A Fire of Roses

by Melinda R. Cordell

  “I like how you think,” Gefjun said. Together, they started working with the wounded.

  7

  Raising the Dead

  King Varinn’s day had been stressful enough. He’d left Gefjun with the prisoners, because she clearly knew what she was doing, and there were many there who needed treatment. So he’d let her stay and headed for his war room. On the way, he met Hedgehog.

  “That commander of the queen’s fleet keeps foldin’ up in battle,” she said, sliding down from her dragon. “It’s amazin’ ta watch. I dona ken why they dona ’ave anybody else running this show. It’s child’s play.”

  Hedgehog had worked with Varinn for many years, and she was level-headed in the thick of arrows and lances and swords. When he’d first met her, he could hardly understand a word she was saying in her strange brogue. Over the years, though, either her accent had diminished or he had just gotten used to it. It was such a funny way of speaking, next to his grandparents’ language with its smooth, cool inflections. And Hedgehog had brought Gefjun to his attention after the prisoners had been brought in.

  The heat came off the dragon. Varinn loved the dark gems of the dragon’s scales, shining like onyx from his grandparents’ land. The dragon lowered its head, and Varinn bowed back. The dragons never failed to amaze him, especially close up.

  “We got some strange reports I wanted ta verify a’fore I shared ’em with ye,” Hedgehog said. “Else I would ’ave shared ’em earlier. But let’s go inside a’fore I discuss ’em.”

  He gazed at her curiously. “It’s a lovely day out here. Surely we could talk outside.”

  She made a face. “Ah! Trust me. It’s just a good idea ta go inside and discuss this in private.”

  He hated being inside when the sun was out, but acquiesced.

  Once in the war room, Hedgehog threw her papers down on her desk and ran her hands over her black braids. “I couldna say this in front of the dragon. It would upset her, and it’s hard ta fly a dragon when she’s upset.”

  “Proceed,” Varinn said, curious.

  “Sir, we lost ships several weeks ago. Recently, one o’ the crew claims she was on one o’ those ships, said they were stolen by a group o’ thieves using magical means.”

  “I beg your pardon?” Varinn asked, astonished.

  “Stolen by magical thieves,” Hedgehog said. “But that’s not the most astonishing thing. The purpose they were stolen for, according ta this woman, was quite irregular. Now, she’d been a-drinkin’, so we wrote it off as a drunk in her cups havin’ fantastic visions.

  “So imagine, if ye will, my surprise when we ran across a second ship that was nearly taken by these same magical thieves, but this time the crew managed ta escape.”

  “It would please me enormously if you’d stop being vague,” Varinn grumbled, arms crossed, leaning against a stone pillar. “You’re not increasing my suspense, you’re increasing my annoyance. So what are these sensational details?”

  Usually Hedgehog would grin, untroubled by his bluster. Oddly, this time she became very serious.

  Hedgehog cleared her throat. “These people claim ta be capturin’ ships ta sacrifice the people aboard. Somehow they’ll ’arness the power of these murders and use that power ta ... ta raise dragons from the dead.”

  Varinn stared at her for a long moment.

  “I swear by the blessed feet o’ Christ that I hae not been drinkin’,” she said. “And I haen’t even finished my story. The crew, they told me that these people say they’re goin’ ta bend an army of undead dragons ta their will.”

  Varinn stared in disgust and astonishment.

  “Ya see? That’s what I’ve been told,” she replied.

  “I’ve never heard anything as blatantly nonsensical. Has the whole world gone to drink?”

  “Na, na, it hae not, I assure ye. But these are sober sailors who’ve told me these things, sober as the sun as it rises. They’ve ne’er led me astray, before or since.”

  Varinn shook his head. “So. Ships being stolen. Undead dragons being raised.”

  “Not yet,” Hedgehog said. “Naught that we ken. But I do ’ave some old lore that might ’elp us come to an idea o’ what ta do.”

  He nodded for her to continue.

