A sea of trees, rising from a blanket of shrubbery, roots and vines, stood behind them; the only landmark breaking a nearly perfectly endless sheet of white sand and rock. At a glance, it seemed lush, Lenk thought, but he knew well that forests could be just as unforgiving and desolate as deserts. The corpse of the vessel, sprawled out on the sand like a beached whale, wood drying under the sun like bones bleaching, seemed a charming example.
‘It could be worse,’ Kataria offered, snapping him from his gloomy reverie.
It certainly could, Lenk thought.
He glanced over his shoulder to where Gariath squatted. The dragonman had taken the worst of the crash, having been tossed from the prow violently, skidding across the sands until his violent journey ended abruptly at a nearby palm tree. Cuts from the beach rocks and thorny shrubs covered his red skin and splinters from the tree jutted from his back.
Regardless of his injuries, the hardy dragonman had refused all aid.
‘Human medicine,’ he had growled, ‘is for skinned knees and constipation.’
Instead, he had skulked over to the shade of the same tree he had caromed off and sat quietly.
Dragonmen, particularly red ones, Lenk had been told, were resilient creatures and had an innate ability to heal themselves through sheer force of will. If there was a will stronger than Gariath’s, Lenk had never seen it, for the dragonman’s wounds were no longer bleeding.
He would have thanked his companion for declining aid if it was out of generosity. There weren’t a great many supplies to go around for the purposes of treating injuries.
His arm had required a good deal of Asper’s bandages and Denaos’s scrapes had required a good amount of salve. Most of the priestess’s aid, however, had gone to the one who had caused the wreck in the first place. Lenk’s eyes narrowed to thin, angry slits as he cast a glare further down the beach.
Dreadaeleon sat propped up against a rock, Asper squatting by his side, working to tighten the bandage around his head that covered the gash at his temple. A lot of bandages, Lenk noted with a wince, too many to hold in such a small brain.
Even now, the wizard clutched his head as he lay against the rock, pampered like a baby. Lenk’s teeth ground together so hard, sparks almost shot from his mouth. He felt his hands clench into fists, heedless of the strain it put on his wounded arm. Kataria noticed his ire rising and laid a hand on his shoulder.
‘Now, calm down,’ she said soothingly. ‘He already told you—’
‘He told me nothing,’ Lenk snarled. ‘If we’re going to be stuck on some Gods-forsaken island and starve to death because of him, I want to know why.’
Not waiting for a reply from his companion, the young man stormed over to the boy’s resting place with such fury in his stride as to burn the sands beneath him. He paused nearby and folded his arms over his chest, focusing his icy scowl upon the wizard. Asper said nothing and continued working on her patient’s splint, though her hands trembled more than a little under Lenk’s frigid stare.
‘Well?’ Lenk snarled after several moments’ silence.
‘Well what?’ Dreadaeleon replied, not opening his eyes.
‘Well, how’s your little scrape, you poor little lamb?’ Lenk said, his sarcasm burning. ‘What the hell were you thinking?’
‘Well, I don’t know,’ the wizard replied, equally vitriolic. ‘I suppose I thought: “I bet Lenk would find it hysterical if I decided to crash the boat.”’ He snorted. ‘I already told you, I don’t know what happened.’
‘How?’ the young man spat back. ‘How do you not know what you were doing?’
‘The intricacies of my mind are of such staggering complexity that they might very well cause yours to explode, leak out of your ears and puddle at your feet.’ He tilted his nose up. ‘Suffice it to say, I knew exactly what I was doing, I just wasn’t sure why.’
‘Oh, well, thank Khetashe for that distinction!’
‘Lenk,’ Kataria said, creeping up to his side. ‘You know Dread wouldn’t do it on purpose.’
‘Well, I’d like to know whose purpose he did do it on,’ the young man growled, casting a sideways glare at the shict.
Despite the protests of his conscience, his rage cared neither for compassion nor logic. It took all his willpower not to flay the boy alive and use his skin to patch the vessel’s wound.
‘I’m not sure what happened,’ Dreadaeleon said, finally opening his eyes and looking