Bones of the Dragon (25 page)

Could the gods be trusted to make the right judgment?

Draya’s faith was her reason for being. As her own life grew more wretched, she clung to Vindrash for support, turning to the goddess for comfort and consolation. Now it seemed Vindrash clung to her.

Torval had fought a great battle and lost. The goddess Desiria was dead. Vindrash was in hiding, unable to respond to the prayers of her people for fear her enemies might find her. If the Gods of the Vindrasi were vanquished, the people who depended on them would be left weak and vulnerable, exposed to powerful enemies. For centuries, the Vindrasi had been conquerers. Now they would be the conquered, their land occupied by strangers, forced to bow to strange kings.

Which left Draya with a terrible decision to make. Could she entrust the future of her people to gods who were fighting for their very existence?

Kneeling before the statue of Vindrash, Draya brought her question to the goddess and waited, trembling, for the answer.

The eyes of the goddess were empty. There was no life in them.

“Don’t do this to me!” Draya cried out. She beat on the floor of the Great Hall with her fists. “Tell me that I can trust you!”

She heard the hiss of the wind through the chinks in the wooden walls. She heard the laughter of children and the squabbling cries of seabirds quarreling over a dead fish. She heard the scream of a swooping hawk.

Draya curled in on herself, wrapped her arms around her knees, and moaned. She was so very tired. The darkness was so very dark. She was so very alone.

“Give me an answer!” she prayed.

The response was silence.

Draya sat back on her heels.

Perhaps that
was
the answer. . . .

That evening, the Heudjun Priestesses assembled in the Great Hall of the Gods. The young acolytes were excited. They did not understand the terrible import, and they viewed the Vutmana as a holiday. The older women were more subdued, for they recognized that whatever the outcome, life for the Heudjun would never be the same.

“If Horg is judged innocent, we are in trouble,” Sven told his wife. “He will take the opportunity to avenge himself on those of us who opposed him, and there will be nothing we can do to stop him.”

“You did what you had to do, Husband,” Fria said practically. “Horg gave the sacred torque to our enemies to save his own flabby skin. You could not condone such a heinous crime.”

She gave her husband a hug. “No matter what happens, my love, I am proud of you. You did right, and so the gods will judge.”

“I did right when I married you,” Sven told his wife fondly, and he kissed her on her forehead.

The Great Hall buzzed with conversations, each woman relating what she knew of the ceremony. Draya had never presided over a Vutmana. Neither she nor any of the Bone Priestesses of the Heudjun had ever seen one. Horg had become Chief of Chiefs upon the death of his father, the former Chief. There had been no challengers. Too late they realized their mistake, and now they were paying for it in shame and humiliation. Horg’s dishonor was their dishonor. The possibility that the Torgun, the poorest clan among the Vindrasi, would gain ascendancy over the Heudjun, their Chief becoming Chief of Chiefs, was a bitter draft to swallow.

Vindraholm had been chosen lord city long ago by the fabled Kai Priestess Griselda the Man-Woman to settle a feud between the Heudjun Clan, who resided in Vindraholm, and the Svegund Clan, who wanted their city,
Einholm, to receive the honor. Griselda had traveled to each of the cities. On the day she arrived in Vindraholm, the sun shone brightly. When she went to visit Einholm, the city was hit with one of the worst storms in recent memory. The will of the gods was clear.

The Heudjun Clan would remain the guardians of their ancestral homeland, but they would no longer be the city’s dominant clan. That honor would go to the Torgun. If Norgaard won, he would move from Luda into the Chief’s longhouse in Vindraholm, bringing with him his household and many warriors. Already the Heudjun were getting a taste of what this would be like, for the Torgun were setting up camp on the beach. Torgun warriors would soon be swaggering through the streets.

“We must hold the Vutmana as soon as possible,” Draya told the assembled Priestesses, “or there will be trouble.”

The Priestesses were in agreement. They were aware of the mood of the people. Almost every woman there had been forced to listen to the angry rantings of husbands and sons, brothers and fathers.

