The Dragon Book (29 page)

“This?” Nitz suddenly became aware of the weapon’s weight. He had bent his spine in such a way as to balance himself and keep the thing from toppling him over. “Yes, well, rest assured that I can use … uh …”

“Wolfreiz,” Madeline chimed in from behind.

“Yes, Wolfreiz. Thank you, Sister.” Nitz cleared his throat. “Rest assured that I can use Wolfreiz to such an effect that nothing remains standing after it is swung.”

Father Scheitzen grunted in reply. Somehow, Nitz suspected that the priest did not quite believe him. Was it the fact that he could not remember his weapon’s name? Or was it the fact that his physique was offensively similar to that of an underdeveloped milkmaid?

“It is no Crusader’s mace,” the priest replied, “but then, you are no Crusader … yet. That may change after you perform your duty to God.”

Nitz swallowed hard at that. Fortunate, he thought, for it prevented any further words from finding their way to his lips. Instead, the questions stewed at the back of his throat: what did the father mean? Was Nitz to be sent to the Holy Land to continue his father’s legacy? How on earth would he accomplish that? By caving in twenty thousand and
two
skulls?

Perhaps, he thought, it would be better just to tell the priest everything. No more secrets, no more lies, no more pretending to be the heir his father wanted. All the heathen blood he had shed in his father’s name came from the power directly behind him, not within him.

He sought to say this, but things like honesty and truth had long been tempered out of him, leaving only the hard, unrelenting steel of verse and duty behind.

“May God forgive the hell I leave in my wake,” he uttered mechanically, the church repeating him.

“So say we all.”

FRAUMVILT was contemptuous, Nitz thought, as it stared out through its stone, flanged head to survey the landscape below. The great mace was sickened to its shaft at the sight beneath its unseeing eyes: thatched roofs, rolling fields of green and tan, men holding shepherds’ canes instead of maces, women kneeling beside cows instead of altars.

War was reserved for the Holy Land, blood spilled where God could
see
it. Here in the kingdoms, men and women died rarely and peacefully, in their sleep, with no one but insignificant sons and daughters to ever know.

“Father would be sick if he could see it,” Nitz muttered.

“Eh?” Maddy took a step forward, and her shadow devoured him.

Father would have been sicker yet to see the size of her compared to him. Fortunately, God had smiled upon Kalintz the Great, the Bloodied, and sent the lightning bolt that had struck him down and called him back to heaven long before he could live to see how runty his son, his only son, had grown. In this, God was gracious, sparing Kalintz the sight of his son dwarfed by a titanic woman.

And yet, God did not smile upon Nitz. For even then, God had sent his father back to earth in the form of his monument: the heap of stone skulls beneath the plated stone feet that blossomed into a terrible, fearsome stone flower. Fraumvilt was its sole petal, its sole thorn, and the recreation of the mace stared down at Nitz with even more hatred than it did the country below.

“Intimidating fellow,” Maddy continued, observing the statue’s face.

Behind his Crusader’s helm, carved so delicately as to faithfully recreate the visage of the first skull Kalintz had ever crushed, Nitz imagined that he probably frowned.

“It almost makes one wonder what was behind it,” she muttered. He felt her good eye staring into his own skull, trying to crack it open and poke whatever twitching lumps held the answer.

“I wouldn’t know,” he replied softly. “Father never removed his helmet.”

“Never?”

“At least, never around me.” He rolled his shoulders with a sigh. “Nor my mother, if she can be believed.”

“Can she?”

“She was an honest woman, all told.”

“Huh.” Maddy turned her stare back up to the towering monument. “So the greater question would be why they ever fell in love in the first place?”

“They didn’t.” Nitz felt a laugh tickle in his throat. “Procreation is all God demands of the faithful; fresh blood for the war. Love has nothing to do with it.”

“In the north, a man is required to kill no less than twelve legs’ worth of beasts before he can propose to a woman.” She grunted. “Or a woman is required to craft him a fine weapon before she can hope to court him. The product itself, be it meat or steel, is largely symbolic. The dedication required for such a thing is what is demanded. Not from God to man, but from man to woman and vice versa.”

Nitz smacked his lips.

“No wonder you’re all such savages.”

“I crafted such a weapon as to allow me my pick of any man in my village.”

Her words were accompanied by a sigh, a wistful breath punctuating her thought. Nitz shifted his feet uncomfortably; he was unused to such a sound. Her morbid laughter, the sounds of her boots crunching on gravel laden with corpses, these were sounds that had grown familiar enough to be comfortable. When her voice dripped with nostalgia, he grew worried.

“And you can have it back now,” he grunted. Reaching under his vest, he proceeded to undo the complicated buckles and straps securing the weapon to his back. “We’re far enough away that Father Scheitzen’s church won’t hear it fall.”

He winced at those words. The weapon fell to the ground with a thunderous clatter, its steel ringing a mournful dirge as it struck the earth.

“Stones don’t hear,” Maddy growled, reaching down to pluck the axe up in one powerful hand. “If they did, though, they’d hear you spilling yourself on your trousers when I gutted you for disrespecting my axe again.”

“Oh, come now, Wolfreiz—”

“Vulf,”
she corrected hotly, “his name is Vulf. Wolfreiz is what you pious piss-drinkers call him.”

