The dragon stench filled my throat—a thick, clotting, sulfurous smell, mingled with the reek of charred flesh. A wind gust tore open a patch of steam near the river and stripped bare a dragon eye: enormous, unseeing, glazed with a thin filigree of ice.
My knees buckled beneath me; I crumpled to the ground and blackness rushed in.
Chapter 14
A dragon’s head, mounted, protects the hall from fire; a dragon’s heart, roasted, fends off the bite of blade; a dragon’s blood, boiled, repels the creeping death.
—THE BOK OF DRAGON
When I awoke I was lying in the dark, wrapped in furs. My insides felt hollow, wasted, like a tree with the heart wood burnt out of it. A fire crackled nearby; one side of me felt hot. Sounds of a distant commotion reached my ears: shouting and talking and a sporadic clanging of metal. Then came another sound: a familiar burbling. Skava!
I sat up quickly, and regretted it at once. My head felt as if something heavy had come loose inside it. I moaned and lay down again. But Skava was there, tethered to the tree root in the cliffside encampment. The same place she’d been—when was it? How long ago?
I turned my head so that I could see her again, and my glance caught on the knot that leashed her to the root. Something amiss with it—it looped the wrong way. “Skava,” I murmured. “What happened?”
For something had happened; I knew that. A chunk of memory broke loose. Calling. And Skava gone.
But she was here now. Back in the cliffside encampment. The fire … something about fire …
Dragons.
And more memories broke loose: the calling on the frozen river, the king’s argument with Rog.
Flagra.
And I remembered her now, remembered from the time when I was small and had stayed in that dragon cave. Not whole, rounded memories, but just pieces: the gleam of Flagra’s scales in the moonlight, the warmth of her sulfur-smelling breath, the sweet, thick taste of milk. And those eyes: long as my forearm, green as a jade stone. The presence of her flooded my mind as if I had never forgotten it—fierce, protective, more motherlike than dragonlike.
Flagra.
Had she spoken to me then? Is that how I’d known her name?
But she hadn’t spoken to me this time, at least not in the usual way. I hadn’t heard her name—I had felt it forming in my mind.
And how came she here? Before she had been south of here, near my father’s steading.
Talking. Someone was talking. Two people, arguing in soft voices behind me. Something about the king, one of them said, and the other, “Let her rest,” and then an answering retort and retreating footfalls.
I sat up again—slowly, this time—and twisted around to look. There, with firelight flickering across his face, sat Kazan.
“You’re awake,” he said.
I began to nod, but my head felt unstable, as if tipping it the slightest bit would hurt.
“Here,” Kazan said and held out a hornful of brew. “Drink this.”
The brew was sweet, of course. Too sweet. Still, it warmed me all the way down. I knew I had things to ask him, but my thoughts clattered around in my head and I couldn’t catch just one. At last I seized upon something: the knot.
“Who tethered Skava?” 1 asked. “The knot is mistied.”
Kazan raised his eyebrows incredulously. “You fainted dead away back there, and I feared you were injured or ill or worse … and now you complain about a knot?” He laughed and shook his head. “You Krags,” he said, pouring more brew into my goblet, “are so—what is that word? Arrogant. You think you have the only way to do a thing.”
“So you did it?”
“She was perching on a rock at the top of the canyon. I borrowed your lure, and she came to it.”
“You … lured her?”
“You thought I know only how to snare a bird, and the finer arts elude me.” It was a statement, not a question.
I shrugged.
“Well, I have talents you know nothing of,” Kazan said. “You would be surprised if you knew me better.”
He was grinning at me now in a way that warmed my insides, as his too-sweet brew had done. But something still tugged at my mind. Something amiss …
The sound came again, a metallic clanging from outside the encampment.
“What’s that noise?” I asked.
“They’re gutting the dragon,” Kazan said. “They’re cutting out its heart and its kidneys and draining its blood. And some of the men are still taking their trophy scales….”
