The Coming of Dragons: No. 1 (Darkest Age) (7 page)

‘We will have urgent need of you, Master Aagard,’ Lord Gilbert agreed. ‘Send the young ones after Cluaran, if you think they’ll go astray on their own. He’s not long gone – they’ll catch him easily.’

Edmund shook his head. ‘We’ll be fine on our own.’

Elspeth wasn’t sure she agreed. If Aagard was right about the amount of danger they were in, they would surely be safer
travelling with someone who knew the roads? Her right arm and hand began throbbing again, distracting her thoughts.
Leave me alone!
she told the sword.

‘If I go,’ Aagard said at last, ‘you must promise me that you will find Cluaran and tell him I have charged him with your protection.’

‘Charged him?’ Edmund protested. ‘We don’t need –’

‘Swear it!’ Aagard insisted. ‘Tell him I demanded this in the name of the one who never died. He will understand. If he hears that, he will not desert you.’

Edmund looked mutinous, and Elspeth’s irritation boiled over. ‘Do you want Aagard to go to Medwel or not?’ she hissed at him. She turned to Aagard. ‘We promise,’ she said. Beside her, Edmund nodded crossly.

Aagard saluted Gilbert. ‘I will ride with you, my lord.’ He clasped Elspeth’s and Edmund’s hands once more. ‘You must go at once,’ he urged. ‘Remember your promise, and trust no one but each other – not even Cluaran, unless it is to guide you on your journey. When I have learned more of Orgrim’s plans, I can find you in Noviomagus and Dubris, or send Thrimgar to you. Go safely. And may your gods and your God speed you.’

He gave them one last look, then turned and strode to the horse that was held ready for him. Moments later Gilbert and his men were galloping away to the south, and Elspeth and Edmund were left alone in the gateway.

*

Elspeth stood with Edmund on a little ridge outside the village, looking down on the distant, north-eastern road. The morning was fine, but the spring sunlight felt weak and the breeze cool. The sky stretched vastly above them, hanging over land that looked neither familiar nor welcoming to Elspeth’s sea-trained eyes. Instinctively her left hand went to her right, which still tingled with an itch beneath the skin.

‘We had better catch up with Cluaran, then,’ she said.

Edmund shrugged. ‘If that’s what you want.’ He added bad-temperedly, ‘I don’t know why Aagard made us promise to ask for his protection. I don’t want protection from some stranger Aagard doesn’t even call a friend.’

His lofty tone grated on Elspeth, but when she looked at him she saw only distress in his eyes. She wondered if he was as nervous as she was at the journey ahead and if, like her, he felt burdened by his strange, unasked-for gift.

They scrambled down the slippery slopes of the ridge to the road. On either side lay sparse meadowland with a few stunted trees at the edge, their new buds barely broken. The road itself was little more than a track, stony and rutted, but it ran straight, and the narrow footprints that appeared here and there showed that Cluaran was still ahead.

Elspeth was glad to be on the move again.
When I get back to Dubris, I’ll go straight back to sea,
she decided.
And if this dragon that Edmund saw is still threatening the south coast, then I’ll take a ship to Northumbria, or even up to Hibernia.

But there was still so far to go – two kingdoms to cross. They
would have to go near Venta Bulgarum, if not through it, and Elspeth knew this was dangerous. Whenever Aagard mentioned the town, her arm had tingled with that strange energy.

Elspeth frowned. The enchanted sword seemed to have some purpose of its own, quite outside her own plans. But Venta was a town like any other, she told herself, and her quickest route home lay through it. She would not be put off by omens from an invisible sword.

She glanced over her shoulder. Edmund was trailing behind, staring dismally at the dusty road beneath his feet. Perhaps she should make more effort to befriend him. They had endured so much in the last two days, more death and destruction than most people saw in a lifetime. Elspeth’s world been had turned on its head – her father gone, the
Spearwa
gone – and in their place only outlandish talk of unnatural storms and conjured dragons, Ripente visions, and the blackest sorcery.

Elspeth sighed. Whatever else was going on in this turned-up world, to walk in silence all the way from Dunmonia to Sussex would be terribly tedious. She shortened her stride, and smiled as Edmund caught her up.

‘You said you’re from Sussex?’ she began.

‘My family live in Noviomagus,’ he said stiffly.

‘Do you have brothers or sisters?’

Elspeth was prepared to be interested, even envious. When Edmund had told Aagard his family would worry about him, she had pictured a whole clan longing for his return. She was taken aback when he glared at her.

