Page 6 of Of Scale and Blood

“Humor me, Captain, and just do it anyway. We’ll shoot the harpoon directly in front of us, and Kaia will swoop down, catch the ropes, and tow us.”

“With me easing the weight of the boat by calming the seas and the force of the wind around us,” the mage said.

I nodded.

He glanced up as Kaia disappeared back into the clouds. “And you can really control that drakkon?”

“I don’t control her. I ask her to do things, and she may or may not oblige. Shehasconsented to doing this.”

“Why?”

“Because the gilded riders—the people who destroyed Jakarra and, I presume, Kinara, given your presence here—killed one of her drakklings. She wants revenge, she wants them all dead, and helping us is one way to achieve that.”

He studied me for a minute, then his gaze shifted to the captain. “We’d better try this, Grant. At the very least, it saves me the effort of pushing the boat forward while maintaining the bubble.”

The captain sniffed, a sound that suggested deep disagreement, but he nevertheless turned and began shouting orders. In very little time, two heavy ropes were attached to the harpoon—which was as thick as my fist—while several others lashed the saker to gunwale cleats on either side of the boat.

“What next?” the captain said. “We just shoot the harpoon out across the sea and hope your drakkon has good enough timing to catch the thing?”

“Timing won’t be a problem if your men do their job properly.”

Him annoying, Kaia said.Should toss in water.

He’s just lost two boats and escaped Túxn only knows what catastrophe on the island. We can cut him a little slack.

No cut slack. No like.

Neither did I, to be honest, although on the scale of unpleasantness, he was a lightweight—especially compared to my father-in-law.Stay up until the harpoon shoots past, just in case their aim is off, and then grab the ropes.

Will.

I returned my attention to the air mage. “When Kaia has the ropes, flow all your protections forward. The calmer the seas and the air, the easier it’ll be for her to tow.”

When he nodded, I said to the captain, “Do it.”

The captain turned and made a sharp downward motion. The winches were immediately employed to draw back the firing mechanism’s twisted cords. Once they were locked into position, the harpoon was added and the saker aimed. The man at the release point glanced at the captain, who gave the final go-ahead.

The harpoon was released and shot like an arrow over the prow, the two ropes unspooling behind it. It travelled straight and true for several hundred yards before it began to lose speed and trajectory, and it was at that point Kaia swept in and caught the ropes.

“Everyone hang on,” I shouted and grabbed at one of the ropes lashing the saker to a gunwale cleat.

The ropes between us and Kaia snapped taut, and her grunt of effort ran through our link a heartbeat before the boat lurched after her. The sudden shift forward sent me stumbling, and I would have fallen had I not been holding on. At least six or more people on this upper deck hadn’t been quick enough to heed my warning and were now lying in an ungainly heap on the deck. The captain wasn’t one of them, and there was a part of me that was rather sad about that. I daresay there’d been falls on the main deck, too, but they were so tightly packed together that, from where I was standing, it was hard to see anything more than a mass of confused and frightened faces.

The air streamed past my back, catching my long wet plait and tossing it forward. The air mage—who hadn’t fallen, despite the fact he wasn’t holding on to anything—had redefined the limits of his air bubble and was now casting it forward to form a large expanse of calm out the front of the boat. It was also far out enough to encase Kaia, allowing her to fly in air unaffected by the weight and fierceness of the storm that chased the boat’s stern.

The boat lurched again as the rope slipped between her claws. A grumbly sound of annoyance filled our link, then she removed one clawed foot from the ropes and grabbed the dangling harpoon. It was long enough to hold crossways in both claws, so she released her grip on the ropes and used the harpoon instead.

The boat lurched forward a third time as she snapped her wings down hard to get the boat moving again, then, as she found her rhythm, it began to cut through the glassy seas more evenly.

“Is that harpoon going to hold up against the stresses being put on it?” I asked.

The captain’s expression was an interesting mix of disbelief and awe. “It should. Like the saker, it was designed to hold double the weight of any white fin we caught.”

I’d have thought this boat, with all the people aboard, would have weighed far more than a couple of white fins, but the captain obviously knew his boat and the fish he hunted far better than me.

I watched Kaia for a couple of minutes, marveling at her sheer beauty and grace, then said, “Tell me, Captain, what happened in the caves? What forced the decision to evacuate everyone except fighting-age males?”

He grimaced. “We could see the smoke coming from Illistin and knew she’d come under some kind of attack. We immediately shifted the boats to a concealed harbor on the far side of the island and stocked the caves as best we could, but those winged bastards still caught us before the full retreat could be completed.”

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