  “On the other side o’ the mountains, the dragons go ta die,” she explained. “They’re incredibly long-lived, so death for ’em is rare. But it comes for ’em as it comes for us all. And there’s a ’igh place in the world, far within the snowy ’eights, where they keep the bones of their kin. They fly up there when their time is come, ta keep their bones from man for plunder. And when their fires are snuffed, they labor ta those ’eights, lie down in that snow, and their souls go ta the All-Father, or the Eternal Ones. So it be said.

  “These thieves are trying ta gather enough people to take ’em up to that ’oliest of places and raise the undead up and bind ‘em to their will.”

  King Varinn shook his head. “A strange story. Are there any dragons patrolling the skies for these people?”

  “Aye, the dragons are quite interested in tryin’ ta stop these walkin’ scum. The problem is that just about every dragon we ’ave is either in the field or standin’ guard at key strategic locations, such as this keep, as ye ken. They’re stretched thin. Ta be ’onest, many o’ our riders are stretched thin as well. So while the dragons are locked in warfare overhead, these scumbuckets are sneakin’ in and tryin’ ta sail off with our ships. The dragons dona ’ave enough eyes ta watch all that.”

  “What is the latest news of the fronts?”

  Hedgehog ran through what she’d seen of the latest battles and standoffs. Varinn frowned. Some of these were not going well at all. Skala was an international city, and it sounded like the queen was calling in some favors from some of her allies.

  He had been lax in summoning others to his aid, and now he was feeling it. He looked over his great map of the battle fronts and moved some of the small pewter soldiers and ships to match what Hedgehog was telling him. She came over and said, “Oh, and this too,” and moved a few ships back at another battle front.

  “Hm,” he said, looking at it. “Tell the commanders to make a flank attack on the main force.” With his finger he drew a curved line from their fleet to the edge of the enemy’s fleet. “Keep rolling them back as far as possible, and keep chipping at them as they fall back. If we can break this fleet in half, that will weaken her greatly.”

  “Too bad the awful commander isna in charge o’ the queen’s fleet ’ere, too. We’ve been able ta roll up ’is forces like an ole rug.” She shook her head.

  “Take this message to the commanders about the flank attack. Give me results of this at the end of the day, if you can. And send out queries among your dragon fleet to watch out for these ships, or these people, and what we can learn of them.”

  She bowed her way out and took off on her dragon just as two more dragons came in with news of their battles and how they were faring, and messages, and cries for more troops, and questions about a supply line and food for the footsoldiers, and a call for a new ship for a crew after theirs had been sunk by a well-aimed boulder. Then there were the usual mundane things—an old friend arriving in their city down the way, petitions for grievances, a letter demanding ransom for some noble, a request to go on a raid of East Anglia yet again, on and on.

  He did all these things. He buried himself in his work. Because when he paused, when he looked up from his work, there was the memory of little Absolam, his giggle, his head of curls, how he’d snuggle up to his daddy, his little hands going pat pat pat on his back when he hugged him.

  And how Varinn held his cold little body tight the night that he’d been murdered.

  Back to work! It was such a fight to continue, to not dissolve into tears where he stood. But his people depended on him.

  8

  The Bite of the Shrew

  Gefjun cleaned up a particularly smelly wound, laying a poultice on it, when she heard a familiar cough. An
d somebody from the original crew’s eyes met hers. “Hey, guys, it’s Juni,” he called. “Juni is here.”

  “Just one moment,” she said, a small smile tugging her lip. “I’ll be with you in just a moment.”

  A bunch of pus came out of the wound she was working on.

  “Oh great eternal father,” he said and quickly retreated.

  Once everything was washed clean and bound up, Gefjun cleaned her hands and hurried over to her shipmates. At last.

  Everybody who could get up, came over. “There you are,” they said, giving her greetings and hugs.

  “Where’s Ragnarok?” she asked.

  “Right here.”

  She hurried to him.

