Handbook for Dragon Slayers (9 page)

Immediately, I fell—my foot wobbled right, my knee wobbled left, and I crashed right down off the doorstep of the house, landing on my shoulder and jarring it. The breath left me in a whoosh.

My leg and foot had seized up completely, angry with the overwork of the day.

“We'll get a room at a guesthouse,” Judith said.

“Absolutely not. We can't afford it, if we want to keep eating!”

“You need some proper care. We'll
find
a guesthouse.”

I acquiesced, but there was no guesthouse that would have us. The first and third guesthouses in the town were empty and barred, and the second one refused to rent to us. “If it weren't First Night . . . ,” the landlady said. “But it is. Now get on away from here, as far as you can, before you regret it.”

“Well, what are we going to do?” Judith said, lowering me to the doorstep of the last guesthouse and giving my leg a vigorous rubbing.

“Parz is planning to look for us here,” I said. “We'll need to leave him a message that we've moved on . . . or just go camp out of sight of all these mad people, and come back in the morning.”

“Both,” Judith said. We left a message with the town watch, and they, too, told us to move on before nightfall.

We weren't much beyond the shadow of the town wall before I knew I couldn't hobble any farther.

“We have to turn back,” Judith said.

“I can't make it back,” I said, tears leaking from the corners of my eyes. Involuntary tears—I wasn't crying or anything.

Judith scanned the landscape. On our right ran the mighty Rhine; on the left, a terraced vineyard rose above us. There were no harvesters here—they'd all been working closer to town.

Two terraces up squatted a small barn, though that might have been too grand a term for the building.

“I can get you there,” Judith said grimly, and she half carried, half dragged me up the mountain and deposited me inside the structure. It was a storage hut, full of trellis pieces and bits for repair, tools for harvesting, baskets, and buckets. There was no convenient pile of hay, as there should be in a proper barn, but at least it would be some shelter from the night frost.

Judith opened the barn door wide and built a small fire at the door's mouth, so we could have some heat and yet vent the smoke.

The flesh of my foot was hot, red and tight, once we had my shoe and stocking off to examine it. I had incipient blisters nearly everywhere.

“It's going to be a long day,” I said, even though it was already somewhat past noon.

“I'm going to fetch a healer.”

“What would we pay a healer with?” I asked, and Judith didn't mention leaving again. “I just need to rest it.”

We knew that was true. This had happened before. There really wasn't much to do for my foot but to apply heat and cold and bandage those blisters. To that end, Judith put some stones in the fire and left some in the shadows outside, and we tried using them. But the cold wasn't very cold, so Judith jogged down to the Rhine and brought cool, wet stones back up.

It wasn't quite the same as Frau Oda's hot and cold poultices reeking of mustard seed, but it would do.

We ate sausages while watching the round moon race to rise before the sun set, and tied more wet stones from the Rhine to my foot. Judith said, handing me an apple, “What do you think the maid meant, ‘It's the end of the world'?”

I shrugged, turning the apple over in my hands but not biting into it. I wasn't hungry after all the sausage. “A generation ago, everyone thought the world would end because it had been a thousand years since Christ's birth. Father Ripertus said that in some places they never quite got over that, and every few years prepare for the end all over again. Maybe this is one of those places. Anyway, it doesn't matter—we're out of the town.”

“And there's no one else around,” Judith said.

That was worrisome. But I couldn't say exactly why. We made uncomfortable beds from our cloaks on the dirt floor and fell asleep, the moon shining bright on our faces through the barn door.

T
HUNDER WOKE ME
.

“Strange,” Judith murmured. “I thought it was clear tonight.”

“It is,” I said, staring out the barn door at the sky full of stars.

The thunder roared louder.

And then the shaking began.

At first, I almost didn't notice it. It was like being rocked in a cradle in the beginning, but then the shaking got harder and harder. The beams of the barn creaked and moaned. Judith and I got to our feet, no longer even a little drowsy.

We would have run outside right then, for fear the barn would come down on our heads, but outside was no better. The vines were tossing on their trellises, and leaves scuttled past in long chains.

