race against their last. That's why he gets to keep his ship.

“What about our schedule?” Edral says.

“We'll take them in passing,” Tuse says. “Besides, the boy could always fix a double ration to make up any time lost.”

“Aye, aye!” a rower says. Tuse doesn't have to look to know whom. Bearclaw's trunk is broader than it was on the
Comber
from the years of rowing, but his face is pocked and wasted, and his teeth are gone. The changes in his face are the result of too much powder, the changes in his teeth, too much mouth. “Your boy's good with the spoon,” he says, “but I preferred that lady. She had a heavier hand.”

Tuse's face reddens. “That one's had enough. If he flags, fix him an old-fashioned ration.”

The oarmaster uncoils his whip.

Tuse closes the hatch. Since the
Comber
, he's preferred a covered deck. The rowers get hot, but they need so much water as it is, what's a little more? Let them burn. There's more where they came from.

He tries to close the hatch on his memory of the poth too, but it won't stay battened.

When Rowan reaches the stern deck,
the first mate, a man as dour as he is sallow, is already clenching his whistle in his teeth.

“The captain will exercise his privilege?” Press says.

“Yes,” Rowan says.

Press's lips curdle. He blows the call for whaling.

Many in the crew leave off their duties to prepare the galley for rendering. The second harpooner, a lank-limbed man with lankier hair named Igen, runs to the foredeck to load the cannons. While the captain is looking into the hatch, Igen holds two fingers downward, then six fingers upward.

The crew looks at Press. Press peers at the whales, considers the distance and roll of the sea, and raises his arm with three fingers
down. Igen nods. Other crewmen out of the captain's sight show one or two fingers held downward as well. Igen marks these with a nod, then a disappointed shake of his head. He holds eight fingers up. No one raises an arm. He holds up ten fingers. Still no takers.

Press chuckles. “He's going to take a bath.”

“You shouldn't bet on the captain to miss,” Rowan says.

“You shouldn't still be standing here.” The boy leaves. Who is he to talk to a mate? The captain favors him too much, perhaps because only the boy favors the captain. Some of the old-fashioned ration would bring him down a peg.

Press watches Tuse go forward and bend over a cannon. Press should be the one to shoot, not man the oar. He's far more accurate. So's Edral, probably so's the boy, and neither's ever shot before. Captain Boots says he doesn't need a third mate because two can do the work of three, something the company appreciates, but Press has heard the rumors that something curious happened on the
Comber
. Maybe he thinks he can only control two mates. The joke on the galley is that Boots is in fact the third mate impersonating a captain.

When he gets his galley, he won't run it like Boots. He'll have the proper three mates and two fearful boys, not one little bootlicker. He'll dress the way a captain should. And he won't allow gambling.

Tuse swivels the cannon. The motion
relaxes him, like picturing a punch before you throw it. Others are better shots, especially Press, but he has to take any opportunity to prove himself worthy of his shirt. He knows they call him Boots. Maybe a little whale meat for dinner will placate them. And if he can show the other captains that sea foraging will lessen the ration expense, maybe they'll stop calling him “the oarmaster” for skipping first and second mate.

“Do you want me on the other?” Igen says.

“We won't need it,” Tuse says.

“Aye.” Igen smiles, cautiously optimistic.

On the foredeck stairs, Rowan holds ten fingers upward against his chest.

Igen gives him a look: Where would you get—

Rowan clinks the pouch tucked inside his short pants. Igen, with the grin of a man just pulled from the sea, nods. Rowan goes to stand beside Tuse.

Tuse mutters, “It's nice to get at least one vote of confidence.”

“It's your money,” Rowan says.

“Not all of it. I only gave you eight pennies to bet.”

Rowan says, “ ‘Bet on the man who bets on himself,' my father says. Besides, you're going to hit the whale.”

Tuse suppresses a smile.

Press kicks himself. He should have
bet five pennies. If the kid is betting, he must know something. Stupid to miss such an easy opportunity. Press makes a mental note:
Vigilance! You'll never be captain if you won't take a chance
.

The first mate hears a strange whooshing astern then something hits him square in the back of the head.

2

The galley closes on the whale pods, which are merging in a great eddy. They're razorbacks, enormous, fast and easy to spook when they're alone, but being in such a large group gives them confidence, and they ignore the galley. It's like a family reunion. Some bob together like old men chatting. Calves jump and race. A few imperious matrons slap them down.

Tuse finds a tubby little calf dead ahead. The other calves swim away from it, and it wallows as it watches them go. Tuse digs in his
heels. Other men get dragons. He gets the saddest whale. It figures. He knew kids like that when he was growing up. They didn't last long. He might have been one had he not learned to use his fists.

Tuse considers the range and wind. The calf flops around to look at him with wide, empty eyes. “This'll be a mercy,” he says, and he brings the firing rod to the touch hole.

The sail explodes behind him. Heat roars over the foredeck. The sound of lines snapping and the sail whipping loose is lost in the groan and shudder of the galley pulling up short. Tuse, startled, pushes the cannon down and fires the harpoon into the sea. He watches it drag down the whale line. His first thought is,
I'll have to make it up to the boy.

