by Resa Nelson
“Don’t protect him. He’s not worth it.”
“He’s my husband!”
“He’s a berserker!”
“I know!”
Benzel felt as if Snip had just landed a punch to his gut. He wheezed and swayed, his balance suddenly out of whack. “What?”
Snip held her hands up as if they were a shield that could defend any blow her brother might deliver. “Sven told us. He told everyone in Hidden Glen.”
Now confusion swept over Benzel as he tried to make sense of what she said. “Told you? Told everyone?” Benzel raised his voice up a notch. “Why didn’t anyone tell me?”
Snip matched Benzel’s volume. “He only told us when you sent him away from Tower Island. We’ve only known for the past few days.”
Benzel paced from side to side, looking for a way to charge Sven without hurting Snip. “Then why is he still alive? Why hasn’t anyone killed him yet?” Benzel stretched tall and shouted over the top of his sister’s head at Sven. “Are you protecting the rest of your clan? Are you helping the rest of your berserker family escape?”
“He saved us,” Snip said. “When I was a baby and you were a boy. Sven saved us.”
Her words insulted Benzel’s sensibilities. He continued shouting over her head. “Lies! You’re filling her head with lies. But it won’t work on me. I see the truth. I know what you are.”
Snip rushed forward and caught Benzel off guard. She pushed his sword to one side and embraced him. “It’s true. He remembers you. Let him tell you.”
Benzel held onto his sword but pressed his face against Snip’s hair. It smelled of herbs and cooking and took him back to the day he found her in a village and a house where everyone else had been slaughtered.
In that moment, Benzel realized Snip was all he had left of his past. He never wanted to let go of her. Snip’s embrace made it easy to remember the faces and voices of his parents and all the things he’d loved about Heatherbloom.
“I saw you at the edge of town,” Sven said. He took a cautious step forward. “You were chasing something.” Sven spoke in an even and calm voice, as if he were relating a story about going fishing or going to market. “I followed while you ran to a hiding place. You never saw me. I almost lost you, but then I killed a rabbit and heard you call out. You said Bunny Hop.” Sven paused. “No. That isn’t right. You called it Fluffy Hop.”
Benzel shivered in Snip’s arms.
“We’re alright now,” Snip said, holding him tighter. “We’re safe, and it’s all because of Sven. He thought you were too young to die. He walked away and let you live. He told his family you got away and that you ran so fast he couldn’t catch up.”
Benzel felt his body go limp in Snip’s arms. He kept staring at Sven. When Benzel spoke, his voice broke with pain. “You killed my rabbit. I couldn’t find it after you left.”
“I took it with me,” Sven said.
“Why?” Benzel felt renewed by fresh anger. “What did you do with Fluffyhop?”
Sven looked away. “I had it for dinner.”
Benzel pushed out of Snip’s grasp with his free hand and lunged at Sven.
The men standing nearby scattered.
When Sven backed away safely, Benzel charged forward and swung his sword, aiming a slashing cut from Sven’s shoulder to his foot. The cut sliced Sven’s shirt diagonally open.
Sven scrambled back, but moments later a thin line of blood beaded up on his chest.
“Benzel!” Snip cried. “Stop!”
Before Benzel could take another step, he lost his balance when his sister tackled him from the side. He stumbled but regained his balance before falling.
Benzel recognized a chorus of shouts when his extended family came onto the scene.
Uncle Kjartan and his sons rushed to stand in between Benzel and Sven, while Auntie Helga hovered on the sidelines of the melee.
“Stop this instant!” Uncle Kjartan shouted. “There is no fighting among family.”
Benzel regained as much composure as he could muster. He kept a firm grip on the Scalding sword. Incredulous, he said, “Family? This man killed my mother—your wife’s sister.”
“It was his relatives who did the killing,” Uncle Kjartan said. “He proved he saved you and your sister’s life. You heard the proof with your own ears.”
Once more, Benzel paced. He’d had no problem getting past Snip, but forcing his way past a handful of strong men would be difficult. “My sister’s life.” He called out to Sven. “How did you do it? Did you take pity and hide her in the cradle before you butchered her mother?”
