“Well, I killed one of my own men.”
“I wondered when we’d get to that.” Varinn placed his hands on his knees and leaned forward. “So, what happened to bring you to that level?”
“I challenged him to a duel, as he was one of Sinkr’s men and kept talking trash about me. I just figured I’d whip him with my sword a little bit and then send him on his way. But then he and Gefjun started singing against me, and I kind of lost control. Then I broke my best friend’s heart and was sent into exile for it.”
She wanted to sink into the floor, saying this.
But Varinn just said, “And that’s all? You just fought a duel with someone and he lost?” Varinn shook his head. “That’s a ridiculous reason to exile anybody. I’ve fought duels with fools before. They brought their own troubles on themselves.”
“The commander who exiled me was Egill, the queen’s ambassador and my father.”
Varinn blinked hard and scrunched his brows. “Your father?”
“He took me out to the dragon isle himself. Cut the straps that held me on the dragon’s back and let me fall into the ocean.”
“He did not.”
“He did.”
“I had Egill pegged for an awful person. I’ve met him a number of times. I have no idea why he did this to you, but to be quite honest, it fits a lot of things I’ve heard about him. Interesting. Interesting.”
Dyrfinna didn’t consider it that interesting, more on the malicious side, but at least Varinn was acting like he was in her corner. Still, she was suspicious. “At any rate, I suppose I’m finished with the queen’s army, though I can’t fight against them.”
“Not even as a dragonfighter?”
Dyrfinna inhaled sharply. One of Varinn’s eyebrows went up a tiny bit. Just a tic.
“Though on the other hand, every child over the age of three years old wants to be a dragonrider,” Dyrfinna said.
Varinn put out one open hand again as if a small dragon were sitting in his palm. “We might have a place for you in our dragon corps. If you are so inclined to ….”
“Inclined to turn my back on the people I love? Inclined to set the ships of my old friends aflame?” she asked quietly. “You must understand that I want, with all my heart, to jump in and take this path. But doing this would be a betrayal of the people I love. I cannot do this and live with honor.”
Then she sighed. “All of this is very tempting, believe me. But at this time, my main concern is my little sister. I swore to protect her and I will. If you have her, and if you’re serious about what you’re saying, I want her here with me. “
Varinn, oddly enough, looked deeply grieved. “You may have your sister.”
Dyrfinna was alarmed. “Your majesty, are you okay?”
“Bring the little girl here, “ he said again.
In a few moments came the patter of feet outside the door. Dyrfinna turned there in the great hall. Somebody opened the great doors, and in came Aesa running in screaming, “Sissy, Sissy!”
Dyrfinna ran to her and scooped her up
And they hugged so tight, both of them crying.
Then Dyrfinna heard another sound.
It was King Varinn with his hand over his face, weeping.
Dyfinna became alarmed. “Sir,” she said, “What’s the matter?”
Varinn didn’t speak, but one of the people at the foot of the throne did. “He weeps for his son, the son who was murdered by the queen.”
Dyrfinna’s mouth opened. “Oh, dear Frejya.”
Suddenly she felt very much in the wrong, hugging her sister in front of a man who’d lost a son. Dyrfinna carried Aesa, whose little arms wrapped around her neck, and approached the throne, but obviously not too close.
Now Aesa saw his tears and said, “Sissy, what’s wrong with him?”
The magician said, “He lost his son. He was your age, little one.”
And the hot blood, a wave of shock, struck Dyrfinna. “Aesa’s age?” she cried. Looking at Aesa, her pure little face. Then she looked back at King Varinn.
“Sir,” she said, “Though I no longer have a sword, I am at your command, for the sake of your little one.”
He nodded mutely.
At that moment one of the hotshot dragon riders came running in.
“Hedgehog,” said Varinn, rubbing his tears away with the heel of his hands.
Hedgehog saluted. “Sir. Nauma has one o’ our ships. Our dragons pursued it, but a fog bank rolled up and we lost it.”
