Will had been having a rather pleasant dream. It involved him, Lette, and a fairly promiscuous cheddar.
Being slapped awake made for a rather disappointing finale.
“Uh?” he said groggily to the blurry figure holding him by the scruff of his neck. “We there yet?”
“No!” bellowed Slappy Slap-Pants, and Will found he’d been hit in the face again.
Balur came into sharp focus. He dropped Will. Will landed hard. His mouth felt like it was full of blood, and his head full of bear shit. He groaned, spat, and took hold of his temples.
He said, “What’s going on?” Except it sounded like, “Wha-suh-guhn?”
Balur provided no answers. He had moved on, was holding someone else aloft, was slapping them.
Lette. It was Lette.
Will tried to put the pieces back together. There had been a plan. There had been a plan because they had been planning something. Something…
Gold. Stealing from Dathrax. Stealing his hoard.
He became aware that he was sitting on a pile of gold. Which suggested that must be going fairly well.
He tried talking again. “What’s going on?” It came clearer now.
Quirk looked at him. “Why in Knole’s holy name do I listen to you?” she asked. It seemed rhetorical, which was lucky because Will really wasn’t up to answering her. “We’re still on the boat, Will,” she said when he failed to respond. “The fucking boat!”
A boat. That meant his plan had involved a boat…
Lette landed with a thud beside him. Balur stood over her looking mildly disgusted. She rolled a sleepy head bearing a bewildered expression in Will’s direction. “Wha-suh-guhn?” she asked him.
And then it came back to him. All of it. The whole plan. The idea that he should be on an island with a drugged dragon right now. That he should not have been heavily sedated. That Quirk and Balur should be on this boat alone, piloting through monster-infested water to him. To gold.
He stood up, adrenaline burning the last of his stupefaction. “Are we on the lake?” he asked. “Did you get out of the town?”
“No!” Quirk almost shrieked. “We only just got on board and found you and all our gold here.”
Their gold. Will tried to fit that to the known facts.
“Oh fuck,” he said, as the pieces slotted home. “That lazy fucking dragon.” Dathrax hadn’t taken them across the lake. He’d dropped the gold off at the garrison for them to transport.
Dathrax.
“Oh shit.” He looked up, stared at the others’ faces.
“What?” Lette asked, apparently having failed to develop telepathy while she was unconscious.
“Dathrax,” he said. “He’s still conscious.”
Lette shrugged. “So? We haven’t done anything to attract his high and mighty bullshit attention.” She yawned.
But Will was looking at the glance Balur and Quirk were exchanging. Lette followed the direction of his gaze. “What?” she asked. Then again into the awkward silence, “What?”
“So…” Quirked resumed her nervous pacing. “About that…”