“No,” Sven said. He paced, too, looking like a squirrel ready to scamper up a tree out of harm’s way. “Her mother must have hidden her. We never found Snip.”
For the first time, Benzel wondered what name Snip had been given by her parents. He wondered what he would have called her if he hadn’t named her himself.
Snip rushed at Benzel again, this time slapping his head. “The only reason I’m alive is because Sven saved you! If he hadn’t let you live, there would have been no one to find me. I would have starved to death before anyone came to Bubblebrook.”
“Calm down,” Uncle Kjartan said. “Everyone, calm down.”
Benzel felt as if everyone he knew and loved had gone mad. But he listened to his uncle and obeyed. Benzel put the Scalding sword back in its sheath on his belt. He then made a show of displaying his empty hands to everyone.
“Good,” Uncle Kjartan said. But he and his sons still formed a protective wall between Benzel and Sven. “Remember, we’re all family.”
“Family,” Benzel snorted in disgust. “That berserker is no family of mine. He’s the reason I have no family.” He ignored the hurt expression on Uncle Kjartan’s face.
“Sven is my husband,” Snip said. She walked to stand between Benzel and Uncle Kjartan and their cousins as if creating a second wall of protection. “That makes him your brother-in-law.”
Ignoring her, Benzel addressed all of the villagers surrounding him. “This isn’t difficult. It’s simple. Sven is one of the Scaldings. The Scaldings are the berserkers who destroyed Heatherbloom and Bubblebrook and who knows how many other villages. They are murderers. They are evil. We can’t let any of them live or they’ll do it again.” He pleaded with his aunt, uncle, and cousins. “Don’t you understand?”
“I do,” Auntie Helga said. Her face held a stern expression and she crossed her arms. “But you and me, we’re the only ones in this village who think that way.”
“Sven was a boy,” Snip persisted. “He never killed anyone. I’m your sister—”
“No, you’re not.”
Snip shook her head as if shaking away a bee that had landed on her nose. She spoke slower as if to make her words more plain and easier to understand. “I’m your sister.”
“No,” Benzel said in a soft voice. “You’re not my sister. We’re not related by blood. We’re not real kin and never have been. You’re just some girl I found in a village where everyone you would have loved was destroyed by the family of the man you decided to marry.” He pointed at Sven. “The man you’re now deciding to protect.”
“Some girl,” Snip repeated. She shook her head in dismay. “How can you say that?”
Benzel’s determination to help her now made him feel cornered and trapped. Riddled with frustration, he gave in to his own desperation. “One of us has to leave. The berserker or me.”
“Nonsense,” Snip said. “You know I won’t tell my own husband to leave.”
“Then you give me no choice,” Benzel said. Holding back tears of anger and disbelief, Benzel turned his back on the village of Hidden Glen and walked away from shouts of protest and pleading from his family and neighbors.
He did not hear Snip’s voice among them.
CHAPTER 23
Blinded by anger, Benzel made his way to the southern coast and hired a ship to take him to Tower Island, convinced he’d find some Scaldings that he could kill.
Benzel marched inside the empty tower. He kicked at the floor, willing the dragon god to rise up from it again, even though Benzel knew the dragon god had committed its body to Dragon’s Head.
But surely the dragon god could hear him, even this far away.
The floor remained in place.
When he shouted, Benzel’s voice rang through the hollow air. “Show yourself!”
A heavy sigh stirred up a bit of dust on the floor near Benzel’s feet.
A disembodied voice said, “You succeeded. You have what you want.”
Benzel paced. “I’ve lost everything. Including my sister. She’s my only family!”
“You were warned.”
Offended, Benzel stopped and crossed his arms. “Warned?”
“I told you: Once I tell you what you want to hear, it cannot be undone. The knowledge will change you forever.”
Benzel remembered. The dragon god spoke the truth.
That didn’t mean Benzel had to like it.
“You tricked me,” Benzel complained. “You knew the berserkers I seek are the family my sister married into. It’s an impossible situation.”
“Not impossible.” The dragon god’s voice became faint. “Difficult, but not impossible.”
