The Coming of the Dragon (17 page)

He counted the men standing by the king. Nine.

People shifted, looking around to see who was left. Behind him, Rune saw Od, who was younger than he was, shaking his mother’s hand off his shoulder.

Then he turned. Thora was walking directly toward him, her face solemn, the drinking horn in her hands. His mouth went dry. What vow would he make?

He had no spear, no helmet, he realized. Maybe he could ask Wyn to let him borrow her uncle Brand’s.

He could feel his heart pounding with nervousness and
excitement as the horn got nearer and nearer, and now he could see the faces of the crowd reflected in its silver fittings.

He reached out his hands to take it.

Thora brushed past him, her eyes on someone else.

FIFTEEN

“OD!” A WOMAN CRIED, BUT RUNE DIDN’T SEE THE BOY
beyond him taking the horn. His pulse pounded in his ears, and his breath came fast and shallow.

He’d been on the mountain. He’d seen the dragon—twice. He’d even seen the spot on the dragon’s chest. And he had to avenge Amma.

None of that mattered. He hadn’t been chosen.

He looked back at the men standing by the king. Could there be a mistake? He counted them again. No, no mistake.

The king didn’t want him. It was that simple. Of course he didn’t—Rune had already told him exactly how he had fallen, trembling, to the ground when the dragon flew over. The king needed warriors, not boys afraid of their own shadows.

He stared straight ahead, unseeing, barely noticing as Od moved past him to join the king, not listening to the king’s words to the men, their vows to him, the crowd’s cheers.

The circle broke as people headed for food. As hungry as he had been, his appetite was gone. He felt sick with shame—for thinking the horn had been coming to him, for thinking he had been worthy of it. For not being worthy.

To the king, Buri and Surt seemed like better warriors than he was. Od, too, even though he was at least a winter younger than Rune, maybe two. Hemming, whose sword hand wavered with age, and Thialfi, who couldn’t even bear a sword. All of them were better to have beside you in a dragon fight than Rune.

People moved past, brushing against him, but he stood rooted like a tree.

“You ought to get some of this—it’s good,” a voice said. He blinked and saw Ketil standing near him, chewing on a hunk of meat. Goat meat, from the buck that had been sacrificed to Thor. The heart went to the god, the liver to the king, and the choicest parts of the meat to his warriors. People like Rune got what was left.

“Thought you’d be going with us.” Ketil shook his head ruefully as a dribble of juice made its way down his chin.

“What, someone who can’t even hold on to his own sword?” Rune spat the words, then turned and walked out of the fire’s light.

What a fool he’d been to think the king liked him,
trusted him. Look at what he’d just found out—King Beowulf had loved Amma, whose son Rune’s father had killed. He thought of the way the king had looked at him earlier, just before the messenger had called him away, his eyes conveying something that Rune hadn’t recognized at the time. Contempt? For what his father had done?

He walked farther into the dark, stumbling over a clod of earth, and stood watching his breath condense into white clouds in the cold night. He wrapped Wyn’s uncle’s cloak tightly around him. Wyn. He couldn’t even think about how stupid he’d been, how his unfortunate mouth had ruined everything when she was trying to be nice to him.

And Ketil. Of course Wyn would want a man like Ketil, a warrior, not a spineless rabbit like Rune. Had Ketil known anything about Rune’s feelings for Wyn? Rune hoped not, even if Ketil would never have said anything about it.

Behind him, the sounds of the crowd wove together like a comforting blanket warming all those who stood inside the circle of firelight. He stepped farther into the cold shadows.

The bard plucked his harp and called out, signaling the start of a song. Rune recognized the opening words—it was the tale of King Beowulf fighting Grendel, defeating the horrifying monster bare-handed, without so much as a sword.

He looked back at the bonfire. The bard was a dark
figure in front of it. Around him people clustered, eating and drinking as he chanted his lay. Then Rune saw someone walking through the crowd, stopping to talk with people, firelight catching his golden crown. The king leaned in close to speak to a woman, and when she turned her head, Rune saw that it was Var, Brand’s widow. When the king stooped down to Var’s little girl, she hid her face in her mother’s skirts. The king didn’t move, but before long, Var’s daughter did, taking a tentative step toward the king while still holding on to her mother’s protective skirt. He waited, unmoving, allowing the child to come to him. When she dropped the skirt and reached out, he folded her into his arms for a moment before she scurried back to her mother.

“Rune? Is that you?” a woman called, making him jump.

He turned to see Elli not far from him, reaching for a basket.

“Did you get anything to eat? Come, there’s plenty.”

Reluctantly, he walked toward her while she waited.

She held out the basket. “Carry this for me, will you?” When he took it, she turned back to the light, and Rune followed her to the fire, where she still had fish frying. A group of women and children bunched on a log near it moved over to make room for him. As Rune sat down and took the fish Elli handed him, a little boy he didn’t know ambled over to him. Standing, the boy was just tall enough to look into Rune’s face.

“You saw the dragon.”

Rune nodded, chewing.

The boy watched him with wide eyes.

Rune took another bite. His hunger had returned with a vengeance, and he finished the fish, crunching the bones and licking the grease off his fingers.

“Were you scared?” the boy whispered.

Rune looked back at him, then nodded.

“Is he bothering you? Here, have some more,” Elli said.

