Anja took packs from each of them and flung them across to Halfdan. The torches were trickier, but Fridrik managed to toss two of them across for Halfdan to catch. Anja paced back and, holding a torch in one hand, ran forward and jumped across with a squeal.
“Now you,” Fridrik said to Birgit. “See how easy it was?”
She said nothing as she walked back a few steps and prepared herself.
“Take a few deep breaths,” Fridrik said.
She nodded and did as he suggested. Then she bounded forward and made the leap. Anja caught her in her arms and they giggled together.
Fridrik wiped sweat from his brow and grinned in relief. He adjusted his grip on the torch and ran forward to jump across the gap.
Anja collected them together in a huddle. “There should be one more larger cavern ahead, then a short passage leading into the lair. We should exchange our torches for candles now.”
They did as she suggested, lighting the candles with the torches before dropping the torches into the crevasse.
Halfdan led the way again, sneaking forward. Shortly they came to the final room before the lair. The room was large and dark even with the candles. Water dripped and pooled among the bones of rats and other small animals.
Fridrik paused to examine what looked like a man’s ribcage. He caught an odd movement with the corner of his eye, something high up the wall of the cavern. His heart pounded in his chest as he recognized the silhouette—the long, sinuous neck; the terrible, spiky head. Dragon! How can that be? Panic surged in his breast. He tried to shout, but his throat betrayed him. No one else seemed to have noticed the beast yet, so focused were they upon the way ahead. There’s a ledge of some sort up there!
He swallowed and found his voice—“’Ware!” he cried, but it was too late.
The dragon’s head plunged downward and its terrible mouth snapped shut over the head of one of his friends below. It jerked upward, carrying the figure into the air, its legs cycling and arms flailing. With an audible crunching sound, the dragon bit through the neck and the heaving body fell to the floor, blood spurting.
* * *
Dragon! Birgit couldn’t believe her eyes. It was supposed to be in the great hall beyond. She saw the awful plunge of the dragon’s head, the death of one of her friends, and panic flooded through her like a molten river. She dropped the candle and fled.
Her arm struck someone as she ran. She felt fingers dig at her side and heard a shout, distant, as if from down a deep well. Her mind refused to work. All she could think was—Dragon! Dragon! Run!
A tiny portion of her mind tickled at her, reminding her that she should feel shame, that she had responsibilities to friends and couldn’t desert them. The overriding part of her mind shoved those thoughts aside and forced her to run faster.
There was another shout behind her and she felt that someone was chasing her. Through the fear her mind teased her again with another thought: I’m forgetting something import—
Her foot came down on nothingness.
Her throat jerked out a strangled scream as she pitched forward headfirst, arms flailing. The back of her shoulders and head slammed into stone, followed by her buttocks and feet. Her head rang and she felt consciousness slipping away as she plunged through cold air.
* * *
Fridrik couldn’t believe what was happening. There couldn’t be a dragon here. He’d seen the dragon with his own eyes as a small child. It was much too large to fit inside this cave. Wasn’t it? And now one of his friends was dead.
He wasn’t sure which one, but he knew it was Birgit who had just slammed into him as she ran back down the passage through which they had come.
He gave chase. His candle went out as he ran and darkness enveloped him. He heard Birgit’s footsteps ahead of him, and he wondered how she could manage to flee without being able to see. Ice ran up his spine as he remembered the chasm, and just then he heard Birgit shriek. The sound cut off almost as quickly as it began. Fridrik halted and reached his arms out to feel for the passage walls. Gods! She’s gone!
With a growing sense of doom, he turned around in the inky blackness. He could see nothing, but there were terrible sounds from the darkness ahead. Gnawing sounds. Chewing sounds. Every instinct inside him told Fridrik to turn back, regardless of there being no other way out. He told himself that one of his friends yet lived, he hoped, frightened and alone in the gloom ahead. Could they somehow sneak by the dragon while it was distracted by its feasting?
