The Coming of the Dragon, page 6
His shoulders aching, his hands blistered, he hefted the last shovelful of dirt onto the grave and then made his way down to the stream to rest and drink, away from the smell of ashes and death. Weak sunshine filtered through the gold-touched leaves, and the water gurgled over the rocks, reflecting the light. Then a raven croaked. Rune looked up to see it swaying on a branch too narrow to bear its weight, staring at him. It unnerved him.
Stumbling with fatigue, he returned to the hut he and Amma had shared. Her grave would be here, under the ash tree.
He wished he could build a funeral pyre for her, or even an earthen barrow to mound high over her grave, but for a pyre, there wasn’t enough dry wood—the dragon had burned it all. And a barrow would take more strength than the gods had given him.
After having buried the others, he wasn’t sure he had the energy for Amma’s grave. But he had no choice. Again, he started to dig.
As he worked, emotion came seeping back. If only he’d come home instead of going to the king, Amma might still be alive. Each jab of the shovel into the earth brought him a fresh thorn of anger and regret. How could he have been so stupid? If only he hadn’t fallen asleep after the king questioned him, he could have been home in time; if only he hadn’t run after Ollie; if only he hadn’t climbed the crag in the first place but had stayed to deal with that slave. Of the thousand different things he could have done, he had chosen the very worst one. He would never forgive himself. If it hadn’t been for him, the dragon would never have killed Amma.
The dragon. Leaning on the shovel shaft, he lifted his face from the grave to gaze toward the mountain where the creature made its home, its top lost in a haze of clouds. Hatred seethed in his chest, renewing his strength. For the first time, he truly understood the desire for vengeance that drove tribes to fight each other, that kept feuds alive for generations. He dug his shovel into the dirt again.
Finally, when the shadows stretched long and blue across the burned fields and he deemed the grave deep enough to keep out the wolves, he lined it with soft leaves he had gathered by the stream. Then he wrapped Amma tightly in her blanket and laid her in the ground, the round stone with the image of Freyja carved in it tucked into the crook of her arm—it would tell the goddess of her coming. Her metal bracelets adorned her wrists, and in one hand Rune placed her comb, the one he had carved for her from whalebone last winter. Two of the teeth had broken while he was making it, but he remembered how proud he’d felt when the cat decoration he’d added had turned out so well. Amma had hardly said a word about it, but Rune had seen the way she looked at it, the way she held it in her palm when she didn’t think he was looking.
He swallowed hard. Then, kneeling, he put his fist to his chest and lowered his head. “I will avenge you,” he said. “By Thor’s hammer, I swear I will find the dragon and kill it. I promise.”
He had thought laying Amma in the grave would be the hardest thing he’d ever done, but he was wrong. Showering earth down on her body was even harder. As the blanket in which he had wrapped her disappeared, his anger transformed to grief again and tears coursed down his face, mingling with his sweat.
Finally, the grave filled, he covered it with flat stones from the stream. He stood beside it, panting, wondering what to do next. No holly grew near here that he could burn on the graves. Nor was there a woman to sing the song of mourning.
A sound from the hut made him turn in alarm. He smiled through his tears. Ollie stood by the rain barrel, watching him. A patch of wool had been singed from her flank—the work of the dragon.
Rune went inside and fetched a handful of grain for her. When she came forward to get it, he wrapped his arm around her neck, giving the little goat a hug. She shook herself free and nosed at the grain.
Then, exhausted and shivering as a chill breeze blew over his sweat-soaked tunic, Rune returned to the hut, threw himself down on his pallet, and slept as if he, too, were dead.
SIX
RUNE STIRRED, THEN ROLLED OVER, LONG STRANDS OF HIS dark hair falling into his face. Insects rustled in the thatch. Through closed lids, he could detect light. He squinted one eye open just enough to see through the smoke hole. Blue sky. It would be a fair day.
He pulled the scratchy goat-hair blanket over his head again and fell back into a doze, waiting for the sound of the fire snapping and the smell of bread baking in the ashes. Any minute now, Amma would start one of her low chanting prayers to Freyja.