  His eyes had rolled back in his head and his breathing was ragged. She squeezed his hand in hers, but received no response.

  She quickly began cleaning the head wound, but that was a mess, with blood caked on. Pus came out when she got some of the blood off. “Bring me water,” she demanded, and kept working.

  Ragnarok began to stir.

  “I’m glad you’re waking up, but at the same time I need you to go back to sleep.” She kept on with the bloody work. She sang magic as she worked, all the healing magic she could, while working on that wound.

  Grown men would stroll over to see what she was doing, go incredibly pale, and hurry away, retching. What a lot of babies.

  She worked until the wound was clean and bled freely. Then she sopped up the blood and stitched it together, singing for the healing of Ragnarok’s mind, while she worked on the outside.

  Finally she finished. She dripped enough ale into his mouth to knock him out and had sung him asleep. The big mountain of the man slept peacefully, and she thought again of when she’d fought against him in that duel. It seemed like forever ago. They’d put on a wonderful show, and a very good fight.

  Somebody touched her sleeve. “One of my friends is hurt bad,” said a prisoner she didn’t recognize. “Could you help him, miss?”

  Gefjun accepted a bladder of water from Varinn’s guard and took a big drink. “Please bring me a little cheese and bread,” she told her. “I may be at this for a while.”

  It was more than just a while.

  Gefjun talked to the people on her ship while she fixed them up. It had been a long day and she had treated the worst of the patients. Now she was working on the cases that weren’t life threatening or prone to infection. She’d seen a number of cases of blood poisoning already and told them to keep washing the wounds and pour alcohol on them to burn out the evil imps that had crawled in through the skin. On some of those wounds, it might have been too late. Sometimes all an imp needed was a small wound to send it the wrong way. The flesh around the wound would turn red, and then a line of red would start moving out from the wound. When that line of red reached the heart, that was the end.

  Several other old wounds turned gangrenous, a terrible sight, an even worse smell. Flesh decayed on the bone—very painful for the sufferer. Gefjun did her best with all of them.

  At the end of the day, Gefjun was bone tired, but she was binding wounds on the mild cases. On the battlefield, sometimes the mild cases were overlooked and then turned bad.

  “So what’s the king like?” one of the old veterans asked. “We don’t know much about this fellow. Usually we’re heading out to England to get a little more money of Aethelred the Unready.”

  The soldiers around chuckled.

  “My coffers are getting low, so come to think of it,” said a reedy-voiced man.

  “I’m feeling the need for sweet English mead,” added another.

  “And the sweet English men,” said one of the shieldmaidens.

  The other women made growling noises and slapped their hands together.

  “People, I was asking Gefjun a question,” the veteran said.

  “Varinn has been good to me so far,” she said.

  “Hm. ‘So far,’” somebody said pointedly.

  “He’s a Moor, though I don’t know if he was born here or if he came from Iberia. His speech is fair, and no real accent in his voice, like the northerners do, or the Danes for that matter. He is courtly, and seems to be grieving. “

  “And he killed the queen’s daughter,” somebody said pointedly.

  “Aye, that he did,” said a chorus of voices.

  “We’re all worried,” one of the women archers said. “After what he did with the queen’s daughter, we were all wondering what’s going to happen to you.”

  “If we could break out of here, we’d follow you up and stop him once and for all.”

  One of the Varinn’s guards came over. The crew’s voices dwindled down to a mutter. The guard walked on, and people grumbled, looking at each other.

  “We were told there’s a dragon that will blast us all with fire and roast us alive in this place if we cross them,” somebody whispered.

  “That doesn’t make our job any easier,” another whispered.

  “Job? What job?”

  “Shhhhh.”

  Somebody leaned forward. “Escape,” she whispered.

  Gefjun thrilled with it.

  “If Dyrfinna were here, she’d be organizing the largest breakout you ever saw, and ride off on the back of that dragon of theirs,” somebody said.

  “Shh, no,” somebody whispered, looking at Gefjun’s face.

