The Dragon Lord

by David Drake

  Combat reflexes had kept Starkad alive a hundred times before, as they did now, but he flung himself back without thought of the fact that his right heel was under the bedstead. The dagger swept harmlessly in front of the fluff of his moustaches. The tendons of the Dane's ankle popped audibly, even against the din of the girl's screams.

  Thorhild turned and ran for the door. Mael was on his feet now, eyes bright with the disoriented terror of a man roused to battle from dead sleep. Starkad was already striding for his prey, but his right leg folded beneath him. As Thorhild darted into the night, the Dane pitched forward helplessly. His forehead fetched up against the door-post. The ground-shaking thud that impact made stilled his roar of anger.

  Mael tried to force his way past his friend's bulk. First, Starkad's prone body blocked him. The Dane rolled to his side. Shaking his head to clear it, Starkad put out a hand to bar the passage deliberately. "No," he said. "Let her go."

  "What?"

  Starkad's face was streaming blood from the pressure cut in his scalp. He lowered the hand he no longer needed to keep Mael away, trying to smear the runnels of blood from his eyes with the palm. Gwedda was there at once, interposing herself between the men and expertly daubing at the wound with her scarf.

  "Let her go," Starkad repeated, "because she earned it." Before Mael could protest, the Dane added, "Look, we were going to let her loose in the morning, anyway, weren't we? We just did it a few hours early, think of it that way. That little hellcat's a real woman after all, by Frigga. I'll be damned if I'll have her carved up for it. After all this is over, I just might come back this way and see if I can't look her up. You know?"

  "You damned fool," Mael breathed in wonderment. He shot his half-drawn sword back into its sheath. "And you say you like 'em better filled out than Veleda?"

  "Don't stand!" Gwedda ordered sharply as the Dane started to get to his hands and knees.

  "I can—" Starkad began, but the old woman cut him off.

  "You can ruin your ankle forever, or you can stay off it for a few days now," she snapped. "Here, let me see." The shapeless boot slipped off easily, but Starkad winced at even that slight friction. The ankle was red and angry already, so swollen that the big bones were hidden in puffy flesh. Gwedda probed the injury with her eyes.

  "The shield and spear," Mael said slowly. "If we wait to get them for this to heal . . . Veleda said to hurry."

  The witch's face paled even in the orange light. "The Veleda? She sent you after—"

  "Shut up, woman," the Dane snarled, "or I'll shut you up."

  Mael blinked in surprise at his friend, but Gwedda understood the reason for the threat. She said, "I can see there might be need for haste. If a—seeker of ability said to hasten, I would take her word for it, Irishman. I would take her word for anything."

  "Look, I'll be ready to leave in the morning," Starkad said.

  Mael caught the woman's grimace and demanded harshly, "Ready to go without slowing me down? Ready to hike twenty miles, to climb hills and ford streams without falling on your butt and pulling me down, too?" The Dane made a moue of frustration but said nothing. More gently Mael continued, "I know you're tough, old friend. And I know that even hurt you can do things that most people wouldn't be able to do healthy. But there're limits. You can't fly without wings, and you can't walk without two ankles to support you. Remember, we aren't here for any reasons of our own."

  "Help me to the bed," Starkad said dejectedly. The ankle was sending jagged black pains up his whole side. "We'll see how it looks in the morning."

  Chapter Eleven

  It looked bad in the morning, as they all had known it would. There was no need for further argument, though. Starkad was delirious and mumbling demands to a chieftain Mael knew had been dead for twelve years.

  The Irishman looked at Gwedda. "Look, take care of him," he said. "I'll be back as soon as I can be. If that's not in a week and Starkad can walk again, tell him to head back to where we came from and take care of Veleda. Until I get back."

  The Briton nodded, catching at her lower lip with her teeth. "I've poulticed his forehead," she said. "The cut there won't get infected. But he's very strong. When he slips and turns that strength on himself, he's no less destructive than at other times. But I can lower the fever and the swelling soon, I'm sure."