Rune took the fish and bread she offered, nodding his thanks. “It’s all right; he’s not bothering me.” Turning his attention to the boy again, he said, “I’ve never been that afraid in my life.”

The boy nodded solemnly and watched him finish his second helping. “I would have been scared, too,” he said, then ran to join his mother. She was speaking quietly to someone beside her, and Rune wondered if she was one of the widows the dragon had made or if she was one of the lucky ones, whose husbands were still out on patrol.

His belly finally satisfied, he sat silently as quiet conversations ebbed and flowed around him, women talking about who had died, who had survived, when their men would return. Across the fire from him, a girl crooned a lullaby to a baby—Elli’s, he thought—while toddlers, growing sleepy, leaned into their mothers’ skirts.

When he turned his attention to the bonfire, he saw that the bard was still singing, now about Sigmund the dragon-slayer. Brief snatches of the lay penetrated the women’s talk. Rune watched the bard’s expression as
Sigmund crept past gray stone to enter the dragon’s cave alone, courage his only companion. Beyond the poet, the flames leapt and danced fiercely, fearlessly.

It was no mere adventure the king and his warriors would be seeking in the morning when they rode out to find the dragon, Rune thought. They would be fighting to save these women and children, as well as the rest of the kingdom, with its farms and fields and families. The king needed men beside him he could count on, men who wouldn’t be overcome by their cowardice.

He lowered his head, wishing he were one of those men, knowing why he wasn’t. The truth of it bit into him, galling him—he was no warrior.

The king had been right not to choose him.

SIXTEEN

THE WARRIORS LEFT BEFORE DAWN
.

It had been a short night. After the mead-drinking and tale-singing, the bonfire had finally died out and Rune had joined the long line of people making their way back to the stronghold, smoking torches lighting their way and fending off the spirits of the dead. He carried a basket for Elli in one hand and over his shoulder, a sleeping child, the boy who had spoken to him while he had eaten. He followed the boy’s mother to a house, and as she held up a light for him, he laid the child in his bed.

Finally, bone-tired, he found himself a spot in the campsite where he didn’t think he’d be trampled, took off his mail shirt and his sword, wrapped himself in his borrowed cloak, and—despite his bruised body and his wounded pride—fell into a deep sleep.

It seemed as if he’d barely lain down when the sounds of footsteps and hushed voices woke him. Groggily, he listened to a dog barking and the clink of chain mail being pulled over someone’s head. It was already morning. As he roused himself, he could hear women farewelling their men while children whimpered at being up so early. Torches lit the dark, and Rune stood to watch, pulling the cloak around himself against the cold air as bond servants led horses from the stable and warriors mounted them.

One horseman kept himself away from the others, and with a shock of recognition, Rune realized it was the slave. Over the flickering light of a campfire, he looked straight at Rune and bared his sharp teeth in a mirthless grin.

Rune recoiled. The malevolence in the slave’s expression struck him like a physical blow.

Then the slave pulled his horse’s reins hard, making it whinny and wheel toward the king, who turned Silvertop just in time to avoid hitting the slave’s horse.

With the slave in front beside the king, the warriors rode out of the stronghold, some singly, some in pairs, the sounds of hooves and jingling mail fading into the darkness. When they were out of earshot, the crowd dispersed, people returning to their huts and houses, leaving Rune alone in the open.

He lay back down, knowing he’d never be able to go back to sleep. Burrowing under the cloak, trying to ignore the cold, he regarded the lopsided moon hanging in the western sky. It looked no bigger than a shield.

There was no point in his staying in the stronghold, he decided. He wasn’t needed here. When it got light enough, he might as well go back to the farm to harvest the single remaining field and to see what he could salvage. He tried not to think of the men going to find the dragon, of not being one of them. Shame wove together with regret in a pattern that lulled him into uneasy dreams.

He woke suddenly. The sound of a hundred heartbeats filled his ears, and he sat upright, blinking in confusion before a wave of dizziness hit him, making him roll to his side, holding his head against the sudden throbbing in his temples. Everything went black.

“Survivor of war,” a voice said. Amma’s voice.

Rune caught his breath.

The slave’s face looked directly into his own, eyes glinting with malice. Then it disappeared and Rune saw a misty cliff. What was it? It didn’t make sense.

Amma’s voice sounded inside his head again. “He leads men astray.” The words triggered something in him, some knowledge, but exactly what floated just beyond his grasp.

He stared at the cliff, trying to understand. A third time came the voice: “You know where to go.” Where? What did she mean?

“Now! Go!” The voice was harsh, startling him to attention.

“Amma?” he said, but the vision was gone.

Rune blinked. He felt as if he’d been taken far away, to another place and time, but here he was, still on the ground
in the stronghold, his head feeling like it would split apart with pain, his heart pounding, his breath coming in gasps. He blinked again and swallowed the bile in his throat, steadying himself against the dizziness that still made him feel as if he weren’t entirely solid.

Carefully, he looked around him, at the sun’s rays just starting to filter through the birch trees, at the smoking remains of campfires the warriors had left behind them, at the mist that lay thick on the ground. As he gulped in the cold morning air and tried to understand what he’d seen, the answer came rushing into his head. The cliff—it was the place where he’d almost gone over the edge when he’d hunted the dragon. And the stranger. Rune didn’t know who he was, but he was sure of one thing: the man was no slave. Was he even human? Whoever—
what
ever—he was, he would be taking the king and his men to the dragon by now.