Highland Dragon Master Read online

  Her voice didn’t make it entirely clear what those duties would be, but had hint enough to warm Erik’s blood. If there’d been privacy, he would have investigated further; he’d have wagered a great deal that Toinette knew as much.

  Teasing wench. When they returned to Bordeaux, Erik vowed silently, he’d see how far she would follow through on her suggestions.

  For the moment, he contented himself with saying, “I’m sure I’d rejoice in any command you gave me,” and letting their eyes meet for a few fraught heartbeats before adding, “by way of making up for the hardship I’m causing you and your men.”

  “There’s hardship and hardship, isn’t there?” Gervase said from the patch of deck nearby.

  As Erik had seen on land, Toinette let her men speak freely, but he flattered himself he saw a flash of irritation cross her face at the interruption. She stifled it well, though, and only asked, “How do you mean?”

  “Well, this voyage we’re on, it’s the Atlantic, and it’s further north than I’d like, and we don’t know the route exactly, no?”

  “Aye,” said Erik.

  The tow-haired man grunted a “Hunh,” which Erik took for displeased agreement.

  “Dangerous,” said Gervase, giving his companion no attention. “But so too are the winds off Tyre, and storms anywhere, and men always. Three times I’ve fought pirates. I lost a good friend and three toes. Then on land there’s war, plague, bad meat, brigands, women—so I say to myself, Gervase, you have the span of years the good Lord gave you, and you know not what that will be, no more than does any man. Best to spend them more eventfully than in taking salt fish from Calais to Dover and back.”

  Erik nodded. “‘The coward believes he will ever live if he keep him safe from strife, but old age leaves him not long in peace, though spears may spare his life.’”

  “Yes, just so! Your words?”

  “No, I’m no poet. A saying of my grandmother’s people. Translated, more or less.”

  The other sailor glanced up at Erik from under lowered brows. “A Norseman as well as a Scot, then?” he asked in an English accent. “My lord?”

  It wasn’t quite sarcastic, but skirted around the edge. Toinette’s lips went thin. “The Hawk bears a French charter, John,” she said. “You’d do well to keep that in mind, if we’re suddenly minding kings and nations.”

  “Captain,” said John, and bent his head back to his work.

  “Don’t mind him,” said Gervase. His hands made quick circles as he talked; he worked without looking, a man for whom it was second nature. “You should be bled a week into every voyage, John. It’d improve your temper considerably.”

  “For two pence, I’ll improve yours,” said John, but the threat sounded almost genial, and he looked at Gervase without any of the resentment he’d shown Erik.

  “No improving perfection. You’re only jealous that I know I’ll not drown.”

  “Not drown?” Erik asked, both curious and eager to turn the conversation from his allegiance.

  “The earring,” said Toinette, and gestured. “Tales say it’s the best protection a man can have, unless he can lay his hands on a caul.”

  “And I keep saying you should have a pair, Captain,” said Gervase.

  “One day I might. Meantime, I can take care of myself,” she said, and gave Erik another grin before turning back to the ocean and adding, under her voice, “in all the ways I want to.”

  * * *

  Conditions aboard ship being what they were, it was a few days before Erik found Toinette alone. She did her best to give him the opportunity, but always there was work to be done, or men around asking questions, and no easy way to put them off. Knowing the question Erik would ask, she also didn’t feel much urgency.

  It was to his credit that he braved the weather to find his chance. To Toinette, the squall didn’t amount to more than a few bumps and a shower. Landsmen often felt differently. Then again, she admitted to herself as she saw him walk toward the forecastle, ignoring the rain on his face, Scotland and particularly its islands would make a stoic of anyone where weather was concerned.

  “Here,” he said, holding out a skin of wine. “It must be cold work out here, even for one of us.”

  “Cramps the hands, after a while,” she admitted. The wine wasn’t good, but it was warming. “I’d let you take a turn, but I’d rather live.”

  Erik laughed, not offended. “I’ll start wi’ the ropes, should I take a fancy to seafaring, and learn from there.”

