Dragon Sacrifice (The First Realm Book 3) (17 page)

“It’s me, Ardel.”

“Ardel? Is that him?” King Garvel looked down from the walls. “My son! Where have you been?”

“—Same place I was—” Orvar said, but this was a whisper.

“Father, I brought back the wizard,” Ardel said.

“You were ordered to remain
here
. Behind my walls!”

“Father, I return with the city’s salvation.”

“And what of the kingdom? You are the future, Ardel. The future. We cannot lose you.”

“Is that him?” a woman said. “Has he returned? Ardel!”

“Dianne! Why are you here?”

“And Serrato! You brought it?”

Serrato grinned. “You’ll have to sign for it.”

“Yes, yes. But first it must be replanted. Open the gates!”

King Garvel turned. “This is my house. But yes, open the gates! Why are they not opening?”

A guard said something in Norse.

“The gates are stuck,” Heronimo said.

“They must open,” Dianne said. “The cutting is extremely delicate. Lives are at stake.”

We moved to the door.

“Urrrrgh.”

“Son of a bitch,” I said. “This is a lot of door.”

“Not so pretty when you’re the one pushing, isn’t it?” Cruix asked.

Meerwen stepped up. “So the gates are unlocked, but stuck?”

“It’s the hinges,” Mina gasped.

Meerwen nodded. “Ardel, if there’s anyone behind these doors, tell them to stand thirty feet back.”

I stepped away from the gates. “I’d do what she says.”

Ardel yelled something in Norse.

“All clear,” he said. “But what—”

Meerwen settled her feet. Raised her hands. Then she shoved and the gates flew out of everyone’s hands.

“Wah!” Heronimo said. He tried to catch it, clawed the air, and ate dirt. So did everyone else.

BOOM
the gates crashed wide.

Meerwen walked in. “Let’s get this over with.”

“This is why nobody likes elves,” Mina said. “If they aren’t forcing you into dance choreography, they’re leaving handprints on your armoured doors.”

“Aren’t we friends?” Meerwen asked.

“You scare me sometimes. All that power. Is that why you don’t carry a weapon? Because you can pull people’s arms off?”

“I fight barehanded
because
I can pull people’s arms off.”

“I knew you were a sadist,” Cruix said. “It was the catsuit.”

“What my lay sister means is that killing comes easy for her,” Dianne said. “She fights without weapons as a way of restraining her power.”

The fighting nun was grafting the cutting to a rootstock. You’d think there were more important things to do than gardening, but Dianne acted like it was major surgery. Another nun passed her the tools.

“You’re a hedge witch,” I told Dianne’s assistant.

“I am, your majesty.”

“Call me Angrod. Are you the one who sends all the messages?”

“No sir. I do fire magic. I boost plant metabolisms.”

“Sisterhood of the Gentle Fists,” Cruix said “What does that even mean?”

He looked around. “Where’s Heronimo? He’s usually said something inane about now.”

“He went out with some of the men,” Dianne said. “Still, it’s a good question. Twine?”

The other nun handed her a ball of the stuff. Dianne started bandaging the wound.

“What you have to understand is that everyone goes armed in the Northlands,” she said. “Even a beggar can carry a mace, if he be a freeman. In such an environment, the fist is the, ah-heh, pacifist’s option.”

“Never knew a pacifist could break so many heads,” I said.

“Broken heads heal if they are but lightly cracked. To put it another way, the hand knows many things. The sword knows only how to kill. Grafting wax?”

She started dabbing the stuff on the wound.

“What is this for?” I asked.

“The cutting was taken out of Deepwood,” she said, as if it explained everything. “You really know nothing, do you? She said as much.”

“Who?”

“She has strawberry blonde hair and a mole under her right eye. I believe you knew her intimately.”

“... Who?”

Chapter 16

Wandering the compound, I found Ardel in front of a shrine. This was a small stone altar under an oak tree.

“Am I intruding?” I asked.

“Not at all,” he said. “I was just visiting Mother.” He gestured to the urn on the altar.

“Are both your parents still living?” he asked.

I shook my head. “I never knew my father. And when I was two, my mother bought a ticket to the Last Ride.”

“I’m sorry,” he said. “At least I knew my mother. Old age took her.”

“She was a halfling?”

He nodded.

We stood there, under the shade. The wind brought us cooking smells. Somewhere a pig was roasting.

The prince looked down and kicked at the grass. “I should be out there, you know. Orvar is the older brother. It’s him that should be standing here, doing nothing.”

“Why isn’t he?”

“He doesn’t heal fast. Not like a human should.”

He looked at the urn. “In the Northlands, when a baby is born, the man of the house must first inspect it. Before it is fed. Before it is named.”

“Before it is allowed to live,” I said.

