by Resa Nelson
Without flinching, the woman continued her meticulous swaddling of the infant in her lap. She said, “Oh, that was quite frightening.”
The little girl giggled in delight.
“Now, back inside with you. You know the rule: children must be heard and not seen.”
Still giggling, the girl skipped back inside.
For a moment, Astrid remembered her own childhood, tucked safely inside Temple’s smithery, now hers. It took many years of practice to hold back one’s thoughts so that they wouldn’t change others, and children were kept out of the way of adults until they’d mastered that skill.
Astrid watched the woman tie the ends of the same cloth swaddling her infant around herself, binding the baby to her chest. “Where do Randim and Lenore live?”
Finally, the woman looked up at the sight of the ax in Astrid’s hand. Wide-eyed, the blacksmith’s wife placed each hand on the doorway as if blocking the entrance to her home with her body. “Are there dragons about?”
Astrid shook her head. “Just a thief.”
Heaving a sigh of relief, the blacksmith’s wife pointed to a cottage across from her own.
Tightening her grip on the ax, Astrid stomped toward it, not caring if Sigurthor heard her coming. No one could escape the wrath of a dragonslayer.
But she opened the door and found the cottage empty.
CHAPTER 11
Astrid’s gaze swept the empty cottage, searching for any sign of Sigurthor’s presence. Although the odor of the hearth fire and smoke permeated the cottage, her nose twitched at the scent of old sweat and dust common to traveling merchants. If he wasn’t here, why could she still smell him?
A blanket lay in a puddle next to the hearth. Astrid raised a handful of it to her face and inhaled. It reeked with the awful stink of the merchant who must have stolen her sword.
Most everyone in Guell already toiled in the fields to bring in the last harvest, which meant Sigurthor had left the village. But he was much older than Astrid, heavier, and slower. If she hurried, Astrid could probably catch up with him by afternoon. Only one dirt road led from Guell, and it eventually forked in three directions. Sigurthor might take any one of them.
Outside, the infant’s sharp cry pierced the air. Looking through the open doorway, Astrid saw the blacksmith’s wife walk back and forth, the swaddled baby still wrapped close against her chest, until the cry dissolved into contented gurgles.
Of course.
Still holding onto her ax, Astrid picked up the blanket with her free hand before she left the cottage where Sigurthor had spent the night.
* * *
By the time Astrid entered the dragonslayer’s camp outside of Guell at mid-morning, the sun had barely climbed above the treetops, casting long shadows onto the open ground beyond the forest’s edge. The sky appeared cloudless and the sun warmed the back of her neck despite the icy ocean breeze sweeping through the camp.
Guilt gnawed at Astrid. She knelt by the small stones encircling the remains of past fires, now littered with broken eggshells. Putting down the folded blanket and ax, she freed the leather gloves tucked into her belt and slipped them on. She picked up only the blanket. She stood and headed toward her sleeping shelter. Kneeling outside it, she gazed into the shelter and said, “There you are.”
A tiny lizard scampered from the shelter, jumped up, and clamped its jaws around one of her gloved fingers. The pressure of his bite felt like a slight pinch, and his teeth were too small to pierce the leather.
“No,” Astrid said firmly. She recognized the lizard immediately: she’d named it after watching it hatch. “Let go, Smoke. You must not bite people. It will kill them.”
Smoke’s eyes brightened, seemingly in recognition, while he continued to dangle from her finger.
Before she could react, a second tiny lizard darted up her bent leg, flung itself up onto her arm, and sped to her hand, where it nosed her gloved fingertips before clamping onto one with its mouth. The second lizard’s eyes were pale amber.
Astrid smiled. “Where there’s Smoke, there’s Fire.”
As she eased the hand with two lizards dangling from it to the ground, she reached into the folds of the blanket with her other hand and withdrew a chunk of lizard meat. She suspected the hatchlings smelled the scent of it on her gloves, and now she would lure them with the real thing.
Sure enough, Smoke and Fire quickly released her fingertips and pounced on the meat the moment she tossed it toward them.