  “That’s how all my men did it, as far as I know,” she said. The other meanings of my men came to mind then. Toinette looked up into the strong, wet face near her, and felt her heart beat faster than wrestling with the wheel would explain.

  “A worthy lot to join, I’ve no doubt,” said Erik. As Toinette waited for more, eyebrows arched, the flirting light died from his face, and he said, a man recalling duty, “I’d a mind to talk with you on that subject.”

  Toinette considered misunderstanding him and continuing the banter, then rejected the idea. This was business. It was best to get it out of the way; they both had responsibilities. “John?”

  “Aye. He…knows what we’re about?”

  “As much as any of the men do. I told them the basics. Not about us, or too much about magic, though I did say that legends had it that…”—she waved her free hand—“and so forth. But he knows who you are, and that your mission is like to benefit Scotland. He signed on regardless. I’ll not say he likes you, but that’s not required.”

  The rain kept splashing down above them, steady and even. The deck would likely need inspection afterward, Toinette thought. Damp bred rot. She glanced from the sea in front of her back to Erik, who was hesitating.

  “You don’t think him likely to…” he finally said, looking embarrassed by the suggestion.

  “To let the English know what you’re trying? No, he’s no way of contacting them, and nobody who’d listen, from what he’s said of his home. To stab us in the back at the last minute? It wouldn’t work on either of us, and the rest of the crew would tear him apart for trying.”

  “Ah. Yes.” Relief joined but didn’t chase off the embarrassment. “I’m sorry for raising the question, only I felt it necessary.”

  The wind shifted northward. Toinette turned back to the wheel with another shrug. “I would’ve, in your shoes. But John’s like the rest of us, no matter how he grumbles. Wars are for kings and knights, and the poor bastards on their land.”

  “And your men are loyal to you.”

  Both the emphasis Erik used and the half-grudging admiration she heard made Toinette a trifle warmer from pride. Out loud she laughed. “And pay. It comes to the same, in the end.”

  “Does it?” Erik asked.

  When she glanced over her shoulder, Toinette saw him studying her with an expression that was serious as well as heated. She cleared her throat. “I’d not care to test it too far—by knocking them about on this water, say. Best you get back below, and I to my duties.”

  Flirting was one thing. It was best, even for her, not to get in over her head.

  * * *

  The storm, such as it was, cleared up, and they had another few days of fine weather. Erik grew used to the sea air, the rocking boat, and the voices of the men blending with the lapping waves or the rippling sail.

  Slowly he began to know a few of them: Gervase, of course, and Raoul, new and lovesick for a girl who’d “likely married already” in the words of cynical Sence. Most talked to him more reticently than they did to Toinette or Marcus, without long familiarity to smooth down the difference in their ranks, and John avoided him when possible, preferring suspicious looks from across the deck.

  Yet there were days when general merriment overwhelmed them all, such as the time when the men brought in a vast blue fish, more than twice Erik’s height. As it
lay flopping on the deck, Yakob and Samuel stretching out their arms, the general laughter and cheers expanded to include Erik.

  “This place you’re taking us,” Samuel said, with a flash of teeth, “is it full of such creatures?”

  “We can but find out,” Erik replied. “For all I know, it could be Prester John’s kingdom and all its wonders, though I’d not hold my breath in hoping.”

  “Wise of you,” said Marcus, striding up with a more serious countenance. “Good work, but we’d best have it butchered and salted quickly, and return to duties. Captain doesn’t like the look of those clouds to the east.”

  Six

  Barely an hour later, Toinette liked the clouds even less.

  Not content with being large, dark, and fast accumulating—any of which would have been ill chance enough in the middle of a strange ocean—they’d developed a sickly greenish undercast. Never in Toinette’s experience had that color failed to mean an unpleasant time ahead.

