“What have you done?” he cried.
“I killed Ostryg,” she said, but her voice was nearly a whisper.
Her papa stared at her, trembling, his black eyes like a lance. “Was this also an … accident?”
She did not look away, though she hated those eyes more than anything else at that moment.
He broke away. “Tribunal! We are having a tribunal now, over the body of my friend, cut down in his prime.”
Everybody obeyed. Nobody dared cross him.
Her papa was an ambassador to Queen Saehildr and had traveled all over the world with his father, Dyrfinna’s grandfather. He was a dragon rider with the Norse dragons. He was world wise, skilled in politics and diplomacy.
Not so good on the emotional side, though. He adored Aesa. But Dyrfinna .…
“Tell me what happened here,” he demanded. “I will judge.”
Dyrfinna looked up at him. “I would prefer a more impartial judge.”
“Don’t question me. I am impartial.”
Her guts pulled into knots.
“We are here,” he said, addressing the crowd, then raised his voice to be heard over Gefjun’s sobs, “to investigate the sudden and cruel death of Ostryg Háthskason at the hands of Dyrfinna.”
“Dyrfinna Egilsdóttir,” she prompted.
Without looking at her, he opened his mouth to speak, then seemed to think the better of it and shut it. “Who wishes to tell me first what happened?”
Dyrfinna was scalded by his rejection of her own name. “Dyrfinna Vaetildrsdóttir, then,” she said quietly, using her mother’s name.
Nobody seemed to hear because Gefjun was crying, “She challenged him to a duel and he took her up on it. I didn’t think she’d go this far! Why did you do that, Finna? Why?” she pleaded angrily.
“You were both singing against me! I can’t defend myself against both of you and you know it!” Dyrfinna raised her hands helplessly, realizing, too late, that they were covered with Ostryg’s blood.
“Ostryg wasn’t going to kill you, you idiot!” Gefjun cried. Half of her face was red with the blood from Ostryg’s shirt. “Why’d you kill him? You didn’t have any reason to murder him!” She burst into a fresh round of sobbing.
And then Sinkr had to jump in. “Dyrfinna’s been out to get Ostryg for all her life,” he burst out. “She just saw the perfect opportunity tonight.”
Dyrfinna turned on him. “That’s a lie,” she snarled. “Don’t twist this for your own gain, the way you’ve twisted everything else.”
“Oo, the wildcat shows her claws,” Sinkr said gleefully.
Skeggi, weeping over Ostryg across from Gefjun, said, “Egill, take Sinkr out of this discussion. He doesn’t know anything about what happened.”
“By rights, he needs to be in this discussion,” Egill said. “After all, he is Dyrfinna’s commander.”
That rankled.
Skeggi’s face was running with tears. “Sinkr is enjoying this too much to be a trustworthy participant.”
“Aye, take him out,” Ragnarok said. “Or I’ll do it for ye, see if I don’t.”
Dyrfinna nodded solemnly to him. He returned it. “It makes me sick to see that no one’s standing up for you, after all you’ve done to save us.”
A murmur from the troops followed—which stopped as soon as Egill turned his frown on them.
He turned back to Gefjun. “Are there any representatives from Ostryg’s family?”
She shook her head hard.
Dyrfinna knew that they were mostly thieves and mercenaries. Ostryg had talked about them often, back in the day, when they were somewhat friendly with each other.
Egill continued. “Do you wish to speak as a representative of his family?”
Gefjun hesitated, then nodded, eyes narrowed at Dyrfinna.
Dyrfinna’s stomach dropped.
“What should we do with her?” Egill gestured at Dyrfinna without looking at her. “Your lover lies in your arms, cold and dead. What should she do to make it right for you, the bereaved?”
Gefjun’s face grew hard. “I don’t care about the blood price. I wouldn’t take it.” Then she looked right at Dyrfinna and said, to her face, “My family will join Ostryg’s in the blood feud. This is between your family and mine. You took away my future. You stole my future. You are dead to me, dead.” She started crying and buried her face on Ostryg’s chest.