“Storm and earthquake,” Judith cried. “It really is the end of the world!”

Then came the light. It was so bright, I flung my cloak over Judith and me, pulling us down to the ground with the fabric over our heads. Even through the cloak, the light turned the inside of my eyelids bright red. The noise of the wind and the shaking rose to a steady, low hum, like giant bees in a field of flowers.

Then the noise died away. The light dimmed.

My skin felt pricked by pins and needles. I threw back the cloak. Judith and I stared at each other: The barn was bright, far brighter than it had been in moonlight and firelight, though still dimmer than in the sun, or in the blinding light that had preceded this.

And the silence was vast and strange. So quiet, it almost burned the ears. There should have been something to hear, and my ears strained to listen for a sound, any sound. Judith got to her feet, but her footsteps made almost no noise—flat, muted thuds that I could barely hear.

Judith hit the side of her head, as if tapping water from her ears.

I hummed, testing my voice. It felt flat and lost in this silence. “Are you all right?” I asked.

“Ahhhhh,” Judith sang with two fingers pressed to her throat. She nodded, and helped me to my feet.

From outside came a noise like distant war drums.

J
UDITH WAS FIRST OUT THE BARN DOOR
. I
FOLLOWED
on her heels but could not keep pace.

Outside, in the windless calm, a strange light lay over everything. It was like the light that comes in a late-afternoon thunderstorm, when the sunrays stab golden across the sky from the west, vividly lighting up banks of onrushing coal-colored clouds. The whole world seems lit by witch light during those storms.

In the terraced vineyards near Upper Folkstown, I saw the same kind of light—only with no sun. The world was bright but the sky was dark, the stars and moon now blotted by clouds. The light came from nowhere, from no single source. It was true witch light.

Two terraces above the barn, a great, gleaming creature ran, trampling vines flat with its gigantic hooves.

The creature was a horse. A huge, golden horse, wearing a golden saddle, an iron bridle, and two bulging saddlebags.

I tried to speak, but in the airless calm, my voice died in my throat.

A shriek—a battle cry, like nothing I'd ever heard before—rose, entirely bone-chilling; the cry was followed by the jolting crack of hooves hitting the earth and splitting it open. Another enormous horse, this one copper, bore down on Judith. It reared in front of her and struck out with its front hooves, hitting Judith in the shoulder. She went down with a muffled cry. I choked on my breath, unsure of what to do.

The copper horse stared coldly down at Judith, a malevolent intelligence in its eyes.
It's going to trample her to death
.

I screamed some wordless denial at it and ran forward, waving my arms, to plant myself between Judith and the horse.

The copper horse reared—and I don't exactly know what happened next, because I thought for sure it was about to trample
both
of us, but a blur of silver caught the corner of my eye—and then an impact against my ribs pushed me aside. It was gentle, not painful, and it seemed that for one moment, I was floating above the earth, before I found myself standing six paces farther north than I had been.

Between Judith and the copper horse—between
me
and the copper horse—stood a silver mare. She faced the copper horse with flared nostrils and flattened ears, baring teeth.

The copper horse backed away.

I made a noise then. It might have been a squeak of fear. It might have been the words I had lost in my screaming, trying and failing to find form on my lips. The point is, I made a noise and I shouldn't have, because in no way did I want to draw the attention of any of the horses—gold, copper, or silver.

The silver horse wheeled around and stared me down, bathing my face with her hot breath.

I stared back, frozen in terror. All I could see was the sharp, hard feet that could grind me into dust, the giant teeth that could rend my flesh from the bones. They might not be a dragon's tearing teeth, but they were no less fearsome.

Not too far away, the copper horse started trampling the vines—a fast but deliberate movement, as it methodically tore down and pulverized the whole row of grapes. Puzzled, I glanced over, then back. Judith's auburn hair caught my eye.

“Judith?” I whispered.

The silver horse showed her teeth again, and I flinched.

“I'm all right,” Judith whimpered. “I mean, other than my shoulder.”