Amma.
Rune’s eyes snapped open. It hadn’t been a dream. She was dead. And he was alone.
He couldn’t get his breath. A terrible weight pressed against his chest, and he thought he might be sick. Unable to think, unable to move, he lay rigid on his pallet, battling the burden that threatened to drown him. The heaviness turned to helplessness, the knowledge that he had chosen wrong. I could have saved her. I could have warned her. Beyond all desire, he wished he had come home instead of going to the king. He saw himself standing on the crag, deciding what to do—and making the wrong choice.
Again he saw the dragon soaring through the twilit sky, belching flames at field and farm, thatched roofs lighting like torches, people running in terror—and then falling as dragonflame enveloped them. The anger he had felt while he was digging the graves still lay smoldering in his belly. Now it kindled into rage, pushing away the terrible weight of his grief.
He sat up, groaning at the ache in his shoulders, the dirt-encrusted blisters on his hands. He’d been too worn-out to even think of washing last night after he had buried Amma.
He looked around the hut he’d shared with her all these years, at the fire pit in the middle, cold and black in the dim morning light, at the altars to Thor and Freyja, the stone image of the goddess no longer in its place beside the carving of the god’s wagon. Amma’s loom leaned against the thick earthen wall that protected them from the north wind, stones dangling from the warp threads, a pattern just beginning to emerge in the weft. On the eastern wall hung a tapestry she’d made long ago, stories of the gods woven into it in sinuous patterns, stories she had insisted he know—Freyja and her falcon-skin cloak, Loki and his son, the wolf Fenrir. Why had he resisted her so much lately, every time she tried to teach him some new tale? The more insistent she’d been, the less willing he’d been to learn. Shame bit at him and he closed his eyes.
When he opened them, he stared across the fire pit to where Amma’s pallet lay empty, bits of straw poking from a mattress seam, the goat-hair blanket gone, and felt the same emptiness filling him. He shuddered, remembering wrapping her charred body in the blanket, lowering her into the grave.
Finally, he tore himself from his thoughts and rose from his own pallet. Shoulders stooped, he looked through the hut for something to eat. It was only this season that he’d grown too tall to stand to his full height inside. He opened the door to let in light and tied his hair back with a leather cord. A chunk of oat bread sat on the board, and in the dairy crock, he found some salted butter and the remains of Amma’s last batch of skyr. They tasted like soot. Still hungry, he ate the cold porridge that had congealed in the pot, grimacing at its lumpy texture and smiling a little as he bit down on a pebble. This porridge was definitely Amma’s handiwork. He washed it down with the water in the bottom of the bucket, ignoring the layer of ash on its surface. Wiping his mouth on his sleeve, he turned to the west wall of the hut and stared at the space Amma had covered with goat hide. He found it hard to think, hard to know what to do.
Except that he knew exactly what he had to do.
Rune crossed the room in three paces and whipped the covering away. The wooden shield stared at him, its metal boss like the pupil in a great round eye, mocking him, asking what a spineless boy like Rune could do against a dragon.
He looked back at the empty pallet and ground his molars. The dragon had killed Amma. He had to avenge her. And for that, he needed weapons. They were his, after all. And they had been his father’s. Or at least he assumed they had. Why else would they have been in the boat? Over the years, he’d heard many versions of the story. Fulla, an old woman who lived in the stronghold, had told him the one he liked best, even though it probably wasn’t true—after all, what would a woman like her know about weapons and armor? Still, he liked what she said about how when the boat came rushing in over the waves, the shield had been at his head, the sword at his feet, the mail shirt along his shield-hand side, while Amma stood on the strand waiting for him.
He thought it was a good story, but he would have preferred to know the truth instead. The only things he really knew about the weapons were that Amma didn’t like him touching them and that she only let him use the sword in the winter because the king said she had to. And that she had known more about the weapons—and about him—than she had revealed.
He reached for the mail shirt, examining its closely linked rings. In the hall, he’d watched warriors to see how they put them on, how they cinched them to keep their sword arms free. He’d even tried on Ketil’s mail once. But he’d never worn his own.
