The Dragon Hammer (Wulf's Saga Book 1)

by Tony Daniel

  “Yes. How will you get into the castle?”

  “Wulf’s got a secret way,” Rainer answered with the slightest grin. “And I’ve got climbing to do.”

  “I know you think you can climb anything, Rainer, but you must be very careful,” Ulla said.

  “I promise.”

  “And both of you take a bath,” Ulla said.

  Rainer rose and made a small bow toward her. “M’lady.”

  Suddenly, the charcoal chute clattered as if someone were shaking it. The great hook rattled in its latching ring, but did not come out.

  “What the cold hell was that?” Grer said. “I must’ve pulled it shut unevenly or something.”

  “Maybe,” Wulf murmured. He stared at the chute, dreading to see it rattle again. But nothing happened.

  Rainer touched his shoulder and broke him out of his trance. “Come on, it was the wind,” he said. “You need sleep. So do I.”

  Wulf allowed himself to be turned away from the charcoal chute. But as he left the smith’s shop, he could swear he heard the faintest whisper from nowhere, from everywhere.

  “Thou know’st,” said the whisper.

  No one else seemed to notice but him. So maybe it was his imagination.

  Maybe.

  Chapter Nine:

  The Trance

  Saeunn stood by the window of her bedchamber staring up into the sky. It was still dark, but there was the faintest trace of dawn on the eastern horizon. The window was open and a chilly wind was blowing. Her white cotton curtains billowed around her. Her blonde hair was loosened from her braids. It whipped about. Saeunn didn’t pay it any mind.

  Ulla had been right. She had only meant to glance out and say good night to the moon. Instead, she’d gotten awestruck by the moonlight, and by the stars twinkling.

  Saeunn shivered. She’d stood in the same spot for hours feeling the delicate weight of moonbeams on her skin. She had been listening to the stars sing the Dragon Song.

  Tonight there was unrest. The dragons were having troubled dreams, and the song was not calming them very well. The stars did not seem to know why this was happening. Or if they did, it was something they could not say to her because she was so young. But she did catch one part of the song. It was the part that had frightened her since she was a very young elfling.

  Hidden in the dragon clutch an ancient evil spirit lurks.

  Made of emptiness, it stays wherever dragon life is slain.

  It would steal the dragon thunder,

  it would kill them as they slumber.

  Frustrating not to understand why they sang this.

  But then there was the calm moon, splashing her light to the Earth.

  Planets, comets, Sun and Moon,

  keep the dragons’ world in tune.

  Standing in the shower of moonlight, Saeunn thought about her future.

  There was the Plan. The hundred-year plan that every elf child of Amberstone was supposed to follow. Visit the other elf-kin in the Old Countries. Learn their skills. Healing. Mind-speaking. Spend days, even years, talking with your star. Listen to the Dragon Song and try and try to understand how it holds the world together. Then, when you are ready, truly ready, return home and stare into the giant eye of your dragon, the Drake of Amberstone.

  You were supposed to find your purpose in life there.

  So far, she had followed the Plan exactly. She’d spent years learning healing in the Old Countries. She’d lived with the Smoke Elves and studied their mind-speak and tree-talk. Now she was in the Mark of Shenandoah on a diplomatic mission. Her family had trusted her to carry it out.

  She wanted to. She liked doing things well. She wasn’t particularly proud of that fact, because most things came naturally to her and you couldn’t really be proud of just having a talent. She did feel like she was doing a good thing when she was using the talents that the stars gave her in the best way she could.

  And so far she had done what she was supposed to here in Raukenrose. She’d been a true elfling when she’d first come. She’d had the appearance of a human child of perhaps six. The following years had been time for inner growth as well as outer—the elven version of puberty. Using the healing skills and bodily understanding she’d picked up from the Old Country elves, over the past ten years she had let herself mature into a teenager in appearance to match her changing personality.

  She’d also studied the ways of men. She’d learned how human children behaved, and what humans thought of elves. She’d gotten to know the country and the people very well.

