“Yes, yes, good idea,” he said.
They were both still tied up, back to back, so the best she could do was lie across his back and curl her arms to her sides, trying to raise her core temperature and stop shivering. She needed to warm herself, but she also needed to get Varinn warmed. The sun was weak through the top of the fog, making it impossible for their clothes to dry very fast. And she knew that Nauma wouldn’t give them any dry clothes, not even from the original crew and warriors who lay all round the ship where they had fallen.
And now here we have joined them, in whatever tragedy is going to befall them, she thought.
Even half-chilled, Varinn felt warm enough, probably from all his fighting, and eventually her shivering slowed. He smelled like roses. She loved that scent. He was still swearing to himself, and his angry words rumbled to her ear.
“Don’t lose faith,” she said. “Your dragon at least escaped. When your people see him, they’ll start looking for us. They knew the mission we were on.”
“But I wasn’t thinking when I came out here,” he said softly. “I should have had a backup plan, like your friend said.”
“Well, she says that all the time,” Gefjun grumbled. “And she’s not my friend.”
“But she was right,” Varinn said. “It’s just … after I lost my son, I haven’t been able to make myself care anymore. I need to lead these armies, I need to lead my people, but ever since the queen killed my son, I’ve lost all my will. I let others do the commanding—as they should. But I let them make all the decisions. And I’ve given up the kind of thinking that your friend told you about. Now all those people—my people—are being stolen by that sentient cow plop. And it’s my fault, because I had the chance to stop her. I could have stopped her—if I’d had a plan. But I had none. Because I just cannot climb out of this grief.”
Gefjun leaned against him, feeling his warmth.
Before she’d lost Ostryg, Gefjun knew she would have told Varinn that he could do it, that he just needed to believe in himself—some kind of smarmy nonsense.
But now? The thought twisted her heart.
“I don’t know if I can tell you anything that can help,” she said, still lying against his back. “Grief is more complex than I imagined. Every morning when I wake up, it’s the same pain, but the way it affects you—affects your mind, affects your body, affects your appetite, affects the way you talk to other people—there’s nothing I can do to predict it. And the dreams I have ….”
She trailed off.
“The dreams are the worst,” he rumbled, a vibration she felt through her back.
Gefjun nodded. “Where you’re at is harder. So many people depend on you. But you’re still human, you know?”
“I still feel like I should do better.”
“Yeah. Me, too.”
She sang the song to him again, the song that brought him peace. And he sighed and nodded and sat up a little.
“The best we can do is to help each other out,” she said.
“I hope you were able to find some peace there at my castle,” he said.
“I did. It’s a beautiful place.”
Gefjun sat up a little, though she hated to leave Varinn’s warmth. “I need to ask you something personal.”
“Uh-oh,” he said, turning. She could see he was half-joking. But only half.
“You don’t have to answer right away. But I want to know. You said you brought me in because I look so much like somebody you know. Who is it? What’s her story?”
He was quiet for a long time. The waves smacked against the side of the ship. Nauma, who was holding a council of war at the front of her ship, swore at one of her commanders and said he was an idiot before she glanced at Varinn and Gefjun and quieted her voice.
But Varinn still didn’t speak.
“I’m sorry I asked,” she said.
Varinn shook himself as if waking himself up. “I’m sorry. I can’t reply,” he said. “It’s still painful.”
“No rush,” she said as the endless fog roiled above and the boat sailed on in silence. “We have a little time right now.”
Their arms were bound together behind their backs. Varinn’s hand found hers, and he wrapped his hands around hers, warming them.
Gefjun’s heart melted. That small gesture of his warmed her faster than anything else could have.
16
OLD LEATHER
Dyrfinna
A kerfluffle outside the orchard woke Dyrfinna. She flexed her hands and peered at her arms, which were starting to get a little red from the sun, even though she’d been lying in the shade of a tree.
Dyrfinna was inclined to go back to sleep, because Aesa was sleeping next to her on the soft spring grass, and she was still exhausted. But something about the panicked talk she heard made her rise from the grass. She looked around and saw Sóma a short distance away, swiftly weaving a small hat using only her fingers and some green wool and talking to several other Moorish women.
