Handbook for Dragon Slayers

by Merrie Haskell

  Either way, he was taking me back to prison.

  “I’d like to help,” Sir Egin said. “Ride with me, back to my castle at Thorn Edge. I can protect you.”

  “Tilda!” Judith said, fighting through the crowd on the ferry. “Are you all right? Your face—”

  “Don’t look out at the dock!” I said, grabbing her good arm and spinning her around.

  Sir Egin smiled at Judith. “Don’t worry. I saw Lady Agilwarda looked unsteady. I came to her service.”

  “Yes—well . . . ,” Judith said.

  The boat finally docked. I drew my hood low over my face, and Judith grabbed my hand and pulled me away from Sir Egin, through the crowd to Parz. I lost sight of Horrible in the chaos, though I scanned the busy ferry slip constantly as we unloaded the horses.

  Confluence was a proper city, however, and we were not going to be able to get out of it too easily. The eyes that the horses attracted were more than just envious—some of them looked angry and jealous.

  We hurried out of the city, but not fast enough.

  “We’re being followed,” Parz said.

  My heart hammered in my throat. “Can we—can we outpace them?”

  “On these horses?” Parz said, and now he was grinning. “If we can hold on, we can outpace them.”

  And outpace them we did. The mares required only the barest nudge before we were flying along the smooth Roman road south. Confluence was left behind, and, I prayed, Sir Hermannus with it.

  “We need to disguise the horses,” I said during our first rest break.

  No one argued the truth of that; instead, we argued about how we were going to disguise them. In the end, we decided to use mud since there was plenty of that around, and some combination of leaves and torn-up clothing to disguise the rich saddles and tack.

  I worried how the horses would react, but they seemed excited about the mud, taking the initiative to roll in it once we removed their tack and applied the first few fistfuls.

  “So, we’ll just be the youths without parents and really dirty horses, instead of the youths without parents and jeweled horses?” Judith asked.

  I shrugged. We had no better options.

  After our horses were sufficiently muddy, Judith and I went into the woods to pass water before we started off again. When we were done, she said, “The man on the docks who scared you. . . . Who was it?”

  “I saw”—I hesitated just a bare moment before deciding to lie. If I told her I’d seen Sir Hermannus, she would never understand my running away from him. We might call him Horrible behind his back, but she’d never see why I’d try to flee from him. Not without realizing I was fleeing all of Alder Brook. “I saw Cousin Ivo.”

  “Ivo!” Judith gasped.

  “I thought I saw him,” I said quickly. “It wasn’t really him at all. Nothing to worry about. We can just go on.”

  Judith’s fear fled, but her anger remained. “I wish it had been him,” she said, smashing her fist into her palm. “Between us and the horses, we could have made him our prisoner, taken him back to Alder Brook, and ransomed him to his own family.”

  I shrugged, thinking that unlikely even if I had seen Ivo in Confluence. “Cousin Ivo’s parents don’t have enough to pay a proper ransom,” I said.

  “Fine, then we make him clean the privies,” she said, laughing a little—at herself, I think.

  “Only seems fair,” I said, though I felt sick to my stomach to be lying to Judith. I was going to tell her the truth in just a few short days, but not until we got to Saint Disibod’s Cloister. She wouldn’t worry as much about me once she saw where I’d be living, and she’d feel easier about leaving me there to go back to Alder Brook.

  WE SPENT THE FEW hours before sunset convincing each other that we could afford both the money and the attention to spend a night at a guesthouse. Each of us in turn voiced doubts: Would the horses stay alone in a stable, all dirty? Would anyone bother the horses? Could we really spare the pfennigs to do this? And another one of us would counter the doubts: It looked like rain. We needed to buy food anyway. Tilda really needed a night inside to properly care for her foot (I was both irritated and grateful to Judith for saying that).

  “We don’t have that much money for the long term,” Parz said. “Not unless we start managing to kill dragons and collect on their bounties.”

  “I’m not actually suggesting this, but one of Durendal’s bejeweled mail mittens would be enough to keep us in fine style at the best guesthouse for a year,” Judith said.

  “That’s assuming that Durendal wouldn’t kill us for trying to nick her gear,” Parz said.

