Flight of the Dragon Kyn

by Susan Fletcher

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  For Mom and Dad

  Acknowledgment

  I gratefully acknowledge the generous help of falconers Byron Gardner and Bob Welle. Many thanks, as well, to Dave Siddon, Cathi Wright, and Deanna Sawtelle from Portland, Oregon’s, Metropolitan Zoo. I am indebted to Jim Todd, from the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry, for moving the sun and moon to help me; and to Hakan Carheden for insight into Scandinavia.

  Chapter 1

  A prodigious gift trails peril in its wake.

  —KRAGISH FOLK SAYING

  I was fifteen in the year the king’s men came to take me from my home.

  It was a lean year that portended hunger; little rain had fallen in the summer, so the grass grew scant and the sheep wasted thin. Many folk had marked the fleeting shadows of dragons twisting across the fells, and a score of lambs had vanished without trace. Then came the early frost, which blighted our hopes for a long growing season and for fodder to last through winter.

  I was gathering angelica in the hills above the steading when they came. I ought to have been spinning. My mother and my aunt and my brothers’ wives all said so. They were spinning—in the smoke-dense gloom of the hearthroom house, their spindles whirring drearily, the only hint of light the thin yellow haze that sifted down from the smokehole. It’s too late for angelica, they all said; it’s gone by now; best you stay here and make yourself useful, for a change.

  But I knew of secret places in the hills—sheltered nooks where the sun warmed the earth and the wind couldn’t pry in to chill it—and I said that I could find some.

  My mother relented, as usual. My brothers’ wives scolded her for cosseting me; my aunt said I was lazy and ill-mannered and strange.

  I didn’t care; I was gone.

  It was one of those clear, frosty days when the wind snaps your cloak and fleets of clouds scud like warships across the sky. The sun lay low about the mountains, piercing the air with shafts of liquid light that glittered on the fjord and haloed the rime-shaggy firs. I breathed in deep, savoring this place. Up here in the hills above the steading was the only place where I was free to live my own life, untrammeled by disapproval and suspicion. Before long, I had found four small clumps of angelica—shriveled, perhaps, but they would yet lend fragrance to the strew-reeds, and their roots were still potent for balm.

  A whitchil called from a hawthorn tree; I called back. It swooped down and landed on my wrist, eyeing me unabashed, its fierce little claws pricking my skin. I called down a gull, too, which landed on my elbow, and a crake, and a sleepy stony owl that tucked one foot up and tried to take a nap on my arm. “Wake up,” I said, twisting my arm so they all lost their balance and clutched me and wildly flapped their wings.

  I laughed and stroked them one by one. My father had forbidden me to call down birds, so I did it away from the steading, where no one could see. I kept my left arm well covered to hide the scratches, but I know my father knew. I know everyone knew, from the way their eyes slid away from mine when I returned, from the whispers behind my back when my mother and father were not near. Whispers of my old illness, and how it had changed me. Whispers of dragons …

  Gently I ruffled the feathers on the stony owl’s breast, calming my mind. When I looked up again, I caught a movement—a glinting—in the valley below. I shielded my eyes to mark what it was.

  There, far down in the rime-crusted folds of the valley, came five moving things—no, six, or seven, perhaps.

  A chill gust of wind breathed on my face and whuffed in my ears; a jingling of bells drifted up.

  Horsemen. They were horsemen; I could see that now. And before them moved something—something light-hued and hard to pick out from the frost.

  Through the rattle of fell fronds rose yet another sound, a plaintive bleating of sheep.

  Sheep!

  Who would come now, on horseback, driving sheep?

  Quickly I pulled up the bits of angelica I’d found—my trophies, my proofs. I tucked them under my sash and scrambled down the hillside. Pebbles clattered and slid beneath my feet. The crake and the seabird fluttered off; the owl half-spread its wings for balance and then, giving up, soared away with a disgusted hoot. Only the whitchil stayed; bobbing its head, it sidestepped up my arm until perched upon my shoulder. When I came to the rocky outcrop that overlooks the homefields I climbed atop it and looked out.