“What’s going on?” she asked.
“They’re talking about a man who says he’s coming in with dragon eggs,” Sóma said, “but they keep saying he’s being pursued by a dragon.” She shook her head. “All crazy talk. Nobody has dragon eggs. It’s impossible.”
Dyrfinna froze in her tracks.
Sóma looked up from her work at Dyrfinna. “Are you okay? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
Dyrfinna recovered her senses. “Is it Papa Ostryg?”
“Why, yes, that’s the funny name I heard,” one of the women said. “They’re all saying he’s on the road coming this way, and there seems to be a burning orange dragon that’s pursuing him.”
Her eyes went huge and she put out her hands. “Sóma, all of you, please stay on the alert. I know this man, and he’s done a very stupid thing. I’m going to try and stop him from coming here. I’m sure he’s expecting to see me.”
Sóma and her friends gasped. “You are not serious,” she said.
“I wish I were not. If you see an orange dragon flying this way, grab Aesa and take her straight into the keep. Stay away from windows.”
A short while later, Dyrfinna ran out the front of the keep, her sword now in hand. She was so glad that Varinn had given her back her old sword. The familiar weight of the steel felt right in her hand. With a small smile, she slid it back into the scabbard. Then she spied Papa Ostryg, galloping along on a horse, and down his front hung a very large bag that was just the right size to hold three dragon eggs.
“Oh, are you serious?” Dyrfinna cried.
Way up in the sky in the distance glowed an orange sunseed with wings. The dragon. And she was moving very fast this way.
Dyrfinna had made a vow to that dragon, a sacred oath, that no one would take her eggs. Evidently, while Dyrfinna and that dragon had been chasing Papa Ostryg to this keep, his men had gone after her eggs. Dyrfinna had sent the dragon back to her cave at the earliest possible opportunity. Clearly, she had not sent it back quickly enough.
She swore. How did Papa Ostryg manage to stay ahead of a very speedy orange emberdragon? How did he keep eluding her, to get clear out to Varinn’s keep? And why was he leading it here? Was he trying to get everybody killed?
No time for questions. Dyrfinna pulled out a wrist slingshot, picked up a couple of small rocks, and fired them at the horse. The first one missed, but the second one hit it square in the nose.
The horse screamed and reared, throwing Papa Ostryg out of the saddle, before it hightailed it out of there.
Dyrfinna was running at him, shoving the slingshot into her pocket and pulling out the sword that King Varinn had returned to her. Papa Ostryg had barely made it to his feet when she pressed the edge of her sword to his throat.
“Well, look at this,” he said with a swagger, despite the sword. “It’s Miss Moxie herself.”
“What are you doing with those dragon eggs?”
“What do you think I’m doing? I’m delivering them to King Varinn, whe
re they belong.”
“You’re a traitor to our people and a stain on the name of Skala,” she said.
“D’ye think I give a fig for your people or your city? I’d set the whole place afire – and in fact, I did.”
“That’s fool’s talk,” Dyrfinna asked.
“Is it? I burned down Skala with these,” Papa Ostryg sneered, patting the pouch of dragon’s eggs he carried. “And now here comes your dragon to burn down this keep.”
“Burned down Skala? How do you burn down a city with eggs?”
“The eggs didn’t do it,” he said scornfully. “The dragon that’s chasing me did it. It came roaring through the city after me … but it never could catch me.” He chuckled, an unpleasant sound.
Dyrfinna jerked her head up, looked for smoke in the west. He’d burned down her city? Was that even true? The sky was too cluttered with clouds to see if there were any trace of smoke on the horizon—
Papa Ostryg shoved her.
Dyrfinna staggered but managed to keep her feet. He was already up and running. Ugh, she should have seen that coming!
She was off like a shot, racing after Papa Ostryg, sword in hand. Don’t trip him! Don’t make him fall on those eggs and crush them!
She leapt onto his back and swung her sword around like a gate upon his neck, its sharp edge cutting into his neck just enough to make him shout with pain and anger.