He crouched low and snuck forward, trailing the fingers of his right hand against the wall. Dim light appeared ahead. A few steps farther and he saw a guttering candle lying on the stone floor. He slowed some more. Somewhere ahead, over the horrific sound of the dragon making a meal out of one of his lifelong friends, he heard the sound of weeping. That’s Anja! It must be. So the one he’d seen slain by the dragon — it was Halfdan.
Fridrik reached down to retrieve the candle. When he stood upright again, he saw a vision worse than any nightmare.
At the far edges of the light, he could just make out the black lump of Halfdan’s body. The dragon’s snout was buried in his friend’s belly, rooting and chewing as if it were the first meal it had had in ages.
The sound of weeping came from somewhere ahead and on the right. Wary of attracting the dragon’s attention, Fridrik edged forward until he saw a curtain of stone that cascaded from the ceiling, forming a small wall that divided the room. Anja huddled on the floor with her back to the stone screen, her body shaking from the strength of her sobbing.
Fridrik stepped behind the screen of stone and felt relief that the dragon couldn’t directly see him. He crouched next to Anja and put a hand on her shoulder. She gave a violent jerk and let out a cry.
“Shhh! Anja, it’s me,” he whispered.
Anja flung her arms around him, her tears wetting his face.
“Anja, we have to go now. Quietly.”
He felt her head shaking. “Can’t...can’t...”
Fridrik gripped her arms and pulled her upright. “We must,” he hissed. “The dragon is...distracted for the moment. We might make it.”
“They’re dead, and it’s all my fault.”
“It’s our fault. Let’s get out of here alive and face up to our debt.”
Anja pressed harder against him, but this time he felt her nod.
“Where’s your candle?” he said.
“I don’t know. Lost it.”
Fridrik cupped a hand over his own candle to shield the light from the dragon. “Follow me.”
He slipped ahead. The screen of stone ended and he stopped and searched the gloom. He thought he saw a darker spot in the wall and prayed that it was the passage that led to the great hall. He pointed. “Do you see?”
She nodded.
“I have the candle. Crawl forward until you find the passage, then I’ll join you.”
“I’m scared.”
“So am I. Go.”
Anja looked in the direction of the feeding dragon, then took a deep breath and crawled toward the dark hole in the wall. Fridrik counted his heartbeats as they thudded in his chest. He expected the dragon to strike at any moment. Or perhaps it would flood the room with its acid breath. Anja made it to the hole and vanished.
Fridrik blew out his breath and checked to ensure his hand covered the fluttering candle flame. He whispered a prayer to the gods, then scurried toward the passage. Moments later he was panting next to Anja.
“We mustn’t stop here,” she whispered. “It may decide to return to its lair. Let’s find the way out.”
Fridrik pressed a hand to her back to urge her onward. He shielded the candle with his body, but it provided enough light for them to see the way forward. A mere ten paces on, they felt the air change and the walls fell away to either side.
“The great hall,” Anja murmured.
* * *
Birgit plunged into a torrent of icy water. The wind was knocked out of her, but her mind became alert
again. She couldn’t orient herself. Which way is up? She felt the current dragging her along and her shoulder scraped against stone. She tried to get her feet under her or at least to the side where her shoulder had met the stone. She could no longer hold her breath. Her feet met stone and she thrust hard against it. Her head broke free of the water and she gasped for air in the moment before she plunged beneath the water again.
Birgit had long been a fine swimmer. Now that she knew which way was up, she dog paddled until her head again broke the surface. She saw nothing but darkness, and the sound of rushing water was almost deafening. The water plunged over a drop and her heart leapt into her throat. One leg struck something hard and a throbbing pain jagged up to her hipbone. She thrashed her way to the surface again.