  We were silent a moment, watching the horses’ ears twitch. None of us were convinced they didn’t understand every word we said and speak human languages among themselves at night.

  “Perhaps, eventually, a well-placed knifepoint could pry off a jewel in a sort of hidden area . . . if and when we need to,” I said. “But for now, we have the rest of the reward money from Upper Folkstown.”

  We found a large guesthouse at a crossroads, reasoning that the size of the place would help us blend in. The common room was lively with the presence of a wandering minstrel, who sang a variety of songs. He alternated bawdy ballads with dreamy romances and heroic lays, which were the perfect accompaniment to pigeon stuffed with apples and prunes.

  “Guess what?” Parz said, gnawing on his pigeon. “I heard from the landlord that there’s a dragon living down near the town of Wood Ash, on the Roman road to Treviris. We have another dragon!” He eyed me. “Once we’ve done our research at Saint Disibod’s, I mean.”

  I nodded, pleased he was still in agreement about the need for research.

  I stuffed myself with bird and fruit, and listened with increasing joy to the music as it moved from romantic to funny to bloody, and thought I’d rarely had a finer time.

  Then the minstrel sang the ballad about the hunter who falls in love with a swan maiden and steals and hides her swan feathers so that she becomes trapped in maiden form and marries him. Then she finds her feathers, turns back into a swan, and flies away. And the man dies of grief.

  “I like that version,” Judith said. “I always heard the one where the hunter goes looking for his swan wife after she flies off, and then when he finds her, he kisses her and she turns back into a woman. And then she just goes home with him again. That never made sense.”

  “Why not?” Parz asked.

  “If she ran away as soon as she found her feathers, why would she go back with him?” Judith asked. “When he stole her feathers, she was basically forced to marry him.”

  “That’s uncharitable,” Parz said. “What if she loved her husband, but when she found her feathers again, she just got so excited she flew home? Like a pigeon. Birds have a powerful sense of home.”

  “Have you considered,” I said, “that maybe the swan maiden just wanted to make her own decision? Maybe she did love him, but the chance to make a choice was too much to give up.”

  “Hmph,” Judith said. “If I could transform into a swan, I’d never give up my feathers for a husband.”

  Parz leaned forward to spear an uneaten prune off my trencher. “I like Tilda’s idea. Maybe she didn’t give them up. Maybe once he realized she chose him, he could return her feathers so she could come and go as she pleased.”

  I smiled at Parz, and he smiled back, munching my prune.

  “I don’t care what you say, I like the one where he dies the best,” Judith said, and when Parz opened his mouth to reply, she shushed him. “Hush, he’s starting the next song!”

  I pushed back from the table, not so much full as no longer hungry. I was like the swan maiden, wasn’t I? Running away because I’d found my feathers. Maybe Judith would forgive with me if I explained it to her that way.

  chapter 14

  ILAY IN BED NEXT TO JUDITH, RESTLESS, SLEEPLESS; Parz snored on the floor beside us. I couldn’t sleep, no matter how hard I imagined the pleasures of working and living at Sa
int Disibod’s Cloister, with a desk in the scriptorium and a reassembled writing box. Dark clouds kept intruding on my fantasy, until I turned my full attention to what was bothering me.

  As we drew closer to Saint Disibod’s, I couldn’t avoid some hard truths. Come Christmas Day—or maybe sooner, when it was clear to her that I wasn’t going back to Alder Brook—Judith was going to leave me. Even if she wanted to stay, she couldn’t. By rights she belonged to Alder Brook. By rights, on Christmas Day, Alder Brook owed her a new dress and her season’s pay. I wouldn’t have either of those things to give her then, anyway.

  I couldn’t imagine life without Judith. It was not a simple matter of having no one to rub my foot or help me dress. I could do those things myself if I had to. I had a few hazy memories of the time before she became my handmaiden, but even then, I had known her since I was born. Her parents had served my parents since they were all young together. Judith might be my servant, but we had also grown up together. Gotten in trouble together. She was my friend—she was my family.

