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 thoughtCaptainordragonwhen 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-rottednurse,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, besilent. 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.
Fourteen
Dragon shape had its own social advantages. Erik didn’t try to get airborne while carrying the pine tree, but he did fall behind the others, and heard little of their conversation as they took the cleared path back. He was glad of it: by the time they got to the beach, bickering had broken out into full-on argument at least once that he’d witnessed, and probably a few more times when he hadn’t been paying attention.
When he saw Sence and Raoul, he realized that he’d been lucky his group had kept themselves only to words. The notion did nothing to improve his mood.
He was stranded with a throng of idiot humans and a woman he couldn’t have. Despite the unfamiliar territory, the odd lights, and the foul smell, flying off to the other side of the island had a sudden intense appeal.
Duty won out over impulse: duty to Artair, to the men he’d hired, and to Toinette, though he knew she wouldn’t be happy to hear that. The most self-indulgence he could manage was taking the pine a little way off from the others and remaining in dragon form while he broke off the remaining branches.
The destruction didn’t lift his mood immediately, but he did feel better while it was going on. Men periodically carried away the discarded wood, stacking the larger branches for later use and putting the others on the fire. None attempted to speak with Erik. They had that much sense.
As the scent of pine filled the air, mixing with the salt and reminding Erik of winter evenings when he was a boy, his thoughts became less prickly. The crew did the best they could—and they’d all had an uneasy night, not to mention being under considerable strain. Expecting sainthood was a fool’s game under such circumstances. He hadn’t precisely been in a meek and mild humor himself.
He turned back into a man with no more thoughts of desertion, and one who no longer found the society around him a burden. Conveniently, the others seemed to have drawn back their spines as well. He noticed Sence offering Raoul a few quiet words as the food went around the campfire, and Raoul replying with a sheepish look and a shrug.
Likely it was no wonder. They’d a mast, and tools from the ship carried in case of just such an occasion. Finishing it would take some days’ work, as Toinette observed after dinner, but they were one step closer to leaving the island. That was a prospect to brighten any man’s outlook.
The wood might truly have helped too. Thinking back, Erik remembered the smell of pine at the castle in the depths of winter, when confinement and lack of light tended to make all within most fractious. He knew not if that had been mere chance, knowledge that Artair hadn’t seen fit to pass on, or the lore of some old man in the forester’s employ.
As with many things, Erik took the results gladly and without questions—particularly so that night, when he slept long, heavily, and without dreaming.
* * *
Trimming the mast and patching the holes in theHawkwas enough occupation for ten men, had they been able to devote such numbers to the task. Mast or no mast, however, they needed food and water, so Toinette led Franz and Raoul back up the cliff the next day. All three carried sacks that they’d roughly made from the cast-off fabric of Toinette’s skirt and the scraps of sailcloth left over from the shrouds. They half filled them with nettles on the way to the spring, drank and bathed, and then pressed onward, hoping to see signs of deer or at least rabbit.
Signs of the Templars or their magic would be good too, Toinette supposed. Having been stranded for Artair’s goals, she would find it a trifle more satisfying if the whole ordeal proved to have been forsomepurpose.
That didn’t keep her from thinking highly uncharitable things about men and nations as she pushed her way through the forest. She was developing a fine list of objects of ire, in fact: the undergrowth, the game that would spook at the scent of a dragon and thus meant she couldn’t simply change shape and barge through as Erik had done, Erik for getting to take the easy route (except for carrying a tree, said her conscience, and she told it to be quiet), the sun for making her sweat when she’d just bathed, nettles for stinging so damned much, and herself for not bringing thick gloves on the voyage.
She’d been in a decent mood on waking, but as they’d gotten further up the path, the day had gotten worse. Strictly speaking, ithadn’t; they’d done quite well. That was annoying too, that discomfort should so mar her moments of triumph.
Oh, aye, Toinette told herself, as she and Moiread had mocked each other back in their girlhood,and your martyr’s crown is surely a wee bit tight, isn’t it?