He took a deep breath and pulled it over his head. As the cold metal settled over his shoulders and fell to his thighs, it felt strange and heavy, not at all how he’d expected. He took a step back and heard the clinking sound of Amma’s metal bracelets. He whirled and the mail shirt whirled with him, its rings hitting together with a metallic sound. Amma wasn’t there; of course she wasn’t. It was the mail shirt that made the music of her bangles—a hundred times over.
He steadied himself and turned back to the hide covering. The sword lay in its wood and leather sheath, crisscrossed with leather bands—and wound around with Amma’s disapproval. The very first time Rune had joined the other boys for sword training, Amma had marched into the middle of the hall. She had put her face so close to Finn’s that he took a step back. Then she told him—loudly enough that everyone in the hall could hear—that he could only teach Rune to defend himself, not to attack. Rune didn’t remember the rest of the conversation, only the laughter from both the boys and the warriors standing nearby. If one of Thor’s thunderbolts had struck him dead then and there, he would have been relieved. The only good thing that had come of it was that the boy across from him had caught his eye and given him a wry look, as if to say, Women! That had been Rune’s introduction to Ketil, back when his friend’s nose had only been broken once.
He wasn’t sure whether he’d be less awkward with the sword if his introduction to it had been more auspicious. Finn ignored Amma’s admonition and taught Rune all aspects of swordfighting, but Rune always seemed to be doing something wrong: thrusting or parrying a breath too late, holding the blade too low or too high, putting his weight on the wrong foot. Ketil had encouraged him, but Rune had felt the eyes of the other boys on him, wondering why a farmer was training with a sword in the first place. He’d wondered the same thing.
The worst day had been the one when Finn stopped in front of him, shaking his head in exasperation. “It’s a sword, not a scythe,” he’d said, taking Rune’s blade away from him. He had examined it closely, balancing it in his hand, feeling its weight, running his fingers over the patterned metal, before saying, “This is a warrior’s weapon.” Then he had handed Rune a wooden practice blade. In front of everyone. Even Ketil had looked away, and Rune didn’t blame him. Skyn and Skoll had never let him forget the humiliation.
Rune thought of the brothers lying side by side in the grave he had dug. He closed his eyes.
Then, opening them, he grasped the sword by its hilt and slid it from its sheath. It came out easily—Amma’s whale oil had seen to that—but it still felt unwieldy, as if it weren’t balanced. As if it weren’t made for him or he for it. The touch of the hilt stung a blister on his palm, and he shifted the weapon to find a better grip. When he extended the blade, the sense memory of Finn’s lessons came back to him. He moved the sword as if to block a heavy blow, and as he did, his legs automatically knew how to stand. His arm, too, went where it should. That was something, anyway.
Careful not to cut himself, he slid the sword back into its sheath.
Finally, he looked back at the yellow shield. This time it stared straight at him, expressionless. He hefted it, grunting at the surprising weight of the linden wood, and swung it over his back.
On his way out, he stopped in front of the altar, touching the flat stone with Thor’s goat-pulled wagon carved into it. “I chose the wrong path before. May I regain my honor today,” he whispered. Then, bowing his head to the statue, he said, “As Thor defeated the Midgard Serpent, so may I defeat the dragon.” He turned to go, then stopped again, laying his hand flat on the lintel where the image of Freyja had been, the stone now buried with Amma. “Lady of the Vanir,” he whispered, and glanced at Amma’s tapestry, with its image of the goddess, her hair looped in an intricate knot, her arms outstretched as she offered her falcon-skin cloak to the god Loki. “Lady,” he whispered again, the stone now warm under his hand. “Help me avenge her.” Then he ducked through the door.
Outside, the air still reeked of smoke from the burned farmhouse and fields, but a weak sun shone through the leaves of the ash tree. Rune forced himself to look at the raw grave. An orange mouser, one of the stable cats that had escaped from the fire, sat atop it, placidly cleaning its ears.
Rune watched as the sun gleamed off the animal’s golden fur. It was a good omen. Freyja must have welcomed Amma into her hall—cats were sacred to the goddess.