Unease crept into her belly. Her dragonslayer duties meant killing lizards, not feeding them. But if Taddeo had pointed them out to her, didn’t that mean they were more likely to be dragons than lizards?
Astrid’s family had betrayed and harmed her. Her own brother had tried to murder her.
Dragons had taken her in and accepted her as one of their own. How could she take the chance of harming the newborns of those who had come to her aid and saved her life? Lizards were just animals. Astrid didn’t understand exactly what dragons were, but she experienced more of an allegiance to them than to most people she’d met.
Astrid turned her attention toward the blanket, shaking out the folds and thinking back to the way she’d seen the blacksmith’s wife swaddle her infant. Astrid wouldn’t be able to use the same technique, but it inspired her to create a small pouch by tying strategic knots and wrapping the rest of the blanket around her chest. Once finished, she looked up to see Smoke and Fire dragging the chunk of meat back into her sleeping shelter. Crawling into the shelter in pursuit, Astrid saw one more hatchling curled up around its broken eggshell.
Letting go of the meat, Smoke nudged the third lizard until its sibling stretched its jaws open in a lazy yawn. Unlike Smoke and Fire, whose coloring consisted of narrow horizontal stripes of black dotted with ivory, the last lizard sported solid pale gray skin, the same color as slag, the gray flakes that magically emerged from the iron during hammering.
Gingerly, Astrid reached for the meat and picked it up before Fire could attack her hand. Smoke and Fire darted toward her, transfixed on the meat even though it disappeared into the blanket pouch on her belly. Leaning forward, she opened the mouth of the pouch, letting them see the meat inside.
The two hatchlings stared steadily at Astrid.
“I’m not going to hurt you,” she said. “I need your help.”
Fire took a tentative step forward and looked at Smoke for approval. Smoke sped into the pouch with Fire on its heels.
The last lizard had rolled onto its back, still under the sleeping shelter, its jaws opening wide in another yawn.
“You, too, Slag,” Astrid said, picking the hatchling up by the tip of its tail and dropping it into the pouch. “There’s a merchant we need to find.”
Picking up her ax, Astrid cast one last look before leaving the dragonslayer’s camp with three lizard hatchlings rustling inside the blanket against her belly.
* * *
“Which way did he go?” Astrid said, sitting on the ground at the place where the path from Guell forked in three different directions. After removing Smoke, Fire, and Slag from the blanket pouch, she placed them at the fork. But instead of following Sigurthor’s scent, they looked longingly at the meat they’d been chewing on for the past few hours, now in Astrid’s hand.
When they first arrived at the fork, she tried asking DiStephan’s ghost but received no response. She assumed he was angry with her for keeping the baby lizards instead of killing them.
Years ago, DiStephan told her of tracking dogs in the southern lands that were trained to hunt animals by detecting their scent in the woods. Astrid suspected these lizards had the same capability. She had to figure out how to let them know what she needed from them.
She closed her fingers to hide the meat while she used her other hand to withdraw one of the daggers tucked under her belt to cut off a small corner of the blanket. She returned the dagger to her belt and slipped the meat back inside the blanket pouch.
She showed the blan
ket scrap to the hatchlings. “This blanket has the scent of a bad man who stole my weapon,” Astrid said, looking into each lizard’s eyes. She held it close to her nose and breathed deeply, flinching at the faint stink of the man’s sweat. “Now—which way did he go?” On her hands and knees, Astrid crawled toward the path branching off to the left. “This way?” She backtracked and crawled toward the center road. “This way?” She backtracked again and crawled toward the path on the right. “Or this way?”
Smoke looked at her blankly. Fire stared at the pouch where she’d hidden the meat. Slag curled up, resting its head on its own tail. Slag’s eyes closed sleepily.
Astrid sat on the ground again, placing the piece of blanket between the hatchlings. Smoke poked at the blanket piece with one foot. Fire took a few tentative steps toward Astrid, still fixated on the blanket pouch that held the meat.