  Why was she feeling uneasy tonight?

  Her window faced southwest, and this morning the moon was setting to the south, so that Saeunn had a full view of it. Saeunn closed her eyes and felt the last moonbeams reach her before it sank under the horizon. As soon as the half moon disappeared, its spell on her was broken.

  Saeunn sighed. She would sleep now. She didn’t absolutely have to, because being in a moon trance was almost as good as sleep. But she had a full day ahead of her.

  Soon it would be time for her to leave Raukenrose. She did want to get back to Amberstone Valley, her birthplace. It was a place where parts of the living, dreaming dragon stuck out through the surface of the Earth. In Amberstone Valley, the ground itself churned with dragon heat. Muddy fountains there seethed with sulfurous dragon breath. Boiling water touched by dragon fire erupted in geysers into the sky. Even the river that formed the valley steamed.

  In Amberstone Valley, you could gaze into the half-open eye of a dreaming dragon.

  Dragons sang the Earth alive,

  and all that breathes beneath the skies.

  Every soul born slave or queen

  comes from the stuff of dragon dreams.

  At the same time, she didn’t want to leave Shenandoah.

  She had friends here—good friends, for the first time in her life. She cared deeply about her Raukenrose family. She had brothers and sisters of her own, but they were much older. Her nearest sister, Bealle, was one hundred fifty years Saeunn’s senior. She loved Bealle, but the two of them didn’t really have very much in common other than being related.

  But the von Dunstigs were human, and they would all be dead in a hundred years. She would live on. Her parents had warned her to stay away from emotional ties with humans.

  Some elves were really good at that kind of detachment. She wasn’t.

  The more she came to understand humans and…well, whatever Ravenelle was, with her body given over to the Roman mold…the more she liked how hot these mortals’ feelings could be. Each of them was like a raging fire inside.

  Elves might have starlight for souls, but the souls of men were bits of the soul of a dragon.

  She was as drawn to that inner fire as much as she was to the moonlight.

  Especially Wulf.

  The future was always leaking into the present for elves. When she got back to Amberstone she could ask the elders why her feelings had developed so strongly for humans. That was what the elder elves were for. Advice. Understanding. Peace.

  When she got back to Amberstone, she would have a lot to ask the elders.

  If I get back to Amberstone, she thought.

  She shivered.

  Why is it so cold in here?

  As if in answer, a line from an ancient elven verse Saeunn knew suddenly flowed into her mind.

  Karltundelkan nalith Ebereth Serian.

  It was a piece of the old tale of the elf maiden who had given away her star to raise her lover from the dead. There was an Old High Kaltish translation of the phrase that Saeunn knew.

  Then darkly fell Amberly Reizend.

  She shivered again.

  My star? Were you singing to me?

  Yes, my child, my own.

  Amberly Reizend was an elf woman who had done what many considered to be impossible. She had transferred her star—which was an elf’s soul—to her lover, who had succumbed to one of the few diseases that could kill an elf. Then she died.

&n
bsp; The swan at the dawn

  With its heartbroken call

  Is the echo of Amberly Reizend

  The dim moonlight seemed to pool in swirls of light and darkness before her eyes. Saeunn could see it now: turmoil gathering in her future. But she couldn’t see past it.

  My star, my own, why do you sing this song?

  Her star didn’t reply for a very long time. Finally she spoke. Her only words were the same lines from the verse, in Saelith, the language of the elves.

  Karltundelkan nalith Ebereth Serian.

  As suddenly as it had begun, Saeunn’s shivering stopped. The Sun, still below the eastern horizon, brightened the sky.

  But the words from the poem echoed in Saeunn’s mind. Was it a warning, a prophesy? Or just a pretty song?

  Then darkly fell Amberly Reizend.