His next are:
Is that a dragon rising away? Where did it come from? Why didn't it make an exploratory pass?

“Who's riding it?” Rowan says.

“Riding?” Igen says.

Tuse drifts down the stairs, shadowed by Rowan, watching the dragon and its rider come around astern. Where did he come from? Is he Aydeni? Ynessi? A pirate? How is he staying on the dragon?

A voice pierces the deck. Bearclaw says, “I won't go through it again! No!” Edral's whip cracks. The voice stops. The oars keep moving.

We have to keep moving
, Tuse thinks, and he realizes the rest of the crew has been gawking at the dragon rider too. His hand twitches as if he had his whip. “Dragon stations!”

The crew comes to. He's trained them well, and they've repelled two attacks by Aydeni privateers in the last six months. The threat of defense, just putting up your fists, is often the best one. The shutters on the rowers' deck are closed. A four-man fire team assembles to deal with the sail and the mast. Two crossbow teams take their weapons from under the foredeck. Igen reloads the larboard cannon, which he'll man. Press should be coming to take the starboard cannon while another crewman takes the oar. Tuse peers through the smoke to find him, only to see his first mate's head bouncing toward him. Tuse traps it with his foot.

While Press's head stares up at Tuse in horror, he sees Press's replacement stuck on the stern deck ladder, staring at something by the oar, then at the dragon diving astern. Training is one thing; reality, another. The crewman ducks and hugs the ladder, and Tuse realizes the rider's plan.

The dragon's glide path will take it along the water, using the stern deck as a shield, presumably to rake their oars, probably starboard. He'll cripple them, test their aim, then come in for the kill.

Tuse tells Rowan, “Get to the hatch and tell Edral hard larboard, double-time.”

“On your mark?”

“Immediately. Then relay from there.” He pats Rowan on the back, and the boy springs away. Tuse picks up Press's head, he can't leave it on the deck, and after a second's consideration puts it in the iron powder bin. He mounts the foredeck. “Igen, ten seconds to load that cannon. We'll catch the rider as he comes amidships. We can use the stern deck for cover too.”

Igen sees the plan in his head as he wads and packs. If the rider is attacking from the stern, he may know their defenses, which means he may think the cannons can't be fired back over the deck. Tuse, however, had the stays removed after the Shield refused his requisition for a stern deck cannon following the last privateer attack. The rider will be flying right down their barrels. Igen swivels the cannon to aim behind Tuse's and says, “Three–one against.”

“Us?” Tuse says.

“Him.”

Tuse grunts with satisfaction and swings the starboard cannon around. He glances at the hatch. Rowan half dives into it. Edral yells. The drumming accelerates. The ship veers to larboard and the dragon appears, unable to make the turn with them. It floats away to starboard and the rider makes the mistake Tuse had hoped he would. Instead of curling away for another run, he tries to turn with the galley, unwilling to give up his prey and, as the dragon banks, making himself a better target for them.

Tuse says, “Fire!”

Igen's harpoon nearly takes off an errant crewman's head then gashes the dragon's shoulder. Tuse's harpoon, loosed a heartbeat later, unspools whale line behind it. The crewman, leaping for cover, almost has his head taken off again. The shot looks true and Tuse thinks they could winch the dragon in until the dragon jerks. His harpoon gashes its tail before sailing into the sea.

Now the rider peels away, cuts around the stern deck, and with a shout causes the dragon to enflame the larboard oars. As the oars go slack, the galley curls farther in that direction, and the dragon has to roar over the bow. It's so low that the crossbow teams fling themselves down and Igen flings himself overboard to avoid Press's fate.

Tuse and the rider glare at each other as they pass, and Tuse knows the rider more than he recognizes him. Jeryon doesn't have a beard in his nightmares.

The rider turns the dragon's head and yells, “Comber!” and the dragon enflames the forward oars on the starboard side.

Rowan, standing on the ladder beneath
the hatch, watches the dragon fly nearly straight up. The dragon's fire has crept up the oars and through the tholes and unshuttered ports on both sides of the galley to sear the rowers and burn the benches. Smoke fills the rowers' deck. It's laced with yellow tendrils from their last cargo, Dawn Lands sulfur. The hatch becomes a chimney, and Rowan has to lean out of the smoke. The sulfur burns his throat. Chains rattle as the rowers beg to be released, Bearclaw loudest of all.

“Help me, boy,” he says. “You're a good boy. Be a good boy.”

He has to help the rowers. They're men, whatever the captain says. And as the dragon pivots like a swimmer after a lap and floats high above the ship, he has a moment. What can he do, though? Tuse ordered him here. If the ship can't steer, they're a sitting duck.

“Boy! Are you listening?” Bearclaw says.

The captain wouldn't let them die down there, would he? Rowan could break the chains, but the tools he'd need are in the carpenter's box, which is stored too far away. Besides, that would take too long. He needs the key. The rowers could unlock themselves. The captain has it.

The dragon dives. The crossbowmen drop their weapons and crawl for cover. The fire team working on the sail brings it down just enough to hide behind it. And Tuse is still loading.