Norgaard started to return to the conversation. Skylan wanted his say first, however.
“What brings you to Luda?” Skylan asked the ogres, and he added brashly, “And when are you leaving?”
The Torgun men around the wall grinned. The ogres scowled. Ogres and Vindrasi spoke the same root language, as did all the people of the world known by the Vindrasi as Ilyrion. In ancient days, the various races had been ruled by one mighty seafaring empire. In order to govern his far-flung territories, the Emperor had decreed that everyone everywhere would speak the language of the Empire.
Though each race adopted the central language and made it their own, they added bits of unique vocabulary, pronounced the words with differing accents and shades of meaning, with the result that the ogre language was much different from that of the Vindrasi. The roots being the same, however, most ogres could carry on a conversation with most humans.
Legend had it that this ancient Emperor had hoped a shared language would foster peace and understanding among the races. Sadly, it had the opposite effect. They could all understand each other’s insults.
Norgaard’s lips tightened. His expression grew grim.
“Forgive my son, lords,” he said to the ogres. “He is young and hot-blooded. I would speak a word with him, if you do not mind that we confer in private.”
The ogres graciously acceded. By their grins, they guessed the young man was in for a tongue-lashing.
Skylan saw the grins and burned with shame. He had to swallow his ire, though. He was not often the recipient of his father’s anger, and he could not understand what he had done wrong. He was also mindful of Aylaen’s laughing green eyes.
Skylan walked over to his father and leaned across his father’s shoulder to speak to him. “Why do you reprimand me before these brutes?”
“Because there are one hundred and seventy ogre warriors in those ships,” said Norgaard, glowering.
The Torgun could muster perhaps seventy-five warriors—ninety, counting old men and boys. Skylan was not daunted, however. The fight with the boar had given him a taste for blood. Battle lust burned in him. He felt he could fight all 170 ogres himself.
“All men know that Torgun warriors are worth two of any ogre in battle,” Skylan said.
“I don’t know it,” said Norgaard sharply. “And I have fought ogres. Have you, boy?”
“No, Father,” Skylan said. Stung by the use of the term boy, he added sullenly, “Apparently I am not to have the chance.”
“You may well get the chance,” Norgaard said. “I do not know why the ogres have come, but I smell danger. These two ogres are commanders; the ogres term them godlords. The third is a shaman, and the fact that a shaman is present on a warship means this has something to do with their gods and is extremely important to them. They were about to tell me when you entered and insulted them. I remind you, Skylan, that the ogres are here under a flag of truce to parley. I invited them into the Chief’s Hall, and as such, they are my guests. The parley is sacred; the guest is sacred. Torval watches.”
Norgaard leaned nearer. “One thing more—did you see the ships when you came into the village?”
“Yes, Father,” said Skylan.
“Did you happen to notice that they have our dragonship surrounded?”
Skylan stared at his father, stunned. He had seen that, of course. He had not thought of the implications. He began to consider that perhaps he had been in the wrong. Maybe he had earned his father’s rebuke—at least some portion of it.
“I am sorry, Father,” he said, subdued. “I was not thinking.”
“You never think, boy,” Norgaard said with a sigh. “You rush in, sword swinging. . . .”
“That is the way of the warrior,” Skylan said proudly.
“But it is not the way of a Chief,” said Norgaard. He gestured toward the ogres. “Apologize to our guests.”
Skylan did as he was told. After all, Torval was watching. His apology was short and gruff and grudging, but the ogres accepted it. Now that the wise old dog had put down the boisterous young pup, they were ready to carry on with business.
“You were about to tell me why the ogres honor the Torgun with a visit,” Norgaard said.
The two godlords looked with deference at their shaman and invited him to speak.
The ogre shaman rose to his feet. An imposing and outlandish figure, he was tall and thin, lacking the musculature of a warrior, and his headdress of long black glossy feathers made him appear even taller. In addition to the feathered cape, he wore a necklace of curved bones tipped in silver. His hairy arms were thick with silver bracelets. The black paint around his eyes emphasized his gaze, gave it strange intensity.
