A Whisper of Smoke

by Pauline Creeden

  And then they were through the fire, and the air was clear. Now he gasped in the air, which after the heat felt cold, but so good.

  A cry attracted his attention. When he looked over his shoulder, he sagged in relief. From the queen’s keep came the other dragonriders on the red dragons of the queen, flying fast toward him. He’d never been so happy to see his fellow dragonriders in his life.

  “Corae, take Skeggi back to the keep,” one of the dragonriders called. “We’ll cover you.”

  Several of the Queen’s dragons shot past on fleet wings and took the Dane’s dragon on in battle, while Corae flew hard back toward the Queen’s keep. Skeggi swayed on her back. His first true taste of combat had left him feeling ill on the dragon’s back – and furious. What had he ever done to the dragonrider and the dragon, that they were trying to kill him! he thought, outraged.

  Logically, he knew full well that they were warriors on the attack. And yet he was outraged by their behavior – and angry that he hadn’t fought back. He’d frozen. He couldn’t believe it was happening.

  He’d imagined battle so many times, and he was just going to rush in there and kill them all! And then he drooped on dragonback because he hadn’t done any of that at all.

  Corae landed on the parade ground, because here was the swordmaster, just about to turn herself inside out to get on her dragon.

  His sword friends exclaimed as he landed.

  “What happened?”

  “Were they shooting fire at you?”

  “Are you okay?” Dyrfinna demanded, reaching out her hands toward him – and then putting them in her pockets, abashed.

  “I’m fine,” Skeggi said, unbuckling his straps. “They were shooting fire at me but Corae protected me.”

  Gefjun, who was a healer, was inspecting his face carefully, squinting up at him. “You got burned a little, but it’s going to be like a very bad and painful sunburn.”

  “Gee. I feel better already.” Skeggi slid down, his shaky legs almost buckling when his feet hit the ground. He kept a hand on Corae’s back to steady himself. “The Danes are here. There’s an invasion force down where you probably saw the fire.”

  “Wow, no kidding,” Ostryg said.

  Hildigunnr vaulted neatly onto Corae’s back and swiftly began to strap herself in. “Lessons are cancelled for today. We’ll make them up tomorrow, but first we have make sure the invaders don’t burn down our city. Okay?”

  “Are they canceled if Skala does burn?” Ostryg asked.

  “I’m sure you can figure it out,” she said dryly.

  “Good luck fighting,” Dyrfinna told their swordmaster, and the rest of the swordfriends echoed her.

  The swordmaster nodded as Corae raised her head, scenting the wind. Her wings opened slightly as if she were eager to return to the fray. “All of you need to hurry out to the Queen’s keep where you’ll be safe. I want to see how big the invading force is, and talk to the other riders about our strategy.”

  Corae reached her head down to Skeggi and nuzzled him, which was like being nuzzled by an affectionate hot stove. Even though his legs felt like jelly, he said, “Who’s the good dragon? It’s you! It’s you!”

  “Let’s go, Corae,” Hildigunnr said, smiling, and Corae looked up, her wings spreading wide. “Up! Up!” Hildigunnr cried, and the dragon sprang. The huge bursts of air from her pounding wings nearly knocked Skeggi off his feet while throwing dust everywhere. Then they were gone.

  The rest of the friends looked from one to another.

  “How’d you do in your first dragon battle?” Ostryg asked Skeggi as they began walking to the keep. When a burst of flame lit up the mountains across the inlet, they walked faster.

  “Terrible,” Skeggi groaned. “I froze up,” he added, ashamed.

  “This happens a lot. It’s common,” Dyrfinna said. “Even battle hardened warriors will occasionally freeze up in action. A battle’s too much for your mind, you know? You freeze up because your body is trying to figure out where the danger is coming from.”

  He let her talk, knowing she was trying to comfort him, as they hurried across the parade ground. Skeggi and the others kept turning around to see the blooms of fire and the dragons roaring across the sky at each other. But after Skeggi looked the first time, his heart thudded so fast that he couldn’t take a second look. It was too soon. He could have been killed.

  Once they were inside the walls of the city, they were surrounded by the general rush and chaos of Skalans, as the old people and little children hurried through the streets up toward the queen’s keep for safety inside its solid walls. The queen’s soldiers pushed through the crowds in the opposite direction, headed to the city walls to mount a defense before the Danes showed up and tried to break through.

  Skeggi loved watching the turbulent crowd, and wanted to lean on a balustrade and just watch people for a while, but he couldn’t. “I need to find my brothers,” he told the rest of his friends. “If they’re among the people who are already in the keep – hey, Vikarr,” he said to a nearby guard, who Skeggi recognized from seeing around town.

  The guard turned from where he was letting people in through the queen’s gate. “Hello, Skeggi. Glad to see you here and safe.”