  “Looks like we’re in for a blow, men,” she said when Marcus had assembled the hands in front of her. “For the moment, we’ll run before the wind and try to get ahead of the worst. Raoul, Samuel, Marcus, trim the sail. The rest of you, to the hold. Lash down everything heavy, and have buckets ready to bail if the water gets high. Should this thing catch up with us, we may drop anchor and furl sail. There won’t be much warning, so listen for my shout.”

  She glanced toward the new men in the crowd. Emrich was looking pale, Sence watching the faces to either side of him, and Raoul surprisingly composed. None of the three looked close to breaking, thank God. All she needed was to have a man go off his head in the middle of a storm.

  “Be wary, all of you. This is new ground for all of us…well, not ground,” she joked, by way of easing the tension, “but new. No knowing what storms in this part of the sea might be like. No foolish chances, aye?”

  “Aye, Captain,” came the chorus.

  “To your duties, then, and may God see us through this safely. Marcus, I’ll take the wheel. Come to me with any questions.”

  “And what should I do?” Erik asked, falling in at her side as Toinette hurried toward the prow of the ship.

  “Help below, if you’ve a mind. Try not to go overboard. Unless you can magic away this weather, you’re a strong back at the moment.”

  “I fear that it’ll be the second. Weather…” he spread his hands. “John’s already been silvering the water, same as the fishermen used to do back home. I wouldn’t be capable of much more.”

  Toinette nodded, unsurprised. No wizard she’d ever met, Artair or his daughter Agnes included, could command the weather well enough to stop a storm in its tracks—particularly not at sea, where ocean water played merry hell with magic in any case. Throwing silver coins into the waves and being careful not to whistle was the best any man or woman could do, even if they were sorcerers.

  “Get on below, then,” she said. “Keep your head down and your wits about you. Even we can drown if the sea’s bad enough, and if a falling crate takes your head off, I doubt it’ll grow back.”

  “So noted.” Erik flashed her a smile. His skin had tanned over the last month, and his teeth were very white against it, another legacy of their shared blood. “A man might be forgiven for thinking you cared, with talk like that.”

  “It looks bad to let the passenger die. Especially if he’s paid already.”

  * * *

  Below the deck, the men had uncoiled great spools of rope and were tying them around the barrels and boxes of provisions, making them fast to the wall by means of iron hooks. Gervase and Franz were telling Emrich about storms in the past. The others were silent, save for Yakob, who was steadily praying as he worked. Erik caught the names of saints Elmo, Peter, and Brendan: nicely scattered among nations, though he’d no notion of whether that would make the prayers more effective or not.

  Descending, Erik joined the group of them. He got a few startled looks at first, but the men accepted him quickly and without question, save for saying “m’lord” when they told him what to lift and where to put it.

  It was hard work, but physically well within his means: the dragon-blooded were slightly stronger than most men even in human form. Lifting and carrying were almost an enjoyable change from the last month of enforced idleness.

  The worst of it was the hot airlessness of the hold. Neither heat nor cold could truly harm Erik, but they could be damned uncomfortable, and this was. The whole place also reeked of unwashed sweat, which he was mostly used to, and of terror, which he hadn’t smelled in a good few months. Franz and Gervase might talk a good game, Sence and John might maintain a stoic silence, but all of them were afraid.

  When the ship veered hard to port, Erik stumbled and fell against the wall. A brittle scratch of laughter went up. “Should’ve stayed out of the wine, m’lord,” Gervase said, extending a hand. Even his joking voice was shaky, and the hand Erik clasped was cold.

  “Och, I’m weak and a sinner,” Erik jested in reply. “Especially about the legs, it seems.”

  “No better way to learn than a storm,” said Franz. “Here. Hold while I tie up. My lord,” he added.

  Obediently, Erik took his place in front of a great barrel of salt beef. As the ship turned again, he braced his arms against the weight and considered the prospect of being killed by a cow—several cows, in truth, but that would do very little for his pride. It might, however, be a fitting vengeance for the beasts.

  “Do you think we’ll outrun it?” he asked Franz.

