by Voima
But it gave him no pleasure, and as he grew older the golden rings began to pinch his belly as he lay on them, and the silver swords pricked him as he moved. He became stiffer as he grew older so that flying was more difficult, but he never stopped growing until he stretched five hundred feet long. So he went no more in search of greater treasure, but every week flew a short distance to a nearby village and ate one of the villagers.
Then the king of that kingdom, a man named Thaar, heard of the dragon. “I shall no more allow this serpent to eat my people,” he said, for he was a young and strong king, the descendant of a line of glorious kings, and he desired honor more than wealth or even life. So he strapped on his helmet and shield, put his good sword Irontooth at his belt, and gave his crown to his queen for their infant son.
He sailed his ship alone along the coast to below the dragon’s lair. “Come out, bloody-mouthed serpent!” he called. He held up his sword with its long, triangular blade and rubies set into the hilt. “Come out and see what dragon teeth can do against Irontooth!”
And deep within his lair the old dragon heard him and stirred. He shook off the coins and jewels that clung to his scales and burst out of the mountainside. Like a whirlwind he descended on King Thaar’s ship, breaking the mast and smashing the timbers.
But when he poked around with his long snout in the sea, he could not find the king. Puzzled, he was pulling himself back up on land when he felt something sharp against his belly, something that bit deeper than he had ever been bitten. The dragon lifted himself into the air with a roar but it was too late. For King Thaar, swimming deep, had come up below the dragon, and the triangular blade of the good sword Irontooth had thrust into his belly. And as the dragon tried to fly all his guts writhed free.
Thaar stood on the shore, dripping wet and holding his sword high in triumph, but only for a second. For the dragon, dying and in fury, descended on him, racking him with his claws and crushing him beneath his bloody body; and, just before his serpent eyes closed for the last time, his teeth bit through the mail and into the king’s heart.
They buried King Thaar with his sword in a great mound that still stands by the sea, but the dragon they burned in a pyre whose flame could be seen for a hundred miles. Some of the treasure, the armbands and jeweled collars, they buried with the king; some, the golden chalices and unset gems, they offered at the Weaver’s cave to the lords of voima; but to keep away the curse of dragon’s gold, the rest they buried deep within the mountain. And there the treasure has remained ever since, untouched by dragon or man, for never since those days has there been a dragon so huge and fearsome, or a king so brave and full of honor.
CHAPTER EIGHT
1
“Roric has never taken my advice on anything yet,” said King Hadros. He paused for a long pull of ale, ruffled the ears of the hound that lay at his feet, then glowered at Kardan from under his eyebrows. “But it is the only lead we have. We know at any rate that he went north.”
“The Hot-River Mountains,” said Kardan slowly. “That is where the king we outlawed at the All-Gemot has his kingdom.” Hadros was back sitting drinking at the head of his own hall, with Kardan seated in the place of honor on the bench facing him. Both kings’ warriors crowded together on the rest of the benches. Firelight flickered across their faces.
Queen Arane sat beside Hadros, looking completely out of place yet also completely at ease, wearing a blue silk dress and sipping delicately from her ale horn. Hadros’s warriors and housecarls kept shooting the pair of them surreptitious glances and whispering whenever the king’s eye did not fall on them.
“The Princess Karin’s welfare must come before any concern for outlawed kings and their kingdoms,” she said in a friendly tone, patting Hadros on the arm. Her own warriors were drinking too, but they stayed constantly on the alert. “Even kings need to think about the relations of men and women sometimes as well as about battle and glory.”
Before eating, Hadros had ridden away from the castle, saying he would ask the Weaver where Roric had gone, “And I hope for once to get a straight answer!” He returned in half an hour glowering but in a fierce good humor, and with nothing to say about the Weaver. Kardan, who had learned already that the other king used humor to face situations he could not control, wondered what answer he had really gotten.
Kardan had drawn his sword casually as they sat down on the benches and had had it across his knees all evening. When the warriors were not speculating about Hadros and the queen, they appeared to be watching him. The only person there who seemed oblivious was Gizor One-hand, who had been using his bandaged arm to raise his ale horn unsteadily but continuously. No one sat within ten feet on either side of the old warrior.
Hadros looked across at King Kardan as though noticing his sword for the first time. “After what we’ve learned this evening,” he said conversationally, “I hope you realize that Roric did not carry your daughter away by force.”
Kardan drummed his fingers lightly on the steel. “And I hope you realize that he must have a powerful hold over her, for her to flee both her own father and the court here where she was raised.”
Hadros looked at him thoughtfully for a moment, then worked the golden armband off his arm, drew his own sword to slip its tip through the band, and reached it across the firepit.
But King Kardan carefully pushed the proffered armband away. It was made of solid gold and was heavily worked and decorated, with tiny bearded faces peeking out through intertwined vines and bunches of grapes—not a product of the northern kingdoms, this, but surely something won by looting in the south. It was probably worth as much as a small manor. “Like you, Hadros,” Kardan said quietly, “I do not take compensation for the life of my child. If she is dead, her killers will pay for their blood-guilt in their own blood.”
