The Sword in the Cave
Drea turned back to gaze on the tall green trees over the soft white beach. "Perhaps," she said.
Tygg snorted. "I'll ready the launch."
Alorn said "But she has not commanded..."
"She does need to. The Dread is hers. Did you want to sail away from the last sight of land in the known world until
the men's teeth fall out? Did I? Yet here we are. We did not come for no reason. Ready the launch."
"I thought you were going to ready the launch."
"I'll make you into the launch, if you say one word more, Goldlander. You're the sailing master. Master the sail."
Alorn looked as if he wanted to resent this rudeness, but instead he inclined his head in Drea's direction and turned
away to the lower deck.
"Must you be so disagreeable?" said Drea, still staring at the vast dark land beyond.
"I am not kept by you to be agreeable," replied Tygg.
"Is that what I do, Tygg? Do I keep you?"
Tygg spat again, this time at the deck near Drea's feet. "Besides," he said, when she looked at him again, "I cannot
let Alorn start thinking he may challenge me. We're not like to find a sailing-master in this hell."
*
*
*
The launch, rowed by living men all, rescued men all, came ashore with the tide. Alorn and another sailor named
Juku jumped into the surf and pulled it onto a promontory beach and then they all disembarked onto the white
sand. The sun was warm but not hot upon their backs, even at this hour. The trees seemed as forbidding and close,
like a thicket of thin trunks, as it had from the ship. Tygg looked up and down the beach for a moment, waiting to
see if anything animal moved. Nothing did. He looked back to Drea, standing in her short dark leather cuirass and
her ragged brown tunic, and she looked out of place. But then she always had, as long as Tygg had known her. And as
long as that had been, they had wandered the seas and lands, on Drea's hunt. Tygg had always been her right hand,
and more. But here, he wanted nothing so much as to forcibly shove her back into the launch and have the Dread
sail away on the next tide. He couldn't do that, he knew. Or, in truth, he shouldn't do that. He wanted to, but he
knew not why, and that fact brought other, sharper instincts, instincts that did not counsel retreat, first to the fore
of his brain. He smelled the salt air and knew what he would do.
Something else came to his nose, in addition to the sea. Something sweet, a fragrance of nectar and of ripeness. As
the breeze shifted, it became strong enough so Tygg could almost taste it. Drea stood beside him and said "You
smell it too".
Tygg nodded, peered into the foliage. "There's something here. Something..."