The Coming of the Dragon (7 page)

If it hadn’t been for the king, Amma said, he would have been killed or set out on the whaleroad in the boat again, left to drown or starve or come to some other shore. Amma hadn’t told him, but he’d heard that Dayraven had wanted to kill him. Dayraven wasn’t the only one who thought that letting him live would bring a curse on the kingdom.

“The king himself lifted you from the boat,” Amma had told him more than once. “He held you in one hand, his sword in the other, and said, ‘Whoever plans to take this child’s life will have to take mine first.’ ”

“Why?” Rune had asked her. “Why did the king save me?”

Amma had looked at him, and Rune felt himself falling into the depths of her gaze. She knew things that other people didn’t. Long before anyone showed up, Amma would know that Embla, from Sigurd’s farm, or one of the women who lived past the ash grove was making her way toward the hut to have a dream interpreted or to beg for a potion for a love gone wrong. Once, Embla had told Rune that on the day he washed ashore, Amma had stood staring out at the waves as if she was waiting for something. “For you, it turned out,” Embla said. Whenever Rune asked Amma about it, though, she turned the subject back to the king.

“He protected you because he remembers the legends, same as I do,” Amma said.

As if that were an answer. But when Rune asked her to explain, she just shook her head. “Ask the bard if you want to know.” She knew as well as he did that a boy like him wouldn’t have the courage to question the one-eyed poet.

The king might have saved his life, but he could do nothing to free Rune from people’s suspicion or their ridicule. Skyn and Skoll had only been mewling crib-children when the little boat came ashore, but that didn’t
stop them from telling Rune he’d been a shit-covered baby whose own mother didn’t want him. The fact that they were probably right made their taunts cut deeper. And they were sure to repeat loudly in Rune’s hearing whatever Dayraven or others said about Rune bringing a curse on the kingdom.

It had been years since anyone had mentioned the curse, and Rune hoped Dayraven had forgotten it. During weapons training, he had tried, without much luck, to impress the warrior, hoping to show him how much of an asset he could be to the houseguard. Fortunately, Dayraven rarely stayed in the hall during Finn’s training sessions.

A thought struck Rune, making him jerk on the reins and causing Hairy-Hoof to toss her head and whinny. “Sorry, girl,” he whispered, stroking her neck. “Do you need a rest?” He swung himself down from her back to run alongside for a while. As he did, he looked sideways at the mountain. Maybe Dayraven had been right. Maybe he
was
cursed. Could he have somehow awoken the dragon by going to the crag at the Between Time? There was so much that he didn’t know about himself.

Amma knew, though; he was sure of it. At least, she knew more than she had ever told him. He had seen the way she held back when she told tales before the fire, how she wove words together until they came too close to his story. Then she stopped or took a turn into a different tale, one she’d be sure to make him learn.

Rune gripped the pendant. When he got back to the
farm, he’d ask her to tell him. No, he’d
make
her tell him. He had to know. He was old enough to be a warrior; it was time she stopped treating him like a child.

It was half-light by the time he reached the runestone that marked the edge of Hwala’s lands—the same time the dragon had emerged a day before. As stiff as Rune’s body was, he felt his shoulders stiffen further. He scanned the sky and kept his ears taut, sure that every sound he heard was a dragon, not the call of a bird settling in for the night.

He was glad to be near the end of the journey. Despite the trouble he’d be in from Hwala for everything he’d done, he’d welcome a warm meal and his own pallet across the fire from Amma’s. He shook his head as he reviewed his transgressions: losing Ollie, going to the crag at twilight, going straight to the king instead of to the farm. He’d probably even be blamed for Hairy-Hoof’s absence instead of praised for bringing her back. Even so, it would be good to be home.

He turned onto the path toward the farm. Recognizing it, Hairy-Hoof pricked up her ears and picked up the pace, eager for oats.

Ahead of him, Rune could see the line of birches that marked the stream. Beyond that, he could barely make out the farm buildings, dark in the distance. A low ray of the setting sun caught something—he couldn’t tell what—and made it gleam like flame.

The smell of smoke reached Rune’s nose just as Hairy-Hoof neighed nervously and pulled up short. Rune narrowed his eyes. Before the stream lay the far field—blackened by fire, wisps of smoke rising from it like ghosts.

The air drained from his lungs. He kicked Hairy-Hoof’s sides, urging her into a gallop.

He was too late.

The dragon had found the farm.

FIVE

HE FOUND ULA FIRST. HWALA’S BOND SERVANT LAY FACEDOWN
in the stream, her bucket beside the bank, her back blackened by fire. Gently, he turned her face toward his, but he didn’t need to see her cloudy eyes, her blank stare, to know she was dead. The smell of her charred hair made his gorge rise. He swallowed and laid her body beside the bank, out of the water. Not allowing himself to think, he raced for Hairy-Hoof.

Small flames danced, wraithlike, in the charred timbers of the farmhouse and stable as Rune approached. He fumbled as he dismounted, his eyes searching for what he dared not find.

“Amma!” His voice cracked as he cried her name into the stillness. No answer came.

Just inside the farmhouse ruins, he stumbled on a
figure, a human body, and his hand rose to his mouth in horror. It could be Skyn or Skoll, he couldn’t even tell—the figure was so badly burned. Could it be Amma?

He reached out his hand toward a glint of metal, then snatched it back, gasping—it was like sticking his hand in a fire’s glowing embers. He looked again at the metal. It was a dagger, and now he could see the wolf shape etched into it. Skoll’s dagger.

Rune shut his eyes tightly against the smoke, against the sight, and screamed, “Amma!”