  But nuns didn’t have personal servants, did they? Certainly not ones they couldn’t afford to pay out of their own purses. And I couldn’t feed Judith without Alder Brook. She might love me as much as I loved her, but she couldn’t stay in the cloister.

  I’d been so thoughtless. I’d failed to see that my new life wouldn’t include Judith. I could forgive myself for not seeing it, though; when I told myself I didn’t need anyone else . . . well, it was hard to forget that Judith wasn’t a part of me. When she left, it would feel like chopping off my foot. And not my crooked foot—the good one. The one I never paid attention to because it wasn’t always aching and holding me back, even though it was the foot I really couldn’t do without.

  And I was chopping off so much more. Frau Oda was a piece of me, too, with her mustard poultices. She had been so proud of my learning, even as she scrubbed ink from behind my ears and under my nails. Somehow, I’d forgotten about Frau Oda, and how much she loved me.

  And Judith’s parents, Aleidis and Ditmar, and Father Ripertus, who taught me to write, and Wortwin the Robust who carried me everywhere when I was younger, and—

  I bit my lip, hard. Alder Brook was better off without me. Wasn’t it?

  In the morning, I told myself, I will tell Judith I’m not returning to Alder Brook. Then there will be no going back.

  WHEN THE OTHERS WOKE in the morning, I felt ancient and ill.

  “Did you not sleep well, Tilda?” Judith asked after Parz left to give us some much-needed morning privacy.

  I opened my mouth to tell her the truth, but my courage drained from me so quickly that maybe I’d never had any at all.

  “Where did you get that necklace?” I asked instead, pointing at the small chain I’d noticed in Upper Folkstown.

  Judith reached back and unfastened it. “Parz made it from horsetail hairs,” she said.

  I stared at it. He’d woven the hairs around each other in such a way they looked like a chain made of silver and copper wires. “It’s beautiful,” I said, and felt a small surge of jealousy that Parz would have made it for her but not me. I forced the jealousy away angrily: Judith was a handmaiden and not used to receiving many gifts. And she was true to Alder Brook, where I was false. Did she not deserve it more?

  WE GOT BACK ON the road. Parz rode with Judith to give Joyeuse a break, not that she appeared to need it, and Durendal seemed patient with having two riders now. The travel was easy as long as we stayed on the Roman road; but even though all roads lead to Rome, eventually one has to go in the wrong direction. We started down a dismal, gully-washed road that barely deserved the name, and travel got much slower, even for horses of the Wild Hunt.

  “Let’s go to Wood Ash,” I heard myself say. “Let’s go slay the dragon there.”

  Parz turned to look at me, eyes very blue as they caught the sunlight. “What about the research?”

  “This is research,” I said, almost frantic. I didn’t want to go to Saint Disibod’s. I didn’t want to have to tell Judith I was abandoning Alder Brook. Not—not yet. We had time before Christmas.

  “Are you sure?” Parz asked me, but exchanged glances with Judith.

  “We have the horses now,” she said.

  “Yes,” I said. “We have the horses now.”

  WE RODE THROUGH AUTUMN drizzle and fog for three days, until we arrived at the village of Wood Ash and found a guesthouse. We stabled the horses and went inside to ask the landlady about the dragon and a room for the night.

  Sleep was elusive for me once again.

  My mind wandered. I thought over all the saints’ stories I’d read about dragons. It was never entirely clear if the dragons ate the maidens they were given, or just . . . sort of . . . converted them to evil. Or made them scrub floors. Maybe that’s all that really happened: lots of floor scrubbing.

  I finally slept a little and woke before dawn, eyes like pits of sand. Rather than disturb the others, I hobbled down to the stables to see the horses.

  The rain had rinsed away more of the mud than was good for their disguises, but it seemed to me that on the day of their first dragon fight, they should not have to wear dirt. I crept into their stalls and brushed each one down as Parz had taught me, trying not to be melancholy when I thought about never seeing the squire again after I joined the cloister.

  As I worked on Joyeuse, I kept catching sight of the silver saddlebags hanging from the wall. When I finished her grooming, I sidled over to the bags. Just a peek.