On this windless day, dirt swirled in the center of the path on the left.
Astrid decided to make one final attempt at communicating with DiStephan’s ghost. Maybe he’d cooled off enough to listen. “Do you know where Sigurthor went?” Astrid said. “He stole Starlight, didn’t he?”
The dirt swirled steadily then blew itself at the lizards.
“I couldn’t leave them to fend for themselves,” she explained to the ghost. “They might be dragons.”
While Astrid respected all living things, she’d learned that lizards and dragons were entirely different creatures. Lizards were animals whose opinions of themselves had inflated their bodies to a gigantic size. But they were nothing more than animals. Dragons could take the shape of lizards or people or water. She didn’t understand what dragons were or what they wanted with her, but her instinct told her to protect anything that might be one. And right now that meant protecting Smoke, Fire, and Slag.
Astrid sighed as she watched Smoke chew on the piece of blanket she’d cut off to provide Sigurthor’s scent. Fire crept toward her. Slag rolled onto his back and stretched. She shouldn’t have expected so much from them. They’d only hatched yesterday.
She scooped each hatchling up by its tail, dropped them inside the blanket pouch, and took her ax in hand, following the swirling dust caused by DiStephan’s ghost onto the left fork in the road. She could catch up with Sigurthor soon and hoped he’d have the good sense to give Starlight back to her. Astrid dreaded the thought of using the ax against him, but she had already decided to take whatever steps were necessary to regain the sword she loved.
CHAPTER 12
Astrid traveled all day on foot through the forest, pausing to gather autumn berries every time she stumbled upon them. Every so often she thought she could smell the heavy musk of an animal nearby, but the brittle, fallen leaves blanketing her path made it impossible to walk without crunching through them. Other than occasional chirps of squirrels in the trees above, Astrid heard nothing other than her own explosive footsteps.
The forest hosted a mixture of pine and leafy trees, and the latter were now bare trunks and branches. All around her, seemingly for miles, trees stood like sentinels, quietly keeping the secrets of the forest to themselves. The sun had traveled low on the horizon all day, casting soft beams of pale light among the black tree skeletons. Finally, the path led out of the forest and alongside a field of wheat waving like ocean waves in the wind.
Astrid paused. The forest stood slightly above the field, nestled in a narrow valley between the forest and the mountains leading to the interior of the Northlands. Looking down into the valley, Astrid saw men cut down the stalks with scythes while women bundled up the wheat into sheaves and shouldered them onto carts. If Sigurthor had come this way, which DiStephan’s ghost seemed to indicate, surely they had seen him.
She gazed at the path ahead that paralleled the field and led into the mountains. The journey appeared bleak and long. Sigurthor could have stopped here to rest. He could be here even now.
Astrid made her way carefully down the gentle slope into the valley, but the people working the fields seemed too intent on their work to notice her presence. She walked toward the sea of wheat and sensed the wind moving through it, giving the rustling stalks of grain the same life and spirit as any other creature. The closer she stepped, the harder her heart beat. She couldn’t help but fear that if she let herself drift too close, the crops would sweep her into their depths, covering her mouth and nose with grain until she drowned in it.
She paused and looked back at the path she’d traveled from Guell. Enough time remained to continue forward on that path, trusting she’d catch up with Sigurthor somewhere in the mountains. Or she could turn back and return to Guell.
Astrid clenched her jaw in determination. Months ago her friends and neighbors had been taken captive and sold into slavery, and she hadn’t given up on them. Starlight was her friend and ally, and the thought of her best blade in the merchant’s hands sickened her.
Keeping a good arm’s length from the edge of the crop, just in case something might reach out and pull her into it, Astrid paced its length until she reached an opening where the wheat had been harvested and the stalks were flattened to the ground, creating a path into the crop. The stalks crackled and popped like fire beneath her feet, and their unevenness gave her pause.
“Hello?” she called out, but her voice sank among the chopping sounds of the scythes, the bustle of sheaves being gathered, and the wind whipping through the still-standing stalks towering above her head.