  “Have you seen my brothers?”

  The guard looked across the crowd, which was bottlenecked at the gate, squeezing in, five abreast, while a lot more people pushed to get in from outside. “Now, how old are your brothers again?” he asked.

  “There’s three of them that are under ten years old, and then there’s Ragnarr, who’s fourteen. Ragnarr probably left them all behind,” Skeggi added bitterly. “And doubtless our little brothers are out there running all over the city because I’m not there to herd them into line.”

  The guard nodded. “I haven’t seen them come by. But I did see your brother Ragnarr.”

  “And he didn’t have our brothers with him?” Skeggi glared through the crowd below. “Where’s he at? I need to knock some sense into him.”

  Ostryg looked around the crowd. “I see him. Come on, I’ll help you fix him up.” Ostryg hopped a fence and ran down into the oncoming crowd. Skeggi gave a short bow to the helpful guard and followed.

  Ragnarr was standing around talking to some of his friends. Ostryg ran up behind him, whipped an arm around his chest, and lifted him up off the ground. “Surprise!” Ostryg cried as Ragnarr yelled with surprise, struggling in the air.

  “Put me down!” he yelled.

  “Put him down,” Skeggi said with a sigh. And now Ragnarr was going to be even more bull-headed because Ostryg had embarrassed him in front of all his friends.

  “What are you doing!” Ragnarr said, kicking, and Ostryg put him down. Ragnarr stepped away from him, shaking out his clothes and huffing. “What do you think you’re doing, you –”

  “Ragnarr! Where’s the rest of our brothers?” Skeggi interrupted. “Do you have any idea where?”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “I got swept up here from the group at the square when the Danes showed up. I’ve been looking all over the crowd for your brothers, but nobody’s seen them.”

  “Have you tried to find them?”

  “It’s not my job! You’re the parent, not me.”

  “I just got here a short while ago,” Skeggi said, his voice low. “I can’t watch my brothers every moment of the day. I need your help with this.”

  “Well, don’t pin this on me,” Ragnarr said, his voice loud. “You were the one who wandered off and decided to fly a dragon.”

  “I have other things to do in my life. You can surely spare some time to look after your own brothers. Or is it too much trouble? You want to simply let them be killed by Danes?”

  Ragnarr leaned in, his voice trembling and quiet. “That’s on you. Not on me. You can’t pin any of that on me.”

  “Maybe you need to find a new place to live.”

  “You can’t kick me out!” Ragnarr cried.

  “Oh yeah? Just try me.” Then
Skeggi swore and left the nitwit, swearing furiously.

  “I’m sorry,” Ragnarr said, but his voice wasn’t sincere.

  “But not sorry enough to drag yourself back out there and look for them,” Skeggi snapped to himself.

  5

  Assassins

  He hurried away from the queen’s keep.

  “How hard would it have been,” he asked Ostryg, “for that twerp to turn around and go back out and get our brothers and bring them in here where they’d be safe?”

  Ostryg said, “Well, you know, there’s always more important things to do, like sit around talking to your friends about how difficult the world is for you.”

  Skeggi snorted. “You saw those friends of his, too?”

  “Sure I did,” said Ostryg. “It’s always the same group of slackers. Those are the kinds that end up falling in with my papa. Don’t let your brother go down that road.”

  “I’m trying,” Skeggi muttered. “I just don’t know how successful I’m going to be with that.”

  He ran to the gate of the keep. “Let me back out,” he demanded of the guard. “My brothers are still out there!”

  “You shouldn’t go,” said the guard. “A group of Danes made it though the ring of dragons and attackers and have gotten into Skala.”

  “Well, I’m definitely not staying here,” Skeggi said, and he bullied his way past the guard and back into the street. There, the bitter tang of smoke hit his nose.

  “What’s that?” said Ostryg, stopping in his tracks.

  The shouts and screams of fighting came from down at the bottom of the city, near the ocean and the docks.

  “The Danes are burning houses,” Skeggi said, putting his hand on his sword. “Shit.”

  Ostryg shook his head. “How’d they get here so fast?”

  “Another fleet of ships.” Skeggi started running. “Damn that Ragnarr. He just refuses to do anything useful. I could just thrash him.”

  A feeling of doom settled over him, suffocating. But he had to fight it. The Danes had come to kill them all and take everything they owned. He was not going to let them kill his brothers if he could help it.

  Skeggi dreaded what he might find – his brothers dead in the streets, or being dragged away as thralls taken to a distant land never to be seen again.

  “Come on,” Ostryg said.

  And just as quickly, Ostryg added, “Oh damn,” and ran behind a house and vanished.

  Bewildered, Skeggi stopped. But then he saw the reason for Ostryg’s disappearance. For here came Papa Ostryg huffing down the street toward them, a broad-shouldered Scots man from Pictland. He was a rotund, red-faced man with wispy red hair who looked at every fine thing in Skala as if he owned it. And sometimes, the fine thing would vanish shortly after he’d looked at it, and none would dare try and get it back.

