The Coming of the Dragon (4 page)

He bent over to examine the oats for ripeness, feeling the moisture in the stalks, rolling the grain between his fingers. Ollie gave him an affectionate butt against the shoulder, then nibbled at the back of his neck.

“Hey, that tickles,” he said, touching his neck as the goat pranced away. She turned to look at him, a glint of humor in her eye, a leather cord in her mouth. At the end of it dangled his pendant.

“That’s mine!” Rune said. “Give it back!” He lunged, but she danced out of reach.

Thinking fast, he grabbed more of the blue flowers she’d been eating and held them out enticingly. She
watched him but didn’t come any nearer, so he laid them in the path and took a step away. He could tell she was tempted from the way she eyed them. But not tempted enough. Without warning, the goat turned and raced down the path away from the farm.

“Come back here!” Rune cried. His hand went to his neck, but of course the pendant wasn’t there. Would she turn when she saw he wasn’t following her? Drop it when she got bored?
Eat
it?

He looked at the oats in his hand. He needed to get back to the farm, not spend his time chasing a fool of a goat.

“Ollie!” he bellowed, but the goat kept running as if she were possessed. He squinted—she was already all the way to the tall runestone that marked the edge of Hwala’s lands. There the path forked, the shield-hand side leading to the sea, the sword-hand path to the giants’ mountain and, beyond it, to the king’s stronghold. Ollie took the sword-hand path.

The pendant. It had been around his neck ever since Amma had found him when he was a baby. He had to get it back.

He took a last glance behind him, to the trees hiding the stream, the smoke rising from the farmhouse, the ash tree outside the hut he shared with Amma.

Then, oats dropping from his fingers, he ran.

TWO

TALL GRASSES WHIPPED AT RUNE’S LEGS. FAR AHEAD OF
him, he could see the brown-haired goat bounding along, her white tail raised like a flag. She had to tire of the game soon, he told himself. As he ran, he scanned the ground for his pendant in case she had dropped it, but he knew he’d never find it that way. The path wasn’t used often enough to keep it clear of vegetation, the way the ones around the farm were.

He glanced behind him. Skyn and Skoll would just have to start on the east field by themselves. He’d make up for it later. He’d work through tomorrow’s midday meal if he had to; he wouldn’t have them thinking of him as a freeloader. Skoll’s words about what would happen to Rune and Amma when he was in charge of the farm were no idle
threat. There was more than one reason to pray Hwala’s wound wouldn’t fester.

Rune wished he’d hit Skoll earlier. He could just feel the satisfying crunch of his foster brother’s jawbone against his knuckles. But, no, he’d backed down, the way he always did. It was laughable how Amma was always warning him not to fight. If she had any idea of the truth—that he always took the coward’s path—she would save her breath.

In the distance, Ollie stopped short and turned to look at him. Finally. As he drew closer to her, Rune slowed his pace, panting. The pendant still hung from the goat’s lips. She watched him through the horizontal pupils of her brown eyes.

He stopped a spear length away. “Come here, Ollie,” he said, forcing cheer he didn’t feel into his voice. He held out his hand invitingly.

She lifted one delicate hoof as if to take a step toward him.

He smiled and kept his tone low and soothing. “There’s a girl.”

Without warning, she bolted, racing away again. Rune pelted after her. She was close enough that he knew he could catch her. He threw himself forward, his hands grabbing for her legs—but she slipped out of his fingers.

“Ollie!” Frustration coursed through him, and he picked himself up off the ground, brushing dirt from his elbows and staring after her.

He should just go back to the farm and hope she would
follow; he knew he should. But if he did, he might never see the pendant again. He
had
to get it back. He started running again.

As he followed Ollie, he thought about what would happen if Skoll kicked them out. No farm he knew of could afford to take in two extra mouths. Could they stay in the stronghold? Amma hated it there—“court intrigue and corruption,” she always scoffed when they got to the king’s hall in the winters. She might not like it, but Rune thought he would. If he could practice the sword year-round, he might get better at it. Good enough to be one of the king’s hearth companions?

Ketil Flat-Nose, his only friend in the hall, had been made a hearth companion last winter. Rune imagined himself joining Ketil and the king’s other warriors. If he could practice as much as they did, maybe he could learn to dance with sword and spear the way Dayraven did—Dayraven, who had killed the wild ox single-handedly. Rune and Ketil had counted Dayraven’s gold armbands, gifts from the king for the warrior’s prowess. No other warrior wore as many, not even Finn, the king’s shoulder companion, who taught the boys in the hall.

Rune pictured himself riding alongside Dayraven and Ketil as they patrolled the kingdom’s borders, fighting off raiders, defending the land, hunting the bear and the wild boar. They’d gallop into the stronghold, their harnesses jingling in time to the horses’ hoofbeats. In the hall, they’d report to the king before they relaxed on the mead benches,
and bond servants would bring them ale and steaming slices of meat, while the bard told tales of heroes and the women watched, their distaffs in their arms, their spindles sinking to the floor.

His pace slowed as he imagined Wyn, Finn’s fair-haired daughter, looking up from her thread-making to ask him if it was really true that he had slain a water monster, just like the king had done all those years ago. He was about to tell her how he’d been kept underwater so long a lesser man would have drowned, when a glint on the ground caught his eye. His pendant!

He grabbed it. The leather thong was slimy with Ollie’s saliva, but other than that, the pendant was undamaged. He wiped it on his tunic and tied it around his neck.

Now, where was Ollie? He looked around him, surprised at how far he’d come, at how dim the light was. Ahead of him, the giants’ mountain loomed, the last of the sun’s rays illuminating its cliffs. Before it stood the crag, the promontory looking out over the water, the only part of the mountain where humans dared venture.