  PART TWO

  Chapter Ten:

  The Master

  Wulf woke up lying on the floor of his bedchamber wrapped in a blanket. Getting to sleep had not been a problem last night after his return. He’d been completely exhausted. He’d stripped off the fustian cloak and thrown it in a bundle in a corner. The dead smell had still lingered, so he’d tossed the rest of his clothes in the pile, too. Then, not wanting to ruin his down mattress by the stink he still carried on his skin, he’d stripped off a blanket, wrapped himself up in that, and fallen asleep on a bearskin rug near the fireplace.

  He’d dropped off instantly. But when he opened his eyes to the morning light, it all came back to him full force. The land-bond where there should have been only the slightest feeling. His sister’s being with, of all people, his friend Grer, the smith.

  The draugar attack.

  It mixed in his head like some horrible pudding until he groaned trying to keep it straight.

  First things first. He needed to get the stink of the dark thing completely off him. Tomorrow was the usual bath day for the week, so there would be no tubs ready. It would have to be a cat bath or nothing.

  As if in answer to his desire, Grim came in with a half-barrel urn of hot water for Wulf’s washing bowl. The faun was really strong, even though he didn’t look that muscular at first glance. Wulf figured that it was in the way Grim used his backward shaped legs to lift. It gave him perfect balance, and he could keep the weight on his haunches and not on his arms that way. The servant set the filled washbasin down on the rug beside Wulf. As usual, Grim didn’t utter a word.

  Wulf looked around. His clothes from the night before were gone, probably taken away by Grim while he still slept. Grim had lit the fire as well. When Wulf peeled himself from the blanket, his room was warm.

  Grim went to stand silently beside the door. Wulf sat up cross-legged on the bearskin rug. He soaped up and bathed with a sponge of dry peat moss, trying to keep the run-off in the washbowl, but not caring if he slopped water all over the floor in the process. He needed to get clean.

  He asked for more water from Grim, and dunked his head entirely before scrubbing down and rinsing once again.

  Wulf wrapped himself in a newly washed blanket and went to change into the clothes that Grim had laid out for him on the bed.

  Before Wulf changed, he pulled the blanket around his shoulders. He took a long drink from a cup of the coffee Grim had set on the side table. Perfect. Grim had also brought in a glass of blackberry juice, and Wulf downed it. He hadn’t realized how thirsty he was. He got dressed in light gray pants and a white linen shirt. Over this he wore a green and gray wool surcoat, which was a sleeveless vest that fell about to the middle of his calves.

  When he was done, he stood straight and let Grim tidy up his rumpled appearance. The faun brought the surcoat front together and tied on Wulf’s belt. Wulf’s hair was beginning to dry, and the faun brought him a whalebone comb to run through it.

  Grim opened the window shutters. Through the glass, Wulf could see that it was well past sunrise. The bell in Allfather Cathedral must have rung the morning bell tolls, dammern and melken. They had hadn’t woken him up. Today was Sturmersday, which meant he’d missed going out with his father. His father went either hunting or falconing on Sturmersdays, but early. Today it was falconing. He’d be out with the birds till noon. Wulf had a standing invitation to skip morning lessons and come along. Wulf’s father, Duke Otto, believed that bringing his children on hunts was as important as anything the lore masters had to teach them.

  I could have gotten out of morning lessons, Wulf thought. Curse it to blood and bones.

  Now he would have to explain his absence to the tutor.

  He was starving. Grim came to the rescue again with breakfast on a large platter, which he put on Wulf’s desk. Wulf sat down at his chair to eat, while Grim knelt and pulled on Wulf’s wool socks and boots. Breakfast was two eggs over easy, their yolks running as Wulf liked them. There was fresh-baked bread to sop with, along with three links of buffalo sausage and a bowl of grits. Wulf shoved all of it down, barely taking time to chew. He drank two more cups of coffee to top it off.

  Wulf felt like a new man when he was done—that is, until he saw his reflection in the looking glass inside his wardrobe door. His eyes had dark circles under them. There were a couple of patches of charcoal dust left on his forehead. Grim, standing nearby, handed Wulf a damp cloth without having to be asked, and Wulf rubbed the smudges off.