  With food in his pack again and his cloak spread across his back to dry as the sun rose clear, Mael strode along the path. The help Gwedda had given him made his direction as certain as if he had walked that way daily for a year. Mael was perversely sure, however, that the wise woman herself almost never left the narrow bounds of her clearing.

  Mael had intended to let Starkad carry the burden of entry into the closed society of a Saxon village. The big Dane had a measure of fame, even though he had never capitalized on it by welding masterless men about him into a pirate band. Starkad could have stalked into the village, roaring that he needed protection during his outlawry and that, from what he'd heard, Biargram was one of the few men big enough for him to swear to. The thegn would have been flattered, the men who had not heard of Starkad might be doubtful but would keep silent because of the Dane's size . . . and those who had heard stories about Starkad would keep very silent indeed. Mael, as a hanger-on and a foreign one at that, had hoped to be lost in the impact of his friend's personality. That would have given the two of them time to locate the arms and remove them at leisure.

  Without Starkad, the job became much harder. If Mael were accepted at all, it would be with suspicion. The women would shun him, the children spy on his every movement, the men find his alien face annoying and pick fights with the Irishman any time they were drinking. It was quite possible that the villagers would simply set on Mael and kill him out of hand. But Veleda's urgency was still fresh in his mind, and there seemed no way around it. Mael hadn't really expected to come home from this one, anyway.

  Well into the afternoon, the Irishman saw the first signs of the village. A hillside, rolling up to the right of the trail, had been cleared and recently plowed. No one was working in it at the moment, but the chink of tools could be heard in the near distance. There was an occasional soughing that was not the wind. Mael shrugged a little to settle his body in his armor. He went on at the same pace as before. As he expected, the village was over the rise.

  There were a dozen buildings on either side of a small stream, laid out as haphazardly as if they had dropped from the sky. The settlement as a whole was not palisaded—it was too far back from the Zone to be threatened by Arthur save in event of a major disaster. Each of the houses, however, had a separate garth surrounded by a fence. The buildings had been dug down a foot or so and the turfs set around the excavations. These formed the foundations for the wall posts. The posts were joined with wattle and daub. The largest of the houses gleamed with plaster over the mud; its walls had been strengthened by cross-timbering. Like the rest, however, it was thatch-roofed and had no chimney. Smoke from the central hearth was expected to find its way out through the triangular openings at the peaks of the sidewalls. In the winter, their own fires were a worse enemy to the Saxons than Arthur more than dreamed of being. Now, in the spring, the heat of a score of bodies was enough to warm the houses without flames.

  The first challenge to Mael's presence came from a pack of nondescript dogs. They had lain in pairs and triplets, sharing the shade of the houses with the village's chickens and hogs. When the dogs scented Mael, they leaped up and ran toward him yelping and snarling. The Irishman kept his stride steady. His lips were a little tighter. When the rangy, stiff-legged bitch who led the pack came close enough, Mael swung his spear butt up from under her jaw and cut the barking off within her teeth. The rest of the pack gave back, prancing. Mael continued to advance, using his spear butt freely on whichever dog was the nearest or noisiest. He wetted the point only once, on the shaggy brute who slipped up behind him and snapped at his heel. The shock of that death silenced the other dogs for a moment; then they were yapping
as enthusiastically as before.

  The dogs had been the first to notice the intruder because the Saxons were all at work in the fields. The eyes of the laborers, men and women both, were unable to reach beyond the plowshares or the wavering stone fence at the field edge toward which they dragged their equipment, staggering. The explosion of barking drew their stares to the approaching stranger in armor. Dropping their tools, the Saxons began running down the hillsides toward the village. Only a few small children stayed where they were, freed from their own duties by their elders' rush to arms. The children set down the long switches with which they had been lashing birds away from the seeds. Depending on their mood, they began either to play or to watch the drama below.

  Mael was a quarter mile from the village at the time he was noticed. He made no attempt to hurry. The Saxon warriors gathered in front of the nearest house to await him. They were hastily equipped; at every moment another man raced out of a building to stand by his fellows. From the shuttered windows peeped the women. The panic, Mael knew, was not at what he was but for what he might be. He was unexpected, inexplicable: a scout for an enemy, a messenger from King Cerdic—who knew?