Dyrfinna was on the alert at once. Nauma? she thought. Now what’s she doing? I wish to the Eternals that I’d been able to kill her when I had the chance.
“Get all the dragons you can spare after that ship,” Varinn said. “We can’t allow them to escape.”
“That’s the problem. We can’t spare any dragons,” Hedgehog said. “The only dragon that’s available is mine, but I need to get back to the battles.”
“I have a dragon here,” Varinn said, rising from his throne. “I’ll go on out there myself.”
“Sire, there’s nobody here that can ride with you,” the magician said. “We cannot let you go out alone, king though you may be.”
“Your majesty,” Dyrfinna said, and everybody turned and looked at her. It was a little disconcerting, but she kept her poise. “Your majesty, take Gefjun with you,” Dyrfinna said. “She’s a level-headed rider, very calm, and always aware of what’s going on around her. Her singing is very powerful, especially against fire.”
Varinn shot her a quizzical look.
“I know this because I trained with her. And if your majesty is going out into danger, your people need you to have backup, so you can make it back home if something goes wrong.”
Dyrfinna longed with all her heart to be up there on the dragons. But at that moment, she longed more to be with her sister, now that they were reunited.
Aesa piped up. “When are we going to go home?”
Dyrfinna said, “Not yet. All their dragons are busy right now. We’ll have to take you later, okay? But I’m staying with you.”
“Okay,” she said, hugging Dyrfinna.
Dyrfinna hated, with all her heart, walking away from excitement, but for once, this was not her place.
“Dyrfinna,” said King Varinn. “I’ll see if your sword is still around. Until then, wait a moment. Calendula, run into the antechamber and bring out a couple of my practice swords.”
“No, no, I couldn’t possibly take one of your swords,” Dyrfinna protested.
“Well, well! Would you look at that?” Varinn asked, feigning surprise, as Calendula brought out a sword that looked familiar.
“My sword!” Dyrfinna cried. Tears sprang to her eyes. She breathed deeply, tried not to show her emotion.
“Thank you. Thank you, sir,” Dyrfinna breathed as Calendula placed her sword back in her hands. She drew it and showed the blade to her: NONE SHALL GET THROUGH ME.
Calendula whistled. “It’s gorgeous. I really didn’t want to have it melted down. I’m glad I stalled just a little bit.”
“Thank you, too,” Dyrfinna said. “Sir, I am at your service. You have spoken good counsel, and you have kept my sister and Gefjun safe, and you have returned my sword to me.”
Varinn got to his feet and drew his sword. “Will you swear fealty to me, Dyrfinna of Skala?”
In one swift motion, Dyrfinna unbuckled her sword, belt, scabbard, and all, and dropped to her knee, holding the whole outfit up to Varinn. “I’m yours to command.”
He set the sword, standing on its point, on the ground, and placed his hands over the hilt. She placed her hands over the king’s and swore loyalty to him.
“I am satisfied,” he said, placing his sword back in the scabbard. “Calendula, run down to the prisoners and have Gefjun meet me outside. I’ll bring my dragon down to her. If she needs anything for this voyage, we can run back and get it. Hedgehog, I’ll walk with you back up to the dragon stables. I need to talk to you.”
One o
f the king’s valets, who was named Sóma, walked Dyrfinna and Aesa out of the throne room to the kitchens. She packed a little picnic lunch for Dyrfinna and Aesa, and showed them the way to the orchard.
“Look at the pretty trees, Aesa,” Dyrfinna said as she walked into the orchard with her sister. She gazed around in wonder at all the pink and white blossoms. Each tree had a layer of earthy compost spread around it, and the trees had been neatly pruned so the branches pointed down to the ground, so they could be easily reached from the ground or with a short ladder. They prune the trees like that to make picking the fruit easier, Dyrfinna realized. She had never realized that she could do that to an apple tree.
Aesa romped through the blossoms, laughing and screaming. She ran back to Dyrfinna to eat a piece of cheese. “I like cheese,” she said. Then she ran screaming through the blossoms some more, her arms wide open.