“We have come to tell the Vindrasi about a great battle that recently took place in heaven between your gods and ours,” said the shaman. His eyes glinted. He didn’t look so childlike anymore. “Our gods won this battle. Your gods lost. Your gods are dead.”
The shaman calmly resumed his seat. Feathers rustling, he looked very much like a large and gangling stork settling into its nest.
CHAPTER
3
There followed a silence so complete that everyone in the longhouse could hear the rustling of the shaman’s feathers. Seeing that none of the Torgun had anything to say, the godlord wearing the tiger-skin cape rose to speak.
“Since the Vindrasi now have no gods, we are here to offer you our protection. In return, you will renounce your gods, who are dead anyway, and you will worship ours. In order to honor our gods, you will give us forty-three head of cattle, thirteen bars of silver, and seven men—among them your son—as hostage to your good faith. And you will also give us your dragonship.”
Skylan was the first to find his tongue.
“You lie!” he cried savagely.
Drawing his sword, he tried to dash at the ogres, but his wounded leg gave out on him. He staggered and almost fell. By this time, Garn had hold of Skylan, grabbing his friend around his chest and dragging him to a halt. Skylan struggled to break free of Garn’s grip. At Norgaard’s sharp command, two more Torgun warriors ran to seize him.
“Torval would never flee!” Skylan raved, struggling in the arms of his captors.
“Torval pissed his pants and ran away,” the ogre godlord said calmly. “Along with your Dragon Goddess and all the rest of the cowards.”
Skylan surged at the ogres with such fury that he carried Garn and the two warriors along with him. His face flushed, his blue eyes blazed, spittle flew from his mouth. He roared as he went, looking and acting like a madman. The ogre godlords jumped to their feet and drew their swords.
Skylan charged straight at them, his feet driving into the dirt floor. Two warriors clung to his arms. Garn was still wrapped around his chest. Skylan made it halfway across the floor before the three men managed at last to wrestle him to the ground.
Even then, with his arms and legs pinned and one warrior sitting on him, Skylan continued to rail against the ogres. He cried out that they lied, until he lacked the breath to speak. Panting and gasping for air, he glared at the ogres and beat his clenched fists into the ground as though he were beating their heads.
He was not the only Torgun outraged by the ogre’s statement. After their initial shock, every man in the longhouse was on his feet, each clamoring to have his say and determined to say it louder than the rest. The Torgun howled and raged and gesticulated, stamping their feet and banging their weapons on their shields. The walls of the longhouse shook with the commotion.
The warriors outside had not heard the ogre’s pronouncement, but they could hear Skylan’s furious roar and the warriors inside yelling. Thinking a fight had broken out, they rushed the door in an attempt to enter. The ogre guards raised their shields and shoved the Torgun warriors, who swore at the ogres and shoved back.
“Silence!” Norgaard thundered. “Cease this madness, all of you!”
He had been a War Chief once. Accustomed to issuing orders on the field of
battle, forced to make himself heard over the clash of steel and the roars of battle lust, and the screams of the wounded and dying, he could make his voice slice through the clamor. He glared particularly at his son. The warriors holding Skylan eyed him dubiously.
“I’m all right,” he said, shaking them off. “You can let go of me.”
Skylan hoped it was clear to everyone, especially the ogres and Aylaen, that he was backing down only because he’d been ordered to do so by his Chief. He rose to his feet, angrily refusing help, and saw that his wound had broken open. Blood was running down his leg.
The hall was once more subdued, though not quiet. It was filled with an ominous and threatening muttering, like the lull in the stormy battles between the Goddess Akaria and her sister Svanses, who sometimes fought over the rulership of wind and water, whipping up great waves that sank boats and flooded villages. The warriors inside the longhouse returned to their places along the wall. Those outside backed away from the door. No one sheathed his weapon.
Skylan and every person in the hall looked at Norgaard, waiting for him to refute this outrageous claim and even more outrageous demand. There would be war, of course. Their Chief had only to give the order.