This time she could see a little, as some sort of dimly glowing moss grew in patches on the walls. She saw that the rushing stream was about ten paces across here. There were boulders to either side and some in the stream itself. She was lucky not to have struck any of them yet. The patches of glowing moss nearly disappeared. Just before darkness enveloped her, Birgit thought she saw the stream whip around a bend to the left ahead. She swam to the right, hoping she could catch herself on something as the stream turned.
She fetched up hard against the stone bank, and her ribs protested painfully. Her hands scrabbled for purchase. One hand caught on a small boulder, and she lunged for it desperately with her other hand. Her grip held, and she managed to halt her forward momentum. Her legs trailed out ahead in the flood. She pulled hard with her arms to get her feet back underneath her.
For some time she remained where she was, her body weakening with numbness from the cold. I’ve got to get out!
Her arms trembling with fatigue, she pulled as hard as she could. She inched her chest up out of the water, but her strength gave out and she fell back in. She nearly lost her grip on the boulder. She panted several times and willed strength back into her arms. One of her feet found a tiny ledge on the wall under the water, so she latched onto it with both feet and thrust upward as hard as she could.
This time she was successful and managed to get her buttocks up onto the rocky bank. After a few deep breaths, she clawed her way farther onto the ledge, dragging her feet from the water. Her left hand brushed something strange that didn’t feel like stone, but she was too exhausted to care. Birgit pulled her shivering body into a fetal position and drifted into unconsciousness.
* * *
To their right Fridrik saw sunlight limning the cracks where the huge entrance doors stood. His eyes adjusted to the gloom in the vast hall, and he gasped at what was revealed.
Lying curled about itself in the center of the hall’s floor lay the dragon he remembered from long ago. It was like a dark mountain filling the hall. The candle fell from his nerveless grasp. Narrow beams of sunlight from the doors dimly illuminated the creature’s enormous spiky head, and Fridrik kept expecting one of its plate-sized eyes to open.
Anja took a step toward the dragon. “Look,” she whispered.
Fridrik had reached out to stop her, but now he saw what she had seen. He strode forward until he could see more clearly. The scales of the dragon’s flanks had collapsed inward and in some places were torn away, revealing ribs larger than the beams on the chieftain’s ship. “It’s dead,” he said, and heard the awe in his own voice.
Anja approached the dragon and trailed a hand over the ebon scales. “I didn’t know dragons could die of old age.”
Fridrik forced himself to approach the dragon’s head. Even in death it was frightening, as if at any moment the massive jaws might snap open and strike at him. It took an effort of will to force his trembling hand to caress one of the yellowed teeth, dagger-sharp and as long as his forearm. He stared up at the terrible void where an eye should be and shuddered. “We shouldn’t linger,” he said. “The other dragon may still return.”
“This dragon had young,” she said, in awe.
“Or more than one. Let’s go.”
“Wait. We should search for Kathkalan’s remains. We cannot make reparations for what happened to Birgit and Halfdan, but we could return Aivgaifa to our people.”
“Are you crazy? If we get ourselves killed by that dragon, no one will ever know what happened to any of us! Let’s go home. Your father can decide what to do about the dragon’s progeny.”
Anja looked like she wanted to go exploring. Fridrik grasped her arm. “I’m going. Leave the talisman for another day.” He walked toward the entrance doors. He prayed Anja would have the sense to follow.
He expected the young dragon to attack at any moment, so he breathed a sigh of relief when he reached the doors. He wondered if he would need to find a secret lever or push-stone in order to open them, but when he pressed upon the ancient steel of one of the doors, it swung open easily as if on heavily greased hinges. Light and color flooded inward, and he saw the red ball of the sun nearing the horizon. He gave a start when Anja’s hand fell on his shoulder.
“You’re right, let’s go,” she said. “It’ll be a long walk through the darkness to get home.”
Fridrik closed the door. “I dread facing our parents, but most of all, I fear facing Birgit and Halfdan’s.”
“There’s nothing for it,” Anja said. “The blame should be mine.”