Rune gazed behind him. Shadow covered the valley. The sun had already dropped behind a line of distant trees. Hwala’s farm lay beyond those trees, far out of sight. He shouldn’t be out here at this time of evening. Nobody should. It wasn’t safe—not for him and not for Ollie. He had to find her; they couldn’t afford to lose another goat.

A slight noise made him turn forward again.

A man stepped out from behind a boulder.

Rune’s breath caught in his throat, and his hand went to the dagger on his belt.

“I’m no harm to you, boy,” the man said, gesturing with his eyes at Rune’s knife.

He was probably right; Rune could see that in a glance. The stranger wore no weapons, and his shoes, like his stained tunic, were torn and ragged, while the edges of his short cloak were frayed to a feathery fringe. His slight shoulders were stooped, and his thin strands of greasy hair made him look far from young. Yet he kept one hand hidden, holding it behind him. Rune stared at him. Who was he? There were no strangers here.

He could feel the man looking him over.

“Where’d you get that pretty thing around your neck?” There was something about the man’s tone that made Rune take a step back. He reached for the pendant and shoved it under his shirt.

“Don’t you speak, boy?” The man bent down and picked up a stone.

Rune pulled his dagger from his belt and dropped into a fighting stance, every muscle taut, every lesson he’d learned in the hall ringing in his skull.
Whatever you do, don’t lose your nerve
, Finn always said.
Assess your opponent. Don’t let him surprise you
.

Rune steadied his breath and shifted onto the balls of his feet, watching the man’s hidden hand, and readied himself to whirl out of range.

The stranger appeared not to notice. Instead, he
brushed a place in the dirt clear of pebbles and weeds. Then, with the stone, he scratched marks in the dirt.

Rune straightened, staring. The marks were the same runes that were etched into his pendant.

Still crouching, the man squinted up at him. “I said, where’d you get that silver thing?”

“It’s mine,” Rune said.

“Whose neck did you cut it off of?” The man stayed on his haunches.

“Nobody’s. It’s mine. It’s always been mine.”

“Always is an awfully long time, boy.”

“It was my father’s.” He spoke the words defiantly, as if he knew the truth of them. Why was he even talking to this man? Strangers had no rights here.

The man laughed, a harsh bark with no pleasure in it, and Rune could see how sharply pointed his teeth were, as if they’d been filed. “Your father’s. And who might he have been?”

“It’s no concern of yours.”

The man stood. “Is that what you think?” Suddenly, he lunged at Rune, his hand reaching for the pendant.

Rune was ready. He pushed the man, sending him sprawling. As he danced on the balls of his feet, preparing
for the man’s next move, he heard a bleat. Ollie stood on the path to the crag.

He looked at the man lying in the dirt. Then he looked back at Ollie. She was so close. He ran.

Behind him, the stranger laughed, and Rune glanced back to see him still sitting on the ground. In the man’s hand, he could see a glint of gold from whatever it was he had held behind his back.

Rune kept going up the crag path—he wouldn’t let Ollie get away this time. He scrambled up the steep slope, slipping on loose rocks and grabbing bushes to haul himself along.

By the time he reached the top, he was out of breath and the sun was almost gone. In the half-light, wind whipped his hair into his eyes, fingering at his clothes and drying his sweat. Where was Ollie? He scanned the flat promontory, but there was no sign of her. Where could she have gone? Surely not up the mountain.

It was foolhardy for him to be here, a place no one should ever be at twilight, the Between Time, when spirits roamed freely. Giants owned the mountain—if Ollie had ventured up it, he would have to leave her to her fate. Humans had no business here, not even on the crag, at this time of day.

“Ollie!” he called, but he heard no bell, no answering bleat.

He picked up a stone and gripped it in his fist, then
threw it hard. It skittered across the shale, sending up a shower of rocks. He’d come all the way up here, and for what?

A booming sound startled him, making Rune look over his shoulder. The mountain slopes loomed black and forbidding behind him. The noise made his skin crawl.

He looked forward again. Surely a goat wouldn’t fall off a cliff, would she? When he ventured far enough forward to see over the edge, the wind grew stronger, toying with him, threatening to send him over the side. Far below, the dark sea curled and crashed into white foam on the rocks. From where he stood, he could see no goat. Instead, he gazed at the two parts of the kingdom, divided by the mountain’s roots, Hwala’s isolated farm lost in the distant west and the more populous eastern section dotted with farms and fields. Beyond them, swathed in autumn mist, lay the stronghold and the king’s golden hall.

Rune turned his back to the wind and listened for Ollie’s bell, fingering his pendant as he did so. The stranger had seen it for the space of a breath, hardly long enough to read the runes, let alone commit them to memory. How had he been able to draw them in the dirt? It was as if he knew more about the pendant than Rune did. Just who was the man, anyway?

He should have challenged him, or fought him, or done
something
, instead of chasing after a stupid goat who was nowhere to be seen.

The stranger could be anybody, a harmless exile seeking
a new ring-giver, a leader he could follow. But he could just as easily be a warrior in disguise or a spy for the vengeance-seeking Shylfings. And Rune had let him go. Could he still catch him, if he ran after him now? He pictured himself subduing the man, then leading him, hands bound at his back, into the king’s golden hall, all the king’s hearth companions watching Rune with newfound respect. He imagined Ketil grinning him a greeting the way he used to when they were still boys training together. He could see Dayraven giving him a gruff nod of approval, the warmth in his eyes secretly welcoming Rune into the king’s warband. And the king—Rune could see the old man stepping forward to thank him for his courage.