The Coming of the Dragon (9 page)

Together they headed away from the farm, past fire-blackened fields. A single acre of oats stood untouched, golden stalks bright against the darkness of the destroyed fields around it. It looked as if the dragon had left it alone on purpose, as a taunting threat that it might return.

They took the trail down through the birches that surrounded the stream, the trees themselves marked by fire, some of their white trunks blackened, half their green and red-gold leaves scorched. Hairy-Hoof picked her way carefully over the rocks and splashed through the stream,
then climbed up the bank, out of the trees, and onto the path that led to the tall runestone. The shield banged into Rune’s back as the horse’s hooves clopped over the dirt, sending up flurries of ash. Rune stared stonily ahead, refusing to look at the burned fields on either side of him, but he couldn’t keep the smell of smoke from filling his nostrils.

Far in the distance, the giants’ mountain loomed dark and forbidding. Amma had warned him never to go there. The crag was only the footstep of the mountain, and it was dangerous enough. But the mountain itself? He shivered. Yet, if he was to find the dragon, he would have to climb it.

He rode on, eyeing the steep slopes, wondering how he would ever find the dragon’s lair. Countless years the monster must have dwelt there, sleeping on its hoard, yet no one had even known about it. Why had it emerged now? And what made him think he could find it?

He had been on the crag when the dragon had flown over him. As he drew nearer, he scanned the rocky heights. Maybe its cave was nearby. Maybe not, but he couldn’t think of any other place to start.

He shrugged and heard his mail shirt clink with the sound of Amma’s bracelets. He took it as a sign.

When he finally got to the bottom of the crag, he stopped. Hairy-Hoof would never make it up slopes that steep and rocky. Careful not to drop the shield or let the sword trip him, he dismounted, grateful that there was no one nearby to see his lack of grace.

He was settling the shield more firmly on his back
when his eye fell on the runes the stranger had scratched into the dirt. They were still there. He reached for his pendant and held it for a moment before he began climbing.

He had taken only a few steps when something made him turn. Below him, two shapes like shadows darkened the patch of dirt. Ravens. Where had they come from? He watched as they hopped on the dirt, pecking at it. He couldn’t be sure from this distance, but it looked as if the birds had wiped out the stranger’s marks.

The hair on his arms prickled. The king’s hearth companions had a saying: “Fate often protects an undoomed man, if his courage is good.” Courage had never been Rune’s companion, and he felt as though doom walked alongside him. It didn’t matter. To avenge Amma, all he had to do was kill the dragon. He didn’t have to survive.

He began climbing again.

At the top of the crag, he stopped to catch his breath and readjust his sword and shield. He hadn’t considered how much harder mountain climbing would be, encumbered by such weight. At least the air was still today, so he wouldn’t have to worry about the wind buffeting him as he climbed. He stared up the slopes at the mountain’s beard of spruce and firs. Surely he should be able to see where the dragon had emerged. He shuddered, remembering just how huge it had been, how long it had taken to thunder over him. Although it had probably only been the space of a few breaths, it had seemed like a lifetime.

Above the tree line, the mountain was strewn with
boulders, but Rune could see no place where the monster had trampled trees or bushes, no burn marks on the ground. “A dragon must live in a barrow, old and proud of its treasures.” He whispered the adage, one of the hundreds Amma had taught him. But where was there a barrow? He’d never heard of any old grave mounds near here, nor caves full of bones and treasure. It would have to be a sizeable cave if the dragon was to get into it, although people said the creatures could flatten themselves the way a mouse does to crawl into tight places.

He scanned the mountain for cave mouths but saw nothing promising. How would he ever find the dragon?

Footsteps sounded behind him. He whipped around, hand tight on his sword hilt.

A goat balanced on a rock, watching him.

Rune let out his breath in a whoosh of relief. He gazed at it; the goat must have been twice as big as Ollie. Its coat was pure white, and there was something strange about its eyes. For a goat, he thought, that was saying something. It gave a nasal bleat, then sprang off the rock and ran lightly up the mountainside. As Rune watched, another goat pranced out from behind a boulder, and the two animals clashed horns lightly. The first goat looked back at him before both of them dashed farther up the mountain.

They could be ordinary mountain goats, he thought, but they didn’t look like it. Could the Thunderer have sent them as guides? It was a chance he would have to take. He started after them.

The goats had disappeared by the time he made it to the boulder. He grasped at a tree root that offered itself like a handle and pulled himself up to rest on the stony surface, lowering his shield from his back. Until today, he’d never realized just how big and cumbersome a warrior’s shield could be—the round wood stood half as high as Rune, and in places, the metal edges and fittings dug into his flesh. He was sure he had a pattern of ring-shaped bruises where the shield had pressed his mail coat into his back.

From where he sat, he could see the goat trail disappearing into the clouds that covered the mountaintop, but he saw no cave. He wrapped his arms around himself, wishing he’d worn his cloak against the cold. Far in the distance, serpentine rock shapes rose out of the dark seawater. At least, he hoped they were rocks.

When he looked back up the mountainside, a sudden movement caught his eye. The goats? No, not goats—it was a tendril of smoke curling through the air.

Smoke!
The dragon’s smoky breath?

Steeling himself, he picked up his shield again and started climbing fast, keeping his eyes on the smudge in the air.

There was no straight path; he dodged around scraggly trees and bushes, climbed over rocks, slipped on loose pebbles, and zigzagged his way up the slope, his heart hammering with effort and fear. His feet crunched on something, and he looked down to see a skeleton, some animal he didn’t recognize, its rib cage whitened with age. Beside
it, an indentation in the ground was shaped like a giant’s footprint. He shuddered and hurried onward.