“What we do is make a cut in the baby’s hand. Just a small cut, one that ought to heal in seconds.

Orvar just cried.” Ardel sighed. “My father wanted to leave my brother in the woods. But my mother stopped him. She said that if he married a halfling, if he had a son by a halfling, he shouldn’t be surprised if the son was a halfling.”

Heronimo

Orvar was scratching his hand as he led us through the trees. Sunlight dappled his back as he moved into shadow, but he never missed a twig or fallen branch. He was silent. His bow was in his hand.

The leather of Orvar’s jacket was creased and faded: it looked like tree bark. The wool of his trousers had been dyed in woad and weld until it was the colour of leaves. Even with human eyes, I doubt I could have seen him if he hadn’t been trying to stay visible.

He stopped.

I made my way to his side. “What is it?” I asked.

“This is as far as I go with him,” Orvar said.

He waited for the approaching clatter. Ardel didn’t lumber, but he rattled.

Orvar sneered. “For Hel’s sake, brother, you sound like pots and pans fucking.”

“Father insisted,” Ardel said. I think he was blushing, but I couldn’t be sure.

Humans tend to shun armour. On the battlefield, padded cloth grows filthy. It picks up lice, it soaks up sweat, it drinks up blood. Nobody wants that in their wounds. Boiled leather is almost as bad. Chainmail is better, but it’s not cheap. What’s more, it makes your enemies stop using swords and start using hammers. Blood and flesh we can heal quickly. Bones we cannot.

Anything less than full plate is more trouble than it’s worth.

Full plate is what Ardel wore. Armour like that, it’s not clean if it’s not mirror-bright. Even in the shade, he glowed.

“Look at you,” Orvar said.

“Hard not to,” Cruix said.

“The very opposite of stealth,” Orvar said.

“The epitome of head-turning,” Cruix said.

“A shining knight. A polished, er, prince,” Orvar said. “A true and perfect peacock.”

“He even stands like he’s at parade,” Cruix said. “Of course, he daren’t slouch with that armour on his back.”

“Heronimo?” Ardel said. “Little help here?”

I covered my mouth. “Prince Ardel, I fear I cannot help where sharp words are concerned.”

“Orvar I am accustomed to—but not this! I am harried from all sides!”

“Lower your voice!” Orvar hissed. “The wyverns are distracted, not deaf!”

“Sorry, brother.”

“It would be best if you stayed here, with your men,” Orvar said. “I will go ahead with our guests and make the first shot.”

The prince nodded in his helmet.

Orvar stalked ahead, bow in hand. It was a recurve like the caprans carried, with a stave of horn and sinew, not solid wood like a longbow.

“What’s the draw weight on that?” Cruix asked.

“Two hundred pounds.”

Cruix whistled. With a forty-pound bow you could hunt elk. With an eighty-pound bow you could go to war. With a bow like Orvar’s, you could hunt wyvern, though you were more likely to rupture your shoulder.

“Orvar also strings his own bows,” I said. “No one else can.”

“No one else dares,” Orvar said.

“Light bows are dangerous enough,” I said. “Ardel was always hurting himself. He’d string a bow and it would slip. Or he’d draw too far back and it would snap. I’m actually surprised he reached manhood with both his eyes.”

“Special, is he?” Cruix said. “I see why the king has him wear a helmet.”

There was a cough. Orvar had drawn an arrow from his belt.

“I’ll not have this talk about my brother,” he said. “It’s one thing to tease him to his face. Quite another to belittle him behind his back, where he can’t defend himself.”

I kept my hands clear of my sword. I nodded. Cruix glanced at me, then also nodded. “I apologize,” he said.

“A man deserves a fair go...” Orvar said.

He slipped the arrow back in its quiver. “Ardel is sheltered, not stupid. He’ll grow out of it when he takes the throne.”

He motioned for silence. We were close to our prey, after all.

The forest was torn up. Trees were pushed over, their bases splintered, their roots dangling. The ground was clawed and full of rainwater.

Orvar manoeuvred over the jagged puddles. Carefully we stepped. The shadows slipped off our backs and the trees stood behind us. We were crawling now. Cruix slithered.

Picture an unlit bonfire. Picture two of them. The bull wyvern had constructed a bower out of branches. Two conical towers between which the female crouched. She did not move, only watched as the male strutted and flared. The mating dance of the forest wyvern.

Cruix stared. “It’s... I never realized...”

The bull wyvern leaped, and hopped, and stamped. It stuck its tail straight out and puffed its wings. It swayed. Waves travelled down its neck as it raised its head and let it drop.

It reminded me of a sword-drill, the kind some fencing schools require. The stances are too wide and the guards too stiff. The attacks are so obvious you might as well shout their names. But no student can advance in rank until he has the dexterity to turn the drill into a dance.

