Thirteen

Come the morning, Toinette gathered the others and told them. Better that they hear it from her, and all together, than that the story spread from man to man and grow distorted in the telling.

She laid the matter out with all the calm she’d learned in her life. She spoke of northern lights, desert mirages, and rings around the moon, and of how she’d seen it rain on one side of a street and leave the other dry. “There could have been a storm up there we didn’t get down here,” she said.

In daylight, with the trees calm against clear blue sky, Toinette could believe herself more easily. No matter that she’d seen no clouds; the light might have obscured them. And if the light hadn’t looked like any lightning she’d ever seen, well, neither had she ever been in this part of the world before. Doubtless a sandstorm had seemed demonic to the first man caught on its edges.

The men listened uneasily. All looked almost as tired as Toinette felt, including Erik, who’d not taken a watch the night before. “If you think it nothing, Captain,” Samuel asked, “why tell us?”

It was a good question, and a fair one. She could cheerfully have kicked him for asking. “So that you’ll not wake the rest of us if it happens while you’re watching tonight,” Toinette shot back, and regretted it when she saw John wince. She added, “And because caution’s not wrong. It might be nothing, it’s likely nothing, but we’ve no way of knowing. The world is often stranger than we think.”

“Even we,” said Erik.

Toinette added him to her list of people she could have struck. It was not the moment, if one ever existed, to remind the men of their nature. She cleared her throat and lifted her chin. “And we’ll need to go back up there as long as we stay on this island. It’s wise to know the place as well as we can.”

“We’ll leave soon, though, yes?” Raoul asked.

“As soon as we repair the ship and replace the stores. We’ll get the wood for the first today. Perhaps I should go back up the cliffs with you, in that case. Erik won’t know how to choose for a mast.”

“But Marcus will,” said Erik, “and I vow I’ll abide by his decision.”

Toinette’s instinct was to contradict, and none too kindly: Will he know from the air, fool? She bit it back. No human shipwright could choose from the air, and yet they picked masts well enough. Marcus knew more of such arts than she did, in truth. It wasn’t Erik’s fault that she’d slept poorly the night before.

Settle yourself. Let your mind guide your tongue, not your temper.

“As we planned it last night, then,” she said. “We’ll keep a watch here. If you do find trouble, send a man back—don’t come yourself.”

As yet, they’d not seen signs of anything intelligent enough to lay an ambush, but it never helped to be careless. One man running back through terrain he knew even slightly would be better than the group’s best protector abandoning them with the unknown ahead.

As Toinette thought about that, she realized the other reason for her irritation: a cover for relief. She shouldn’t have been glad of the excuse not to enter the forest again, but she couldn’t deny that she was.

* * *

Light or no light, Erik welcomed the distance from the water. The sea had never held much terror for him, or no more than for any other man, but this morning he couldn’t look at it without thinking of his dream.

This waits.

He’d broken his fast only perfunctorily, swallowing bread and washing it down with overwatered wine out of the knowledge that his body required the fuel, not any real appetite. The task ahead became a welcome distraction.

They went further than Toinette and her party had gone before, taking advantage of the trail the others had broken for them and then following the stream inward. Briars tore at their clothing, until Erik loosed his sword and began to chop them out of the way. Doubtless it would dull the edge, but he wasn’t inclined to care. He had other weapons at his disposal if he needed to fight.

“You could change,” said Franz. “Burn a path for us.”

“Set the whole island afire too,” Marcus snorted. “Fool.”

The man had never been overly gentle in speech, but that was sharper than Erik had heard him. By Franz’s look of wounded surprise, he wasn’t used to it either, but Marcus’s rank throttled whatever reply he might have made down to a sound in his throat and a sullen turn of his mouth.

“I could crush a path,” said Erik. “And I’d not feel the briars so much. If you’d not mind.” He gestured to the other three.

“If it gets us through this hell quicker, you can turn into whatever you desire,” said Marcus.

Franz and Samuel didn’t answer, but neither looked likely to run away, nor to attack him at the change, and Erik took that for assent. He took a few paces forward, finding a more-or-less open area along the stream.

“Wait—” Samuel held up an open hand. “When you’re a dragon, can you hear us? And understand?”

“Aye. I can’t speak, but I know everything I do as a man. Language too.”

“Ah. It’s good to know, in case.”

Marcus nodded. “I’d rather you didn’t blink back and forth like a firefly just so I could point out a likely tree, for one. Now…” He waved one hand in rapid circles: Get on with it.

Shifting was itself reassuring. After his impotence in the dream, Erik relished the feeling of the power rising at his command and reshaping him when he released it. As his hands became claws and skin transformed into scales, he knew a vast sense of relief: That truly wasn’t real, thank God.

He’d never had the Sight, nor even managed much in the way of scrying when he’d gone through the rites for it under Artair’s teaching—but one never knew. Prophetic dreams chose unlikely people at times, as both the Scriptures and the lore of his family had recorded. Erik had no wish to be one of those instances, particularly not for such a dream as he’d had.