  By the time Mael reached the band of warriors it was some sixty strong. Half a dozen at most wore ring mail. Perhaps twice that number had leather jerkins, hardened with scales or at least metal studs. The rest, though the village was clearly much more prosperous than the one in which Thorhild had grown up, wore only boiled leather or no body armor at all. Almost all of the Saxons carried shields, round or kite-shaped and made of wood or oxhide. The fancier ones had iron rims and sometimes designs worked in their faces with metal. None of the shields looked out of the ordinary, the famous object Mael had come to steal.

  Nor were the remaining arms exceptional. Most of the warriors carried spears six to eight feet long. A few made do with axes or agricultural implements, hoes or metalshod dibbles intended for planting. The wealthiest Saxons wore double-edged swords the length of a man's arm. More common were heavy fighting knives, scramasaxes, often thrust sheathless under a belt. The knives averaged a foot and a half long, sharpened only on the lightly curved inner edge.

  The headgear was generally leather with a mixture of iron and bronze pots; it was here that the leader's equipment was most unlike that of the other Saxons. The apparent chief wore an iron helmet whose face was closed from nose to throat by a veil of fine ring mail. All the metal surfaces were silvered, and the cap itself was parcel gilt as well. Though striking, the helmet was not a modern design and probably had been handed down through several generations.

  The thegn was as tall as Mael and broader. His face was unreadable for the veil and the bushy blond brows that twisted above his eyes. The Saxon took a step forward, his spear half poised, and called to the Irishman, "What's your business here?"

  Mael halted within a spear length. He kept his own weapon upright. The dogs were backing away. Though Mael was well aware that the wings of the Saxon line were edging forward to encircle him, he ignored them. "I am Mael mac Ronan, of the Cenel Luigdech," he declaimed with deliberate formality. "Exiled from my own people for saving a Saxon trader's life, I have come among his folk to take the service of the thegn I am told is the greatest of them all. I come to join the chieftain Biargram Ironhand."

  The intake of breath among the Saxons was swift and general. Many of the warriors signed Thor's Hammer at Mael, twisting their spears sideways in order to hold out their clenched fists palm upward. One man gasped, "A miracle!"

  Even the thegn had started at the Irishman's words. Very carefully he asked, "What do you come here to do?"

  Mael was uneasy. The Saxons were not reacting hostilely, but the reason for their religious awe was unclear; therefore, it was potentially dangerous. Had some priest foretold an outland savior appearing to aid Biargram at a crucial moment? If Mael's luck had been that good, then surely the gods were behind him in this mad quest! "I have come to join Biargram Grim's son," Mael repeated.

  The Saxon chief clashed his spear against his shield boss in an access of joy. "And so you shall!" he thundered. "I'm Biarki, Biargram's son. My father died three days ago, but you'll join him tonight—in his barrow."

  Mael's arm was quick, but a dozen Saxons had already launched themselves onto him. They pinioned and bound the Irishman before he could strike a blow.

  * * *

  "How far is it to this damned barrow?" grunted Mael to Biarki. The young thegn walked beside Mael in the midst of the procession of happy Saxons. They were keeping holiday. Some of the women had even bound flowers into their hair. As for Mael, he too was bound—by a pair of nooses held by three men each before and behind him. The cords were long and slack enough for comfort, but if Mael balked or ran, they would choke him at once. Mael was furious—with himself and his luck and his captors. He had cursed them all loudly from the beginning of the march. What could the Saxons do to him if his insults angered them, after all? Condemn him to death?

  Little the Irishman said, however, could penetrate Biarki's buoyant mood, anyway. "Oh, well," the Saxon said, "a couple miles yet. We didn't want my father staying too close, you know . . . and not just any place would have done for his barrow. We needed a cave so that the walls would be solid and he couldn't . . . well, you know."

  "Look," Mael snapped, "if you're going to kill me, you can at least tell me why. I don't know a damn thing."