Having a five-year-old sister is a lot like having a happy puppy that talks, Dyrfinna thought.
It was warm here, and the blossoms were so beautiful, and the air was filled with apple and peach blossom fragrance. The bread that Sóma packed was a small wonder, striking her as similar to some Castillian recipe from the Moorish empire that her grandma used to bake when Dyrfinna was a kid.
Dyrfinna ate the bread, thinking of the old days at her grandma’s house, and then she fell asleep at the foot of an apple tree. She kept popping awake to watch over Aesa. Dyrfinna knew she hadn’t quite recovered from her time on the dragon isle, and she hadn’t slept much last night, due to flying in a spectacular battle and also trying to escape.
Well, I still need to be stronger than that. I need to stay awake, she sternly told herself, then fell asleep again.
Aesa came over and flopped down next to sleeping Sissy. She was tired from all her running and from the scary man last night. But she wasn’t scared any more. She liked how Juni kicked the man and he curled up and fell over. That was funny.
The sun lit up all the pink blossoms and the sky was blue, and the grass was so soft. Aesa ate the rest of the cheese in the bag. She ate a little bread. Her eyelids were getting heavy, but she didn’t want to go to sleep. She looked at the flowers with her eyes half-shut so the colors all ran together. She wanted to make a picture of the trees and the flowers. They needed to make paint that had a million colors in it so she could draw flowers like this. Everybody would love her pictures because they looked so real.
Sissy snored. Silly Sissy! She poked Sissy, and Sissy made a funny “grrk” sound, but stopped snoring. Good. Aesa lay down on Sissy, using her as a pillow. She was happy Sissy was here. Sissy would keep her safe.
After a little bit, Aesa fell asleep too. And Dyrfinna, in her sleep, put her arm around her little sister.
14
A CALL FOR HELP
Gefjun
“Follow my finger with your eyes,” Gefjun said to Ragnarok, holding up her pointer finger. She moved it slowly to the left, then to the right. His eyes tried to stay with it, but they wandered off as if they had minds of their own.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m trying my best.”
“It’s not your fault. You’ve been hit hard on the head, and sometimes it does something with your eyes.” Gefjun kept her worry out of her voice. She had hoped that his eyes would have steadied by now. “What’s your name?”
“Ragnarok.”
“I know that,” she said affectionately. “I mean your real name.”
“Thorvald.”
“That’s not a bad name. Why don’t you ever use it?”
“Because all my friends call me Ragnarok.”
Gefjun smiled and started unwrapping his head. She was long used to the bad smell that hit her from the wounds when the bandages came off. It seemed to help if she burned out the imps that infested the wound with a small libation of ale. She’d burned out the imps repeatedly in this wound, but they kept coming back again and again. The wound left Ragnarok tired and weak all the time, and her heart went out to him most of all.
“Lie on your side,” she said, and began washing his wound. He shut his eyes and breathed slowly as she cleaned it with water, and then he hissed as she rinsed it out with a little alcohol.
“I’m sorry,” she said, placing a bandage on it and wrapping it deftly up.
“That’s fine, that’s fine.” He moved out of the puddle that the washing and rinsing had left, wiped off his face with the clean towel she handed him, and lay back down on his pallet. “I don’t mind it one bit when you’re doing the work.”
“Thank you. I do want you to get well.”
“I’ll get well,” Ragnarok breathed with his eyes shut. “Then we can fight another duel.”
Gefjun smiled at the memory. “I’ll let you win.”
His eyes came open. “You are very generous.”
She bent down and kissed him on the cheek, and Ragnarok smiled and closed his eyes. A moment later, he was snoring.
Gefjun’s smile vanished. Now she let her worry show, her hand curled over her mouth, gazing down at him. Several of the other warriors gathered around, looking at both Gefjun and Ragnarok.
“D’you think he’s going to get better?”
“He just don’t seem like himself.”
“That’s because he got socked in the head by a sword, then rowed a million miles right afterwards, you big dummy.”
“Nobody is a dummy,” Gefjun said as if to herself, and the other fell silent.
