Bones of the Dragon (50 page)

The Torgun grinned at Raegar and lifted their drinking horns and drank.

Norgaard raised his horn to Skylan. “To our Chief of Chiefs and his safe return.”

The Torgun drank this toast and then refilled their horns, all of them waiting eagerly for the toast they knew was coming.

“It is far too long since the Vindrasi have gone to war.” Norgaard lifted his drinking horn high in the air. “To Torval and the destruction of our foe!”

The Torgun roared, “To Torval!” and drank.

“We have much work to do to prepare,” said Norgaard, placing his empty horn on the table. “This meeting is ended.”

Moving slowly and painfully, leaning heavily on his crutch, Norgaard limped over to Skylan and rested his hand on his son’s shoulder.

“You have been through a terrible experience, my son,” Norgaard said. His eyes were moist. “You handled it well. I am proud of you.”

“Thank you, Father,” said Skylan. His throat closed, choking on his lies.

People streamed out of the hall. Norgaard stood talking a moment with Raegar. Skylan made a hasty escape and plunged out the door. He nearly stumbled over Wulfe, who was squatting in the middle of the street, hunched over the bowl, shoveling food into his mouth with both hands. Skylan took down a flaring torch from the wall.

“Come with me,” he said, grabbing Wulfe, who grabbed the bowl.

“Where are you taking me? To the ship?”

“To my home,” said Skylan.

Wulfe planted his feet and stood firm. “I want to go back to the ship.”

Skylan considered. Perhaps it would be best if Wulfe remained on board the ship. He would be less likely to talk to people than if he lived with Skylan in the village.

“Very well,” said Skylan. “But you’ll have to stay on the ship by yourself. I can’t be with you.”

“I won’t be alone,” said Wulfe. “The dragon is there.”

“I didn’t think you liked the dragon.”

“I like him better. He wouldn’t talk to that woman.”

“What woman?”

“The woman who brought me.”

“You mean Treia? She was talking to the dragon? What did they talk about?”

“You,” said Wulfe, licking his fingers.

Skylan stopped, troubled and immediately suspicious. The only reason Treia would have to speak to the dragon would be to find out if Skylan was telling the truth. He glanced back over his shoulder. The Torgun were filing out of the hall, and some would be sure to come looking for him. Skylan doused his torch in a nearby bucket and ducked down a side street, hauling Wulfe with him.

“What did she say to the dragon?”

“I don’t know,” said Wulfe. “I couldn’t hear. It doesn’t matter, because the dragon wouldn’t answer her. That made her mad, and she came down into the hold. She scared me. I thought she was the draugr. She was dressed like the draugr. She asked me questions.”

“What questions?”

“Where I met you and where was I when I met you and who was with you and did I see the giants.”

“What did you say?” Skylan waited nervously for the answer.

“Nothing,” said Wulfe. “I don’t like her.”

“That’s good!” said Skylan, relieved.

Wulfe used a piece of meat to scoop up gravy, running it around the side of the crockery bowl. “What did she mean about you fighting giants?”

Skylan paused. He’d known this moment was coming. He hadn’t expected it to come so soon. He squatted down in front of the boy, looked him in the eyes.

“It’s a story I made up. Wulfe, if Treia or anyone else asks you, tell them I found you adrift in the sea, lost in the fog.”

“But you didn’t,” said Wulfe.

“I know. It’s a lie, but it’s a good lie, not a bad lie. Like the lie about the giants is a good lie. I told the lie because I want to protect the druids and your people on Apensia.”

Wulfe looked puzzled by this. “You don’t need to lie.”

“Yes, I do. If my people found out that the druids killed my wife—”

Wulfe interrupted. “The druids didn’t kill her. The druids don’t kill people.”

“I saw them drive a stake through her belly,” Skylan said harshly. “Don’t argue. Just listen! If my people ever find out what happened, they will sail to Apensia and use their swords to kill the elder and the others.”

Wulfe smiled at his friend in reassurance. “They can’t. The faeries won’t let them. Your people would be the ones to die.”

Skylan gazed out across the sea, dark in this dark night.

“Wulfe,” said Skylan, “if my people hear the truth, I will die. They will kill me.”

“I’ll say you found me in the sea,” said Wulfe.