“I didn’t have to go along.”
Anja gave Fridrik a long look, then began picking her way through the rubble of the ancient roadway.
* * *
Darkness, chattering teeth, cold stone, and the roar of water were the entirety of the world for Birgit when she woke. Her body was wracked by shivers. I’ll die of cold long before I starve, that’s for sure.
She pulled her knees up to her chest and wrapped her arms about them. Gravel bit into her side, but she welcomed the pain. It reminded her that she yet lived.
She was surprised to realize that there were shades to the darkness. She thrust herself to a sitting position and stared about. The underground river raged by from her left to her right. It was to the left that she saw the lighter shading to the darkness. She recalled the glowing mosses. She could see none from here, but she suspected that the lighter coloring of the darkness must come from such moss.
A sharp pain in her left leg made her temporarily forget the cold. She slid a hand over the spot from which the pain radiated, hoping it was merely a bruise. Her head and back ached as well from slamming into the wall during the fall, but they didn’t feel as bad as her leg.
The shivers took control again and her wet clothing didn’t help matters. Where am I? Buried beneath a mountain! Trapped and lost forever!
These thoughts did no good, so she decided that moving around might at least warm her a little. She began to feel about with her hands. Cold, slimy rock was all she touched at first. Thick patches of moss covered much of the rock, though sadly not the glowing kind. She reached through the air in the direction away from the rushing waters, but her hands encountered no resistance. She bit her lip against the pain and slid herself forward into the darkness. Her right hand encountered something strange, and she recalled having felt it just before she lost consciousness.
Moaning with pain, she crawled closer to whatever it was she had felt. She reached out with both hands and explored the area in front of her. Her right hand touched something soft. Her left hit something hard, though not stone. She felt confused for a time, unsure what to examine first. She imagined that if she let one go it might vanish. She grasped both objects and pulled. The soft substance in her right hand gave easily, tearing away noiselessly. The object in her left hand was long and thin; it resisted her pull as if something larger was attached to it.
She released the harder object and used both hands to feel the softer. It felt like thick cloth, though it crumbled easily and tore at the barest touch. The cloth was too decayed to be of any use, which was unfortunate considering how cold she felt. She dropped the cloth and turned her attention to the long, hard object. She slid her hands in b
oth directions along its length. Her left hand came to a break, a place where it had snapped like a branch of a tree. Her right hand encountered something cold and hard. She grabbed it, for it was yielding, and she realized what it must be. Chain mail! The realization made her shudder for a reason other than the cold. This is a body. That must have been bone I was touching. If this person could do nothing but die here, what does that mean for me?
She got to her knees, ignoring the pain that shot through her leg. Stretching out her arms, she patted her hands over the corpse, seeking to understand just how it lay. The body lay with its legs splayed out to Birgit’s left, its arms pulled up close to its chest. The skull still had long, brittle strands of hair, and she yanked her hand back in revulsion as soon as she touched it. Poor fellow! I should feel sympathy for him, not disgust.
One hand had found something that could only be a sword. She had brushed the hilt first and had tentatively drawn her hand along the length of crumbling leather that was the scabbard. What good would a sword do me here, even if it were not rusty and useless? I’d be far happier with a nice cloak.
A wave of hopelessness descended on her. Tears welled up, and she thrust the heels of her palms into her eyes to dry them. Breathe! You’re not dead yet. Perhaps I can be luckier than he was.
She remembered the snapped leg bone and wondered just what had happened to the man. She felt along the legs again and discovered that both had been broken in several places. He must have had tremendous strength to be able to pull himself up here.
Birgit was seized by a fit of shivering again, so she squeezed herself into a tight ball and rubbed her arms briskly. Something hard dug into her arm. She fumbled for it with numb fingers and found a cold metallic hoop. She tried to pull the object closer, but something resisted. With her thumb she felt a tiny chain running from the object. A necklace?
The Dragon Chronicles Page 18