My stomach lurched—I almost lost the brew—and the rest of my memory flooded in on a rush of darkness: the archers, the blood, the roar, the pain. I turned away from Kazan? buried my face in my hands, tried to wall myself off from the nightmare.
Kazan was talking—something about sorry, something about water—but I could not attend him.
I had felt her die. I had kenned her thoughts. She was … sentient—no less than a woman or a man. She had saved me with her milk, that long-ago time, and for that I had called her to her death. The shame of it burned inside me.
“Kara!” The king’s voice brought me up with a jolt. “They said you were awake!” Orrik climbed up into the encampment, his face flushed and jubilant. A gang of warriors crowded in behind him. “I was worried about you, Kara. You just dropped back there, and we feared … By the sun’s blessed rays, I am glad to see you well! We’re moving the camp upriver. The dragons came that way, and we scouted out a better place, hemmed in by cliffs on three sides. We’ll attach our arrows to the fishnetting and loose it over them when they come to your call.”
When they come to my call.
I must call … again?
I gaped at him, dumbstruck. How could he take this so lightly, so joyfully? After what I did. After Flagra …
“Your grace, she will need rest …” Kazan began.
“You—you shot at me!”
I hadn’t meant to say it, but the anger boiled up inside me and the words were out before I thought.
Orrik’s face blanched; he worked visibly to compose it. I felt the pressure of Kazan’s hand laid on my shoulder—for reassurance or restraint, I knew not which.
“No, Kara,” Orrik said at last, his voice smooth and unperturbed. “I would never shoot at you. Never. But I commanded you to stay, and you”—he paused deliberately—“did not hear. And so the arrow was … a signal.”
A signal? That had been no signal! It had been a threat! There was no intent to hit me—that I knew. But to frighten me into doing his will—yes!
And now I saw the game he played. Much as he might wish to punish me for defying him, he would not. He dared not throw me over. For I was like the fabled goose that laid the golden egg, and my help was needful for his plans. So he would humor me and cajole me and flatter me. He would threaten only without seeming to threaten.
But I couldn’t call more dragons to their deaths.Couldn’t. If I told my true reasons, Orrik would not understand. He would force me to call. So I would try to persuade him by means he could grasp.
“My king,” I said, “I know but one dragon name—Flagra—that my mother told me. I spoke this name in my sleep, from the time they left me for dead in that cave. And it was not until I said this name—called it—that the dragon came. And she was the one who came. Flagra. The one who nursed me back—” I choked up, fought against the tears that pushed against the insides of my eyes.
“You are tired,” the king said. Cajoling me. “Fetch her fish and more brew!” he commanded.
“No!” I tried to stand, but the dizzying pain in my head returned, so I sat back down. “You mistake my meaning. I can’t call any other dragons because I already called the one whose name I know. I know no other names.”
“Three dragons came,” the king said, his blue eyes steady on my face, “and you called but one name. Do you call birds by their names when they come?”
“No, but … birds are birds. With dragons it is different.”
“I
have heard that dragons hunt only at deepest night. Could not this be why they bided so long?”
He was condescending to me. He would not heed what I had to say.
“It may be true, your grace—what she says,” Kazan protested.
“All too true,” came another voice, a voice I well knew. Rog. I picked out his face from the crowd of warriors around the king. “It’s a fluke that dragon was here. It’s the only one she knows.”
“Be quiet, Rog.” The king’s voice held a threat.
“Orrik, now is time for the shields. I can lead a band ahead; you can—”
“Cease!”
Rog backed down like a beaten dog. Something had happened up in the encampment, some shift in power, when the dragons had come down to me.
“Let me show you something, Kara.” The king held out his hands and helped me to my feet. He supported me with his arm and led me to the edge of the cave; warriors yielded before us and closed again around us, leaving Kazan neatly behind. My head still throbbed painfully; my eyes ached.