Nervously walking between pulsing walls of wheat, Astrid stumbled upon a crossroad inside the crop. Looking to her right, she saw a cart and a woman heaving a bundle of wheat onto it. “Hello!” Astrid called out, striding forward.
Finished with her bundle, the woman looked up.
“I’ve come from Guell,” Astrid shouted, walking toward the cart and the woman. “I’m looking for a merchant traveling through this region. He took something of mine that doesn’t belong to him.”
When Astrid drew near, the woman’s face paled with fear. She pointed at Astrid and screamed, “Monster!”
CHAPTER 13
The woman screamed, frozen in place. Her pointing finger trembled in horror.
Astrid shuddered at being called a monster. When she’d first come to Guell, she saw herself as a monster because of the scars covering her body. Her greatest wish had been answered the moment the blacksmith Temple had told her that one day she’d learn how to choose the way she appeared to others. Much later in life she learned only those who ate lizard meat would see the shape she chose for herself. People who had no lizard meat to eat—or who refused it—saw her for what she truly was.
She’d never wanted anyone to be afraid of her, and her heart ached at the woman’s scream.
“Please,” Astrid said. She took a step forward. “I’m not a monster. I’m a dragonslayer.”
The woman screamed as if being tortured. She dropped to her knees and folded her hands in a pleading gesture. “Don’t kill me!”
The walls of wheat surrounding Astrid thrashed and churned as a dozen men and women emerged from the crop behind the pleading woman, who cried out, “There she is! The monster!” She wept in terror.
Two men forged ahead of the crowd, taking a few cautious steps beyond the crumpled woman, pausing when they came close enough to get a good look at Astrid. Their eyes widened in surprise. One man’s nose looked misshapen, long and crooked, from having been broken. The other’s large forehead appeared slightly dented in one corner and his hair receded around it. She clearly remembered the day they’d stormed her cottage and she’d fought back by using her hammers for weapons. “Lumpy,” she said, remembering the wounds they’d earned from fighting with Astrid. “Broken Nose.”
When Astrid walked toward them, the men and women behind them uttered a collective gasp of horror. A few people gathered the weeping woman in their arms and dragged her out of harm’s way. Lumpy and Broken Nose stood their ground.
“She be no joke,” Lumpy called back to the crowd behind him. “This mon
ster be the task we been give. Stand back.”
“Monster?” Astrid said in disbelief. With every step she took toward Lumpy and Broken Nose, the men and women behind them took two steps back. “You’re calling me a monster?”
Lumpy tilted his head, studying her closely. “Your hair be chopped off. What happened? Did it catch fire in the smiting camp?”
Broken Nose straightened his stance and raised his chin. “We sold you in a square deal to Randim and warned him to keep you locked up. If you tried your tricks and got away, ain’t our problem and no one can hold us accountable.”
Lumpy brightened and gestured to the crop surrounding them. “All this be ours now. We was riding along, planning on sailing far away from Scalding territory, but then we heard you murdered your own brother—”
“He died in a fair fight,” Astrid said, her throat tightening with emotion.
“We bought this land, and it’s ours now,” Broken Nose said, ruffled like an animal defending its territory.
“I have no quarrel with that,” Astrid said. “And neither will Randim. I’m not his property any more—I struck a deal and earned my freedom. He’s my friend—Randim and the other blacksmiths. We’ve rebuilt Guell.”
Lumpy brightened. “She be like a sweet pony now, not a barbarian girl.” He patted her cropped hair.
“I never have been and never will be a barbarian. Stop calling me that.” Astrid shrugged away from his touch and eyed the brigands with suspicion. “Have you told these people that I’m a monster? Are you planning to hurt them?”
“No!” Lumpy withdrew his hand from her head as if she’d stung him. “We be farmers now. These be our workers.” He hesitated. “We might be mentioning we could protect them from the Scalding monster that roams the countryside looking to rip people’s innards out and eat them alive.”