“I do not condone what the Chief of Chiefs has done,” Fria said, rising to speak. “Far from it. Still it would be best for the Torgun if they returned home until it is time for the ceremony. Our men have promised they will not fight them, but that promise will be hard for some of them to keep, especially if the Torgun warriors go about the city like young bucks flaunting newly sprouted horns.”

Draya agreed, and as the first order of business, she sent Fria as messenger to Norgaard to explain matters.

Norgaard sent back word that he understood completely. He and the Torgun would sail home with the tide.

Draya was pleased at his response. Norgaard was a man of sense. He would make a good Chief.

“And,” said Fria, squeezing Draya’s hand and whispering excitedly into her ear, “I found out that Norgaard is now a widower. His young wife died last night in childbirth. That is sad, of course, but it makes things easier. Now there will be no messy entanglements, no divorce.”

“I grieve to hear Norgaard’s wife died,” Draya said. “But what else do you mean? Was there talk of divorce between them?”

Fria stared at her, amazed. “Don’t tell me you haven’t thought of this, Draya! If the gods are just, you will have a new husband.”

Draya gasped. She had been so caught up in worrying about how the change to a new Chief would affect her people, she had not remembered that the Vutmana would have a profound effect upon herself.

The Kai Priestess was required to marry the Chief of Chiefs. If the Chief was already married, as Norgaard had been, the law required that he divorce
his wife. Such a divorce was most honorable. The woman received substantial compensation and could either remain in her own home or return to live with her family. Norgaard, now a widower, would be looking for a new wife anyway.

Draya considered Norgaard as a husband. He was her elder by some ten years or more; she liked him, but she knew him to be a disappointed man—a somber, cheerless man with a crippled leg who was always in pain. She suppressed a sigh.

“He would be a good husband for you, Draya,” Fria told her. “He can give you children. And he won’t beat you.”

Was that the measure of good husband? Draya wondered. That he didn’t beat you?

In a society where marriages were always arranged between families, few married for love. Songs celebrated love found
after
marriage, and Draya had only to see the way Sven and Fria looked at each other to know that the words of the poets were not empty. Men and women who had scarcely known each other before they lay together in the bridal bed often found deep and abiding love came after they had said their vows.

Draya longed for such a bond. Instead she saw herself moving from one loveless bed into another. She must hope for a child. That would be her consolation.

“We need to set a date for the Vutmana,” said Draya, addressing the Priestesses. “How soon can all the clans be notified? The other Clan Chiefs will want to attend to serve as witnesses for their people.”

The Bone Priestesses calculated how long it would take messengers to travel from Vindraholm to bring the news to the other clans and how long the Chiefs would need to undertake the journey to Vindraholm. Fortunately the weather was fine for sailing. Most would travel by sea. Add a day or so to take into consideration the possibility of bad weather, and Draya judged they could safely schedule the Vutmana to occur within a fortnight, the last week of the month of Desiria.

Desiria, the month of spring, the time of hope and rebirth, named to honor the Goddess of Life. What dreadful irony! Draya thought. That reminded her of another unhappy task. She would have to tell the people the terrible news about the gods. Now was not a good time, not with all the upheaval and turmoil. Yet she feared Horg would tell them if she did not. He had threatened to do so, after all.

And then Draya realized Horg didn’t dare carry out his threat. If he should win, he would claim Torval’s protection. Horg would be a fool to go around telling people Torval was dead.

Draya sent word to Norgaard that the Torgun should return in a fortnight’s
time. She sent a messenger to Horg, as well. The girl returned with word that Horg was gone. He and some of his cronies had gone on a hunting trip.

“Likely stalking the woods in search of the wild cider jug,” said Fria tartly. “A good thing he left, given the way people feel about him.”

Draya felt an overwhelming sense of relief. Hopefully he would stay away, far away, until time for the Vutmana. She did not want to have to speak to him or think about him or set eyes upon him until the day she stood before him during the ceremony.

After that . . .

Hopefully there would be no after that.

L
ong, long ago, a Clan Chief named Thorgunnd Sigrund declared war upon a rival Clan Chief, Krega of the Steppes. The war started innocently enough. Chief Krega sought the hand of Thorgunnd’s eldest daughter in marriage, hoping to ally his clan with the more powerful clan of Thorgunnd. The young woman refused the marriage, as was her right, for Krega had the reputation of being a savage brute.

