by Resa Nelson
Benzel smiled. “Didn’t need much. Just some patching.”
The neighbor woman shook her head while bouncing the baby with a gentle rhythm. “Couldn’t have convinced me of that yesterday. So much rain flooded in, I thought it would wash us all away!”
“Should be good now. Let me know if you have any leaks.”
“Thank you, Benzel. I’ll tell my husband to set aside something from the harvest once it comes in. Or if you’d rather, we could keep you in a supply of milk and butter for a spell.”
Benzel still shared the small stone house with his uncle, aunt, cousins, and sister Snip. He calculated what he’d last seen in the home and what he expected to be due to their family. “We’re good on milk and butter, so put me down for the harvest share.”
While Benzel collected the short ladder and prepared to leave, the neighbor woman said, “Where’s your uncle been? I thought he’d be the one doing the work today.”
Benzel rested the ladder’s feet on the ground and let it lean against his shoulder. What he liked best about thatching was chatting up his fellow villagers. Benzel imagined people might consider him a gossip. He preferred to think of it as staying well informed on happenings both inside and outside his adopted village of Hidden Glen. “Uncle Kjartan is overseeing the crops in Bubblebrook and Heatherbloom.”
The neighbor woman cocked her head to one side as if puzzling out this information. “Your cousins the ones working those crops? That’s a lot of work for a handful of boys.”
“Not so much. The fields around Heatherbloom are best suited for carrots and beets and potatoes. Uncle Kjartan knows which herbs to plant among them to keep weeds to a minimum. It’s mostly a matter of keeping an eye on the fencing to make sure no animals get in and seeing the ground is watered enough.”
“And Bubblebrook?”
“Even easier. Its fields are best suited for parsnips and purple carrots.”
Everyone knew the demand for purple carrots, which were popular from the highest reaches of the Northlands all the way down through the Midlands and Southlands. Although some people swore the purple carrots were more delicate in taste than yellow or orange ones, Benzel couldn’t tell the difference. He believed people just liked the color better.
Then again, if yellow and orange carrots weren’t so prevalent, he imagined people would claim those were the ones that tasted better.
“Benzel!” a girl’s voice called out.
He looked up at the sound of Snip’s voice.
A 13-year-old girl as slender and pale as a willow tree in winter ran through the dirt roads in this central part of the village until she spotted Benzel. When she ran up to him, the distress in her fierce blue eyes startled him.
Before either Benzel or the neighbor woman could speak, Snip blurted, “The dragonslayer is here. It’s bad news. He’s asking for you.”
Benzel stared at her in dismay. “Uncle Kjartan? Thorfinn?”
“All our cousins are fine,” Snip said. “So is Uncle Kjartan and Auntie Helga. The dragonslayer found something east of here.” The girl hesitated and then corrected herself. “I mean, he found someone.”
A dragon killed someone from our village. The dragonslayer found the body. Is anyone other than our merchant absent?
The same thought must have occurred to the neighbor woman. “Oh, no,” she said. “If his wife hasn’t found out, she’ll need someone to be there when they tell her. I’ll go.” Still balancing the baby on her hip, the neighbor woman hurried toward the other side of the village.
“Where is he?” Benzel said. “The dragonslayer, I mean.”
“Home. Auntie Helga’s taking it hard.”
Picking up his ladder, Benzel hurried alongside his sister until they reached their little stone home. Instead of storing the ladder properly, Benzel rested it alongside the house and followed his sister inside.
The dragonslayer, Sinchetto, sat on a bench next to the wall and sipped water from a wooden cup. He looked up and gave a solemn smile to Benzel instead of greeting him.
Auntie Helga paced, deep in thought.
Benzel stood still. “One of ours?”
Sinchetto nodded.
Benzel said out loud what all of them already knew. “Our merchant? He’s dead?”
Sinchetto nodded again.
Benzel swallowed hard. “What happened?”
Auntie Helga cast a sharp look at Benzel. Her teary eyes looked bloodshot and her face was flushed. “I don’t want to hear the details.”