“Go on, kill me! But you’ll die in the dragon’s fire, too!”
“I believe that was the agreement I’d made with the dragon, yes,” Dyrfinna said with fury. “And now you have crushed my little sister’s life for a second time through your stupid acts. For that, you will pay dearly.”
Papa Ostryg looked at the sunseed coming swiftly on. “I doubt that. Now you better hide, Missy, so the dragon doesn’t burn you to death.”
“I’m not hiding,” Dyrfinna said intensely into his face, still pressing her sword against his neck. “I made a sacred oath to that dragon, and I intend to fulfill that oath.”
“What? That’s stupid,” Papa Ostryg scoffed.
“It’s an oath! When you take an oath, you always follow through with it, you lawless cretin! Have you forgotten that? You don’t break oaths, ever! Now give me those eggs!”
“I will never—hey!” Because while she’d been talking, she’d been unbuckling the straps that held the eggs on, one-handed, while pressing her sword to his neck—and now the bag fell off Papa Ostryg into her hand. He tried to lunge for the eggs, but her sword cut into his neck as she gently set the eggs behind her.
“Ouch! So why don’t you kill me already, you wretch?”
Dyrfinna shoved him hard, and he fell backwards to the ground. Before he could move, she stood over him, one foot on his chest, the point of her sword sitting snugly against the hollow in his throat under his Adam’s apple.
“Because,” she said, “I am going to fulfill my oath. But you are going to be burned to death with me, in the emberdragon’s white-hot flame. Make your peace with the eternal ones, Háthski, because our time here on Earth is over.”
“But her eggs! They’ll burn!”
“No, they won’t,” Dyrfinna said scornfully. “She heats them in her flames to keep them warm. You might as well kill a salamander by throwing it in the fire. They’ll be fine.”
Still holding her sword steady, she reached into her shirt and took out the drawing that Aesa had made of the two of them in their boat with rays coming out of their heads, going on great adventures. She let herself weep a moment, looking at it. At least Aesa was safe here. If the dragon had burned down Skala….
“You have been the cause of a great deal of suffering and heartache,” she said quietly to Papa Ostryg, “both for me and for many other people. That’s going to end today.”
He started yelling at her, but she ignored it.
The wind was blowing in the right direction. She lifted her hand and let the wind pull Aesa’s drawing out of her fingers, let the wind carry it to the people gathered some distance away.
“Take that picture to my little sister, Aesa,” she called back to them. “Tell Aesa I love her, and that I have gone to fulfill my oath to the orange emberdragon. Tell her I killed the bad man who kidnapped her with me, because he broke the oath I’d made. My name is Dyrfinna of Skala. Gefjun, who is with the king, must be told of this, for when I die, Aesa will go into her care until she can take my sister home to our mother.”
“You’re not going to do this!” Papa Ostryg screamed, struggling beneath her foot. “You’re mad! You murderer! You killed my son and now you are trying to kill me!”
“I told you several times about this oath,” she said as the emberdragon roared, very close now, wings wide as she came in for a landing. “You chose not to take it seriously. That’s your loss—and mine.”
My eggs! the dragon roared, and she came down like fiery death out of the sky. She blasted out a flame, and though it roiled over Dyrfinna’s head, for a moment she couldn’t breathe, and her skin and eyes tightened, and all of her hair suddenly curled.
“Your eggs are right here!” Dyrfinna called over the roar of the dragon’s wings. She widened her stance over Papa Ostryg to keep from being blown off her feet, her sword’s point never wavering from the hollow of his throat. “And here, under the point of my sword, is the man who stole them. I’m willfully here to die in fire, as was promised in my oath.”
Papa Ostryg screamed and thrashed his arms and legs, striking out at Dyrfinna’s legs. She pressed the point of the sword into the hollow of his neck, and he made an awful face as blood welled up. “Stop! What are you doing!” he shouted. “Somebody stop this wretch!”
Nobody came forward to stop her, since there was a gigantic emberdragon glowing orange like a log from a bonfire, and the heat coming out of it was like nothing anyone had ever felt, and everybody backed up fast because nobody wanted to die. And no one could hear the dragon or understand it.