“I wouldn’t have paid the blood price, anyway,” her papa said to Dyrfinna. “I let you go a long time ago. What you do is none of my concern.”
There were so many things she wanted to say to that. But all her words drowned in the abandoned grief that rose up in her from when she was ten years old. It had never gone away. And now it swamped her, body and soul. She shut her eyes.
“What are you going to do with me?”
Egill put a hand on his beard and made a great show of thinking. “Hm. Hm. I think that the punishment should fit the wrongdoer. Word’s gotten around about your exploit to the dragon’s island. The one where you burned the fisher boat to the waterline because you couldn’t row away fast enough? I think you should go into exile on that island. But this time, there will be no boats to escape.”
Her heart raced as her panic grew. Mist rose around her. A hissing like hard rain filled her ears.
“I want to see my mama one last time,” she said, her voice breaking. “I want to see Aesa. One last time.”
He turned and met her gaze. His black eyes were hard. Grief. Fury.
“I never got to say goodbye to Leikny,” he said.
He let that pause linger in the air, staring her down.
Her papa—no, Egill—finally said, “You will go to the dragon isle tonight.”
Dyrfinna’s mouth went dry. “It’s too far to travel there.”
“No problem,” he said quietly. “I’ll take you myself.”
Last Flight
He wasn’t taking her home to say goodbye to Aesa.
She wasn’t going to see her mama. Or Aesa. Ever again.
Dyrfinna knew she needed to fight back, but the announcement took all the air out of her. It was too much, too fast, and she was already exhausted.
“This is wrong,” she said. “This is wrong.”
He just swanned off with his robes and tassels fluttering behind him.
Sinkr called to the troops, saying, “Egill will take this woman to the dragon island. While he’s gone, we will move back toward King Varinn’s keep and engage their ships on a different battlefront.”
Nobody spoke after this.
“Ready the ships again for voyaging. Load them up. First thing in the morning, we will set sail for the enemy, and we will fight!”
There were no cheers. Her crew was silent.
Dyrfinna looked back at her warriors, those who were still standing, those who were still ready to take guard for her after all this.
And now she was forced to leave them to these crap commanders who didn’t care about their lives.
Sunlight had played at the edges of the sky during her judgement, but now they disappeared like all of her hope.
Egill returned and told her, “Get your stuff. You’re leaving now.”
“I want to say goodbye to my friends.”
“Shouldn’t have murdered an old family friend in the first place. Get your things.”
She went to get her belongings from her ship, but Egill sent two of Sinkr’s men with her, both of whom were pretty mad about her killing Ostryg.
Skeggi followed.
At the ship, they made her put all her possessions into a cloth bag, instead of bringing along her sea chest.
“You can’t put a sea chest on the back of a dragon,” one sneered.
“I should take that,” said the other. “It’s a nice chest. You murderer. You’re not using it.”
“I gift the chest to you, Skeggi,” she said.
“I’ll take it …. ” Skeggi had to compose himself. “I’ll bring it home to Aesa.”
>
“Tell her I love her.” Tears rose to her eyes.
One of Ostryg’s friends hit her with the butt of his spear.
“Hey.” Skeggi pushed him back.
“Shove off, loverboy.”
“He’s not my boyfriend.” Dyrfinna sneered the last word. “His betrothed is the dragonrider who was burned.”
“Oh.” Ostryg’s friend backed off.
Dyrfinna had seen this guy around Skala, though their paths didn’t often cross. Even though he was a complete jerk, there were a few things he respected. Dragonriders were one of them.
Her possessions all gathered, they walked back up the hill toward where her … toward where Egill waited with his dragon. Skeggi and Dyrfinna walked side by side from the port through the crowds of Vikings getting the ships ready to go for the attack the next morning. Their two guards walked behind Dyrfinna, their spears leveled at her. Dyrfinna’s heart burned with anger.
“What is going to become of my forces?” she asked Skeggi. “It makes me sick that I have to leave all of you to … to them,” she added, since Sinkr’s own staff was walking three steps behind them.