Benzel acquiesced. No need to upset people more than they already were. “No details.”
Auntie Helga’s face softened, and she took a seat on a bench on the opposite side of the small room.
Snip hovered near the doorway, looking as if she didn’t know whether it would benefit her more to stay or go.
Like all the best dragonslayers, Sinchetto hailed from the Southlands. He spoke Northlander fluently but with a lilting accent. “I tracked a dragon along the southern shore, just outside the port city.”
“I know which one you mean,” Benzel said. “Was the merchant alive when you found him?”
Sinchetto shook his head. “It was not a pretty sight.”
Benzel paled, and he heard Snip gasp. “Dragon?”
Sinchetto shook his head again. “Man.”
“Brigand?”
This time, Sinchetto peered into Benzel’s eyes. “Doubtful. Brigands most often rob without killing. When they kill, they most often do so with quickness and efficiency. He was killed with brutality.”
When Benzel spoke, his voice trembled with anger. “Berserkers?”
Sinchetto kept a steady gaze on Benzel, like a man reining back his horse. “I suspect so.”
Benzel had tended his anger toward the berserkers during the past 12 years as if it were a hearth fire requiring constant attention throughout a harsh winter night. He hated the berserkers with a passion, especially because they were known to be Northlanders. No matter how hard or often he thought about it, Benzel couldn’t understand why any Northlander would kill his own kind.
Benzel had lobbied his uncle to let him take on any duty that might put Benzel in the path of the berserkers, whether that duty be running goods between villages or accompanying the merchant of Hidden Glen when he traveled the Northlands to trade excess goods for foodstuffs and other things.
Uncle Kjartan refused to entertain such notions. Whenever Benzel broached the subject, his uncle ended the conversation and told Benzel he was needed in Hidden Glen instead of traipsing after a fool’s errand.
But Uncle Kjartan wasn’t here. And Benzel was no longer a boy. “I could take the merchant’s place,” Benzel said to the dragonslayer. “If you let me travel with you. You could teach me the route. Then I could travel alone.”
Everyone knew Benzel had no interest in being a traveling merchant. But traveling throughout the Northlands provided a much better opportunity of crossing paths with the berserkers than thatching rooftops here in Hidden Glen.
Uncle Kjartan insisted Benzel give up the idea of finding the berserkers. Now, the dragonslayer Sinchetto echoed the words Benzel had heard from his uncle all his life. “What chance do you think one man has against the berserkers?”
“There must be a way,” Benzel said. “And if there is a way, I will find it.”
The dragonslayer studied his fingernails and picked out the dirt beneath them. “What good will it do to kill them?”
Auntie Helga spoke up with authority. “What good?” She scoffed. “Those monsters murdered my two sisters. Killing the berserkers will stop them from killing other innocent people.” She looked at Benzel with admiration. “If I were a man, I’d have left years ago in search of them.”
Sinchetto looked up at Auntie Helga. “Kjartan approves?”
“He doesn’t understand,” she said. “Kjartan thinks everyone should stay in Hidden Glen and mind their own business. If every Northlander did that, the berserkers would take over the entire country! And t
hen what kind of life would we have?”
Sinchetto kept his voice soft and smooth. “The berserkers did the most damage years ago. I rarely hear of them now. Your dead merchant—I suspect a stray berserker killed him or most likely your merchant encountered and crossed a berserker without recognizing him for what he is. Someone in the Midlands told me there’s word of the berserkers settling down and hiding among us. There’s talk they’ve given up their heinous ways. There’s no reason to talk of berserkers anymore, because they no longer exist.”
“Of course, they exist!” Benzel said. “Even if they’ve settled down, it could be a trick. It could be a way of lulling us all into thinking they’re gone. And when we least expect it, the berserkers will strike again.”
Sinchetto shrugged. “That could be, although I doubt it’s most likely to happen. If Kjartan approves, you can join me tomorrow.”
“Uncle Kjartan doesn’t need to approve,” Benzel said. “I’m old enough to make my own decisions.”