  Biarki laughed. "My father was murdered," he explained, "by magic. He had a spear and a shield you see, heirlooms of our house." Mael shot a side glance at the thegn but made no overt indication of his particular interest in the weapons—or of his surprise at Biarki's inappropriate good humor. "They were the arms made for the hero Achil by Wieland the Smith. That was long ago, at the Troy fight. No one ever had arms like those.

  "We came here to take service with King Cerdic," continued Biarki. "He gave us good land and we were happy. Only, Cerdic has a councillor named Ceadwalla, a Briton who commands his housecarls. This Ceadwalla is a very great magician, and after a while he learned about my father's shield and spear. He came to my father and demanded them—a nasty little man with a birthmark like a spider on his right cheek. If Britons lived like men, they would have thrown Ceadwalla onto the kitchen midden the day he was born."

  "Well, why didn't you do it yourself?" Mael asked. "You folk seem quick enough to murder strangers or do you do that just to people who come alone and friendly?"

  "Ceadwalla was too powerful to kill," Biarki admitted easily. "He never came to us with less than a hundred men, and . . . we knew he was a magician, too, remember. But still my father held him off. Then last year, Biargram's head began to pain him both day and night. He called Ceadwalla to him and gave him the spear but kept the shield. And that was enough for one year, but last week Ceadwalla came back. My father refused him the shield again, and so my father—died."

  Mael grimaced in utter bewilderment. The men at the head of the procession were singing a cheerful, bawdy song. Closer by, a group of women were chattering like daws in a cornfield. "If this is how your mourn your chiefs," the Irishman said, "you must dance yourselves to death at a marriage feast."

  "Death isn't the worst that can come to a man," Biarki said, his smile wiped away as cleanly as smoke in a windstorm.

  They marched along together in silence for a time, as if they were comrades. At that the two men were more similar than different to look at except for their hair color: two big fighting men in armor, young for any profession but the one they followed. "You've started your story," Mael said at last. "Now tell me the rest."

  Biarki nodded. "You may as well know," he agreed. His expression became grim. It might better have suited the prisoner being led to death. "We held a wake for my father," he said, "laying his body out on a bier in his house garth. We feasted around him, lighting lamps after sunset. Each one of us told stories about how we'd ambush Ceadwalla and avenge Biargram. And then the moon rose, and so did my father, there in the midst of us."

&
nbsp; Biarki swallowed thickly. Nobody looking at him could have doubted his sincerity. The Saxon went on, "He stood and tried to walk, but his legs didn't work and he fell. He was making sounds like a carp sucking air. His eyes had been closed. They opened again but I don't think he could see anything. He lay there on his belly, crawling with one hand and one foot. We all ran. We locked ourselves in our houses and didn't even look out at the garth until the morning. My—father—was still lying there, dead again. He had pulled the trestle out from under one of the tables and eaten most of the food there. He'd shit, too, great sloppy trails of it that stank like a bear's. . . ."

  Biarki shuddered in a way that Mael could now appreciate. His own mind glanced back a few days to his horror in the ship, the purple hell-light writhing from Veleda's fingers. Mael trembled also. Magic was for those who understood it. And surely there were few human beings so evil that they understood it.

  "We would have raised a true barrow," Biarki said "but there wasn't time and—maybe it wouldn't have been strong enough. From the inside. So . . . there was a cistern not far away, near where a villa had stood. They'd cut it down into the rock, the Romans had, and it was fifteen feet deep. Deep enough. So we took m-my—" and this time the Saxon could not get out the word "father," so he said, "Ironhand there, with his shield and his horse and his dog. . . . And we hoped that he could lie still now that he had his grave goods, but we covered the cistern over and put guards by it. And the guards heard Ironhand begin to move when the moon rose again. They heard him smack and slurp and eat.

  "So we knew we would have to give his soul a human before his body would lie still. Some said a slave would do, and some said Thora, because she had been his woman for a year before he died. And a few of them said perhaps his son was the gift Ironhand sought," Biarki added with a fell smile, "but none of them said so when they thought I might hear them. When you came, there could be no doubt but that Wotan had answered our prayers and sent us the sacrifice he demanded."