T
he Vindrasi were going to war.

A month had passed since Skylan’s return from his ill-fated voyage. The Vindrasi celebrated the summer solstice that launched the time of Skoval, the raiding season. The weather was hot and continued dry. Rain came in sporadic bursts, pelting the hard ground with huge drops that were of small benefit to languishing crops. The Vindrasi needed a week of gentle soaking rains. The Bone Priestesses offered prayers to Akaria, but the temperamental goddess did not see fit to respond.

Despite these ongoing concerns, Skylan was in good spirits. The time of his return had been dark and unhappy, but now that was over. His sun had risen once more, and hope for the future shone brightly. He moved from Luda to Vindraholm, took up residence in the house of the Chief of Chiefs, empty now that his wife was dead.

The funerals for the Heudjun dead had been hard, but he’d managed to get through them. If he was somber, people put it down to sorrow. Skylan expanded on the heroics of the warriors, describing the make-believe fight with the giants in detail. The Heudjun mourned their dead and honored them for their heroism and then made ready to go to war.

Draya’s funeral was the most difficult. Skylan grieved for Draya with a grief compounded of guilt and remorse and self-recrimination. He tried to assuage her restless spirit and his conscience by giving the statue of Vindrash the lavish gift of a valuable turquoise necklace. The offering did not work. The draugr continued to plague him. Night after weary night, she came to Skylan before he slept and forced him to play dragonbones with her. He could not understand why she did this. It seemed her only purpose in walking this earth as a corpse was to play this game—a game he never won.

He had to admit the draugr had made him a better player. He kept hoping that if he finally beat the draugr, she would leave him alone, and thus he concentrated more on the game than on anything he’d ever done in his life. Previously he had always made his moves as the moment took him, rarely thinking more than one or two moves in advance. He had been quick to see his foe’s weakness, but had generally failed to note her strength until it was too late.

The draugr was an excellent dragonbone player. Skylan had never gone up against such a skilled opponent. She was better than Garn, who had beaten everyone among the Torgun so often that now no one would play him. Skylan
eventually realized that if he studied the way she played, the tactics she used to defeat him, he might learn something to his advantage. He began to do that, and he began to see that the game was far deeper and more complex than he had realized. He forced himself to be patient, to be observant, to think first before he acted. He still never won. But the matches more frequently ended in draws.

Skylan’s next official duty, after presiding over the funerals, was to rally his people for war. Escorted by a troop of young warriors, he rode Blade or sailed in the
Venjekar
to meet with the other Clan Chiefs, convince them to give him warriors and what wealth they had to pay for the expedition against the ogres.

The Chiefs needed no convincing. All of them were eager to fight. The Vindrasi had long chafed under Horg’s unwillingness to allow so much as a blood feud among kin. They were glad to have a Chief of Chiefs who was going to lead them into battle against their enemies.

Wulfe did not accompany Skylan on these journeys. Concerned and a little nervous at leaving the strange boy on his own, Skylan had tried to persuade him to go. But the warriors who escorted the Chief of Chiefs went heavily armed, and Wulfe could not bear to be around them. Skylan considered this aversion of the boy’s to iron a silly notion, taught to him by the peace-loving druids. Skylan tried numerous times to persuade Wulfe that a stewpot was not his foe.

“How are you going to fight at my side in the shield-wall if you refuse to even touch a sword?” Skylan had asked the boy.

“I don’t need a sword to fight,” Wulfe had replied. “I won’t be at your side in a battle, but I will be there to protect you. I saved your life. You belong to me.”

The boy was intensely serious, and Skylan had smiled and reached out his hand to brush Wulfe’s shaggy hair out of his eyes.

“You’re a strange one,” Skylan had said. “And someday I will teach you to use a sword.”

While Wulfe remained behind, Raegar accompanied Skylan on his travels. His cousin had been true to his promise. He had kept Skylan’s secret faithfully. And, as promised, he had brought Skylan a map, which he claimed revealed the location of the ogre nation. Skylan could not read, and therefore he could make nothing of the map himself. Skylan was forced to take his cousin at his word. He was forced to take Raegar at his word about a lot of things—one reason Skylan liked to keep Raegar close to him.