“It’s your fault,” Benzel said. “I have no choice. All I can do is look for the Scaldings and kill them. There’s nothing else in this life for me.”
“Your life is your choice,” the dragon god said. “And what you do with it is up to you.”
Benzel spat on the floor in disgust. “Liar.” He plodded out of the tower and back to his ship, believing the only path he saw was the only one he could take.
* * *
For the next 35 years, Benzel traveled throughout the Northlands, Midlands, and Southlands in search of the Scaldings with the intent of killing them all. When he considered how many the dragon god had butchered on Tower Island and how many had survived and escaped, Benzel suspected about forty members of the Scalding clan survived.
He vowed to never return to Hidden Glen until Sven was the only surviving Scalding. Benzel needed to kill the most dangerous Scaldings before deciding whether or not he should let his sister’s husband live.
Benzel wrestled with the temptation of asking Sven where to find the rest of his kin. But why would Sven tell him? Sven knew how Benzel hated the Scaldings. Sven had reason to protect his family. Telling Benzel how to find them would be foolish.
Sven was no fool.
Benzel spent years thinking about how Sven claimed to have saved his life. It had to be true. Benzel had been so distressed by all the people murdered that he never mentioned Fluffyhop to anyone.
Not even his sister Snip knew about Fluffyhop.
Benzel wrestled with wondering whether Sven saved his life or had been too lazy to kill him that day. Sven was a Scalding. All Scaldings were berserkers.
All berserkers were monsters.
Didn’t that mean that somewhere, deep inside, Sven was a monster, too?
Benzel understood people. People didn’t change. Once a killer, always a killer.
What he couldn’t understand was why no one except Aunt Helga agreed.
No. He would never ask Sven where to find the Scaldings because Benzel knew it would be pointless. He would never consider Sven and his kin to be anything but what he knew them to be.
Berserkers who looked mortal but had the hearts of monsters.
Most years, Benzel traveled alone. Sometimes he preferred the company of the dragonslayer Chelli. Sometimes Benzel preferred walking, because it gave him the opportunity to explore a region in depth. Other times he rode a horse, because it allowed him to cover ground more quickly when he heard a rumor about a Scalding being spotted at a certain site or village.
But no matter where Benzel looked, throughout those 35 years he found no Scaldings. No matter how far or how thoroughly he traveled, he failed to locate any of the Scaldings he’d met on Tower Island.
In late autumn, Benzel decided to make a trip to Gott before heading to the Southlands for the winter. He enjoyed the port city and every rare opportunity to visit it. Arriving at dusk, he wandered along the boardwalk. Merchants and their wares still crowded the busy walk, although this was bound to be the last major market week before the coming winter winds would make the ocean passage from the countries below the Northlands too risky for the merchant ships until spring.
Benzel smiled when he recognized the last merchant on the boardwalk. When the last customer walked away, Benzel stepped up to greet the weapon merchant and his alchemist wife. “Claude and Thurid. How long has it been?”
They welcomed him with exclamations of glee. “The berserker killer!” Thurid said in delight. “How many have you slain so far?”
Benzel shrugged. “Still none.”
“None?” Claude paused and counted on his fingers. “It must be 15 years since we’ve seen you. I miss that wolf of yours.”
The mention of Grey-Eyes made Benzel misty. “He was a good companion and lived a good, long life. I miss him, too.” Composing himself, Benzel said, “What about those three girls of yours? They must have families of their own.”
Claude shook his head. “All spinsters. And all practicing alchemists like their mother.”
“We keep hearing rumors that you’ve slaughtered nearly all of those wretched berserkers,” Thurid said. “I don’t understand.”
Claude interrupted and spoke to Thurid. “We’ve sold as much as we’re likely to sell today. Let’s pack it up.” Looking at Benzel, Claude said, “Meet us at the Snout and Tail. We’ll have supper and catch up.”
“Snout and Tail?” Benzel said, perplexed.
Thurid laughed. “It’s the new tavern. Where the Old Iron Cauldron used to be. Tell them we sent you and that we’ll meet you there soon.”