  The steading’s grass-roofed buildings clustered below. Blue drifts of woodsmoke gusted in whirling eddies from the hearthroom and kitchenhouses. From here, I could see the mooring place on the fjord, and two red-sailed knarrs lying in.

  Red-sailed. King’s knarrs.

  Never since my grandfather’s youth had a king’s knarr put in at our steading.

  What could King Orrik want with us?

  As I watched, sheep and horsemen emerged from behind a thicket of birches that rippled and silvered in the wind. They were yet small in the distance. The horses looked like elfin steeds, decked out in red and mounted by metal-helmed, crimson-caped figures. Six riders there were, and one horse riderless. And behind them two great carts filled to overflowing with something that looked like hay.

  Stranger still.

  My heart beat loudly in my throat. What did they want?

  Was there war? Did they come mustering an army?

  But why the sheep?

  A shout went up; men came pouring out of the smithy. I recognized my father’s lank-legged stride as he approached the riders. They halted. As the lead horseman conferred with my father, maids and housecarls emerged from the stables and byres and storerooms. Two of my brothers came running from the homefields; my mother and my brothers’ wives and my aunt bustled out from the hearthroom house.

  I stayed to watch no more, but hastened, running, for home. With a sharp cry, the whitchil took wing. The steading sank from view behind hills and stands of trees; clouds made a shifting patchwork of light and dark upon the ground. My breath came in short, frosty puffs, and soon my nose felt numb.

  When at last I reached the courtyard, it was thronged, but I could find no one there from my family. Nor did I see the strangers’ horses, nor the sheep; they must have been stabled and by red. But a smoke plume arose from the hall, where great company—when we had it—was entertained. I pushed open the heavy door, thinking to slip in unnoticed and listen from a shadowed corner.

  My father’s voice stopped me at once.

  “Ah, there she is. Kara, come here.”

  Beyond the light from the smokehole I saw them seated around the table: my father and my mother, the king’s men, my brothers and their wives. All turned to stare at me.

  My father stood and said the name of one of the king’s men, who rose and turned to me. I heard “Prince” but did not grasp the meaning of the name that followed, so surprised was I that my father had stopped his dealings with these men to mark my coming. The prince said something to me, and then my father spoke to me again—about a journey, King Orrik’s court, a great honor, and many sheep—but I was still too numb to understand how one thing connected to another and why he spoke of any of it to me.

  “Unlike a tryst,” my father said, “and yet more like an apprenticeship. You need marry no one, and you may return home to us within three years.”

  “I … don’t understand,” I said.


  The prince, a tall, burly warrior with an unruly red beard, began to speak to me. I forced myself to listen to his words, to fit them together so that they would make sense.

  King Orrik, he said, had made a vow to his lady-love, Signy—here he glanced at my father. Well, the prince continued, the substance of the vow mattered not. The king was determined to do his lady’s bidding; she would not marry him else. And yet this oath was not an easy one to keep, and Orrik had need of … certain powers. “Powers you possess,” he said.

  “Powers?” I turned to my father, suddenly sick in my heart. Surely he would not betray me. Surely he would not let this man make use of me to attain his own ends, as those suitors had tried to do.

  My father and mother exchanged looks. My aunt suppressed a smile. “He will not harm … your birds,” my father said. “Prince Rog has sworn to that. Birds count for naught in this matter.”

  Prince Rog. Then this was not just one of the many larger steaders who called themselves princes. This man was Rog, the king’s own younger brother.

  “Then I do not see,” I said—carefully, reasonably—“what use my powers, as you call them, could possibly be to the king. It is little enough, what I do, and sometimes I cannot manage it, and always it has to do with birds.”

