The Coming of the Dragon (26 page)

Clenching the piece of wood in his good hand, he
closed his eyes, probing his memory for any hint of his mother. “Inga Til,” he repeated to himself as the cookfire snapped. His nostrils filled with the smell of smoke, harsh and biting. Against the backs of his eyelids, a scene formed, and he tightened his grip on the wood. Flames, he saw flames in the night as a hall burned, as people ran to save themselves. Horses whinnied in terror, and he smelled not just smoke but also burning flesh. He heard children screaming and the clash of sword against sword. A young woman with a baby in her arms ran toward dark water, a servant beside her carrying weapons and armor that clinked together as she ran. Ahead in the shallows, a boat rocked. The woman turned to look behind her. A man, silhouetted by flames, brandished his spear and began running toward them. He heard a cry of anguish—“My child! Wiglaf!”—and felt the warmth of a body pressing to his cheek, a heart beating in time to his. Then: darkness. Darkness and cold and the slap of waves against the sides of the boat.

He opened his eyes. The ground was beneath him. He was sitting in front of the cookfire in Amma’s hut. He unclenched his hand from the piece of wood that was cutting into it. Cautiously, he raised his head. Over the tops of the friendly flames, Ketil was watching him.

He swallowed and looked away. “Let’s get some sleep.”

The next day, Rune felt hollow and drained. He was relieved by the speed with which Ketil learned how to work a flail, bringing the heavy, jointed sticks down on the stalks
to separate the oats from the chaff. As they worked, he could tell Ketil was keeping a close eye on him. It was hard to keep his focus on the threshing, to lose himself in the work. The rhythm he had found in the previous day’s reaping eluded him, and twice Ketil had to leap out of the way to avoid being hit by his flail.

He hadn’t slept well. All night long, disturbing images and sounds and smells had woken him. He didn’t know what he’d seen as he sat in front of the fire—a vision? Or had he just imagined it? He didn’t want to think about it, but he couldn’t stop himself.

Before they left Hwala’s farm, Rune returned to Amma’s grave. He took the carved piece of wood out of the pouch at his belt and turned it over in his hands. He thought he might understand some of Amma’s reasons, her choices. It would have been a terrible burden for him to grow up knowing his father had killed her son. But one secret was connected to another like a long chain of dark beads, and revealing one might have led to others. In the end, she must have chosen to keep all of them wound up inside herself until it was almost too late.
Survivor of war
, she’d said. It wasn’t just his name. She’d been trying to tell him what he was: the flotsam bobbing on the waves after the wreck of war. Like Amma herself.

They rode out, bags of groats tied to their saddles, straw drying in the shed. They could send someone for it later if it was needed for the settlement’s horses. Amma’s woven hanging that had covered one wall of the hut for as
long as he could remember was rolled up and tied to Rune’s saddle, where he could see it as he rode.

They stopped at farms, looking to see who needed help, taking a hand with a scythe or rake, driving a cart full of hay, always keeping watch for raiders. Despite his burned hand, Rune welcomed the work. Harvesting made sense: you grew grain, you cut the stalks and allowed them to dry, and you threshed them when it was time—all so you could feed yourself and your livestock. He wished the rest of his life were equally straightforward.

At every farm, Ketil chatted amiably with the farmers as he worked, telling them about Thialfi and Wyn’s brothers, about Rune’s idea to put an end to the feud. The first time he realized what Ketil was doing, Rune shot him a warning look, but it was too late; the words were already out.

Then it was Ketil’s turn to signal for Rune to listen as the farmers talked among themselves. “It’s what a good king does,” one of them said as Ketil held Rune’s eyes. “Brings about peace so we can get on with farming.”

“Not just farming—living,” another man answered, and an older woman agreed with him.

“Bringing up children you don’t have to send off to war,” she said.

Rune wondered how many sons she had lost to the Shylfings.