Hadros pulled down his eyebrows. “Do you suggest that I would consider this sufficient compensation for someone’s life, even a woman’s?” His tone was brusque, but to Kardan he seemed to be mocking him. He retrieved the armband and slid it back on. “I was merely making you a guest-gift. When I pay compensation, I pay it royally.”
His eyes narrowed further, and his next words came out measured and cold. “But while we are speaking of compensation, think of this: The only reason Roric and Karin would flee together, slaying good men in the process, is if they shared a guilty secret, such as having killed Valmar.”
The hall went completely silent except for the hissing of the fire. Kardan’s hand tightened on his hilt. The queen’s warriors stood up, as though casually, and moved toward the head of the hall. King Hadros’s two younger sons looked up sharply, their hands on their own swords, but their faces were anguished rather than angry. Good boys, Kardan had thought when introduced, reminding him of his own dead son when a few years younger.
Queen Arane laughed into the silence, a light, almost musical laugh. “Are the two of you then more interested in blaming each other than in finding Roric and Karin?” There was a brief pause when no one answered her, and the two kings kept their eyes locked on each other. Her warriors, Kardan realized, would tip the balance if it came to a fight. “Would you rather see each other dead,” she added as though the question was an amusing one, “or have your heirs back again?” The kings turned slowly to look at her.
“I realize Valmar is not here,” Arane said, “but from what you have told me there must be something to this story of his having left with the Wanderers. And you, Hadros, should know well there is a much better explanation for why Karin and Roric have fled. You yourself sent the message to capture them when they reached here—they are fleeing for their lives, probably thinking you have gone berserk, killed Valmar yourself, and are planning on finishing them off next.”
The suggestion was so outrageous that Kardan’s reply died on his lips, and he saw Hadros too struggling to find something to say.
The queen laughed again, squeezed Hadros’s hand affectionately, then sprang up to come around the fire pit with
a swish of her skirts and do the same to Kardan. Gizor roused himself as though about to speak but did not.
How did she do that? Kardan wondered. He found himself sliding his sword back into its sheath. The two kings’ warriors, who had been reaching for their weapons a moment earlier, now had their ale horns in their hands again.
“So let us follow them north,” said the queen, returning to her seat with a smile and a quick hand-motion to her own men. “Then we can question them as to what really happened. My ship will take us more swiftly up the coast than they can ride overland. We should be in those mountains before they are.”
“That troll-horse of Roric’s is fast,” Dag piped up in objection.
But Hadros paid no attention to his son. “We’ll take my ship, now that I have it back again,” he said thoughtfully. “Yours got us across the channel, Arane, but mine has more oars.” He had stopped making accusations, real or mocking, and seemed now interested only in planning for tomorrow. “We may catch them even before the mountains—there is that one spot where the peninsula narrows to almost nothing . . .”
“You have to take me with you, Father,” interrupted Dag again in a high, clear voice. The king cocked his head toward him. “If Valmar— If I am now your heir, then I— That is, I think that Roric might talk to me even if he wouldn’t answer questions from you.”
Gizor One-hand spoke at last, lurching to his feet and spilling his ale. “Do not let this woman muddy your thinking,” he said to King Hadros, his voice thick but not at all confused. “Roric killed your warriors, attacked me, and through us attacked you. We may ‘question’ the princess, but for him there can be only one fate. There is but one way a foresworn man may pay the blood-guilt against his lord, and that is with his own life.”
King Hadros’s warship came around the headland and straight into the teeth of a north wind. The two kings and Queen Arane stood out of the way while the sailors lowered the sail, its red canvas snapping furiously as though alive and fighting back. The helmsman shouted as oars splashed into the water, and the sailors bent their backs to pull.
Kardan wondered again about the “troll-horse” of Roric's. He realized he knew very little about this man, other than that Hadros had raised him from a foundling as his foster-son and had made him one of warriors. He did not like to think of him with Karin, but the image kept coming unbidden: a rough, unmannered man, the get of some slut on one of the smaller manors, whose hard hands might even at this moment be peeling Karin’s clothes from her body to satisfy his base lusts.
He should never have let Hadros take her as a hostage, he told himself, even if it meant all their immediate deaths. He had tried to deny it, but all the evidence suggested that she loved this man who might be half-troll himself. If she had never come to Hadros’s court, she would never have been brought up to think a man like Roric was better than the alternatives, would not now be galloping on a horse of voima far faster than this ship could possibly take them, far away into the northern mountains.
“Worried how far they’re ahead of us?” asked King Hadros good-humoredly. “My seamen are strong rowers, and the wind can’t stay against us for long. Riding double, they’ll be much slower than we are. And they’ll have to hunt—not many people live in the center of the peninsula, and they will have trouble finding food. We’ll catch them, all right.”
They were starting north along the west shore of the peninsula on which all the northern kingdoms were located. The coast on their right was dark and rocky, and to the left stretched unmeasured miles of open ocean, flashing green and silver in the sun.
“I can barely remember the last ten years, now that we’re underway at last,” said Hadros, grinning into the wind. “How could I have spent so long at peace? This is the real life for a man—feeling the waves, hearing the creak of the mast, chasing down an enemy in a fast ship with good warriors on board and good seamen at the oars.”