  The sailor, tall and dark with a luxuriant mustache, shrugged. “Could be. Captain knows her trade, but none know these waters. Or these winds. There.” He yanked a knot tight and then stood back, prompting Erik to warily do the same.

  Ropes held. Barrels stayed in place. From above, a clap of thunder rolled slowly across the sky.

  Profanity in three different languages filled the hold. Yakob’s prayers got more intense, but he also grabbed a stack of large buckets from the corner. “Half of you go, half stay,” he said to the others, motioning toward the ladder. “I’ll pass them up.”

  Erik followed the other men, climbed swiftly, and emerged into a world of greenish-purple light.

  * * *

  Saint Elmo’s fire. Toinette had seen it a time or two before. Some held it to be a good omen; she knew only that it went with storms and sea.

  Usually it came toward the end of the storm, though, not at the beginning. Then too, it had typically been blue or green, without the violet hue that made it look sickly and diseased, and it had confined itself to the mast rather than spreading all across the deck. The difference might have been down to the sea, yet a feeling in the pit of her stomach said, This is uncanny.

  Gripping the ship’s wheel, she uttered the Latin words—visio dei—she’d learned at Loch Arach in her youth, calling on the aid of spirits that would let her see the hidden world of supernatural forces—and nothing happened.

  What in God’s holy name?

  She didn’t let herself clutch the wheel as tightly as she wanted, lest it break. She told herself that an absence of magical sight was the last thing she needed to worry about. It had been a while since she’d bothered, and there was the chance she’d done it wrong, or perhaps the spirits who made such things possible wouldn’t come near a lightning storm. Toinette had never tried invoking them in such circumstances before.

  She had more urgent considerations. Lightning was flickering through the clouds above, and growls of thunder followed it, growing steadily louder. Toinette eyed the motion of the sky, looked at the rising waves, and made a decision.

  “No outrunning this one, damn the luck,” she called to Marcus. “Strike the sail and drop the anchor. We’ll try to ride it out.”

  She didn’t wait to see the order carried out. Toinette knew her men, and knew that Marcus would ride herd on Raoul if need be
. She turned back to the wheel. A hard, spitting rain began to fall, blowing horizontally into her face. The Hawk rocked from side to side.

  The first stab of lightning hit the sea about a hundred feet off. It lit up the sky, which had otherwise turned dark as midnight. Everything looked vivid in that second of illumination. The restless sea stretched far out ahead of the Hawk, with nobody and nothing for hundreds of miles, as far as Toinette could tell.

  They were alone in the storm.

  * * *

  It hit them hard and suddenly, one long scream of Nature roused to fury. Toinette was no stranger to storms, even to perilous ones, but this outdid everything she’d seen, everything she’d even heard of, save for the tales of men who’d been to the Indies. Lightning struck again and again, turning the sea around them into blue-green flame for a few seconds at a time. The thunder rolled in constant baritone to the higher voices of the wind and the sea, but all were rendingly loud.

  Soaked, breathless, Toinette clung to the wheel. Even with the anchor, the Hawk could capsize without a steady hand, and Toinette knew very well that she might do so even with one. Ships were wood and men were mortal, and she was close enough to a man to fail. She’d done that before, but never with others’ lives at stake.

  The ship rolled from side to side, and waves beat at the hull with fierce, wet noises. A few washed over the sides. More followed, swamping the deck, and behind Toinette the men ran back and forth with buckets, throwing the water back overboard. It was a perilous business. Cries and oaths rang out as someone slipped; from the tone, she didn’t think he’d gone over the rail. Toinette had learned to identify such things.

  She couldn’t have named the moment when she knew they were losing. Time lost meaning in any storm, and this one made her half forget it ever had existed, that there’d ever been a normal world outside the pandemonium of wind and water.

  Her arms ached. She thought, We’re not likely to come through this one. That was everything she could muster of words, since all else was simple instinct to clutch and stand and turn. She probably should have prayed, but she couldn’t remember anything past Ave Maria or Pater Noster.