Sinchetto turned to Auntie Helga and raised a questioning eyebrow.
“It’s true,” Auntie Helga said. “It’s up to Benzel, not my husband.”
With a fierce cry, Snip hurled herself across the room and wrapped her arms around Benzel’s waist. “No!” Snip protested. “Don’t go!”
Every time Benzel looked at Snip, he saw the one thing from his past that he’d managed to salvage: a sister, even if she happened to be a sister of chance rather than blood.
“Please,” Snip whispered while she buried her face in his shirt. “Don’t leave me.”
Benzel put his arms around her and kissed the top of her head. “I’ll never leave you. Not in spirit. But this is something I have to do for us—for me and you.”
Snip’s voice trembled. “I don’t need you to kill the berserkers. They’ve left us alone all these years. Why can’t we leave them alone, too?”
“It’s a fair question,” Sinchetto said.
“They didn’t murder anyone you loved,” Auntie Helga said. To Snip, Auntie Helga said, “Don’t you trust your brother? Don’t you think he’s smart and resourceful and clever? Don’t you know he can take care of himself?”
Snip peeked at Auntie Helga but then pressed her face into Benzel’s shirt again.
“I swear I’ll be gone for just a short time.” Benzel rested his cheek against Snip’s soft hair. “I’ll be back before you know it.”
“You’ll be gone forever!” Snip cried. She lowered her voice to a whisper. “You’re not like them. You’re my real brother.”
But in the small room, everyone heard what Snip said.
“Honestly,” Auntie Helga said. “We’ve told you the story many times. Benzel named you after a parsnip! He’s your kin by choice, not by blood.”
Snip wiped her face on Benzel’s shirt and looked up at him. “Choice is stronger than blood.”
Her words tore Benzel between wanting to laugh and cry. Until this moment, those words had been a secret between them. As much as Benzel cared for what remained of his blood family, the bond he shared with Snip had strength and love that no one else would ever understand.
Benzel placed his hand on the side of Snip’s face and wiped her tears away with his thumb. “Choice is stronger than blood. But you know I have to do this. And you—more than anyone else—know why. Be good until I return, and have faith in me.”
CHAPTER 5
While Auntie Helga spread the word through Hidden Glen that Benzel would be leaving soon and sought goods to trade, the dragonslayer Sinchetto led him to the edge of the village where he’d brought the remains of the dead merchant back in his own cart. Like every man in his village, Benzel’s everyday knowledge spanned a wide range. He knew enough about the workings of carts to give this one a once-over to make sure of its soundness for travel.
Satisfied to see the cart in good working condition, Benzel looked all around and then at Sinchetto. “The horse?”
Sinchetto shook his head. “There was none when I came upon the body. Only the cart.”
“Taken by berserkers?”
“Most likely taken by brigands.” Sinchetto appeared unconcerned about the missing horse.
“Horses are valuable,” Benzel said. “Wouldn’t the berserker who killed the merchant take his horse?”
“Berserkers most likely take things that are easy to take. Silver jewelry. Food. Daggers. Horses require care—they must be handled and fed and watered. Brigands have more patience for that kind of thing.”
Sinchetto’s argument failed to convince Benzel. He couldn’t imagine anyone walking away from something as valuable as a horse.
“But most likely of all is that the horse ran away. No matter what happened, we must find a replacement.”
“Shouldn’t be a problem,” Benzel said. “No one wants a delay in trading. Winter will be here before you know it, so it’s time to stock up.”
By that afternoon, Benzel had made arrangements with a neighbor willing to loan his horse for a profit. It would be better to leave before Uncle Kjartan and his sons returned from working the fields of Heatherbloom and Bubblebrook just in case they tried to talk Benzel out of his new merchanting venture. He sat alongside Sinchetto atop the bench of the cart, now laden with purple carrots and other vegetables that would keep well during the journey. Benzel took the reins and urged his neighbor’s horse onto the dirt road leading to the next village.