  I lifted out one of the mail mittens and slid it onto my hand. It fit perfectly. I flexed my hand, feeling strong and tough. I dug deeper into the saddlebag, came out with the fine silver linen coif, and slipped it over my hair. Also a perfect fit. I took up the mail shirt next, and again, perfect.

  I stood there for a long moment, feeling the weight and heft of the armor. It wasn’t heavy. It felt right. You might have thought randomly acquired mail that came with a horse escaped from the Wild Hunt would be meant for a large man, but it fit me exactly.

  Then, with a sigh, I slid back out of the shirt and coif and mitten and put them all away.

  Joyeuse had grown excited when I put on the armor, and she didn’t lose the excitement now that I’d changed out of it. Every jingle of the mail had made her hop from foot to foot. I calmed her by petting her so-soft nose and feeding her apple slices.

  Knowing how much a warhorse could eat, and faced with the destruction of entire vineyards at Upper Folkstown, I had been worried, early on, how much feeding the Wild Hunt horses would cost us. But much to our distress, neither of them wanted anything but the handful of fruit we gave them on a daily basis. At first, Parz had told us to be patient: horses in new situations often lost their appetites. But there was nothing about their attitudes that suggested they were uneasy, malcontent, or unsettled. Or hungry. They didn’t like people, but they seemed to enjoy spending time with us. And they always ate apples and grapes when offered.

  They never seemed to lose any weight or become fatigued. They both slept like normal horses, Parz assured us.

  “Well, my friend,” I whispered, “do you want to go fight dragons?”

  She struck a silver hoof against the wall.

  “I’ll take that as a yes.”

  “Tilda?”

  It was Judith. She pulled out Durendal’s saddlebags, and I helped her dress.

  The copper armor fit her perfectly, just as well as the silver had fit me. I frowned. Two sets of armor cut for girls? The Wild Hunt’s leader was a woman, but . . . Not all girls were alike. Judith was broader, taller, and more buxom than me. How did her armor and my armor both fit so well?

  “Magic armor, I guess,” I muttered.

  “What?” she asked, smoothing the mail shirt over her hips.

  “Nothing,” I said, not wanting to admit that I had tried the armor on; I was never going to wear it into battle, so it seemed vain and hopeless and, well, just silly. “Is it heavy?” I asked, even though I knew the
answer: No, it wasn’t heavy, it was perfect. When I’d worn the armor, I’d felt strong and safe in a way I’d never felt before.

  “Not heavy at all,” Judith said, and then left the stall to execute a cartwheel. She looked as surprised as I did when she regained her feet. “I think I’m spoiled for all other armor.”

  I gave a half twist of a smile, trying not to envy her. It wasn’t that I wanted to fight in a battle. Far from it. The thought of facing down an opponent and being struck, and worse, striking back, actually nauseated me. It wasn’t just my foot that held me back from fighting. It was my nature first; I couldn’t imagine myself holding a sword with the intent to kill someone. Even a dragon.

  I opened the stall door for Joyeuse—which was a joke, for at this point, the mares had proved that they only stayed in stalls as a courtesy to us.

  Joyeuse and I went outside to wait for Parz, who disappeared into the stable. We had decided that, since Durendal had more or less chosen Judith, Parz would use Joyeuse to fight.

  Parz came out clad in the silver armor, and I stared.

  “I thought you wouldn’t mind,” he said, forehead wrinkling, his charming sidelong smile fading.

  “I don’t. The armor fits you so well. . . .”

  Parz plucked at the mail shirt. “As though it were made for me.” He came over, carrying the silver sword and silver belt. His mouth and brows were straight lines of seriousness.

  “Will you gird me, Princess?” he asked, and knelt down to offer me the sword and belt.

  I had seen my mother do this for various knights who owed our family service. She had done it for my father the day he left on his fateful pilgrimage. It was strange to do it now for Parz. But I did it.

  I took the sword belt and bade him stand. I reached around his hips and girded the belt on him, saying, “With honor, and with bravery.” At this point, my mother would always kiss the knight on the cheek.

  I hesitated. The thought of kissing Parz was enough to make me blush so hot that I might turn into a candle, so I just kissed the air beside his cheek. Even then, I couldn’t look at him right away.