It was a dream, and he was the dragon, a creature of eternity and thus of the moment. His senses sharpened, save for touch. He smelled squirrel in the trees, hare and wildcats elsewhere, and the smoke from the fire on the beach. There were scents he didn’t recognize too, including the trace of one on the eastern wind, cold and gelatinous like worms stranded on rock after a rain.

Erik snorted in disgust and bent his head away. The stream ran north. He forged his way forward, taking savage delight in the way plants crushed beneath his claws and branches snapped against the weight of his chest. The larger of the trees could stand against him, but not most of them.

The men followed at his heels, small chattering creatures. He could hear bits of their conversation, but cared little for either the words themselves or the sense behind them. Talking served men well. He had other purposes.

Up they went, following the stream. The shallow rise of the hills was nothing to Erik, though he’d not have wanted to try flying with the forest so thick around him. He didn’t know whether he could have cleared the treetops without his wings getting entangled. As it was, he held them upright by significant effort and knew that the muscles of his back would ache before the day was out. It was an ache worth having, though, to forge a path and clear his head both.

When they finally found the spring, flowing from a crack between two huge mossy rocks, Erik was the first to take a deep drink. He found the water cool and sweeter than any he could call to mind. Of course, memory was different in dragon shape, and he’d spent weeks drinking stale water from casks, then slogged his way through the forest, but whatever rot might take place on the other side of the island, it hadn’t found purchase near the spring.

After he quenched his thirst, he swung his great body aside, letting the men drink and fill their waterskins. The forest around him was cool and green, the earth gave easily under his feet, and birdsong filled the air. No deer or hare would stay in a dragon’s presence, but the birds seemed to realize that they were too small to be prey and circled near Erik’s head without much fear.

From below him, Marcus cleared his throat. “That tree,” he said, gesturing to one of the nearby pines, “would do well.”

The pine in question was smaller than some of its fellows, manageable rather than goliath, but like them it grew straight, not even branching until halfway up its length. Even Erik could see the potential there for the mast. He nodded his head, slowly enough that the humans would get the message without the force of the gesture knocking them over.

“Just don’t bring it down on our heads,” muttered John. “If you can manage it.”

* * *

The sun was warm, the sound of the waves constant and soothing, and Toinette was tired. She didn’t let herself fall entirely asleep; strictly speaking, she was on watch. They’d had no threat during the day yet, though—no threat, in truth, in the two days they’d been on the island—and so she did relax, lying back against a rock with half-closed eyes. When Jehan had lived, she’d spent a good many of her days at sea just so, aware that she might need to act but resting while she waited.

Remembering Jehan, she was glad he’d died before Erik’s voyage, and she couldn’t feel shame for the gladness. He would have been no more likely to survive than the others—less, as he’d been older than half of them when Toinette had first met him—and she doubted she could have stood the worry for his safety, much less the likelihood that he’d have shunned her once he knew her nature.

The men had reacted better than she’d thought. That was different than—

A shout took her from her thoughts. It was a day for perverse joy, for she almost welcomed the distraction. Sword in hand, she bolted upward from her seat and spun to face the sound.

A ways down the beach, Raoul and Sence had thrown their fishing gear aside and had come to blows of no uncertain sort. Even while Toinette grasped the situation, Sence grabbed Raoul’s shoulder, only to catch the other man’s fist in his jaw and stagger back.

Toinette didn’t run toward them. She strode down the beach, quickly but with as little impression of effort as she could manage to give, and although she was muttering curses half the way there, she raised her voice loud and clear when she addressed the men.

“What in God’s holy name do you think you’re about, you stupid, poxy sons of whores?”

They stopped. Whether they thought Captain or dragon when they heard it, Toinette’s voice acted like a pail of cold water on the brawlers. For once, she didn’t wonder which. She took the silence, set her hands on her hips, and began to curse them out in the many languages of profanity she’d picked up as a child of the streets and a woman of the world.

“He said—” Sence began to defend himself.

“Am I your God-rotted nurse, cabrón? I don’t care if he said he buggered your mother on top of the altar at Easter, you keep your fists to yourself! And you”—she rounded on Raoul—“you keep a civil tongue in your head, and if you can’t figure out whether you’ll give offense, be silent. In case either of you are too dull to count, we’ve eight men here, one who’s not manned a ship.” In her anger, she decided the Viking boats didn’t count. “And we’ll need all of you to get back. Even if you want to die here because of a pissing contest, I don’t!”

They stood silent, abashed. Raoul’s eye was turning black, and Sence’s lip was split.

“Put the word out,” she said. “Next man who throws a punch, I’ll have his hands bound behind him for a day. He can eat off the ground like a dog.”

With that, she strode back off down the beach, relishing the thud of every footstep in the sand.