“Should have thought about that before you picked up that sword,” Skeggi said.
That was the final gut-punch.
After a moment, Skeggi said, “My sweetheart is lying near death, and you just killed my best friend, and now you’re being taken away from us … I really have nothing good to say right now.”
Dyrfinna’s throat was too tight to speak, and her teeth were locked together.
When she reached Egill, though, Skeggi reached his arms to her. Her heart twisted, but she opened her arms, and they embraced for the last time.
He sighed into her hair.
She let him go. A bitter leave-taking.
“Get on up here,” Egill commanded, already sitting on his dragon. “Sit behind me.”
Dyrfinna stared at him, weighing whether she should simply run into the forest behind him. Just run, and then fall dead with a bunch of arrows and lances in her back. Thus endeth the glorious saga of Dyrfinna the Excellent.
Where there’s life, there’s hope, she thought as she climbed up into the dragon’s seat.
She nearly laughed aloud at that.
Egill’s dragon was dark red, like wine, probably the largest male in the Queen’s stable. Dyrfinna felt the heat radiating off of him as she approached. He turned and sniffed at Dyrfinna. Moist heat from its nostrils blew over her, like the air inside the house on washing day when Mama was boiling water.
Her heart failed.
“Come up,” he said.
The whole camp was watching.
She thought, I could go to my doom calmly, or I could go to my doom while screaming my head off.
Though she would have greatly preferred the screaming, she wanted her final impression to be a good one. She climbed up on the dragon without a word, though dizziness clouded her senses.
Egill moved aside. She managed to climb up without touching him.
“You can hold on to me,” he said.
Like Hel she would.
Dyrfinna made him sit on his cloak so it wouldn’t billow and snap in her face. Then she was forced to sit behind the man she hated more than anything in the world, the man who was happy to deliver her to her doom.
Dyrfinna buckled herself into the straps, then slid both hands under the strap that went around the dragon’s middle, the girth strap, and she held on for takeoff. She would not touch the man who was her papa.
“I will be back in a while,” Egill told Sinkr, who was too busy smiling and waving at Dyrfinna to hear what he’d said.
Then Egill said, “Come on, then, Buttercup.” His dragon gathered himself and leapt into the air smoothly with a powerful downstroke from his wings. The force of it threw Dyrfinna back as she held tightly to the girth strap.
The ground sunk away from her. She watched it dwindle. She was stuck behind this man she despised, constrained in this small seat, trying not to touch him, unable to lean forward or move her arms. She felt as if she were wound tight, unable to move.
How smoothly Egill steered the dragon into the air. This was nothing like the old days, when she used to lean on her papa’s back and wrap her arms around his middle. He’d say, “Hold on!” and they’d spiral down in a dizzying vortex until she got dizzy and giggled so much that she got the hiccups. “Come on,” he’d said. “Dragon riders don’t get hiccups!” And then she’d giggle and hiccup some more, and they were both laughing.
No. It was nothing like that at all.
“Some father you are,” she muttered, the cold wind blowing in her face and stripping away all her heat. She shivered.
“Do you want my cloak?” he asked.
She nearly came back with a biting remark, then didn’t reply. If he thought he was being sympathetic, he had a long way to go.
“I don’t mind the cold up here,” he said. “You can have it.”
“How nice of you to give me your cloak. Hey, thanks for the nice cloak. It’ll keep me warm while I’m burned to death on a dragon island.”
“Well, I don’t want to see you shivering.”
“You know what I’d rather hear? Hey Finna, I really don’t want to see you dead. Notice the difference there?”
“I wouldn’t be much of a queen’s advisor if I didn’t follow the letter of the law. You have to know that this hurts me too,” Egill said.
“Not enough to not do it,” she cried. “You didn’t even bother listening to my side of the story.”
Egill’s voice hardened. “The story was pretty cut and dried. You killed Ostryg. Or are you going to blame that on somebody else as well?”