Norgaard remained grimly silent.
The truth was, he didn’t know what to do. He had never been confronted with a situation like this. The ogres were not acting like the ogres he had fought. Those ogres would never have bothered to come to the humans with such a tale and demand a parley. The ogres he knew would have sailed into Luda, burned the village, slaughtered everyone, stolen everything, and sailed off.
Why the change? What was going on? These were dark and dangerous waters, and Norgaard had to wade into them carefully, feeling his way. He kept his mouth shut, scratching his bearded chin, and gazed thoughtfully at the shaman. As in the game of dragonbones, it was sometimes better to fall back, go on the defensive, allow the enemy to make the next move. He had tried teaching that to Skylan, to no avail.
“Why doesn’t he say something?” Skylan demanded impatiently.
Garn replied with the old proverb. “ ‘A fool opens his mouth. A wise man keeps it shut.’ Norgaard is trying to figure out what is going on. For example, why did the ogres not simply attack us? Why the parley?”
Skylan snorted. “Bah! They’re ogres. They have cheese curds for brains. The old man has lost his nerve, that’s all. I will say something if he won’t.”
“Stay out of it, Skylan,” Garn warned. “Let your father handle this.”
Skylan ignored his friend’s counsel. He turned to face Treia, who had said nothing during the furor and was almost forgotten. Aylaen stood near her sister, her hand resting on Treia’s arm. Both were watching Norgaard. Neither was paying any attention to Skylan, and both were startled to hear him speak.
“I call upon our Bone Priestess to refute these ridiculous claims,” said Skylan. “Priestess, tell the ogres they are wrong. Ask Torval to give us a sign to prove to them he is alive.”
Treia said nothing with her mouth. Her dark eyes glittered with anger. Her pale face remained impassive, giving no hint of her thoughts, but Norgaard noted her hands curling tightly over the arms of the chair, the knuckles white.
Skylan, pleased with his own cleverness, saw nothing of the Priestess’s inner turmoil.
Norgaard saw, and hope died within him. Treia knew all was not well in heaven. She feared that if she called upon Torval for a sign, the god would not respond, and that would embolden the ogres, who—Torval knew—did not need emboldening.
At least now, Norgaard understood why the ogres had arranged for the parley. The knowledge that the gods had abandoned them would devastate his people, weaken their resolve. Undoubtedly that was why the ogres chose to talk instead of fight. The lives of the Torgun people depended on what Treia said and did, Norgaard realized, and he desperately wished that he knew her better, had some idea of how she would react.
Treia was newly arrived in the village. Although she was Torgun and had been born here, she had been sent away from home at the age of twelve, bartered to the Dragon Goddess by her mother, Holma, in hopes that Vindrash would spare her husband’s life. Treia had gone across the bay to Vindraholm, the capital city of the Vindrasi nation, to study to be a Bone Priestess. Apparently the barter worked. Her father had lived many years afterwards. Unfortunately Treia did not know. She never again saw him.
Treia had remained in Vindraholm for sixteen years, during which time she had been initiated into the secrets of the gods. She had returned to the Torgun less than a year ago, when their Bone Priestess had died of eating tainted eels.
A morose woman, Treia was twenty-eight years old and still unmarried, with no man eager to seek her hand. She was not unattractive. She had pale skin and thick blond hair, a long narrow face, and a slender figure. Men might have been more interested in her if she ever smiled. Nothing pleased Treia or made her happy. Even during festivals, when everyone else in the village was celebrating, Treia regarded the merrymaking with disdain and would take the first opportunity to escape back to her dwelling.
Treia was extremely nearsighted, and she had developed a squint whenever she looked intently at something. Her squint and the uncanny ability she had of appearing to know what a person was thinking gave rise to the notion that she had the power to see through flesh and bone to the soul. Because of this, most of the people in the village—including the men—were daunted by her. After giving Skylan one irate look, Treia lowered her dark eyes, staring at the floor. Her sister whispered something to her. Treia shook her head.
