The Coming of the Dragon (3 page)

“Water,” she said, and Rune crouched beside her, handing her the waterskin.

“Get away from him. I’ll do it.” Skoll’s voice was as icy as his eyes.

Rune opened his mouth, then closed it and handed his foster brother the water. It sloshed and gurgled inside the leather bag.

Skoll gave him a look that made his meaning clear. Rune rose and backed away.

“I need goat wort,” Amma said, and Skoll rifled uncertainly through the basket until she snapped, “Give me the whole thing.” With one hand on Hwala’s leg, she reached for a leather pouch and opened it with her teeth.

Rune clenched his fist. He would have had the bag of goat wort open by now and the leaves crushed between his fingers. Instead, Amma had to do it all herself, taking precious time. He turned his head so he didn’t have to see the pain etched into Hwala’s face.

Finally, as she finished tying a bandage tightly around the wound, Amma spoke to Hwala for the first time. “If it doesn’t fester, you won’t die.”

He nodded wordlessly.

“How will we know if it festers?” Skoll asked.

“You’ll know.” She gathered her pouches and jars and placed them back in her basket. “You two.” She gestured toward Skyn and Skoll. “Take your father home. Don’t let him put any weight on it.” Then she turned back to Hwala. “Bed for a few days at least. I’ll come in the morning.”

Skyn and Skoll helped their father stand. Rune winced when Hwala grimaced; the wound must hurt like elf-shot. Had the blade cut through the muscle?

“No weight,” Amma said, and the three started for the farm, Hwala hopping on one foot while Skyn supported him on one side, Skoll on the other, their blond heads leaning close together.

Rune looked around him. The sun was already disappearing in the distant ash trees. He collected the abandoned tools, wiping the offending scythe on clean oat straw, but the blood was already dry. Tomorrow, Skyn would have to use it. He must already feel terrible, Rune thought, and seeing the blood again would make him feel worse. He kicked loose soil over the places where Hwala had bled on the earth and straw, then followed after the others.

Once they were home, Amma disappeared inside the hut while Rune ladled water from the rain barrel onto the scythe. He scraped at the blood and poured more water over it. Finally satisfied, he took it down the path and back to the stable beside the farmhouse, wiping it on his tunic to make sure it was dry. The last thing they needed was a rusty blade.

By the time he got back again, the light was almost gone. He needed to get inside, but first, he had to take care of Ollie. Ever since their other goat had died at midsummer, Ollie—the source of their milk and butter and some of their wool—had begun disappearing when it was time for milking and, worse, getting into the oat fields, ruining grain that was just ready to be harvested. They’d had to start tying her up for the night.

She’d worn a dirt ring around the stake and eaten everything within reach. Rune pulled it up and drove it into the ground close enough to the north wall of the hut, the one made of sod, that Ollie could reach the weeds and the yellow flowers that grew in it—but not so close that she could devour the roof thatch.

As he drew the rope through the stake, he heard her bell, the signal of their nightly dance; he would try to lure her in, and she would frisk just out of reach, making him laugh. He wasn’t in the mood for it tonight. Without warning, he grabbed her by the horns and slipped the rope around her neck.

Ignoring her angry protests, he let himself inside, closing the door to the dark. Amma had already unrolled his pallet in front of the fire for him and set out strips of dried herring, bread, and skyr, the tasty cheese curds she made.

Lowering himself cross-legged to his pallet, his stomach growling, Rune picked up the bread, then stopped just before the loaf touched his tongue. Wearily, he rose again, ducking his head to keep from hitting the thatch and the
beams that held it up. He went first to Thor’s altar and then to Freyja’s, leaving them both some of his bread, along with his thanks and an added prayer for Hwala’s health.

Amma gave him a look of approval as he returned to his pallet.

“Will he heal?” Rune asked.

She gazed at the Freyja altar, at the stone with its carving of the goddess on it. “Too soon to tell.”

He ate, spitting out an occasional pebble from the bread. They’d played a game, these past few years, of pretending Amma could cook, Rune trying to stay close when the porridge was boiling so he could stir and salt it. Before she poured them into the pot or kneaded them into loaves, he picked through the oats for grit and husks and insects she never bothered with. But during harvest season, when he was in the fields all day, there was no time for any of that.