Raegar was at least a jovial companion, unlike Garn, who had turned into a killjoy, or so it seemed to Skylan. Garn always looked grave and somber; he was always wanting to “talk,” which meant he wanted to lecture.

Skylan was convinced that Garn knew he was lying about the giants, about most everything, and in this, he was right. Garn knew Skylan was not telling the truth. Skylan was wrong about Garn wanting to lecture him, however. Concerned for his friend, Garn only wanted to find some way to help.

Skylan had another worry, and that was Treia.

She did not bother to conceal the fact that she thought Skylan was a liar. She did not confront him. She was like a snake, slinking about in the undergrowth, watching his every move, waiting for him to trip over a rock so she could sink her poisoned fangs into him. Skylan avoided her as much as possible, and that was one reason he was leaving for Luda tomorrow, when she was arriving here at Vindraholm for the Kai Moot.

Alarming news had reached Skylan. Word had it that the Kai were considering Treia for Kai Priestess. If she was thus honored by the gods, he would have to marry her! He took comfort in the fact that she would also be adverse to such a union. She disliked Skylan fully as much as he disliked her. And she had her eyes on his cousin.

Though Treia had left her stepfather’s house and was living on her own in the lodging of the Bone Priestess, she was yet unmarried and was therefore under Sigurd’s care and protection. Since Sigurd had given up trying to arrange a marriage for her, Treia decided in her own mind that the matter was now up to her. She made no secret of the fact that she had chosen her own future husband, and that her choice was Raegar. He continued to take a marked interest in Treia, singling her out over many other younger and prettier women who were vying to catch the notice of the tall, strong, and well-favored blond-bearded man.

Though Skylan was certain Treia did not want to be Kai Priestess, he did not trust the gods. Given his broken oath to Torval and the many lies he’d told since, the god might decide to punish Skylan by making this snake his wife. Skylan thought it best to head off danger. When he ended his triumphant journey to introduce himself to the clans, he traveled to Luda to speak to Aylaen.

“The Kai Moot will be held soon,” he told her. “Treia will be attending. I want you to go with her.”

Aylaen was going to draw water from a small spring, and Skylan offered to accompany her. The spring cut through a grove of ash, birch, hazel, laurel, and oak trees. Water from this spring was said to have healing properties, and though Treia had remarked scornfully that she did not believe this, her patients did.

The spring was located deep in the woods, near Owl Mother’s house. Skylan thought back to the time the old crone had magically healed the wound when the boar had gored him. That same day, the ogres had arrived. The time seemed distant and remote, as if it might have happened in some other
lifetime. Or to some other person. He remembered, suddenly, what Owl Mother had said to him on that day:
The thread of your wyrd snaps tonight. Tomorrow it will be spun anew
.

He was pondering her words and thinking that they had come true and wondering, with a shiver, how she’d known—when he realized that Aylaen was laughing.

“Did I say something funny?” he demanded irritably. He was not in the mood to be laughed at.

“Yes,” said Aylaen. “You want me to attend a boring old Kai Moot! Why should I? I’m getting more than enough sleep now, thank you.”

“I know the meeting will be dull and tedious,” Skylan admitted. He took the bucket from her and knelt down to fill it at the sparkling stream. “But you have to attend. You have to tell them you want to become a Bone Priestess, and you want to do it in a hurry.”

“But I
don’t
want to become a Bone Priestess,” Aylaen protested, still laughing. “I’ve seen what Treia has to put up with. People whining and complaining and asking her to do the impossible to make their lives better. I don’t know where she finds the patience.”

“You have to do this, Aylaen,” Skylan insisted. “This is the only way for you to become Kai Priestess, and that is the only way we can be married.”

“Skylan, you’re not serious—”

“Hevis take me if I’m not!” Skylan said, glowering at her. “Why do you insist on mocking me? I am Chief of Chiefs. I want you to be my wife! You will do this, Aylaen. I command it!”

Aylaen flushed, hot blood rushing to her face. “You may order everyone else about, Skylan Ivorson, but not me! I do what I want and what I want is—”

“—the same thing I want,” Skylan interrupted her impatiently. “You love me. I know it. Stop teasing me. I am a man now, not a boy. The time for such foolery is passed.”