Most of the Torgun warriors were watching Treia with smug smiles, confidently waiting for their Bone Priestess to scornfully deny the ogre’s outrageous claims and call down the wrath of Torval upon them. But Norgaard noted that some were not so confident. Those men had been on the ill-fated expedition with his son, and all of them were remembering that during the raid, Treia had tried to summon the Dragon Kahg to fight for them and the dragon had not responded.
Treia had told them that Vindrash, the Dragon Goddess, was displeased with them. But what if Vindrash had not been merely displeased? What if the Dragon Goddess had been vanquished, driven out of heaven?
Treia did not speak, and now all the Torgun warriors were growing uneasy. Norgaard gave a low growl, indicating that Treia needed to say something and she needed to do it fast. The Priestess gave him a sidelong glance and then rose slowly to her feet.
Her movements were graceful, majestic. Her dark eyes shone with myopic luster. Her pale cheeks were stained red. She cast a sweeping glance around the longhouse, and her gaze came to rest on the ogres. Such was her proud and haughty demeanor that even they appeared respectful. She spoke directly to the shaman.
“I am going to the shrine of Vindrash. There I will call upon your gods and mine,” said Treia. “I will wait to hear which gods answer me. I will be at my prayers all night. I am not to be disturbed.”
Head held high, she walked out of the longhouse. As she passed Norgaard, Treia cast him a look that said as plain as speech, I have bought you time. Use it well!
The ogre guards, after a nod from their shaman, stepped aside and allowed Treia to depart the hall. The Torgun warriors fell back to give her room. One offered to escort her, but she scornfully refused.
Aylaen had been caught off guard by her sister’s sudden decisive move. After a moment’s hesitation, Aylaen hurried to follow Treia, who was already out the door. The ogres made no move to stop her, though they ogled her as she hurried past them, and one ogre made what was obviously a lewd comment to the other, who grinned.
Skylan did not hear what was said, but he could guess, and he reached again for his sword. Garn seized hold of his arm and whispered urgently in his ear, and for once Skylan listened.
The three ogre godlords consulted with their shaman. Norgaard remained silent, as did the Torgun warriors gathered in the longhouse. They did this ostensibly out of courtesy, but every man there had his ears stret
ched, trying to hear what was being said.
The ogres kept their voices low. Norgaard rose to his feet, and under the pretense of easing his crippled leg, he limped closer to hear better.
Absorbed in their talk, the ogres did not notice him.
The ogres spoke rapidly. Norgaard could understand only about one word in five, but he heard enough to realize that the ogres were confounded, uncertain what to do. The ogres had urged the Torgun to accept their gods, known as the Gods of Raj, and now the Torgun Bone Priestess had said she was going off to pray to the Gods of Raj. The ogres might or might not believe her (clearly one of the godlords did not), but the shaman insisted that they could not now attack the Torgun. The ogres had to give the Gods of Raj a chance to respond. Doing anything else would be an insult to the gods and, as the shaman pointed out, the ogres were a long way from home with miles of treacherous ocean to cross. It would not be wise to anger the gods.
That last argument convinced the godlords. Ogres did not love the sea, as did the Vindrasi, and the sea did not love ogres.
Having heard enough, Norgaard limped back to resume his seat.
After another few moments’ conferring, the tiger-skin godlord spoke. “We are confident in the powerful and mighty Gods of Raj. We give your Priestess time to pray to them. We will hear her answer—and yours—this night. In the meantime, we will tell you more of our gods at the great feast you will give this night in our honor.”
Norgaard sighed. Feeding the ogres would deplete the Torgun’s already meager food supply, but he did not dare insult them by refusing.
The ogre godlords made ready to take their leave, as did the shaman, his feathers rustling. Norgaard walked with them. At a gesture from him, his Torgun warriors remained where they were. The sight of all his men suddenly rushing at them might have alarmed their guests.
Bones of the Dragon Page 4