The ice moon lit the eerie scene below: an army of men moving about Flagra’s long, twisted body, festooned with wisps of mist. She was chipped and gored and hacked at. Icicles dripped from her jaw and brow ridges; blue-white ice scabbed over her eyes.
The king was talking: about the blood feud and the famine and the dragons killing sheep. He spoke of duty and honor and the glory I would gain when the dragon kyn was slain.
His words washed over me. I stared down at Flagra and was flooded with a deep, still sadness.
This was wrong.
It would do me no good to protest further—I saw that now. Orrik was too much bent on his course and the glory it would bring him.
But glory meant nothing to me now.
“We leave in a while to set up camp in the new place,” Orrik said. “It is well past deepest night now, and the dragons, if they are yet hunting, will soon return to their lair. We must hasten, for we will be two days stringing net to arrow and setting all in place. Not next night, but the following, you will call.” He turned and eyed me sharply, as if daring me to argue.
I had no wish to argue. I desired only to flee, to run, to escape into the hills.
“I … you are right, of course, my king. I am tired … perhaps sleep will clear my mind.” I turned my face up toward him and gave him what I hoped was a brave-looking smile.
“That’s my girl,” he said, softening, and chucked me lightly under the chin.
We left early the next morning, a quiet, torchless caravan across the moonlit valley. Orrik offered to let me ride on the dogsled, but I would not, for it also bore Flagra’s head and her heart and pig bladders full of her blood.
I skied along slowly in the company of Kazan and a friend of his, Thowain, who was a favorite of the king. Kazan carried my pack; Thowain offered to carry Skava, but I shook my head no. Although she still seemed distant, even the weight of her on my fist was a comfort. I gently scratched her feet; she turned to me, burbled, then went back to staring upriver.
The other warriors—even the hearth companions—seemed to have changed toward me. One offered me a draught from his drinking horn; another proffered me his cowl; many nodded and smiled.
The way was not hard; we followed the frozen river up the canyon, the way the dragons had come. The pain in my head had eased; now it was only a weight against the insides of my eyes. I pretended to listen to what Kazan and Thowain said, but my mind was tired and numb; it seemed to trudge wearily among memories and plans for escape and the paralyzing dread of calling anew.
At last we left the river and turned aside into a narrow gorge run through by a frozen creek. The rock walls stood well apart where we entered the gorge but curved closer farther on, until they pinched together at last, severed only by a narrow cleft. We stopped and made camp near the end.
I was sitting by one of the campfires, feeding Skava on my fist, when all at once there came a flash of light back the way we had come, and the sky flared pinkish red. Skava stretched herself up and looked about alertly. All stopped their talking and stared in silence.
“They came back for us,” one man muttered darkly.
“No,” another said, “I have heard they do this, set fire to their dead. It is nothing to do with us.”
They spoke in low voices, although they could not have been heard from so far. But there was something about that place that made us not want to break the hush.
Sleep came quickly when I retired to my tent. The past day’s work had truly drained me. When I awoke, the sun had already come and gone. I stumbled outside my tent to find Kazan feeding Skava. “I knew she must be hungry,” he said, “and I didn’t want her to wake you.”
I nodded, grateful for the sleep and yet a little jealous that Skava would consent to be fed by someone other than me. But she had come to Kazan the day before, and I was glad of that.
I retrieved my gauntlet from my tent and finished feeding her. My headache had gone. My thoughts came clearly now and hardened me in my resolve to escape.
It was yet quiet in the encampment. Some of the men slept; others ate or tended to their weapons or talked quietly among themselves. The purplish bruise of twilight spread across the southern sky, while dark clouds massed in the north. The air smelled of coming snow.