But not everyone thought the truce was a good idea. At the next farm, a young farmer exploded with anger at
Ketil’s words. Ketil kept working alongside him, and Rune heard him asking who the man had lost to the enemy.

“Nobody in my family,” he answered as he swung a bale of hay onto a cart.

“Friends of yours, then,” Ketil said sympathetically.

“No, nobody I know,” the man said. “But you can’t just stop a feud with words. Those Shylfings, they’ll say they want peace, but when we let our guard down …”

“No matter what happens,” Rune said, “we’ll never let our guard down.”

The farmer stared at him for a moment, then leaned over to pick up another bale. The man was right, Rune thought. King Beowulf had known it. What did Rune think he was doing, acting against the king’s wishes, against all of the wisdom age and experience had conferred on him?

Then he remembered what Amma had taught him about the king ending the feud between the Danes and the Geats. Some feuds could be ended, some couldn’t, but how was he to know which was which? He shook his head in bewilderment.

After that, Rune kept his mouth shut and let Ketil do the talking. More often than not, the people on the farms they visited supported the truce. Sometimes Ketil asked them if they knew how it had started. Only once did someone say she did, a wizened old woman who wore a hat that looked like a sack. But the version of the story she told was different from the one Rune knew. He wondered if either of them was right.

As they left Surt’s farm, Rune pictured Thialfi and Wyn’s brothers on their horses, riding through hostile lands. Could they have reached the Shylfings yet? Ketil said no, that it would take many days to get there, then time to negotiate and travel home again—if nothing went wrong. Rune couldn’t stop worrying that Horsa had been right: any envoys to the Shylfings would be killed before they delivered their message.

What was I thinking?
Rune wondered. When Thora had backed him, sending the men had seemed like the right thing to do. Now it seemed like a fool’s errand, or worse. Had he sent them to their deaths?

He looked down at the pouch on his belt where he’d tucked the piece of wood and once again saw the vision of terror and destruction his mother had saved him from. Could that happen to the Geats? Had it already happened at the settlement, while he and Ketil had been away? He imagined Wyn and her mother cowering in their house; Elli holding her baby, terror and grief on her face as a sword came down.

The sound of Ketil whistling broke into his dark thoughts. He looked up at the bright autumn sky, at a group of birches in the distance, their leaves flickering red and gold. A breeze ruffled through his hair and across his eyelashes. Ahead, he could hear the sounds of men in the fields, laughing as they worked. He nudged Hairy-Hoof’s sides, and as she broke into a canter, Ketil kept pace beside him.

They stopped at Buri’s place last. The young farmer needed no help, but he was glad to see them all the same and to show off his new son. “I wanted to call him Beowulf, but the wife said no,” he said. “Too high for the likes of us, she said, so we’re still trying to decide.”

Rune held out his shield hand. The baby grabbed his little finger, twisting it hard. He gritted his teeth, letting the infant have its way. “Quite a grip on this one.”

Buri laughed.

“Finn was a good man,” Rune said. “What about Finn for a name?”

Buri nodded. “Fair but firm he was, wasn’t he?” He turned around to look at his wife, who peered shyly at them from the doorway. She nodded and Buri looked down at his son. “How does Finn suit you?” he asked.

The baby gurgled happily.

From Buri’s, Rune and Ketil made their way back to the settlement, their path leading them through a wide swath of land the dragon hadn’t burned. They passed field after newly harvested field, and Rune thought there might be just enough grain and hay to get the kingdom through the winter, at least if spring didn’t come too late.

As long as the Shylfings didn’t attack.

And as long as the warriors hadn’t already splintered into factions while he and Ketil had been gone. What would they find when they returned?

TWENTY-SIX

RUNE STOOD UNMOVING, HIS ARMS HELD OUT LIKE WINGS,
flinching at pricks of pain. There was no escape.

In front of him, Wyn looked him up and down, frowning, hands on her hips. She pulled a pin from between her lips and took hold of his shirt.