The bull wyvern had decorated its bower with a peddler’s fortune in pans and pots. This was dwarven cookware, still mirror-bright after centuries. In addition, the wyvern had polished its black and orange scales.

“You think it’s trying too hard?” Cruix asked.

“Seems to be working,” Orvar said. The female wyvern, or cow, swished its long striped tail. Its eyes were locked on the dancing male. Its hind legs flexed and its hindquarters rose.

“Ooh, she’s a hot one,” Cruix said.

“Need a moment alone?” Orvar asked.

“Just, er, admiring my closest relatives. I mean, they’re very like dragons.”

“Are dragon mating dances any less ridiculous?”

“Females always make fools out of males,” Cruix said. “Our courtship tends toward the exchange of gifts.”

“Again with the shiny,” Orvar said. “Have you fellows seen enough? My bow is restless.”

“Shouldn’t we move closer?” Cruix said.

“We’re plenty close.” Orvar rose to a crouch.

“But it’s three hundred yards at least.”

I nodded. “I’ve seen him shoot half again as far.”

Orvar nocked an arrow.

“But we’re not shooting for distance, are we?” Cruix said. “Our targets are not patches of dirt.”

“Deer or dirt, bullseye or clout, it matters not,” I said. “He never misses.”

Orvar leaned into the bow, the great spring bending to the power of his shoulders and back. His bow hand pushed forward, the bow’s limbs curving in reverse. Orvar raised the arrow to this face, where the feathers of ten million arrows had carved a groove into his cheek. He looked down the arrow-shaft and past it to where the bull wyvern hopped and beat its wings.

Orvar opened his hand.

The first arrow was still swimming through the air when he sent its brother after it. These were war arrows, heavy enough to stagger an armoured man. They hissed over the clearing and punched through wyvern hide.

The bull wyvern screamed. It hobbled on three limbs: its right wing had gone dead.

“How—?” Cruix said.

“I hit the nerves,” Orvar said. He drew another arrow. “Also, these are poisoned.”

The female huddled in the bower, all four thousand pounds of her, while the male howled and tore at the dirt. It scanned left and right. It saw us and bellowed.

Orvar laughed and put an arrow in its eye.

Then the bull wyvern was running toward us. It was ungainly but fast. Its left wing was folded close to its body, its right wing hung as though broken. Its hind legs muscled it forward.

Orvar pushed his bow forward. His arm was steady, his stance was firm. He shot again, and then once more, and the wyvern skidded with two arrows in its knee.

“If he wanted to kill it, he’d put a shaft in its heart,” I told Cruix. “He’s waiting for something.”

“Yaaaaah!”

Ardel charged out of the forest, warhammer held high. The sun caught on his armour and he shone as brightly as the wounded beast. He made more noise than the wyvern did. It sounded like so much dropped silverware.

Ardel clattered forward. The bull wyvern fixed its good eye on the prince and snarled. Its teeth were many. Its jaws, built for crushing. It got its feet under it and—

—and every bird for miles rose into the air. The wyvern had roared. No other sound existed.

That close to the wyvern, it must have hurt Ardel. He didn’t slow down. He closed the distance and with both hands hammered down on the wyvern’s nose.

A flat-headed warhammer might have glanced off. One with a pointed tip might have done so as well. But Ardel’s hammer had four prongs, four spikes to catch on armour and deliver a blow’s full weight. The wyvern reeled. Blood poured from its broken snout. Its head snaked around to bite Ardel’s shoulder. The prince dove and rolled. He passed between the beast’s legs and hooked a blow into its knee. This was the good knee, or it had been. It folded.

The wyvern slammed into the ground, but then it twisted. It tucked in its good wing and tried to deliver an upside-down bite. Ardel leaped over its neck and smashed its throat. The beast thrashed. Spiked tail and toothy skull made furrows in the grass. Ardel slipped and was covered by the monster’s bulk.

“No,” Orvar said. He lifted his bow and loosed an arrow, but only hit a lung.
“No!”

The wyvern tried to gouge Ardel’s face with a thumb-claw. Ardel turned his head and took it on the helmet. The wyvern threw itself on top of him but Ardel rolled. He leaped to his feet, the wyvern snapping at his back.

We were already running. Byrnjar, Eadric, and Rangvald were ahead of us. It was one thing to let the prince get the glory, entirely another to get him killed.

Cruix ran at the wyvern cow. “Yaah! Yaah!” He waved his arms and drove it back. Ardel’s companions rushed to Ardel’s aid with axe and shield. I unsheathed my sword and hacked at the beast’s tail. Orvar leaped on the beast’s back and began putting arrows in its spine.

Eadric pulled Ardel to his feet. “Come with me, my prince!”