He lowered his head in thanks.
Hairy-Hoof greeted Rune with a whinny and a toss of her mane. He hadn’t taken as good care of the horse as he should have, so busy had he been burying the dead, but she seemed to forgive him. Mounting her was harder than he had anticipated, with both sword and shield to manage and his mail coat restricting his legs. After two tries, he balanced the shield in a fork of the ash tree, retrieving it when he was seated on Hairy-Hoof’s back, careful to keep the horse from stepping on Amma’s grave.
Together they headed away from the farm, past fire-blackened fields. A single acre of oats stood untouched, golden stalks bright against the darkness of the destroyed fields around it. It looked as if the dragon had left it alone on purpose, as a taunting threat that it might return.
They took the trail down through the birches that surrounded the stream, the trees themselves marked by fire, some of their white trunks blackened, half their green and red-gold leaves scorched. Hairy-Hoof picked her way carefully over the rocks and splashed through the stream, then climbed up the bank, out of the trees, and onto the path that led to the tall runestone. The shield banged into Rune’s back as the horse’s hooves clopped over the dirt, sending up flurries of ash. Rune stared stonily ahead, refusing to look at the burned fields on either side of him, but he couldn’t keep the smell of smoke from filling his nostrils.
Far in the distance, the giants’ mountain loomed dark and forbidding. Amma had warned him never to go there. The crag was only the footstep of the mountain, and it was dangerous enough. But the mountain itself? He shivered. Yet, if he was to find the dragon, he would have to climb it.
He rode on, eyeing the steep slopes, wondering how he would ever find the dragon’s lair. Countless years the monster must have dwelt there, sleeping on its hoard, yet no one had even known about it. Why had it emerged now? And what made him think he could find it?
He had been on the crag when the dragon had flown over him. As he drew nearer, he scanned the rocky heights. Maybe its cave was nearby. Maybe not, but he couldn’t think of any other place to start.
He shrugged and heard his mail shirt clink with the sound of Amma’s bracelets. He took it as a sign.
When he finally got to the bottom of the crag, he stopped. Hairy-Hoof would never make it up slopes that steep and rocky. Careful not to drop the shield or let the sword trip him, he dismounted, grateful that there was no one nearby to see his lack of grace.
He was settling the shield more firmly on his back when his eye fell on the runes the stranger had scratched into the dirt. They were still there. He reached for his pendant and held it for a moment before he began climbing.
He had taken only a few steps when something made him turn. Below him, two shapes like shadows darkened the patch of dirt. Ravens. Where had they come from? He watched as they hopped on the dirt, pecking at it. He couldn’t be sure from this distance, but it looked as if the birds had wiped out the stranger’s marks.
The hair on his arms prickled. The king’s hearth companions had a saying: “Fate often protects an undoomed man, if his courage is good.” Courage had never been Rune’s companion, and he felt as though doom walked alongside him. It didn’t matter. To avenge Amma, all he had to do was kill the dragon. He didn’t have to survive.
He began climbing again.
At the top of the crag, he stopped to catch his breath and readjust his sword and shield. He hadn’t considered how much harder mountain climbing would be, encumbered by such weight. At least the air was still today, so he wouldn’t have to worry about the wind buffeting him as he climbed. He stared up the slopes at the mountain’s beard of spruce and firs. Surely he should be able to see where the dragon had emerged. He shuddered, remembering just how huge it had been, how long it had taken to thunder over him. Although it had probably only been the space of a few breaths, it had seemed like a lifetime.
Above the tree line, the mountain was strewn with boulders, but Rune could see no place where the monster had trampled trees or bushes, no burn marks on the ground. “A dragon must live in a barrow, old and proud of its treasures.” He whispered the adage, one of the hundreds Amma had taught him. But where was there a barrow? He’d never heard of any old grave mounds near here, nor caves full of bones and treasure. It would have to be a sizeable cave if the dragon was to get into it, although people said the creatures could flatten themselves the way a mouse does to crawl into tight places.