  Prince Rog smiled a smile that did not reach his eyes. His teeth were crooked and yellow. His glance moved to linger upon the vermilion mark on my cheek. “All this I have told the king,” he said, “but my brother would not be content until he met you for himself, to see if you might … be of use. And if—as I think—you cannot help in this matter, I will persuade him to send you home the sooner.”

  “Help?” I struggled to keep my voice calm, but what I wanted more than anything was to run, run out of this hall, run away into the hills above the steading and stay there until these men went away. “What could I do to help the king?”

  Rog turned to my father, as if he did not wish to deal with me himself. “The king wishes only to meet her, to try. It may well be that he is mistaken about her. Indeed”—and here he lowered his voice so that only I and my father could attend him—“if I were king, I would never have come all this distance to fetch a mere girl. And I believe my brother will be of a different mind once he sets eyes upon her. She’ll likely be home within a half-moon.”

  “The choice is yours, Kara,” my father said. “Whatsoever befalls, they will treat you well.”

  “As the king’s own kin,” Rog added.

  “But I don’t want to leave here. You know that, my father.”

  Twice I had been asked for in marriage at a Gathering, even though my aunt had said no one would want a girl as strange as I. My first suitor asked me to show him the hills above the steading. He spoke to me sweetly and, after a time, asked me to call down a kestrel from the air. As the bird neared my arm, the man took out his bow and shot it dead. I refused to call birds for my second suitor; he struck me across the face.

  After that I vowed never to marry: never to live far away in a strange man’s home and bend to his will and that of his kin. And the king’s will would be worse—more absolute, unbendable.

  I wouldn’t dare call down birds at the king’s steading. Here, I was the steaders only daughter; I was shielded from those who despised me; I could escape to the hills. But there … I’d have to stay indoors—spinning, most likely. There would be no escape. And with no one to quell the whispers, they would rise to a roar.

  “Kara,” my father said, and I could tell by the studied gentleness in his voice that he had something hard to tell me. “You cannot live this way forever, running into the hills or to your mother for protection. This life you live here is no good for you. Perhaps a new place, being useful to the king …”

  My heart gave a lurch. The king! How did he mean to use me? The vow …

  “What is this vow the king has sworn?” I asked, unable any longer to rein in my fear. “And what will he want me to do? Why don’t you tell me? Even a concubine knows what is expected of her! Surely you cant—”

  “It is not as a concubine you would go!” my mother burst out. “And Orrik himself has sworn to keep you safe. Sworn it!”

  “But what is this vow? I want to know!”

  Rog was looking at me through narrowed eyes; he did not answer.

  “You care only for yourself?” said Ragnhild, my eldest brother’s wife. “Two marriage matches you were offered, and both you refused. What are you waiting for—a prince? Or will you stay on here forever, eating up the food my babes should have? And now—with the storehouses near empty, and all of our fates in your hands—even now you refuse to go.”

  “Dragons’ shadows on the fells!” cried Hurtla, my second brother’s wife. “I saw them myself. And a score of lambs are gone. Gone! Vanished! We’ll starve here without the sheep and fodder the king sent. We’ll starve!”

  “The sheep?” I turned to my father. “Those sheep are … in trade … for me?”

  He nodded.

  My plight was coming clear. If I left now with these men to do the bidding of the king—whatever that might be—then no one at our steading would go hungry come spring. The sheep would carry them through. And if I refused, and if someone—a child—were lost, they would lay it at my feet. And the fault truly would be mine.

  I could not refuse.

  And yet …

  A secret, guilty hope fluttered up inside my chest. My mother … perhaps she wouldn’t let me go. Wouldn’t let them take me away, to a strange place, to make use of me for their ends. Perhaps …

  I drew myself up. “Very well,” I said. “I will go.”

  I waited for it, my mother’s voice, calling out that it must not be.

  The silence hung on; my eyes sought hers in the shadows. Her head was down; she shook silently; tears streaked down her face.

  It was then that I knew my lot was cast.

