Twenty-Nine

The circle of protection around the cabin was, as Erik had said, quite a bit like the warding spells he’d cast around his camp when he’d had few men in strange territory. He strengthened it by mixing in a charm against opposing sorcery and a spell to defend against wild beasts. To his senses, magical and physical alike, the process seemed to go smoothly: power came from the four magicians and settled into a swirling black and gold wall at the circle’s outer perimeter, and though the wall turned invisible when the spell ended, Erik could still feel it there.

As with the swords, there was no true way to test the spell. They had done what they could. The rest came down to faith and hope. Those were becoming common enough props of late. Sence or Franz—or Brother Michael, who’d instructed Erik in his youth—might have approved, save that Erik’s faith was mostly in his skill and Toinette’s, and his hope was for fortune rather than any specific divine favor. If God wanted to intervene, He generally used men as His tools. If they were too flawed to succeed, then that was often the end of the matter.

Yet Erik prayed lengthily and reverently at night, particularly on watch, and even more so before he and Toinette left camp. There was no priest to grant him absolution, but he confessed what he could and took what penance he remembered being assigned in the past. In advance of a battle, you made sure your sword had a decent edge, you checked your armor, and you got as far into heaven’s graces as you could manage. With Erik, as with most of the dragon-blooded, the extent of that last had always been debatable—but then, he’d often found both sword and armor less than needful. Accounts likely balanced.

He prayed for the men as well. He’d often done that in war, but never quite so fervently. The men who’d followed him against the English had known precisely what they went to do, and risked no more than a mortal’s usual death in wartime, as likely to have been in another leader’s levy if he’d never been there. The Hawk’s crew was different. Lord, Erik asked, if I should fall, let it be in setting them free.

And he prayed for Toinette, that he be able to do the same for her, if need be—even more so for suspecting that she was just as likely thinking along the same lines, with herself as the necessary sacrifice. It fretted at his nerves, that knowledge, and yet the forest looked less dark for her companionship.

It was unlikely that any had overheard him, but all knew what was possible, and the knowledge hung over the camp as Erik and Toinette prepared to depart. Success or failure were not the only outcomes.

“There’s food here for a fortnight each,” said Marcus, handing them packs, “and water as well. It’s mostly bread and roots, but there’s some dried meat. Eat carefully. Likely as not, this place will turn out to be as large as all of France, and all the rest of the game will be cursed.”

“You forgot the sea serpents,” Toinette replied, smiling wryly and blinking a few times.

“I wouldn’t eat those either, were I you,” said Marcus, his voice rough-edged, “but you’ll know what’s best.”

Erik turned away from their goodbyes, feeling an intruder almost on family matters, and made a pretense of adjusting his pack until Franz tapped him on the shoulder. “You should take this, I think,” said the other man, holding out his rosary beads. “I had it blessed at Aachen once, at the shrine, and where you go, you will have more need of a blessing than me.”

“Thank you,” Erik said. At a loss for other words, he clasped Franz’s arm firmly for a moment before Toinette cleared her throat and all turned to look at her.

“Wait a fortnight for us, at most,” she said. She faced her men at the edge of the path from the beach, straight and tall in the ruins of her red gown, with her hair tied back and a sword belted around her waist. Her face brooked no denial, nor any argument; she gave instruction as she’d done before the storm. “If matters get bad and you can leave before then, do it. Trust no strange sights or sounds. If anyone shows up claiming to be us, question them very thoroughly—before you let them through the wards.”

“I fostered in England,” Erik added, “before the wars. I don’t know if an imposter has ways of knowing that, but a man who doesn’t isn’t me, no matter how he looks.”

Toinette hesitated, then said, “And my mother’s name is Galitia. Keep yourselves safe. Be on guard.”

The men each said their farewell, advising caution or invoking God, all blending into a pool of uncertainty and sentiment. None of them turned away, so it was Toinette who moved first, squaring her shoulders and marching up the path, her eyes resolutely forward.

* * *

A few steps into the forest, Erik stopped under a pine and muttered thanks in Latin before breaking off two sprays of needles. “Here,” he said, handing one to Toinette.

It was the first either of them had spoken since leaving the men. Theirs hadn’t been an unfriendly silence; rather, for the first part of the journey, speech had felt treacherous to Toinette, equally capable of provoking her to tears or cheapening the memory of her crew’s farewell. She didn’t know what had made Erik keep quiet—whether sentiment of his own, her own mood being more evident than she’d hoped, or merely concentration on the journey.

She twirled the pine needles beneath her nose, and the smell brought a measure of calm to her mind. “Thank you,” she said, and tucked the spray into her bound hair.

“At my lady’s service,” said Erik with a quick bow but a smile that felt more sincere than joking.

Toinette allowed the answering warmth to linger beneath her breastbone for a few steps. If they lived, she would address that, and what it might mean; if they didn’t, it wouldn’t matter. Their mission had simplified life a good bit. She had to see that silver lining.