In the answering silence, he heard only low flames licking gently at what was left of the beams.

He stepped around the body, the hot coals scorching his feet through his shoes.

Farther inside the farmhouse, Hwala lay on the floor near what had been his pallet, one leg pulled up as if he’d been trying to protect his wound from the flames.

The building wasn’t large. He stared around fearfully but saw no one else.

Skyn he found in what was left of the stable, a beam across his chest, his clothes burned off, his shorter left arm stretched toward something he would never reach. Beside him lay a dead goat. The smell of its charred flesh made Rune’s mouth water incongruously. Or was it Skyn’s flesh?

A sound he didn’t recognize rose out of his chest and escaped his lips, a whimper of dread. If all the others were dead …

He looked across the homefield, over the blackened hay, toward the hut he had shared with Amma for as long as he could remember. It was still standing—the dragon hadn’t burned it. He ran.

“Amma!” The word came out like a cry when he saw her lying on the threshold. As he knelt beside her, she looked at him, one eye meeting his, the other drifting into the distance. She was still alive, but her burns were terrible.

He lifted her as gently as he could, but she moaned in pain until he laid her on her pallet. “I’ll get you water, I’ll take care of you, you’ll be all right,” he said, pulling the blanket over her as much to hide her wounds as to warm her.

She stared at him, her mouth working as if she was trying to speak.

“What, Amma? What is it?”

She reached a clawlike hand to his face, her metal bracelets clinking against each other. Then she brought her hand to her lips. He leaned his head toward hers, his ear near her mouth.

“Rune.” Her voice was a creaking rasp.

“I’m here, Amma. I’ll take care of you.”

“No!” The voice had more force than she seemed to have the strength for. Again, he brought his ear to her lips.

Rune held his head still, listening to Amma’s heavy, tortured breathing. Finally, she spoke again.

“Survivor of war.”

He shook his head. He needed to build up the fire to
warm her, to find her water and something to eat, to dress her wounds. “It isn’t war, Amma. It was a dragon.”

She grimaced. “No,” she rasped again. “You.” She half pointed with her clawed hand, then dropped it to her chest. Heavily, her eyes closed.

“Amma?” Rune said, fear making the air catch in his throat. But as he watched, her chest continued to rise and fall. She was still breathing.

He looked in the rain barrel; soot floated on the top. He strained water through a cloth and then, cradling her head in his arms, tried to get Amma to drink, but the water dribbled down her chin.

The same thing happened when he tried to feed her the porridge he found in the pot on its tripod over the cookfire—the supper she had probably made for him. He wiped her face off, thankful that it wasn’t burned like so much of the rest of her; then he sat down, leaning his trembling body against the wall, and took one of Amma’s hands in his. Gently, he kneaded it, caressing her fingers the way he’d done these past few years when the stiffness in her knuckles pained her. She often sang to him when he did, choosing stories of the feuds between tribes, of the fates of the women and children when men sought vengeance. She wouldn’t be singing tonight.

She was in bad shape, he knew, and he didn’t know what to do to help her.
She
was the one people came to when they needed healing. Even if there had been somebody he could have gone to, it was too late now; night had
fallen and the spirits of Hwala and Skyn and Skoll, even the bond servant’s spirit, would be roaming. He tried not to think of their unburied bodies, but every time he shut his eyes, he saw them.

He stared into the cookfire, listening to it snap. Then, his voice low and quavering with fatigue and fear and grief, he began to chant the sorrow-filled lament Amma had sung when she polished the sword. As he chanted, he recalled the coolness of her hand on his forehead, the comforting sound of her voice singing him to sleep, the way she had when, as a child, he’d been hurt or ill.

    
Daylight decreed it; Wyrd agreed:

Brother and son, uncle and nephew

Lay slain in the swordplay
.

That sad lady mourned in the morning

Under gray skies where she had grasped gladness
.

Now bitter breastcare hardened her heart
.

Hoc’s blameless daughter—her kinsmen were gone
.

    Rune’s voice choked off. Before he looked down at Amma’s chest again, he somehow already knew. It moved no more.

Amma, his Amma, who had mothered him for as long as he could remember, who had taken him in when he’d been cast out alone into the world, who had taught him and disciplined him and loved him—Amma was gone.

A ragged, wordless sob tore from his chest.

.  .  .

It took him the entire next day to prepare the graves. He worked mechanically, feeling light-headed. His vision was as blurry as his voice was raw from the prayers he’d chanted to Thor and Freyja, asking them to guide Amma’s spirit on her trip to the next world. He’d kept his fingers wound in hers all night to keep her spirit from becoming fearful—or worse, angry—when it realized the body it had lived in could no longer house it.

When he woke, Amma’s fingers were stiff and cold, and he had to use one hand to free the fingers of his other from hers.

He buried Hwala and his sons and Ula first, all of them together in one pit. It took him till midday to dig it. Skyn and Skoll had made his life miserable, but he would never have wished them such a fate. And certainly not Hwala, who, though he was a hard man, had allowed both Rune and Amma food and shelter without complaint. He couldn’t find Skyn’s dagger, so he gave him a scythe. Hwala would meet the gods with the farm’s ax.

Dully, he wondered about Ula, who had kept to herself no matter how often he had asked her to tell her story. Amma would have known. Who had her people been? Would they ever hear what had happened to her? He doubted it. He found a ceramic jug, scorched by the flames but still serviceable, to bury with her. Because she had had so little joy in her life, he wished he could search for a
brooch or a bracelet for her, but he was running out of time. Amma’s body was still waiting.

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.