At least her skyr was good. As he swallowed his last bite, he felt fatigue creeping over him. His eyelids fluttered shut, then open, then shut again. The prospect of tomorrow and the days that followed filled him with disquiet. How would they ever be able to get the harvest in without Hwala?

“I’ll take care of the rest,” Amma said. She inclined her head, signaling that he should lie down. “You sleep.”

He didn’t protest. Usually, the meal was followed by a lesson, a lay or wisdom poem that Amma wanted Rune to learn. Things hadn’t gone well last night. He had
been so tired that the words kept jumbling together in his head. Amma had snapped at him, saying he wasn’t trying. Shamefully—he wished he could forget he’d done so—he’d snapped right back at her. Sometimes he wondered whether she had any idea how exhausting it was to work in the fields all day.

As he rolled away from the fire and pulled up his blanket, he could hear Amma moving around the little room, putting the lid on the dairy crock and closing the bread away from the mice, her metal bracelets clinking.

He was almost asleep when he heard the unmistakable sound of a sword being drawn from its sheath. His eyes snapped open. Then Amma’s wooden stool creaked as she lowered herself onto it, and Rune’s eyelids drooped again. He heard her opening her little pot of whale oil, and now he could smell its rancid odor, too. He didn’t need to see her to know that Amma was dipping a rag into the pot and rubbing oil along the length of the blade, inspecting every crevice, every carving, checking for rust or dirt. He waited, listening for her song to start, first the humming and then the words, rhythmic and low.

It was the same song she always sang when she polished the sword, the one about the lady who’d lost her kinsmen in a feud. “Bitter breastcare hardened her heart,” he heard before her voice dropped so low he could barely make out the words. But after all these years, he knew them as well as she did.

What he didn’t know—what she would never tell him
when he asked—was why she spent so much time with the sword when she was dead set against fighting. If the king hadn’t insisted on it, Rune knew Amma would never have allowed him to learn swordfighting during the winters, when the farm folk gathered in the hall. Hwala always stayed with the farm to care for the livestock and to repair tools, but ever since he’d been a boy, Rune had gone with Amma and his foster brothers to spend the winter in the hall. Like the other farmers, he was drilled in the proper use of ax and spear, but unlike them, he also learned the sword. It hardly made him popular, not with the other farm boys and not with the boys who lived in the stronghold. The ones whose fathers were warriors trained with their swords all year long, leaving him at a permanent disadvantage.

The fact that the king was always so kind to him, greeting him each winter when he arrived at the hall, asking him questions about himself, about Amma, about the farm, should have made things easier. Instead, it set him apart even more.

He pulled the blanket over his head and reached for the pendant he wore around his neck, rubbing his thumb over the marks incised in it, to calm himself. The last thing he saw before he fell into troubled dreams was the image of the scythe coming down on Hwala’s leg.

In the morning, he woke to the sound of Amma’s bracelets clinking as she kneaded bread on the stone before the hearth. He opened one eye and peered straight up through
the smoke hole in the thatch. The sky was still gray, not yet pink. He stretched, yawned, and sat up.

“There’s whey in the bowl,” Amma said.

He yawned again, slurped down the whey, and pulled on his shoes.

“Will you finish the west field today?” She handed him a chunk of bread, and he nodded.

He knelt to leave a pinch of grain on the altar to Thor and then, taking a bite of the bread and ducking to keep from hitting his head on the lintel, emerged into the reddening dawn.

The cold morning air made him shiver as he headed to the farmhouse, where his foster brothers were just coming out of the door. Neither of them said anything about their father, so Rune didn’t ask. He fell into step behind them.

They got to the west field just as the sun peeked over the horizon, the three of them walking silently, scythes in their hands, rakes over their shoulders. They spaced themselves out and bent to their work. By the time they were at the end of the first row, the sun had warmed the air. Normally, Rune loved this time of year, the clear blue of the sky, the honking calls of geese overhead, the crown of mist on the giants’ mountain in the distance, the way insects bounded out of the oats ahead of him. But today, Hwala’s absence made their every move fraught with the knowledge that they must complete the harvest without him. Their uneven number made the work harder, too; instead of pairing up, one person cutting while the other raked up the
oats and gathered them into shocks, they had to work out the pattern with three. Finally, Rune moved to the far end of the field, cutting a row and then backtracking to rake it as well.