  Rainer raised his eyebrow in greeting when Wulf came into the classroom. First things first. Wulf excused himself to the tutor, Master Albrec Tolas. Tolas scowled at him, then nodded his acceptance of the apology. Wulf took a seat in a corner chair.

  Albrec Tolas was a gnome. He was barely taller than a seven- or eight-year-old human. But he was not a child. He had the round features of his people, but you would never think of Tolas as chubby or slow. He kept himself fit with lots of exercise. Despite the reputation of gnomes for being pleasant, easygoing creatures, Tolas was downright ruthless as a teacher. In his classroom you learned—or else.

  Wulf had found out about what that meant when Tolas, recognizing Wulf’s gift for memorizing the sagas, had set him to work on the king of them all, Andul’s Saga. It was Wulf’s favorite. What Wulf liked most about the story was that it didn’t have much magic in it. It did have lots of battles, sword fighting, poisoning, and drinking from skulls.

  But there in Andul’s Saga, near the very beginning, and for no reason Wulf could figure out, was a weird list of names. The skald, the teller of the saga, was supposed to recite these to get things going. This list was known as the “Roll Call of the Dwarves.” Nobody was sure why it was there. But, for nearly a thousand years, the Roll Call had been stubbornly passed from storyteller to storyteller, memorized and re-memorized.

  Wulf had figured he could skip the dwarves. Nope. After class one day, he’d gotten instructions to meet the tutor in the castle library afterward. Wulf remembered that his stomach had been grumbling—and he was going to miss midday meal.

  The gnome was also the castle librarian. The library was filled with rune-covered scrolls in bins. On shelves were vellum codexes, and a few books made with papyrus pages. This was Tolas’s office while at the castle. And this was where Wulf began to learn the Roll Call of the Dwarves.

  Wulf and Tolas had sat down at an old oak table in the library. Tolas had Wulf spread his right hand out on the table. Tolas asked for Wulf’s dagger—it was the same dagger that was now stuck in the oak tree at Allfather Square—and Wulf handed it over.

  The gnome had then played mumblety-peg with Wulf’s fingers. He started poking through the space between the fingers with the dagger point, going back and forth, back and forth, as fast as Wulf could call off the names of the dwarves. He’d stab into the wooden table between one of Wulf’s fingers and then the next as Wulf called off the list he was supposed to have memorized from Andul’s. When Wulf missed one or got one out of order, Tolas missed, too. He delivered a small but painful prick to the skin of a finger. It wasn’t long before Wulf’s fingers had little blood roses all over them.

&nb
sp; Wulf had threatened to tell his father. Tolas had taken a puff from his pipe, then sat back and dared him to. This had shut Wulf up on the matter. Tolas had probably known it would. Wulf hated to ever appear to be whining around Duke Otto. He spread his hand back out on the table.

  “So you want to continue, von Dunstig?” said Tolas. “Or should we just cut your fingers off now because you’ll never get it?”

  “I’ll get it. Go on,” Wulf had demanded. “The first one is Lori!”

  “Good,” the gnome said, and stabbed down expertly and powerfully between Wulf’s thumb and forefinger. “Next?”

  “Swert.”

  Pop, went the dagger between forefinger and long finger.

  “Nim,” Wulf said. “Slanhanker.”

  Pop. Pop.

  “Fremdeb, Kor,” Wulf said, even faster. Tolas did not miss a beat. The gnome was really good at this. “Those are the Five Hewers, masters of copper and bronze.”

  “Yes, now give me the shapers of arrow and spear.”

  “Gelbert, Knitbert, Shem, Sothi—”

  Pop, pop, pop, pop went the dagger into the wood of the table.

  “And…and, and, and . . .” Wulf tried to remember. The dagger hovered over his pinkie.

  Egbert, Ilbert, Ulbert…no, no, no…something “bert”. . .

  The dagger began to descend.

  Not fair! I didn’t get it wrong yet! I didn’t get it. . .

  The dwarf’s name came to him.

  “Unbert!”

  Pop. The dagger struck precisely to the outside of his pinkie, missing it by a hair’s breadth.