  After that, things happened quickly. The men rose from the table, speaking of winds and tides and the need to be under way. The women moved out the door and came back bearing silver brooches and lengths of wadmal, sealskins and reindeer pelts, and combs of walrus tusk. They were all bundled together and taken out into the courtyard, where I could hear the clopping of horses’ hooves. My father embraced me first, and then my mother, sobbing, clinging, until my father touched her shoulder and she let go slowly and backed away.

  Then somehow I was outside in the courtyard, with Rog and the king’s hearth companions and their belled and wool-draped horses. Rog set a cape about my shoulders—a crimson wool cape of downier loft and finer weave than ever I had seen. He fastened it with a gold brooch and set a gold circlet on my brow. I mounted; we set off.

  Our hoofbeats rang on the frost-hard ground. The wind ripped the hood from my head and tangled in my hair. When we came to the birch thicket, I drew up my horse and looked back.

  I could hear the wind soughing in the firs, the cry of a gull overhead. The sun had disappeared behind the mountains and long shadows stretched across the vale. A billowing blue mass of clouds bulked to the east, but a single slab of light caught the grasses of the steading’s turfed roofs, drenching them in brightness, silhouetting each thin blade against the mountains. As I watched, the light dimmed and was doused.

  And so I left them all—my mother and my father and my brothers, the birds that I so loved to call, the fine turf-roofed houses, the mountains with their tumbling becks and falls—my birthplace, my steading, my home.

  Chapter 2

  Lonesome it is when the sea-steeds toss their frothy manes far from the home-hearth.

  —KRAGISH SKALD

  Just beyond the birches, out of sight of the folk watching from the courtyard, two young men of our band put spur to their horses and began to make sport. They raced breakneck down the steep, pebble-strewn track to the sea, then wheeled about and charged straight for us, veering off in the pinch of time. One passed me so nearly by that my own mount shied and reared, nearly pitching me off. As it was, my gold circlet tu
mbled from my head, skittered across the track, and fell down a shallow embankment. The one who had startled my horse leapt from his own mount and retrieved the circlet, polishing it clean with his coat.

  He was clean-shaven and differently garbed from the others. Instead of the scarlet cape and metal helm of the royal hearth companions, he wore an open fur-trimmed coat of a cut I had never seen, with a black fur kalat on his head. His goatskin jerkin was girded by a sash of many colors loosely intertwined, from which dangled tinkling trinkets of silver and gold. His hair was different, too: darker, and tied back at the nape by a thin leather thong.

  He approached me, bowed stiffly, and held out the circlet. “Forgive me, Lady,” he said, and his words sounded oddly clipped and careful, as if they were strange on his tongue. I was held for a moment by his eyes, unexpectedly long and dark above high, flat cheekbones.

  Then all about us the men began to make hooting sounds and kissing sounds and ribald jibes. “Kazan,” they called him, and me, “the bird girl.” I snatched the circlet, my face burning. I jammed it onto my head and spurred my horse down the track. Where was Prince Rog? Surely he would not tolerate this. But when I caught sight of him just ahead, my heart sank. He was turned around in his saddle, grinning. When he caught my eye, he barked out a short, hard laugh.

  Treated as the king’s own kin, he had said! Those had been words only, to placate my kin. I was on my own, with no protection. Rog would treat with me as he pleased.

  At the ship landing we dismounted, and the men coaxed the horses into the holds of the two knarrs. The long-eyed youth offered to help me aboard—bowing, again. Surely he mocked me, and yet … In any case, I did not want to start up the hooting and laughing again. I made my way up the shore plank hardly deigning to give him a glance.

  These knarrs were broader in the beam than the one my uncle took on his expeditions north for walrus and seabirds and whales. Each had a cargo hold amidships that was open to the sky. When I stepped down into it, the fore and aft decks stood waist-high. I picked my way through the maze of casks and crates and bales, breathing in the smells of damp wool and men’s sweat, of salt and pitch and horses. The hearth companions found perches wherever they could; most sat with the crew at oar. At last I settled myself in a heap of hay, as far from the others as I might.