Highland Dragon Master

by Isabel Cooper

  “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.

  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 the Hawk was 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 for some purpose.

  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, it hadn’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?

  She grinned, despite her mood, and in her amusement she almost missed the flicker of movement from the corner of her eye. If Franz hadn’t shouted, she would never have seen it.

  To the east, through the trees, metal glinted in the sunlight and then vanished into shade.

  “Hallo!” Franz shouted. “Hallo, you there!” Nobody responded. “It was a man, Captain! A man in mail, I think. I saw his face just an instant. Come on, then. He must not have heard us. He can’t be going very fast in this, not in armor. Hallo!” he called again, starting to run. “We’re friends!”

  They might not be. Toinette would have reminded Franz of pirates and cannibals, had he given her longer. With more warning, she would have grabbed him by the neck like a youth and made him listen.

  But he was running too fast for that, bolting off into the forest with a speed Toinette hadn’t expected.

  She only had time to think Dammit, what is wrong with everyone?

  Then she dropped her sack of nettles and broke into a run too. The smell of crushed plants rose up to meet her; her own heartbeat grew loud in her ears. She could hear Raoul close behind her too, keeping pace well enough for a new man.

  Undergrowth tangled Toinette’s feet, slowing her further, and she had to dodge around trees—many big enough to have been obstacles for her dragon form, let alone her human one. Her saving grace was that Franz did too. So should have the man he was chasing, but when Franz finally stopped, the phantom was nowhere in sight. Toinette and her men stood on a sparse trail, one whose presence did make her hopeful about deer—or even elk, by the way the plants on it grew—but which showed no sign of a human presence.

  “Gone,” said Franz, panting. “But…I swear I saw him.”

  “So did I,” Raoul put in.

  “Oh, and I did too, or close enough,” Toinette replied testily. “If it was a vision, we’re all going mad, for we’re never saints. Hush a moment, both of you, and we’ll look for tracks—assuming the good knight’s friends aren’t hiding behind the trees with bows at the ready.”

  She sniffed the air as they looked around, as quietly as she could manage while still getting what scent she could as a human. Cool earth and broken plants overwhelmed most else. For all she could tell, they were the first people to ever pass down the trail.

  “There’s nothing here,” Raoul said. He’d been kneeling to examine the dirt and moss; he got to his feet with a frown. “Could be the plants are just too thick to show footprints, but—well, look.” He gestured at the trail ahead. “None of the branches are broken.”

  “A man running away wouldn’t have dodged them,” Franz agreed.

  All three of them stood still. “It might,” Toinette said slowly, “have been a bit like a mirage.”

  “Not a desert,” said Franz.

  “No, but we don’t know this land.” Toinette didn’t sound convincing to herself. The men looked more doubtful yet. “If not, then—”

  She trailed off. None of them wanted to say the words aloud, not alone in the forest. They’d come a ways from the spring, Toinette noticed then: a pink-and-white vine she hadn’t seen before climbed up many of the trees around them, and fewer birds sang overhead, although that might have just been a result of the racket she and the men had made.

  “We should go back,” she began to say, thinking of retrieving the nettles before other creatures got to them. Not many things were desperate enough to eat nettles, but the island might have goats—and the thought made her stomach growl.

  Naturally, that was the moment when the vines detached themselves from their trees and lunged.

  * * *

  The vines were as strong as any man, and they’d struck from surprise. Toinette yelled like a kicked cat as they yanked her backward into a tree, which struck the back of her head with a
loud thwack and a burst of pain that left her cross-eyed for a few moments.

  Thinner vines crept around the tree, opened fleshy pink spots, and pressed them against Toinette’s exposed skin. The edges of those spots were sharp. Her blood started flowing at once, and the vines pulsed, drinking it down. She screamed again, as much in revulsion as pain, and heard Raoul and Franz crying out as well, their voices baritone counterpart to hers.

  Struggling did little good. When Toinette managed to get a hand free and draw her sword, the vines swiftly wrapped around her arm again, hindering her motion. She wasn’t strong enough to break free of all of them at once, and little less would be sufficient.

  Bugger this, she thought, and transformed.

  The smell of sundered plants was strong and sickly sweet. They snapped around her without any real effort on her part; her sheer mass was force enough. Toinette slammed a hind leg contemptuously into the tree behind her and swung her weight forward to address the plants preying on her men.

  Fire, alas, was too likely to catch Raoul or Franz, but her claws were sharp, and she could put considerable muscle behind them. Hold damned still, she thought at Franz, and swiped through the vines as carefully as she could manage in a hurry. He was in one piece when he bolted from the tree and over to her side, and Toinette didn’t notice any serious wounds.

  Good enough. Another slash freed Raoul. Toinette didn’t wait for him to run, but plucked him up by the collar with her teeth and deposited him onto her back.

  Now fire would work. As the wounded plants writhed, she drew a long breath and called forth flame, careful to keep it controlled despite her rage. She didn’t want to set the whole forest ablaze—or likely wouldn’t, when she’d calmed down and had a meal.

  It had been a long time since Toinette had used fire on anything. Containing it was a bit of a struggle at first, but she managed to keep the flame narrow, crushing it out with a forefoot as soon as the blood-drinking plants had blackened and crumbled. They writhed as they died. She was glad of it.