“Ow,” Rune said, and looked at Thora, who stood beside him, pinning on a sleeve. Gerd worked on the other one, on his sword-hand side, giggling occasionally as she warned him not to move. She was the best seamstress of the three women, and Rune trusted her not to touch his burned hand. He was still wearing the padded glove she’d made him.

If only the tunic would fit as well as the glove did. It had been Finn’s best, embroidered down the front, and
Thora had cut it down for Rune. Nobody said it, but Rune was sure the task would have been simpler if Thora had allowed Gerd to do the initial cutting. Now, no matter what they did, the three women couldn’t get it to fit Rune properly, with the embroidery in the right place.

He endured their ministrations. There was no point in protesting—they were doing their best, and they didn’t have much time. The coronation was tomorrow, and the cloak still wasn’t ready, either. Fulla had been working feverishly on it, and now several other women were helping her. Or so Rune had been told.

It wasn’t as if they had waited until the last minute. They had worked as hard as Rune and Ketil had. So had everyone else—men, women, and children. Carts of grain had rumbled into the stronghold—not as full as in previous years, Thora had told him, but perhaps enough to see them through the winter. Rune had been gratified to hear people remarking on them, and more than one warrior had given him a nod of approval at the sight of a cart laden with hay.

There had been no word from the envoys when Rune and Ketil got back to the settlement. Even though he knew it was too early, Rune couldn’t quell his anxiety. They increased the number of border patrols, and finally Rune agreed with the bard that it was time to rebuild the hall. It wouldn’t be anything grand the way King Beowulf’s golden-roofed hall had been, let alone shingled with shields the way Odin’s hall was said to be. For now, plain
thatch would have to do, despite the bard’s disappointment. If they were to finish before the snows set in, they didn’t have time for luxuries. What they needed now was a place for the people to assemble, especially in case of attack, a place where the men and boys could practice their weapons during the winter. Rune thought the women needed to meet there, too, even if he wasn’t sure what it was they did.

The last of the border patrols that had left before King Beowulf died came riding in when they were just finishing the roof. The men watched Rune, their eyes expressionless, as the troop leader gave his report. Later, Rune saw them looking with disdain at the new hall’s dirt floor, not a wooden one like in King Beowulf’s hall; at its wooden beams as yet undecorated with the elaborate carvings they were accustomed to; at its simple thatched roof that made it look like a farmhouse. Seeing the hall through their eyes, he understood how it fared in contrast with the great mead hall they had left behind them when they went out to patrol the borders. Their entire world had collapsed while they had been gone, and the new hall was a symbol of just how diminished things had become. Well, Rune told himself, it would have to serve. At least it had long benches lining its interior, surrounding the fire pit, like King Beowulf’s hall had had. And at least there would be enough food to survive the winter, if the hunting was good.

As the patrol dispersed, Rune could hear murmuring among the men. It wasn’t just the hall they were objecting
to, he was sure. He set his jaw and turned back to helping Gar with the thatch they had been working on.

That night, they consecrated the hall to Thor, sacrificing a goat in his honor and cooking it over a roaring fire in the middle of the structure as warriors gathered on the benches. Outside, the wind whistled, nosing around the eaves, inspecting the walls and finding no entry. Sawdust still littered the ground, but the joints were solid.

The bard took charge of the ceremony, and Rune was content to watch until a servant bowed low in front of him, holding out a platter. Unsure of what to do, Rune sought out the bard with his eyes, but the poet was looking elsewhere. He was the only one—everyone else in the hall seemed to be staring at Rune. Then he remembered the last goat sacrifice he’d seen, at the Feasting Field, when King Beowulf had chosen the men who would help him fight the dragon. The king had eaten the goat’s liver first, before the warriors ate the choicest cuts of meat. He took a deep breath, then grabbed the liver from the platter, held it up for the people to see, and took a bite as the juices dripped down his wrist and chin.