Now his swordbelt, too loose to keep the sheath stable on his left side, slipped down over his hips, making the rings of his mail shirt bite into bone. Irritably, he yanked it up. A boulder rose before him, and, still tugging at his belt, he edged around it and through a stand of fir trees. He burst through them—and stopped short, teetering, his heart in his throat.

Below him, the mountain dropped away in a sheer cliff. One more step and he would have gone over the side.

Barely daring to breathe, he drew his foot back. Steadying himself, grasping the boulder for balance, he looked down. Far below him, an eagle hovered on a current of air. He heard it shriek, a faint sound carried on the wind. It was a long way to the bottom.

Edging back to the other side of the boulder, he began his ascent again, more carefully this time. But as he scanned the heights, he could no longer see the trail of smoke, nor the boulders that had been near it. Instead, a gray cloud hung over the mountaintop, obscuring them.

Higher and higher he climbed, blinking away mist. He kept going, wiping dampness from his face and focusing on his path, watching for sudden drop-offs. When he reached forward to steady himself on a rock, he stopped, amazed to see his arm disappear into the air. Mist swirled around him, cutting off sound and light, chilling him. Water droplets formed in his hair, on his clothes and skin. If he kept
climbing, he might go straight past the dragon’s lair without seeing it. Or he might come to another cliff—but this time, he wouldn’t know until it was too late.

Above him, below him, on his sword-hand side, on his shield-hand side, the air was solid, a white-gray mass that no human eye could penetrate.

There was nothing he could do. He lowered himself to the ground beside the rock.

He was trapped.

SEVEN

BEADS OF MOISTURE SETTLED ON RUNE’S EYELASHES. HE
hunched his shoulders against the fog and wished for his cloak, the one Amma had woven for him. He thought of her sitting at her loom, chanting songs as she worked, stories of gods and giants and heroes, of King Beowulf’s battles, of the feuds between the tribes, the Shylfings and the Frisians, the Geats and the Danes. People said Amma could out-chant the bard, she knew so many tales. Much as Rune liked the stories, he’d never seen the point of having to learn them himself. And especially not all the histories of the tribes and their leaders or the wisdom poems, like the one about what was expected of king and queen, earl and churl. A churl—a farmer like him—hardly needed a poem to know how to harvest a field.

Shivering, he wrapped his arms around himself and
stared at the mist. Never still, it eddied and purled like stream water. Sometimes he thought he could see shapes moving within it—giants going about their business? He sat frozen, hunched like a boulder, hoping that giants couldn’t see through the gray air any better than he could.

Now he thought he could discern sounds, vague and muted. A wordless voice seemed to float toward him through the mist. For a moment, he thought it sounded like Amma’s voice.

Sudden anger welled in Rune, anger at himself for leaving the farm unprotected, for not warning Amma about the dragon. The dragon! Such rage as he had never felt before flooded through him. If he had to crouch here, unmoving, on this mountainside for even one more heartbeat, he would explode.

Maybe it was too dangerous to walk, but he could crawl, couldn’t he? Whatever it took, he would find the dragon, and he would take his vengeance for Amma, for Hwala and his sons, for Ula, for the fields of ripened grain, for the burned gables of the king’s golden hall. For the king’s hearth companions.

He dropped to hands and knees and slung his shield onto his back. His sword dragged and the shield slid forward, hitting the ground and making his going slow, but nothing would stop him now, not the rocks biting into his hands and knees, nor the mist that seemed to thicken with every move he made.

That voice again—he seemed to hear it ahead of him
now, leading him on, almost pulling him up the steep slope. He rose to his feet for speed, keeping his hands to the ground like a bear, the shield falling forward until finally he rose to his full height. Let the mist try to slow him. He wanted the dragon
now
, while he was white-hot with fury.

Shapes rose before him in the mist, boulders hunched like trolls, fir trees standing like spears, but he scarcely noticed. He grabbed hold of one to pull himself upward, then stumbled, righted himself, and stumbled again. This time, he caught hold of a bush whose thorns pierced his hand.

The pain fueled his anger and pushed him blindly on. As long as he was heading up the mountain, he must be going the right way.

Until a wall stopped him, a cliff face. In the fog, there was no way for him to see how high it was. He reached for handholds but found no way to scale it. As he stood before the wall, a muted sound pierced the solid air. Rune stood stock-still, listening. Again he heard it, the sound like a voice, coming from his sword-hand side.

“Amma?” Rune said softly, and strained his ears for a reply.

None came, nor any sign.

He swallowed hard. Then, one hand on the rock wall, he began edging to the right, each foot stretching out to feel for solid ground.

Suddenly, his hand met air and he pulled back. But his feet told him the ground was still there. He reached down
to feel scraggly bushes and, beside them, a path that seemed to go around the cliff face.

He was right—the voice
was
leading him. Was it Amma’s spirit helping him to avenge her death? Or some malign presence luring him to his doom?

The path, probably a goat trail, led him higher and farther to the sword-hand side. It seemed like the right way, but in the fog, he had no idea where he was or where the curl of smoke had been, the smoke that had looked like the dragon’s breath.

The thought of the dragon lying smugly on its treasure hoard made his anger flame. He grasped at his sword hilt but let it go as a root tripped him, sending him sprawling. As he fell, his hands reached out, touching … 
nothing
.

He lay still for a moment, listening, breathing. Then, cautiously, he pulled himself forward on his belly, feeling the ground in front of him and the air beyond, where mountain gave way to cliff. Still splayed on the ground and blind in the mist, he searched with his hand until he found a loose stone and dropped it over the edge, listening for its landing. No sound answered. For all he could tell, the cliff might plunge all the way to the sea.

He reached behind him and took hold of the root that had tripped him, saving his life.