The silver horse did not look around at Judith's voice, but when the copper horse drew near again, the mare sent it away with an angry snort.

The silver mare bent her head toward me and showed her teeth again.
She's going to take my nose off
, I thought, shaking, and turned my cheek aside. I took a half step back, then waited, unsure of how close the golden horse was, and unwilling to take my eyes off the silver mare. She had saved us from the copper horse, but her lips curled from her teeth again and again and again. I cowered away from her, praying she wouldn't bite me.

“Tilda!” Judith called in a low voice. “She—she's not threatening you. She's fighting that bit in her mouth.”

I glanced up at the horse, my tremors subsiding as my curiosity increased. I studied the horse. She was silver, from teeth to tail, and this was certainly amazing; but amazing as well were the elaborate, bejeweled saddle and fittings of silver she wore. Bulging saddlebags of cloth of silver rested both ahead of the pommel and behind the cantle.

But her bridle was a different story; it was not silver but dark iron, wrapped around the mare's face like a cage—and it didn't belong.

Judith was right.

I reached up to touch the bridle. The mare quieted, no longer making her teeth-baring face.

“How do I take the bridle off?” I called back softly. Our voices still sounded strange and flat in the dead-calm air.

“Reach up—grab that topmost piece of the bridle, between the ears, and just pull forward and down.”

My hands fumbled to obey Judith's instructions. My fingers skimmed up to the topmost piece between the ears, hooked around it, and pulled it forward.

Immediately, the bit dropped out of the horse's mouth, and the whole iron bridle fell to the ground.

The silver mare shook herself and grunted.

Behind me, I heard the continued trampling of the golden horse. Beyond the silver mare, the copper horse edged closer to me again. The silver horse wheeled about and stared down the copper horse.

I was uncomfortable with the silver horse's massive rear hooves so easily in striking distance of me, but I wasn't scared witless anymore. I sidled over to Judith, then crouched next to her.

“What's wrong with your shoulder?” I whispered.

“It's . . . It might be broken.”

“Thunder weather!” I swore. We couldn't just slap a hot rock on a broken bone. Of course, we couldn't even do
that
surrounded by these horses.

“Do you think you can get up?”

“We'll see.”

We managed to get Judith to her feet. The copper horse—another mare—flattened her ears, but the silver horse blocked her approach.

“Let's get you to the barn,” I said, and together we moved slowly across the terrace to the little wooden building. The silver mare kept pace, always placing herself between us and the copper horse.

“I've never seen anything like them,” Judith said once we were inside the barn. I stood in the doorway, studying them. All three gleamed like metal; all three wore bejeweled tack and bulging saddlebags. The golden and copper horses each had dark iron bridles as well.

Three horses made of the three royal metals, here in Upper Folkstown.

The copper horse tried to approach the barn, but the silver mare headed her off again.

I watched the copper horse closely. She was making the same lip-curling face that the silver mare had. She flicked an ear, watching me watch her.

I stepped out of the barn.

The silver horse stepped forward, as if to push me back inside; but while I was still wary of her, I was no longer exactly scared. I was the mouse who had removed the thorn from the lion's paw. I put my hand out to brush the silver horse's neck, to show her I would not be herded back into the barn.

“I'm, um, fine. You can . . . well, you can stand guard, but stop interfering.”

Slowly, cautiously, I edged toward the copper horse. Her aggression had died away, and she simply stood there, waiting for me, while she fought her bit.

When I reached the copper mare, I waited a moment for her to quiet, then pulled off her bridle, too. This time I caught it, not letting it fall to the ground.

The copper horse dropped her nose to my head and snorted.

“Don't chew my hair off,” I whispered.

She blew into my ear and then sort of grunted at me. Not a whinny—something else.

I backed away from the copper horse, the bridle looped around my wrist, and looked up at the golden stallion still trampling the vineyard to dust. He was many terraces above us now—he had destroyed nearly the whole vineyard. I wondered if he wanted to be free of his bridle, too, but there was a wildness to him that made me too afraid to go and try.