True to her word, Thurid showed up with Claude at her side by the time Benzel polished off his first cup of mead. By the time the tavern girl served bread trenchers filled with thick potato-and-leek soup, the three friends had talked about their lives during the past 15 years, and the topic returned to Benzel’s quest to find the lost Scaldings.
“I don’t understand how you’re not finding them,” Claude said.
“I don’t either.” Benzel shook his head in consternation. “I hear rumors. I go to where those rumors take me. I used to ask where I could find the Scaldings, but there are none to be found.”
“Maybe they’ve changed the family name,” Thurid said. “Or they’re using a different name until the day you stop looking for them.”
“But it makes no sense,” Benzel said. “I know them. I met the entire clan.” He took care to never mention Tower Island or the exact circumstances of how he met the Scaldings other than to say he didn’t know they were berserkers when he met them. Only he and the Scaldings knew about the monster on Tower Island. Only Benzel knew that monster was actually the dragon god of earth. He didn’t want anyone to ever know how he’d colluded with that dragon god for his own gain. And he felt too ashamed to let anyone know his sister had married one of them. “I know what the Scaldings look like. And no matter where I go, no matter how many times I go there, I’ve never met anyone who looks like anyone in that clan.”
Claude picked up the bread trencher, took a slurp of soup, but then put it back down on the table. “Wait. Didn’t you say these Scaldings are Northlanders?”
Benzel nodded.
Claude became animated. “What part of the Northlands?”
“I don’t know,” Benzel said. “Probably not the Lower Northlands. It’s fairly inhospitable, and few villages exist there. I know them all well enough to be certain no Scalding could hide from me in any of them.”
I’ve never been back to Hidden Glen. Is there any chance all the Scaldings moved there thinking Snip would protect them from me?
Thurid placed a hand on her husband’s arm. “I know what you’re thinking! The berserkers must
be from the middle or upper Northlands. And we know what that means.”
Benzel looked from the alchemist to the weapon merchant in confusion. “I don’t. What does it mean?”
Claude slapped a hand against the table as if announcing the mystery had been solved. “There’s no reason why you should know. Even as much as you’ve traveled, as long as you’ve traveled, it’s probably never come up. And I wager no one in the Lower Northlands has any way of knowing.”
Impatience made Benzel fidget. “Know what?”
“Your berserkers,” Thurid said. “They’re probably shapeshifters.”
“Shapeshifters?” Benzel laughed. “Don’t tell me you believe those silly fairy tales.”
Neither Claude nor Thurid laughed.
“The fairy tales carry things to extremes,” Claude said. “Of course, no mortal can change into the shape of an animal.”
Thurid cleared her throat. “I’ve heard of instances where people have been so frightened of dragons that they changed into deer and scampered away before the dragon could catch them.”
“We’ve seen no evidence of that with our own eyes,” Claude said. “But we’ve met shapeshifters. And you have, too. You just don’t know it.”
Benzel stared at his friends. “Now you’re just trying to find out how gullible I am.”
“Not at all,” Thurid said. “This is what you don’t know.” She gazed at her husband. “How do I begin? Dragons don’t go to the Lower Northlands very often, at least not where villages exist.”
“That just explains why Benzel doesn’t know,” Claude said. “This is what you need to know. Dragonslayers don’t just kill dragons. Dragonslayers take the dead dragon to the nearest village.”
Benzel shook his head. “That’s impossible. I saw the dragon that killed Sinchetto—you know that. No man could drag an animal that size to a village.”
Thurid giggled and took a sip of mead. “Maybe that’s how dragons got their name. Because a slayer has to ‘drag one’ to the nearest village.” She giggled louder.
“There’s something special in dragon’s blood,” Claude said. “When villagers eat a somewhat steady diet of dragon meat, it gives them the power to shapeshift. Nothing too fancy, mind you. A blacksmith can make his chest and arms larger to help him do his work easier. A jeweler can narrow his fingers and use them like precision tools.” Claude lowered his voice as if he were breaking some kind of rule. “And when slayers drink the dragon’s blood, it gives them the strength of 20 men. That’s how a slayer can move a slaughtered dragon to the next village.”