Kardan looked away, pretending he had not heard. He had no intention of becoming nostalgic for a war he had lost, and he would not let the other king goad him into a reply.
At the same time ten years ago that Kardan had sworn on steel and rowan to pay the tribute, Hadros had sworn to treat Karin as his own daughter—as long as the tribute was paid. He had been happy then to accept the black-bearded king’s word.
But should he have done so? Had Hadros already enjoyed the princess’s embraces many times, perhaps beginning when she was still a little girl? Had she then been passed to Valmar to teach him the ways of manhood, and had young Dag recently begun to take his turn as well?
Kardan closed his eyes and gritted his teeth. He reminded himself that when Karin returned home she had not seemed coarsened or abased. Hadros’s offer for her to marry his heir suggested that he still considered her a woman worthy of a king’s son, a maid who could command a fine bride-price rather than a discarded concubine. But she had never seemed completely happy to be home again, and especially in the few days before she disappeared her moods had been wild. She had denied any feeling for Valmar, although Hadros had said she had spent the night with him at least once, and she had kept it from her father when Roric arrived. He had to conclude bitterly that he just did not know his daughter—and if they did not find her he never would.
“I was thinking about Dag,” said Hadros beside him.
Kardan opened his eyes, startled as though the other king had read some of his thoughts.
“If Roric doubles back, I hope Dag will be able to direct the castle’s defenses himself. I even have doubts he’ll be able to manage the breaking of the yearling colts. It should have been Valmar left in charge. Well, I have thought a few times that my sons might use the toughening of war! And the boy may be right; it is possible that Roric would talk to him when he wouldn’t to anyone else.”
Hadros glanced toward the bow of the ship where Gizor One-hand reclined in front of the mast. “When he insisted on accompanying us,” he added in a lower tone, “I had no one else but Dag to put in authority. Roric knows all too well exactly how many warriors I have, and just what to do to spread them to maximum thinness.”
Queen Arane stood a few feet away, easily balancing herself against the ship’s motion with a hand on the rail, following their conversation with a faintly ironic smile on her lips.
Hadros turned to look again at Kardan. “You look terrible,” he said with another grin. “Not a good sailor, is that it? Is that why your own ship had not been made ready?”
Kardan shook his head hard. He did feel queasy, but this ship’s rising and falling through the waves had only a little to do with it. Besides thinking about Karin, he kept being reminded of his oldest son, dead so short a time, whose ship had risen and fallen through waves like these until it had smashed against the rocks and all had drowned.
He had thought then that he had nothing left to live for, having neither wife nor child, and a kingdom his only at Hadros’s whim. Karin, restored to him, had abruptly given his life purpose again, but she had also given him a whole new array of events to fear.
“Worried about the lass?” Hadros added, this time without the grin. “I am too. Did she tell you she took over the direction of my household when my queen died? As soon as I returned from the All-Gemot without her, I knew the castle would never be the same. I just wish she had the sense to stay with Valmar! Women,” he added in a mutter.
Kardan turned from him and tried watching the waves, rising higher than the ship before they fell, their tips edged in white, then decided it would be even better not to watch them.
But Hadros was not done. “Roric won’t hurt her, but neither of them can have any idea what they will find in the northern mountains. There are creatures of voima there that are worse than even those in the tales told late at night when the youngsters are asleep. I’ve been in those mountains—I know.”
Kardan seized him by the arm. He immediately tried to make it seem that he was just trying to keep his balance, but there was more to it. Without knowing Karin’
s mind now that she was a grown woman, without being able to see her fate, he desperately needed an ally. As much as he considered Hadros his enemy the other king kept appearing the only ally he had.
“When I encouraged Roric to go north,” added Hadros almost apologetically, “I had no idea he would take her with him. He’ll find plenty there—men and creatures of voima both!—for his restless spirit. I do hope he survives the adventure, however. For one thing, I personally want to wring his neck.”
They put in that evening at a cove King Hadros said he knew of old. He took the helm himself to guide them in between rocky islets, thick with brush, to a sheltered harbor as smooth as a pond. “We should be safe here,” he told Kardan. “We’re still too far south for any of the dangerous creatures of voima, and there never used to be any human settlements nearby.”
He sent several warriors ashore anyway to check for danger and to refill the water barrels. Gizor insisted on leading the party even though he had to be helped into the skiff. Queen Arane went with them, saying she wanted to stretch her legs after the day’s journey. The two kings stayed on board as the sailors rigged the awnings, then ate some of the smoked meat they had brought along while waiting for the shore party to return.
“Why do you think the queen insisted on coming along with two widowers looking for their heirs?” Kardan asked. “It seemed like more than a woman’s whim.” The sun had dipped low in the sky, its light glowing on the dark pines on the shore. For a brief half hour the two kings were alone, the only sounds the quiet conversation of sailors and warriors at the other end of the ship and the steady ripple of tiny waves against the hull.
Hadros, sitting with his stiff leg stretched out in front of him, shot Kardan a sharp glance but answered casually. “You were the one who seemed to think she had become friendly with Karin.”
“But why, since Karin had not fled to her court after all, should the queen have any further interest in our affairs?”