“Is he going to make it?” someone asked.
“I don’t know,” Gefjun said. “To be honest, I come down here every morning, dreading to find him dead. Every day he surprises me. I hope he continues.”
“Maybe if we escaped, we could get him out in the sun,” somebody said, half-joking.
“The sun would have a good effect on him.” Gefjun looked around at the gloomy walls, the endless low roar of talk of several hundred voices, and smelled the stink of latrines and sick. “Fresh air, too. And on the rest of you.”
And then, knowing the effect this would have on everybody, she added, “Dyrfinna showed up here yesterday.”
Everybody fell silent and looked at Gefjun expectantly. Somebody said, “Yay?”
“Look, I won’t have anything to do with her, I’ll tell you that now,” she snapped. “I have nothing good to say about her. But I also know that I can’t break you out of here. She can.”
“Why can’t you break us out?” somebody said. “You seem to be friends with the king.”
“To be honest, I’ve been worried about you,” said one of the archers, folding her arms. “Especially seeing how the queen’s daughter fared when she came here.”
Gefjun grimaced. But she said, “Look. I’m going to come right out and say this. But after talking to Varinn, and talking to his staff … I think the queen lied to us.”
Everybody gasped so loudly that the air pressure in the cave dropped.
“How could you say that!?”
“But the queen’s daughter died over here, as a guest in Varinn’s house, and they sent back her dead body.”
“Varinn had to pay the blood price because now the queen has no heir.”
Gefjun raised a hand. “I know, I know. But listen. I don’t know why the queen is lying, or why she’d start a war over this. Varinn tells me, and the people around him tell me the same thing: he was in love with Thora, and she loved him back.”
“Really?” asked a skeptic.
“I heard some sweet stories about the two of them,” Gefjun said.
“The operative word being ‘stories.’”
“By all accounts, Varinn and Thora were getting along wonderfully, but all of a sudden she got sick and died. He brought a bunch of healers in but nobody could stay her death. Some of the people who were there cried about it when they were telling me.”
One of the burly Vikings shrugged. “People can tell lies and cry at the same time. I’ve seen it many a time. I’ll even cry at my wife so she will let me get something nice, like a ne
w boat.”
“Stop,” somebody said. “Ugh.”
Gefjun continued. “But remember how she said that the son she killed was twenty-five years old and a drunkard?”
“Yes, and good riddance to that whippersnapper.”
“King Varinn is only a little bit older than me,” Gefjun said. “I’m twenty and he’s twenty-five.”
“Pff, a little bit?”
Gefjun turned and looked at the rest of the crew. “He’s twenty-five years old. How old would Varinn have to be to father a twenty-five-year-old son? It’s just impossible.”
Everyone fell silent.
“Well, maybe he’s lying about his age.”
“Let’s say he started really early and fathered a son when he was 13. How old would he have to be to have a twenty-five year old son now?”
Several of the warriors around her started counting on their fingers, their lips moving silently.
“He’d be thirty-eight years old,” somebody said.
“He could be lying about his age,” offered one of the archers.
“I’m telling you, if that man is actually thirty-eight years old, then I need to find whatever fountain of youth he’s using,” Gefjun said. “No. His son was five years old. The queen killed a five-year-old boy.” Gefjun swallowed. “And she fed his little heart to King Varinn. Not some grown man’s heart. The heart of a little boy.”
The rest of the crew was silent.
“I’m ... kind of not sure how to feel about this,” somebody said weakly.
Another warrior spoke up. “So let’s say all this is true. Let’s say the queen lied to us. Her daughter died of sickness, and she decided, for whatever reason, to pop over to Varinn’s place for revenge and kill his son, who was just a little boy. The big question here is … Why? That’s what I’d like to know.”
“And if that’s true, then why did she lie to us and start this war? I don’t mind dying for a cause. What I don’t want to do is die for a lie. A lot of good people, good friends, have died for this. Nobody else should have to.”
“Amen,” murmured some of the warriors.
A Fire of Roses Page 13