Krega was angry and affronted, and he urged Thorgunnd to force his daughter to marry him, but Thorgunnd would not do so. A short time later, Thorgunnd’s youngest son, his father’s favorite, went walking in the woods and vanished. When he did not return home, Thorgunnd sent men to search for him. They found the boy on Krega’s land. The boy was dead, an arrow in his back.

Furious, Thorgunnd demanded a blood-price for the life of his son. Krega refused, claiming the boy’s death was an accident. Men had been out hunting and mistaken the lad for a deer. Krega further stated that the boy had trespassed; he had no business being on his land in the first place.

Thorgunnd suspected that Krega had murdered the boy and then dragged his body onto his land, but he could not prove it. Since Krega would not pay the blood-price, the clans went to war.

Each Chief called upon his allies to fight for his cause. The Djevakfen fought alongside Krega. The Martegnan joined forces with Thorgunnd. Not content with victory on the field of battle, warriors burned and looted
the homes of their fellow Vindrasi, raped their women, and sold their children into bondage. Every battle engendered another, as relatives of the dead demanded revenge. Soon every clan had been sucked into the terrible maelstrom.

The Kai saw the valiant young men, the future of the Vindrasi people, lying dead on the field of battle. The Kai heard the screams of ravished women and the cries of orphans. The Kai saw their enemies watching, biding their time, waiting for the Vindrasi to destroy themselves. When that happened, they would swoop down, like carrion birds, to pick the flesh from the carcass.

Fearful that this war threatened to fell the World Tree, the Kai Priestess, a valiant woman named Ingunn, undertook a perilous journey. Ingunn traveled to the Nethervold to beg the Goddess of the Dead, Freilis, to end the strife.

Freilis was moved by the pleas of Ingunn, and she left the Nethervold—a thing unheard of. She sailed in a ship drawn by ravens to Torval’s Hall of Heroes. She found the God of Battle carousing with the souls of valiant warriors, listening to them relate their heroic deeds. Freilis reproached Torval with the vast number of dead. She pleaded with him to end the strife before the Vindrasi people ended up destroying themselves.

Torval roared his refusal. The warriors had died with honor. Their deaths brought them glory. Freilis asked him bitterly what glory there was in a woman lying slaughtered in a pool of her own blood or in Vindrasi children being carried away to slavery.

“I say these so-called valiant warriors are cowards with
no
honor,” Freilis declared angrily. “They fear to fight each other. Instead they kill defenseless women and old men and helpless children.”

Torval was furious. He thundered that he would stake anything Freilis named upon the courage and valor of his warriors.

“If I am proved right, then you must end this war,” Freilis said.

“I take your wager,” said Torval, pleased, for he was convinced he would win. “How shall it be settled?”

“The two Chiefs, Thorgunnd and Krega, started this war. Let them meet in single combat,” Freilis declared. “This will not be a fight to the death, for we have seen death enough already. Whoever draws first blood will be the victor.”

Both Clan Chiefs agreed, and they met in single combat. Torval favored Thorgunnd, for Torval knew the Chief’s cause was just. As for Freilis, she had tricked Torval, for she knew Krega’s heart was black, and she was certain he would not fight according to the rules.

She was proved right. Thorgunnd drew first blood, slashing Krega across his cheek. Krega dropped his sword and walked forward to congratulate the
winner. But when Thorgunnd sheathed his sword and lowered his shield, Krega drew a knife from his boot and stabbed Thorgunnd in the heart.

Shocked and outraged, Torval conceded he had lost the wager. He cursed Krega and caused him to be expelled from his clan. Krega was forced to become an outlaw—one who lived outside the law. This meant that his life was forfeit. Anyone who came upon him could slay him, and the killing would be deemed justified. Krega had many enemies who sought his blood. Hunted like an animal, he lived a miserable existence and ended up being torn apart by bears—an animal sacred to Torval.

With the war at last at an end, the clan of Thorgunnd Sigrund prospered. They renamed their clan in his honor, calling themselves the Torgun. Their many dragonships sailed the seas, venturing into distant lands, performing deeds that were forever after known as the Thorgunnd Sagas.