  Gefjun frowned. “Yeah. I really don’t want to hear anything else about Finna again.”

  “Anyway, that’s our idea,” another one said. “We want to break free.”

  “Help us if you can,” one of the shieldmaidens said in a low voice. “Find a way to help us.”

  “I will,” she said.

  When Gefjun had finished treating everybody and came out of that place, the sun was setting far beyond the mountains of the fjord. The sky was a glory of saffron and yellow clouds, with the blue soft beyond.

  The guard helped her up the mountain and brought her inside the keep. “I’ll give a full report to Varinn,” she said. “But your conduct was exemplary.”

  “I’m a medic,” Gefjun said. “It’s what we do.”

  Sóma met her. “Tonight we have a small sup prepared for you in your rooms for you to eat and get rest. The king would like you to break bread with him in the morning.”

  Gefjun was exhausted, but she pulled herself together. “It would be my pleasure,” she said.

  In her room, she washed the blood off her arms from her patients, had a small portion of her food, then fell onto her bed, exhausted. It was not lost on her that she had a bed to sleep in while her friends had nothing but the stone floor in the prison. Guilt pricked at her heart. But not for long, for blessed sleep came fast. She blacked out, as she had done for several nights now, embracing her familiar, dreamless sleep.

  In the morning, Sóma led her to the king’s dining hall. To her surprise, it was just her and King Varinn, though they had other people waiting on them.

  “No surprises this morning,” he said. “I wanted to talk to you now because you were a little busy yesterday. But I had business as well, the business of war. And there is much for women and men like you to clean up in my aftermath.”

  Gefjun stood there, wondering if she should run, except her legs ached too much, and she really wanted to go back to sleep.

  “Have a seat,” he said, and she did.

  She nodded and took her seat.

  “I need to talk to you about the queen and what she told you.” He looked at his glass of mead and took a measured breath, collecting himself. “I want nothing more than peace. Though others feel I am very much entitled to my revenge, and talk a lot about blood price, I want none of that. I only want to grieve in my own time and grow my roses and be left alone.”

  He looked at her then.

  Gefjun pulled herself together. “I hope you’re not asking me do the high level work that your diplomats and your council is supposed to do.”

  “I am tempted to, in a way,” he said. “You have fought for th
e queen, though now … I don’t know.”

  “I renounce what she’s done, and I want no part of that. But these are my people—my friends, my family. I won’t betray them either.”

  “You stand in the right. I will not ask you to betray any part of your life. And I don’t know you well enough to trust you with that kind of work, anyway. Put your mind at ease.”

  She couldn’t be at ease. Even though he’d treated her very kindly so far … even though they’d shared their griefs … she was quite aware that she had been asked to a private audience with the king. Something was up.

  “I do need to ask you a favor.”

  Oh, something was up indeed.

  Just then food arrived, crusty bread with a soft middle, a lovely haunch of goat, tender greens, rose water, and mead. Her water had some rose petals floating in it and smelled like his rose strewn courtyard. She breathed slowly, trying to calm her thumping heart.

  So what does he want? she thought.

  Does he have a harem? she instantly replied.

  Her guts turned over. It was one thing to be a girl at home, dreaming about living a decadent life with a king, a life filled with romance and deep kisses and languid smiles. But now, when every dream brought the image of Ostryg with blood running down his face and his eyes bugging out of his head from the force of Dyrfinna’s sword—

  Gefjun shut her eyes and took shallow breaths, concentrating on the rose scent from her water glass.

  They were supposed to have children together, grow old together. Only he had been cruelly murdered before her eyes.

  Great bitterness came over her.

  She didn’t want to belong to anybody else. She only wanted back everything she’d lost.

  “I probably shouldn’t be here,” she said. She couldn’t help how the bitterness came out in her voice.

  What would Ostryg have said in this situation?

  Thinking that only made it worse.

  She glared up at the king. But he didn’t notice, staring at his plate of food, lost in thought.