‘Why do you want to know?’ he snapped.

‘I thought you were lucky to
have
a family, that’s all!’ she cried. ‘That there’s someone who cares if you live or die.’

He walked on without replying, staring straight ahead.

‘Are you going to be like this all the way?’ she demanded, running after him. ‘It’s plain to see you’re some lord’s son, with your silver brooch and your lofty airs – but does that mean I’m not even allowed to speak to you?’

Edmund stopped dead, then turned on her, his eyes bleak. ‘I’m a king’s son,’ he said.

Elspeth stared at him as he went on in strained tones. ‘The silver clasp you saw is my name-brooch. It belonged to my father, Heored, King of Sussex.’

Elspeth remembered Edmund’s aloofness on the
Spearwa
, his confident poise in the thane’s great house – he had drunk wine all his life, of course – and his constant air of secrecy. So that was why … She realised she’d been gaping like a fish.

‘But why did he send you away on my father’s ship?’

‘For safety,’ Edmund said harshly. ‘My father’s cousin in Mercia sent word that his lands were being threatened by the Danish invaders, and my father took all the good men of the kingdom and rode to help him, leaving my mother to rule in his place. That was months ago, and we’ve heard no word from them since. Then the Danes attacked our coast.’ He frowned. ‘My mother wanted me to go to her brother Aelfred in Gaul. I was to stay there until the danger was over. That way, she said, I could return to rule the kingdom if … if there
was no one else.’ His voice was low and hard, but Elspeth caught a flicker of misery in the boy’s face.

‘And would your uncle have made you welcome?’ she asked gently, thinking of her aunt’s overcrowded household in Dubris.

‘I think so. He lived in my father’s house when I was small. I was fond of him, and he of me. He went to Gaul to make his fortune and never returned, but he sent letters asking me and my mother to visit him.’ Edmund’s face clouded with memory, then hardened again. ‘But it makes no difference now. My mother will hear of the wreck and think me dead. I have to go back. I should never have left.’

‘We’d best get on with the journey, then,’ Elspeth said briskly. ‘Maybe we can reach your mother before the news does.’

Edmund had not moved. ‘Elspeth.’ His voice was suddenly urgent. ‘If we have to travel with this Cluaran, he mustn’t know who I am! The sons of lords have been kidnapped many times before now, and held for ransom. Promise me you’ll say nothing.’

He was an odd boy, Elspeth thought: so stiff and haughty one minute, then so fearful the next. But it was a small thing to ask in return for peace on the journey.

‘Agreed,’ she said. ‘Now come on, or we’ll never catch him.’

The road climbed ahead of them, the trees giving way to gorse and heather. At the top of the next rise they caught
sight of a small figure heading eastwards, and they quickened their pace to catch up with him. Several times as the day wore on, they seemed to be drawing nearer to the brown-clad figure, only to lose sight of him and spot him again as far away as ever.

The shadows were beginning to lengthen when Elspeth touched Edmund’s arm and gestured to him to listen. They were in upland country of rocks and heath; there were no trees and only an occasional bird call. But as a breeze blew along the track towards them they could faintly hear a man’s voice, raised in song.

‘We’re near him!’ she said.

But even though they quickened their pace, by dusk they still had not caught up with him. When they could no longer see the track in front of them, Edmund said, ‘We’d better stop for the night.’

Elspeth nodded, her teeth chattering. They found a rocky outcrop that gave them a little shelter, and sat back-to-back on the prickly turf, hugging the blankets that Aagard had given them. It was too cold for sleep. They munched bread from their supplies and stared gloomily into the darkness.

Suddenly Edmund spotted a flickering orange glow in the distance, and at the same moment Elspeth raised her head and sniffed.

‘I smell smoke!’

Without another word they rose, each clutching a blanket, and made their way towards the fire.

Cluaran was sitting beyond the next bend of the road at a small campfire, his back towards them. Before they reached the circle of warmth, he lifted his harp out of its case and began to play.

Edmund and Elspeth stopped to listen. The singer seemed to be addressing someone, his voice now swooping in heartrending cadence, now almost speaking, though neither Edmund nor Elspeth understood the words. When Cluaran finally stopped and laid down his harp, he spoke a few more quiet words in the unknown language. Then, without turning his head, the minstrel said, ‘You may as well come sit by the fire, both of you. It’s a bitter night, and there’s room enough for three.’

