“Whatwas their fashion?” John asked, looking at the piles of ash and bone on the ground and curling his lip. “Demons?”
“I don’t know. No demon I’ve ever heard of, but—” Erik shrugged. “I’ve not heard of that many.”
Toinette eyed the spreading blood on his shirt. “If you lean against a tree,” she said, “do you think you’ll hold up while we look at what’s left? Don’t try to be brave about it.”
“I’ll last.”
It took a long look at him for Toinette to nod. Even when Erik leaned against one of the pines and she knelt to poke at the bones, she kept glancing back over her shoulder, making sure he hadn’t swooned—or seeking a distraction from what she found.
From the expression on her face as she stirred the bones with a handy stick, from the way Sence crossed himself and John swallowed convulsively, they were seeing nothing good, even without the flesh that had moved so disturbingly. Erik wished otherwise, but he couldn’t truly have claimed to feel the smallest amount of surprise.
Now that it had happened, even the attack felt like it had been coming for a long time, like he’d always known and could never have admitted it.
He wondered what other knowledge he possessed and couldn’t face.
Twenty-Seven
Dragons’ fire outdid the hottest forges. Trained on a living creature that didn’t have dragon’s blood, it left very little behind. Looking at the bones of the “elk,” Toinette was glad of that.
Fire might have warped, but it wouldn’t have twisted bones in the way she was seeing. Spikes grew out of ribs, ridges burst forth from spines, and teeth bred like rabbits, warping the skulls around them with their sheer numbers.
“It couldn’t havelivedlike that,” said John. He poked gingerly at a skull, using a long branch—none of them wanted to touch the bodies, and Toinette saw no reason to fight that impulse—and shook his head. “How would it have eaten? Or moved, with that mess on its back?”
“Not long,” said Sence. “Or well.”
Toinette nodded. The beasts would have been in constant pain, if they’d been capable of any feeling. Their charge at Erik looked as much a rush toward death, in that light, as it did any attempt to kill or feed—unless they’d been acting on another’s will.
There were…spaces…in the bones: not mere breaks, nor missing chunks, but places where bone had faded and a shadow taken its shape. The stick went through those places, but they obscured the ground behind them. When Toinette reluctantly knelt to eye one femur more closely, she felt a chill in the air around it, far more than wind would have accounted for.
Youuuuu, sighed the trees. Recognition, accusation, or warning?
She straightened up again quickly, for all the good that did. “I’d say we’re done here for now. Let’s go back.”
The others were fast to agree. “I’ll help you walk,” Sence told Erik. “Best leave the Captain free, in case.”
Toinette saw the logic and was glad Sence didn’t have to be prompted or persuaded; yet she watched Erik drape an arm around the man and felt a quick pang before telling herself not to be an idiot.
Before they left, she scraped dirt and branches over the bones. They weren’t men, much less Christians, to make a grave necessary, but she disliked the idea of leaving them bare to the sky. “And,” she rationalized aloud, “that’ll make it easier to see if they’ve been disturbed.”
The notion of a creature that would want to disturb them, or of a scavenger desperate enough to eat such leavings, visibly crossed through everyone’s mind, leaving lips curled and nostrils flared in disgust. “What were they?” John asked. “Elk, maybe—the females, without antlers—but—”
He trailed off. Erik cleared his throat. “The word we want,” he said quietly, “is ‘cursed,’ I’m thinking.”
Around them, the trees—or a voice beyond—kept whispering, noises that were almost words, words that could mean anything. Toinette didn’t bother looking to the undergrowth for watchful eyes, though; she didn’t think eyes came into the matter at all. The fight and the fire had left her heated, and she was walking, but her flesh was goose-pimpled all the same.
Back at the beach, she and Marcus examined Erik’s wounds: Marcus with the eye of a first mate turned makeshift physician at need, Toinette with greater knowledge of how the dragon-blooded hurt and healed. Neither found anything to contradict Erik’s initial statement, and they settled for tying a scrap of Toinette’s red dress, washed in salt water, around the bleeding wounds. Erik gritted his teeth at the sting of salt, but agreed that it would probably counter most evil spells that might have lingered.
“But you’ll tell us if your side turns green or grows horns,” she said, resting one palm lightly on his naked shoulder. It was a casual touch, as one man might have given a comrade, but Toinette felt every inch of her skin against his, and glanced around quickly to see who among the men might have noticed.
If any had, they gave no sign. They weretalking, certain enough, but neither Toinette nor Erik figured largely in the conversation—or, rather, nothing between them did.
“And he truly breathed fire?” Raoul was asking Sence. “What was it like?”
“Like fire.” Sence’s mouth twitched as he watched his younger companion’s face and added eventually, “Brighter than most flame I’ve seen. A trace bluer.”
“And it did kill the…whatever they were?” Samuel asked.
“It did.”
