The Dragon Round (Dragon #1)(27)

She lies on her belly and swings her sword at the crab. She misses by a wide margin. The crab comes at her again, she swings again, and it turns aside to skitter along the cliff face. It disappears behind an outcrop.

She leaps up and faces the woods; the other crabs might come back. She holds her sword before her, sturdy but flexible, moving without moving, the way her father taught her when she was a girl. A trader has to be a duelist, he said, in case his guards are absent or traitorous. And swordsmanship offered a profitable worldview. Although she deplored the taking of life, he was right. Knowing intimately that every thrust could be her last had taught her anticipation, poise, intimidation, and planning. Still, her lessons would have been more interesting had she been armed with a cleaver like this broad sword instead of a foil.

The crab doesn’t appear, nor do the others. Is it waiting for her to reach for him and make herself vulnerable? Is it skulking through the bushes to flank her? Jeryon barks, “Poth.” She turns and flattens herself along the edge. He points to his right with his eyes. She swings. The sword sweeps the crab’s legs out from under it, and it falls. It skips off the cliff face, breaking off its legs and pieces of its shell.

“Hold on,” she says. She gets up and sees exactly what she needs near the edge: a thick vine dangling from a chinkapin. It’s lined with withering yellow flowers and small purple fruit like plums. She works it loose in stages and pushes it to Jeryon. He grabs hold and climbs it while she holds it over her shoulder, facing the roots to keep it from tearing out of the ground.

When he’s nearly up, she hears clicking in the brush. She left her sword by the chinkapin. Ten feet away, it feels like ten miles. “I have to drop the vine,” she says.

“No,” he says, “I’m almost there.”

The crabs come closer. “I’m going to try something,” she says. “Don’t let go.”

Everlyn hugs the vine tight and charges toward her sword and the crabs, drawing him up behind her. The crabs rush her. The vine goes slack. She hopes he’s on top of the cliff. She kneels to grab her sword and a crab flies at her. She comes up quickly to stab it between its eyes. Two more leap on her. Their claws have her hair and her smock, trying to find her arms. A third snips at her ankle, putting her into a fighting retreat, and she screams as she cuts through one claw, then the other.

She waves her sword in an arc to keep the rest at bay while Jeryon wrenches one crab off her back and tosses it over the cliff, then does the same to the other. Its broad claw comes off in his hand, and Jeryon shakes it at the other crabs.

That and the sword convince the crabs they’ve lost the day. They leave the field sideways, each with one eye curled over its shoulders like an upraised finger.

When he can’t hear their clicking anymore, Jeryon says, “I’m sick of crab too.”

4



* * *



Jeryon tries to line up the rips in his sleeve. “I don’t think I can mend this.”

“Good. Tear it off. I need it for a bandage.”

“It’s just a flesh wound.”

“You can live without a sleeve, not without an arm.”

“I’ve known plenty of one-armed sailors,” he says. Nonetheless, he tears off the sleeve while she hacks off a long piece of the vine with her sword. Then he cuts off the other sleeve with his blade. “Balance,” he says.

Everlyn upends the vine over his arm and hand. Water trickles out to clean his wounds and wash away the seeping blood.

“A water vine?” he says.

“Exactly.” Lubber. She takes a swallow and hands him the vine. “You can eat the fruit too.”

He twists one off, bites it, and makes a face.

“Too bitter?” she says.

“Looks like a plum. Thought it would taste like one.”

She takes a big bite of one herself. “I like bitter.”

“I like tart.”

“Then we’ll get along just dandy,” she says.

“What choice do we have?” he says.

Everlyn takes a roll of thick aloe leaves from her smock. With his blade she scores them to release their medicinal juices, then uses the sleeves to bind the leaves to the wounds. “I’ll disinfect them with seawater after they’ve clotted,” she says.

He wipes his blade on his pants and pockets it. “Where are your hair pins?”

“Lost at sea. But this island more than makes up for it.” She produces a sprig of leaves with a blue flower. “Boneset. It’s a pain reliever. Chew it.”

After a moment he says, “I feel pretty good. Kind of invincible.”

“That’s just what it’s like not to hurt after so long.” She chews a wad herself.

He looks at the bandages. “These, and back there: How can I repay you?”

“Make me lunch. Then get me off this island.”

At the beach, Jeryon kills two crabs. While he piles their meat on one of their carapaces, Everlyn pulls up her smock and sits with her bare legs stretched out on the sand. A misshapen target, dark purple ringing yellow, covers her ankle. She scratches it with the ornate brass cap on her sword sheath. He asks, “Where did you get the sword?”

“Not, ‘Where did you get the bruise?’ ”

“Where did you get the bruise?”