When Ula came out to the field with their midday meal, they all stopped and watched her approaching, none of them daring to speak. The bond servant seemed to understand their apprehension, because as soon as she was within shouting distance, the words “He’s fine” drifted over the oats to their ears.

The tension went out of Rune’s shoulders, and he laid down his rake, joining Skyn and Skoll in the shade of an elm as they waited for her. “Fine” seemed an overstatement to Rune when she told them more. “Sometimes he groans,” she said, and Rune saw Skyn flinch. “It hurts him, but it hasn’t festered.” She handed Skoll the waterskin and took bread and cheese from her basket. “Yet.”

After she left, they ate in silence, passing around the waterskin until it was empty. They hadn’t gotten nearly as far as Rune had hoped; he’d assumed they would be moving on to another field by now.

Skoll stood to piss.

“Hey, watch it!” Rune said, scrabbling out of the way as a stream of urine spattered on the ground beside him. He stood as Skyn laughed.

“We know about you and the scythe last night,” Skoll said. “What were you doing, putting a curse on it?”

“What?”

“Don’t deny it. Ula saw you.” Skoll turned toward him, his eyes narrowed. Taller than his father now, his muscles honed from hard farm labor, Skoll was the kind of person you’d want near you in a fight—unless he was on the other side. He’d never been on Rune’s side. “When I’m in charge of this farm, you won’t be bringing it down anymore with your curses.”

“I was cleaning the blood off!” Rune said.

“We know why Skyn’s blade slipped yesterday.”

“It was an accident.”

“If anything happens to my father …” He pointed a menacing finger at Rune.

Rune felt anger rising in him, and he clenched his fists.

“You want to fight, sword-boy?” Skoll said, his voice icy calm.

All of Amma’s lessons about using his head instead of his fists, all of the tales she’d taught him about how feuds got started, everything fled him now except an overpowering desire to drive his knuckles into Skoll’s jaw.

“Too bad you don’t have your fancy sword with you,” Skyn taunted as he rose to stand beside his brother. He might have been Rune’s age, a winter younger than Skoll, but he was almost as strong as his brother.

“I’ll fight you,” Skoll said, raising his fists. “Come on.”

The two of them stood like a wall. Rune stared at them, anger pounding behind his eye sockets. Then he dropped his fists and turned away.

“Coward,” Skyn said.

Rune stalked across the field in silence, Skyn’s word hanging in the air behind him. They’d ganged up on him before, and it never ended well for Rune. But that didn’t make him any less of a weakling for walking away. He clenched his fists again, wishing he’d punched them both.

He knew why they hated him, but knowing didn’t make it any easier.

His scythe was lying on the ground. He picked it up and started swinging.

By the time they finished the field, his anger had dulled. There was still time to make a start on another, but they didn’t know which one Hwala had planned or where the grain was ripest.

“You check on the far field,” Skoll said. “We’ll try the east field. Meet us back there.”

Rune looked at him. Instead of simply going back to ask Hwala, Skoll wanted him to go all the way out beyond the stream to the field that bordered Hwala’s lands, and then come back to the field beside the farmhouse?

Then again, he thought, it would get him away from Skoll. He started walking.

When he got to the rocky path that led down to the stream, birds rose, chittering, from the branches. He grabbed smooth birch trunks and pulled himself along. Leaves tinged with gold and fiery red mingled with the greenery, whispering of the harsh winter to come. He crunched over wet brown pebbles and splashed into
the stream, hopping from one rock to the next through the rushing water and then up the opposite bank.

He emerged from the trees into the far field, its slender stalks buzzing with insects and shining in the slanting sun. Dots of blue and red caught his eye from the flowers that wound their way into the oats.

A horned head rose out of the field, startling him. He laughed. “Ollie! What are you doing out here?”

The little brown goat came through the oats toward him, green stems and half-chewed blue flowers hanging from either side of her mouth. Rune shook his head in exasperation. Now he wouldn’t just have to get back to the east field with his report, but he’d have to take Ollie back, too. He cringed at the damage she’d already done to the field.