“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.”
* * *