The next few days took them to a scattering of villages along the southeastern corner of the Northlands. Sinchetto explained that in this part of the country few villages existed and none could be found on the seacoast. Instead, villages like Heatherbloom and Bubblebrook were situated by the river running to the sea but protected by a northern backdrop of mountains so treacherous and steep that dragons avoided them when migrating to the Midlands and Southlands each fall.
The coast was another story. Dragons traversed easier mountains from the far northern reaches of the country and then made their way to the coast. From the southern beaches of the Northlands, the dragons swam across the narrow sea to the northern shores of the Midlands.
No village could survive an onslaught of migrating dragons. But Heatherbloom and Bubblebrook stood far enough from the sea to avoid dragons and yet still benefit from the sandy soil required to grow a healthy crop of purple carrots.
Auntie Helga had given a small sack full of the choicest purple carrots to Benzel and advised him to keep them hidden under the cart bench. She said they might come in handy in case an especially good opportunity to trade presented itself during his journey with Sinchetto.
So far, no such opportunity had come about.
In each village, their arrival drew a crowd of children begging their parents to trade for purple carrots. Benzel thought of the vegetables as common and ordinary, never realizing until now what kind of demand they created in the Northlands. He marveled at the squeals of delight the smallest carrots brought to the boys and girls who hungered for them.
He took extra care to keep the small sack from Auntie Helga well hidden.
At Sinchetto’s advice, the traveling pair sought room and board for the night in each village they visited. Although each village had its own distinct personality that Benzel saw through the goods they offered for trade, the temperament of its people, and the landscape surrounding it, all of those villages reminded Benzel in one way or another of Hidden Glen.
That changed when they arrived in the port city of Gott. Driving the cart through the city, Benzel gawked at its enormity and busy atmosphere. Rows of wooden houses jammed next to each other on the opposite side of the walkway, thronged with more people than Benzel had seen in his life. Like the women in Hidden Glen, most of the women wore traditional linen sheathes and overdresses, held in place with large silver brooches shaped like dragons and other animals. And like Benzel, most men wore brightly colored shirts and breeches gathered at the knee.
Tethered ships bobbed in the harbor, packed so tightly that their sides scraped aga
inst each other. Stacked wooden crates displaying cloth and cheeses and furs lined the walkway. Merchants sold bright yellow, blue, and green wools and linens by the arm length, potatoes and rye, cloves and saffron.
Seabirds shrieked as they circled high above the walkway of wooden boards running parallel to the sea. The chattering voices in the crowd diminished the merchants’ cries for attention. The scent of salt water hung heavy in the air, along with the smell of hundreds of sweating men and women.
Sinchetto pointed at an open spot at the end of the walkway and across from a large stable. “Park the cart there. I’ll take care of the horse while you set up for trade.”
“Here at the end of the boardwalk?” Benzel followed the dragonslayer’s suggestion and put the cart in place. He scanned the long line of merchants standing behind stacked crates displaying their goods. “I’d rather not.”
“Not trade in the greatest city in all the Northlands?” Sinchetto furrowed his brow in confusion. “This is the one place where you’re most likely to vend everything you have. And more quickly than you’d ever imagine.”
Benzel jumped down to the ground. “I suppose I could do that for a while if you think I can sell out. But then I want to talk to the other merchants.”
“About?”
Benzel shot a surprised look at the dragonslayer. “What do you think? About the berserkers. That’s the only reason I’m here.”
Sinchetto laughed. “You think you’ll learn more than what I already told you?” He shook his head in merriment. “Go ahead, boy. I’ll be talking to them, too.”
“About?”
Sinchetto’s expression became serious. “Where they’ve seen dragons, of course.”
Of course. That’s what dragonslayers did.
True to his word, the dragonslayer led their horse to the stable, while Benzel displayed his wares and discovered Sinchetto had not exaggerated about the demand for them. Careful to keep the small sack of purple carrots given to him by Auntie Helga hidden, all others sold out immediately. Even then, customers clamored for the rest of the vegetables that Benzel considered common and boring. Within the hour, he successfully traded all but the hidden sack.