“Vulf,” he repeated, “is a strong and sturdy weapon, perfectly capable of suffering the earth’s embrace for a few moments.” He shot her a cheerful wink. “After all, he was wrought by the finest hands in the north, was he not?”

“Mm,” she grunted. She swept her good eye about, surveying the lack of flesh in their vicinity. “We’re far away now, are we?”

“Yes,” he nodded. “Why?” He cringed suddenly as her free hand went for her robe. “Oh, good lord, don’t do it in front of me. Can’t you wait until you find a bush or something?”

“It itches,” she replied simply.

Any further protest he had was squelched by the sound of fabric tearing and the murmur of cloth. In the blink of an eye, her habit was off and clenched in her hand. He attempted to turn away but was mesmerized, as he always was, by the sight of what lay beneath.

The rough leather that sought to encase her had been soundly defeated long ago, leaving tight-fitting scraps that clung to her body with resigned determination. What considerable amount of skin was left bare was crisscrossed by scars, dotted by fresh bruises, and tattooed by blue and black designs that snaked down her biceps, wrists, and flanks. It was a masterpiece of muscle, a testament to how much blood, heathen or no, she had spilled.

Against such a wall of strength, the evidence of his handiwork, the bandages that covered her at odd intervals and the jagged scars where his stitching had gone awry, seemed more like desecration than medicine.

He had little time to think on it, for his vision was obscured by black as she tossed the robes over him.

“You’ve got needlework to do,” she said.

He found his way out of the tangle just in time to see her pull her cap off, shaking free a wild mane of brown that descended past her shoulders in a long, frayed ponytail. He caught that more deftly as she tossed it to him, thanking whatever saint watched over tailors that she hadn’t ripped the garment. It had taken him months to recreate the stiff-browed headgear faithfully.

“You ever think of investing in a shirt or something?” he grumbled, folding the garments and tucking them under his arm. “It’d draw less attention.”

“Why would I want to draw less attention?”

“It would mean less fighting.”

She blinked at that, staring blankly.

“Fine, it would mean less fighting for
me
. Besides, here in the kingdoms, women dress with civility.”

“Civilization is relative.”

“To?”

“To whoever has the biggest weapon to decide who gets to say what civilization is.”

“Ah.”

“Shirts catch fire, anyway,” she replied, hefting her axe. “If we’re going to kill a dragon, damp leather will burn less easily.”

“What’s this ‘
we
’ business, anyway?”

“You’re not coming?”

“I’m coming, certainly, but I figured
you’d
do the fighting.” He coughed. “Like you always do.”

“Hiding behind a woman,” she snickered. “Your father would be proud!”

“Had he seen the ogre pretending to be a woman that I hid behind, he probably would be.”

As they set down the hill, Nitz didn’t quite believe that. His father, undoubtedly, would have criticized him for stumbling in the footprints of the northern woman’s stride. Criticism no longer bothered Nitz; he had developed skin thick enough to resist the taunts and jabs thrown his way from the road, well out of Maddy’s hearing. And reach.

His father had never criticized with words, however …

“Where is it this dragon was seen last, anyway?”

“West,” Nitz replied, “if the map’s to be believed.”

“So we go.”

“So say we all.”

Before them, the road stretched out endlessly, over the hills and forests that marked the land forsaken by God. Behind them, Father Scheitzen’s temple cast its stalwart shadow, hiding the peaceful shame of the countryside from the heavens. And above Nitz, his father watched with unblinking stone eyes.

“LISTEN, I know it seems like I erred, but it was an error of virtue.”

Armecia was not listening.

“You can hardly fault me for that.”

Armecia faulted him for that.

“For the love of the lord,” Leonard grunted. “At least let me put down the damn boulder.”

She turned a scowl, one part icy, one part pitch, upon him and surveyed him bent and crooked under the jagged rock. With a contemptuous snort, she turned her back on him and made a fleeting gesture.

“Fine,” she replied, “but only until I can find something bigger.” She pointed a finger toward the earth. “Lenny, put it down.”

It landed with a heavy crashing sound, followed by a loud popping sound as the knight knuckled his back. She frowned, more at herself than at him; there was no logical reason why he continued doing that, she reasoned. He should be well beyond pain at this point.

You can bring a man back from the dead, but you can’t cure a bad back,
she scolded herself,
you deserved to be burned.
She rubbed her arm.
Or at least bashed over the head a few times.

“Frankly, I’m not sure what you’re so upset about.” He cricked his neck with a much louder popping sound. “I was only following your commands.” He held up a finger in emphasis. “First law: protect the half-breed.”

“And the second law?”

“Is superseded by the first.”

“The second law,” she fumed, “is
protect the book.
As it turns out, the
half-breed
is rather partial to that one. Who knows what they’re doing to it?”

She shuddered at the thought of greasy hands running through its dry, delicate pages, beady, ratlike eyes going over its masterfully penned script with blasphemous disregard for its content.

That is,
she admitted,
if they haven’t already burned it.

“Well,” Leonard responded, “I suppose you should have had better foresight.”

“Oh, don’t you turn this back on
me
.”

“I wouldn’t … but, I mean, it
is
your fault.”

“
My
fault.” She pursed her lips. “For being burned at the stake?”