Edmund lay curled in the warmth cast by the flames, listening to Elspeth’s steady breathing as she slept beside him. The minstrel had been happy to share his fire, but he’d made it clear at once that it was for that night only.

‘We’ll go our separate ways in the morning,’ Cluaran had told them. ‘I’ve no time to watch over children.’

‘But –’ Elspeth had begun, and Edmund had kicked her ankle to silence her. It had been all he could do not to walk off into the night, icy wind or no.
Watch over children!

Cluaran’s words still rankled. What right had this stranger to speak of them so contemptuously? They had survived shipwreck and murder. Edmund had used the eyes of a dragon, and Elspeth held in her hand an enchanted sword – and this vagabond minstrel was dismissing them as nothing more than infants.

A movement on the other side of the fire caught his attention. Cluaran was slipping away from the circle of yellow light. Edmund felt another rush of anger; was the man
planning to abandon them already? But then he saw the minstrel’s pack still lying in the grass, just visible at the edge of the firelight.

Edmund rolled on to his back and stared at the half-risen moon. His eyes began to close at last, but the moon’s pale light seemed to penetrate his eyelids, finding its way into fitful dreams of dragons, armed men and a sword that glowed like a star.

He woke with a jump. The moon was higher now and he blinked in the pale radiance, trying to catch the threads of his dream again. It was driven abruptly from his mind by the sound of a stealthy tread on the track behind them.

So the minstrel’s come back
, he thought. Still half-asleep, he let his mind reach out towards the soft footsteps. It felt so natural, so treacherously easy. All he had to do was blink, and when he opened his eyes again, he would be approaching two figures sleeping by a fire …

When he realised what he was doing, he recoiled, hot with shame – but at that moment he glimpsed what the other eyes were seeing: a dark figure, moving alongside him.

Edmund jolted awake in an instant. This wasn’t Cluaran! There were
two
people approaching. He felt them drawing nearer, slowly and stealthily.

Urgently, he searched again for the eyes he had borrowed. There: he could see more clearly now. The minstrel’s campfire was a distant gleam about a hundred paces away. The two humps beside it – himself and Elspeth – were dimly lit by the
red flames. But the watcher knew them, somehow; had been expecting to see them.

It was a man. He turned to whisper something to his companion, and Edmund flinched with surprise – whether it was his own body that stirred or the other’s, he could not tell. The second figure was one of those trader brothers they had met at Lord Gilbert’s home; Dagobert, that was it. Edmund caught a sense of breathless stealth, and overweening greed, and knew these visitors brought trouble.

Very slowly, he reached out a hand to shake Elspeth. ‘Wake up!’ he whispered.

She stirred, and her eyes snapped open. ‘What is it?’

‘Thieves,’ Edmund breathed.

‘Where’s Cluaran?’

‘Gone off somewhere. If we can get to the other side of the fire, there might be a weapon in his pack.’ Edmund sensed the men moving towards them with more urgency now. They were almost within the circle of firelight. ‘Ready?’ he mouthed. Elspeth nodded.

He took a deep breath, then gripped her arm:
Now!
He jumped to his feet and they sprinted around the fire. From the road he heard hoarse cries as the two men broke into a run. He dived on Cluaran’s leather pack and pulled it open: clothing, skins and packages, but nothing they could use to defend themselves. The minstrel had taken his bow with him. Beside him, Elspeth had drawn her little knife and was pulling a big branch from Cluaran’s pile of firewood.

‘Torches!’ he hissed. She nodded, quickly slicing a strip of her tunic hem and wrapping it round the end of a branch. Edmund took it and thrust the cloth end into the fire, stirring up a cloud of smoke as it smouldered.

The two thieves were suddenly huge figures, looming through the smoke.

‘You’re sure they’ve no weapons?’ one of them muttered.

‘You saw for yourself when they left, lackwit!’ scoffed the other. He called hoarsely across the fire. ‘Hey, you there, lad! Hand over your packs and we’ll not hurt you.’

Edmund said nothing. Beside him Elspeth was fumbling, trying to light another torch. He felt her tremble. Suddenly his own torch flared.
Pretend to be brave and you will be brave!
Edmund hoisted the flaming branch as if it was a fine Noviomagus blade. With a yell that he hoped was warlike, he darted around the fire towards the men, brandishing the torch with both hands. The thieves jumped back, but when they saw they faced only a boy with a torch, they laughed and advanced again. In their hands, the firelight glanced off two long knives.