“Almost feels like home now,” she said as they walked on, with a gesture to the path around them. Eight people had trodden it for weeks, breaking and crushing the undergrowth. The blood-drinking plants were dead, and while slurred voices still drifted through the brush, Toinette had nearly gotten used to that. “By contrast, I suppose.”

“Aye,” said Erik, “and by use. We’ve put our marks here, and they’ve stayed. There’s a safety to that, in the mind if nowhere else.”

Toinette nodded. The cabin they were passing had once been wild trees, the ground host to plants no man would have imagined. She’d changed that—she and the rest—with their own hands. They’d made a dwelling that would never have formed in nature. “Like dogs pissing on fence posts, in a way,” she said with a quick laugh, “but I won’t deny it works.”

“We’re most of us dogs at heart,” Erik said and then winked. “Did no one ever tell you that about men?”

“Wolves, for certain,” Toinette shot back.

She knew as well as he did, and knew he knew, that they’d have neither the time for sport nor the safety to indulge in such a distraction. Still it was good to let herself respond to his heated glances. Like the pine, the warmth would be something to carry with her as a talisman against the darkness to come.

* * *

“What will you do?” Toinette asked him. “If this all goes as well as possible, that is?”

They’d stopped at noon to eat and drink. Still on the path they knew, they sat with their backs to broad trees and kept wary eyes on the forest. It wasn’t very far to the trail of the elk-things and the unexplored territory.

Erik swallowed a mouthful of bread. “How well is ‘as well as possible,’ do you think?”

Copper eyebrows slanted upward, and the dark eyes beneath rolled. “You know damn well. We break the curse, we find Excalibur or a magic cauldron, we have a calm sea and a following wind, and we’re back in France in a month. You take the treasure to Artair, I’m guessing. What then? Back to war?”

It was a question he’d tried not to answer ever since Artair had sent him off investigating rumors. War had an ease to it that matched the simplicity of life in dragon form: the straightforwardness of killing and being killed, the narrowing of vision to the next battle or the next blow, even the visceral satisfaction of victory and survival. A man could get lost there. A dragon-blooded man was in special danger. There were those, Artair had said, who’d become trapped in dragon’s shape and seen men merely as prey, and that without the additional intoxication of battle or the fury wounds could cause.

Knowing all this, Artair rarely asked or permitted his kin to spend many years at the front of any war; that was one reason he’d sent Erik abroad. Yet, if the English came again in force…

“I don’t know,” he said slowly. “He might think he and Dougal will serve well enough by themselves, now that Dougal has sons to carry on after him. There’s Cathal too, and Moiread, should matters grow desperate. I’ve younger brothers, so it’s never been a matter of risking the line with me, but…you know the other risks with us.”

Toinette’s mouth twitched, and she shook her head slowly. “Always the perfect knight,” she said, though without the bitterness or the annoyance of their former arguments on the subject. “Oaths are heavy things, I understand. What if Artair leaves the choice up to you? He’s not a tyrant, in truth.”

“I…don’t know,” Erik said again, only realizing it himself. Following orders had been simple in its way. “When we signed the last treaty, I thought I’d had my fill of war for a long time. But if my country’s at stake, and my people—it truly isn’t just Artair’s pride. Not for me. Conquerors don’t often deal well with their subjects.”

“No,” said Toinette and sighed. “And I, when I said that…” She laughed shortly. “It’s very easy to see a river between yourself and the man in your way, even if there’s only a stream. Or less.” She drew a line in the dirt with one finger. “Though I’m not sure how pleased he’d be with the comparison.”

“Pleased enough,” said Erik. “He always spoke well of you in my hearing. If we leave here, he’ll be glad to know you’ve done well for yourself.”

“And I hope he does too…and well for the rest of you.” Toinette broke a piece of bread in half and stared at the edge. “At times, it strikes me as very odd that men should still seek conquest, after the years we’ve had. As if inheritance, or rulership, or any of it mattered when they could die spitting blood the next day.”

“I don’t suppose the English knew the plague was coming when they invaded,” Erik said, with what fairness he could manage. “And death’s always been on every mortal’s doorstep, though the form of it might be less showy. Life’s a matter of learning to ignore that, perhaps.”

“Mmm,” said Toinette, in reluctant agreement. “That’s the other half of what I think. Life goes on—and it may be that trying to kill another man for what he’s got is as much a part of that as eating or sleeping. Sence, or the priests, would say it’s original sin, I suppose.”

“So I’ve always heard,” said Erik. “Though my father’s priest when I was young was often too deep in the wine bottle to give much instruction on that or any other subject.”

As he’d intended, he got a smile from Toinette. “That explains a great deal,” she said. Getting to her feet, she brushed away crumbs and shouldered her pack. “And now, maybe we’ll see what a pair of near-heathens can do against a greater evil.”

“Just hope it’s not too much greater,” said Erik, following behind.