“I’m not blaming anything on anybody else,” she said through her chattering teeth.
The dragon sailed over a series of dark islands bristling with fir trees. Finally Egill said, “Look. I’m not going to let you start a feud between our family and Ostryg’s family just because you couldn’t keep your temper in check. So yes, I am doing this for your little sister. You saved her once.”
“Twice,” Dyrfinna corrected him angrily.
“I’m not going to let your temper be the end of Aesa. Anyway, I don’t have time to stop a feud. I have a great deal of work to do.”
“Oh, well! Heaven forbid that I get in the way of your work.”
“I’m the ambassador for the queen,” Egill said, his voice cutting. “I don’t have time for people who lose their temper and kill their friends.”
“It’s not going to make up for what happened to Leikny.”
He didn’t speak. After a long while, he said, “It’s not about Leikny. It’s about you killing Ostryg, just in case you’ve forgotten. Though it’s interesting that you seem intent on leaving a trail of dead behind you everywhere you go.”
“What are you going to tell Aesa?” she asked. Dyrfinna choked on her sister’s name.
“I’m doing this for Aesa’s good.”
“I fail to see how breaking my sister’s heart is going to do her good. Why is this okay?”
He snorted but didn’t answer. The freezing wind buffeted her.
Dyrfinna suddenly realized that she recognized this part of the coastline. Her heart went cold.
“Come in low,” Egill told his dragon. “Silently.”
The island loomed, a black mass on the waves, blacker than the water around it. No light except for a faint reddish glow from the far side of the isle.
“Just as long as the other dragon does not come out,” he murmured.
Egill kept singing low bits of song. She could feel the magic from off the music, but it was too quiet to make out the tune or the words or know what magic he was working. She could hear only an indistinct rumble.
“Unbuckle yourself,” Egill told her. His former daughter.
“If you want me off, you’re going to have to fight me.”
The dragon came in low over the black rocks. Egill dropped something in the faint starlight onto the
burned land. He turned around.
Dyrfinna clung to the girth strap even tighter. “No,” she said in a ragged voice.
A knife flashed in his hand.
“Fine. Go ahead.” She opened up her arms.
“That’s not how I do it,” he said, reaching down with the knife to the straps.
Snik went the knife. Her bag filled with useful survival stuff fell into a heap in his arms. He dropped the bag off the dragon’s side. Its cut straps waved like ribbons as it tumbled to the barren rocks below that edged the water.
“Go … to … Hel!”
He reached back to the straps. Snik snik snik went the knife.
Every single strap that held Dyrfinna onto the dragon’s back untwined around her like fleeing snakes.
“No no no no!” She grabbed at the straps but they came loose in her hands. She lunged to grab the straps that were holding Egill on.
Egill shoved her. Hard.
She slid off the dragon’s side. “No! Papa, help me!”
“Shut up,” he snapped. “Do you want the wild dragon to hear?” He yanked her hands off his straps.
She clawed wildly at him, scratching his arms.
He just scowled.
With a great heave, he flung her off the dragon.
She smacked into the ocean and sank through a mass of bubbles, then flailed her way to the surface, powered by pure rage.
Dyrfinna shook the water out of her face and screamed after him. Screamed every bad word in the book as she fought her way back toward the island.
He’d told her not to attract the attention of the red dragon. Too bad.
A roar came from the red mountain. Egill’s dragon turned away and darted for safety.
Dyrfinna ran up the slope from the beach, grabbed both bags, stuffed them under a big rock so the dragon wouldn’t notice them, then plunged back into the water, crouching until only her eyes were over the water’s surface. The waves rolled over her head. She prayed that in the darkness she’d look like a rock.
The wild firedragon, glowing a brilliant orange like an ember blown to high heat, came in fast and low over the island. But the only other living thing in sight was Egill’s dragon, right in plain view, flying as fast as he could. But not fast enough! Dyrfinna grinned, doing her best to hold very still in the surf.
Dragons and Mages: A Limited Edition Anthology Page 23