When I had done feeding both Skava and myself, I blocked her within my tent and made for the place where the walls of the gorge converged upon the frozen stream. I preferred to relieve myself out of sight of the encampment; the warriors were used to my habits now and did not question me as I clambered up the stream’s frozen path through the cliffs. I dared not go too far; that would excite suspicion, which I could ill afford. And yet I did venture far enough to assure myself that the creek seemed not to drop from above but rather to wind in gradual steps through a gap it had cut in the cliff rocks. Later, when all were sleeping, I could follow its path up and over the shoulder of this peak—and make good my escape.
Chapter 15
Fortune hath more twists in it than a hank of new-shorn fleece.
—KRAGISH FOLK SAYING
When I returned to the encampment, the last purplish traces of twilight had faded above the southwestern fells. Clouds rolled in from the north, blotting out the stars, drifting like windblown veils across the full moon’s face.
The men sat in clusters around scattered fires. Some oiled their bows and leather gear, others worked with the fishnetting; all conversed in lowered voices. Kazan rose and came to me. “Will you sit with us, Kara?” he asked. I nodded and followed him to a group of men gathered about one of the fires.
I bided there a time, drinking the brew the men offered me, eating the food they brought me. This they did one by one, as if by signal; when I had finished one draught, someone who had not yet offered appeared and filled my horn. I drank slowly and sloshed some of the brew over the edge, as I did not wish to blunt my alertness this night. Feigning interest in the dragon hunt, I asked Kazan to show me the knot by which arrow strings were attached to the netting. “I deemed you were the mistress of knots,” he said and then grinned—a bit sadly, I thought—and showed me anyway.
It seemed to me that the dragons might simply burn their way out of the netting, and, when I said as much, they rushed to explain it to me—the king’s plan. They would array themselves upon the cliffs, hauling up the netting, which they had attached by long strings to their arrows. As the dragons approached, the men would loose their arrows at once, and the netting would entrap the creatures.
“Like a flying snare,” one man said.
“More to entangle them than to enclose them,” added another.
“So long as their wings are pinned, it matters not if they breathe flame,” put in a third. “We’ll fill them full of iron.”
You will not, I thought grimly but said nothing.
There were two nets, it seemed: one for the first wave of dragons and the second for any that came later. “And after, we will lie in wait for the ones wh
o set fire to their dead,” Thowain said.
Kazan had remained silent during this exchange. Thowain, who sat to one side of me, leaned in and said softly, “Kazan asked to stand by your side in the canyon, but the king said his presence might warn off the dragons.” I flicked a glance at Kazan, but he did not look up from his knotting.
I stayed for a while, pretending to accede to this plan, not wanting to waken suspicion. At last I bade them all good night and rose to go to my tent. Kazan rose as well and walked with me.
The men were silent as we wended our way among the fires, but I felt their eyes upon me. Then a voice from somewhere behind called out: “Good fortune, Lady Kara.” I stopped, turned around to see who had spoken, but then came another voice—“Good fortune, Lady Kara,”—and another and another, building to a crescendo of grave, quiet voices. The king’s tent flap stirred; he came to stand in the opening as the men greeted me, as their voices trailed off into silence.
I stood still, overcome. A lump had risen in my throat; I could not trust myself to speak. At last I said, “And to you.”
I turned around and walked the short remaining distance to my tent; Kazan went before me and lifted the flap. Our glances snagged again, and this time his dark eyes were unguarded—stripped bare of all formality, abrim with unspoken emotion. They pierced me through.
I nodded briefly, ducked my head, and stepped inside my tent. I sat still in the dark, drawing the cold air deep inside me and pushing it out again, waiting for my heartbeat to calm.
I would never see him again.
Food.
That was what mattered, I told myself. Not Kazan, nor any of the others.
Food.
All else stood in readiness. I had flint and iron and tinder. I had candles—three good tallow ones that Gudjen had packed for me—and a fur for sleeping in. I had a dagger, and rope for snares, and a bow and seven arrows. I had a store of mice for Skava. If it came to the worst, I could release her to hunt for herself. But I could not rely upon her to feed me, and my seven arrows would not go far.
Flight of the Dragon Kyn Page 10