But Dyrfinna could, due to the sacrifice she’d made to it.
The dragon leaned her glowing orange neck down. Heat shimmered off her, rippling, twisting the cool air.
Gosling, this was not in the oath. I didn’t expect you to voluntarily give up your life if someone else stole my eggs.
“That’s how I understood it,” Dyrfinna replied.
Did you say you have my eggs?
“Right there in that pouch.” Dyrfinna nodded toward the pouch lying a short distance off on the ground.
You’ll have to show them to me. I trust you, but not that much.
“I understand. But this is the man who stole your eggs, the man you’ve been chasing.”
Papa Ostryg cried, “Are you talking to the dragon? She’s not saying anything. You’re deranged.”
Shall I burn him? the dragon asked.
“Yes, and me too.” Dyrfinna swallowed.
Stop that, said the dragon. You’re the only human in this whole world who’s helped me. I didn’t think humans could have a change of heart, but I’m happy to see that it sometimes happens …. Uh-oh. The dragon flared her nostrils and sniffed Papa Ostryg, who screeched, the whites of his eyes showing.
“What is it?” Dyrfinna asked.
I recognize this man’s smell, she said. He was the one who stole your little sister.
Dyrfinna’s face darkened. “Yes, he did. I’d be happy to have him burned just for my little sister alone.”
“No!” Papa Ostryg screamed.
“He’s a bad man,” she added.
Let the bad man up, said the dragon. Let him run. I’m in the mood for some sport.
Dyrfinna looked at the dragon, looked down at Papa Ostryg, thinking, What would happen if he ran? What might he do?
He might try to kill me. He might try to grab the eggs. He might try to do some magic on us, Dyrfinna thought.
“Sing silence on him,” Dyrfinna told the dragon.
The dragon made a hissing sound. Suddenly shock flashed over Papa Ostryg’s face, and he reached
to his throat as if something was wrong with it. She pressed her sword point into the hollow of his neck, and his hands stopped, though they hung in the air as if waiting to come to his aid.
“Hm.” Dyrfinna quickly went over contingency plans in her mind, eyes flickering here and there. A moment later she was ready. She said to the dragon, “Okay. If you’re ready, dragon, I’ll let him go.”
Oh, you’d better believe I am ready, my gosling.
As soon as Dyrfinna lifted her sword, she leapt back, grabbed the pouch with the eggs in it, then sprang to the dragon’s side, the whole time holding her sword at the ready.
Papa Ostryg raised himself to his feet, shaking. He tried to sing something, but when his mouth opened, he choked.
Dyrfinna couldn’t help but feel sorry for him. But an oath was an oath. And if he was telling the truth about having burned Skala ….
Dyrfinna’s eyes darkened.
“You better run, you varmint,” she said.
He spat on her.
The next moment, Papa Ostryg fled toward King Varinn’s keep.
Any sympathy she’d had for him was long gone when she told the dragon, “Don’t burn anybody but him.”
Pff, said the dragon. I’m looking for some sport. Burning people accidentally isn’t sport.
Then the dragon sprang into the air with a great gust of her wings, and made a long, curving arc, like a fox springing to plunge into the snow to catch a mouse.
But instead of landing on a mouse, she landed on Papa Ostryg.
In an eyeblink he was in her mouth, and the teeth made a grisly cracking sound—the sound of a walnut being cracked, but much, much louder. Papa Ostryg’s scream was abruptly cut off, though his legs and arms still twitched and snapped.
People went screaming, running back into the keep.
Dyrfinna went weak-kneed. The next moment she found herself lying flat on her belly on the ground. From the dragon behind her came another crunch, then a terrible snap, as if a femur had broken. She really needed to crawl away, because some primitive part of her was sure that she’d be the dragon’s next meal.
After a while—a very long while—the worst of the crunching and visceral pops and hisses died down, then stopped. Dyrfinna prayed to Frejya that she’d never have to hear any more awful sounds like those again.
A Fire of Roses Page 16
