Dragonstone 60

Chapter 60
Arin decides they have to sneak into the cove at night. Alos is horrified at the idea, pointing out that he can't see in the dark, but Arin says she can. Samurai Chick, as per usual, is unnecessarily aggressive toward him. Arin eventually badgers him into it, and McKiernan makes a joke-shaped sentence. 
Cut to Our Heroes sailing on by night, with Egil consulting their charts and conferring with Arin before deciding they're slightly north of their goal. Shouldn't Arin's Sparkly Perfect Elf Astronomy Sense allow her to determine precisely where on the globe they are? Wasn't this established earlier? What's the point of giving your elves such a precise and specific power, useful for exactly this sort of situation, if you're not going to use it in exactly this situation? \~/
Anyway, we reach the cove after much description of exactly which sails are still up and who's doing what. Having found the place they sail on past, and Egil says they'll come back the next night and sail in. Alos freaks out about this, as the surf is high and he's afraid they'll be battered to pieces on the rocks. Egil, using the flowery style of language common to Vikings, tells him tough shit.
Egil takes a moment to tell Arin how awesome she is for being able to see at night. Alos wants a drink \~/
to settle his nerves, and Samurai Chick threatens to castrate him, which is played for laughs. \~/ Arin decides to be incredibly rude and patronizing, putting her arm around Alos's shoulders and singing him "a crib song she'd heard a human mother sing long past." This causes Alos to look "doleful." So her singing is making him sad, and she knows this, and she continues to sing him a song for babies.
Why, again, am I supposed to like her?
Next, we get two pages of Our Heroes navigating Serpent Cove by night, with plenty of nautical talk. Alos is utterly terrified of everything, which seems to be his thing now that he's being denied booze, and Arin, as the only one who can see clearly, yells directions. We also get numerous sound effects, such as the sound of a wave crashing into stone ("Whoom!"), the sound of ropes "buzzing against cleats" ("Zzzzzz . . ."), and the noise a ship's hull makes when it grinds against stone ("gwrrrwwwkkk . . ").
Eventually, Our Heroes make it to clear water and Alos, "pressed beyond his meager limits," faints.
Alos, the veteran helmsman. Not Delon, the gigalo. Not Ferai, the landlubber thief. Not Burel, who has lived his entire life in a tiny religious community in the middle of a canyon. I realize he's old and suffers from PTSD, but Alos is also a veteran Viking sailor; these other people are not. Why does the narrative insist on focusing on his cowardice and weakness? What purpose does it serve? If we're meant to dislike him, it fails because we have far more reprehensible characters around, like the philanderer and, oh yeah, the rapist. If this is meant to engender sympathy, it's a bizarre way to go about it, given that the other characters vaccillate between disgust and contempt. \~/
Drinks: 4
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