  “What are you two lunkheads doing?” Papa Ostryg demanded in that strange brogue from his homeland that Skeggi always had trouble understanding.

  “I’m going to get my brothers,” Skeggi said.

  “Tell my stupid son that he can come with me now or I’m going to make it very hard on him,” said the old man.

  “No,” Skeggi said. Then he added out of the blue, “I’ve invited him to live in our house.”

  Papa Ostryg stared at him for a minute, an intimidating open-mouthed stare. Then he threw back his head and laughed. “Ha! Only if he wants to be a stupid prat – which he is. No, boy. My son’s not goin’ anywhere, and he’ll not be living at your rotten plae. He’s my son, not yours, I’ll have you know.”

  “Well, obviously,” Skeggi said.

  “You’re young and stupid, sure. Nah, there’ll be none of that talk from ye. I wonder that you brought it up,” Papa Ostryg said, glaring him up and down. “If he tries to move in with ye, I’ll kill him. Got that? I’ll kill him and your brothers, too.”

  “Why are you threatening us? I just made a suggestion.”

  Papa Ostryg snorted and turned away, and then he went stumping down the street toward the oncoming Danes.

  Ostryg came back from behind the house. “That bastard,” he muttered, wiping his face.

  “Ugh. I agree. You all right?”

  “Yes. I’m fine. It’s just sweat,” Ostryg snapped. “Let’s go.”

  Skeggi was watching Papa Ostryg. “I’d like to know where he’s going,” she said. “He doesn’t have a sword on him. I know for sure he wouldn’t fight for our city, anyway.”

  “It doesn’t matter where he goes, unless he goes to the bottom of the ocean,” Ostryg muttered.

  “He’s not out to rescue anybody,” Skeggi said, trotting toward his house again.

  “He’s going to find the leader of the Danes and fix up some deal that benefits him and the Danes, I’m sure,” Ostryg said bitterly.

  “He’s doing that?” Skeggi said, shocked. “And the Queen finds this acceptable?”

  “She doesn’t care, just as long as he leaves her alone,” Ostryg said. “She actually pays him gold so he doesn’t bother her.”

  “How lovely that would be,” Skeggi muttered. “How can we get people to pay us to leave them alone? We need to be more destructive.”

  “He’s an assassin,” Ostryg said. “He loves it. Perfect job for him, though I hate when everybody at home picks up their knives and asks me to come with them.”

  Skeggi threw up his hands. “I don’t need to hear details. I’m just here to get my brothers back to safety.”

  By now, chaos reigned in the streets. Crowds of people ran, pushing and shoving, toward the castle.

  Skeggi fell silent as he hurried through town to find his brothers. Now, far down by the edge of the water, a house caught fire, blazing brilliantly against the dark water.

  “Oh, this is bad,” Ostryg said.

  Skeggi couldn’t shake the image of the smoke rolling around his brothers and all of them screaming while the flames and burning houses surrounded them, thatched roofs going up in fireballs when touched by a spark.

  Skeggi led the way through the chaos to his house, only to find the oak front door was broken in. “Oh, no,” he groaned. He drew his sword and ran into the dark house. “Agi! Juti! Tuni!” he shouted. The table had been thrown over, the dogs were gone, his rising loaves of bread had been thrown on the ground and trodden upon, and the thin straw tick mattresses had been pulled off the bed frames. Nothing had been taken, obviously since there was nothing to take. But his brothers were not there.

  Skeggi ran outside. “Agi! Juti! Tuni!” he shouted, and Smoke flew in wide circles around his head, shrilling her thin owl call.

  Ostryg’s tears were falling, too. “Come on, man,” he said. “Come on, we can still save them.”

  “How?” Skeggi said. “They must be behind the battle lines by now, and it was all because I wasn’t here to take care of them.”

  He stumbled out in the street. “Where are my brothers?” he cried, seeing a neighbor.

  “I couldn’t stop them,” he said, taking Skeggi’s arms. “They were with me and three of those damned Danes fought me for the wee bairns but I could na hold ‘em off. They and those damned Danes just left here.”

  Skeggi’s head came up. “Which way were they going?”

  The neighbor pointed with his spear. “That way. Run fast. You might catch ‘em. Kill all the basteds.”

  “Come on,” Skeggi said. He ran down the streets, Ostryg pelting along behind him.

  Right now the Danes were spread out and looting houses, but a group of the queen’s army was going through Skala in bands, cutting Danes off from their ships and killing them where they could. The guardian dragon of Skala was fighting the Dane dragons over the harbor. She was trying to drop fire on the ships, while the Dane dragons were trying to drop fire on the town. Wings beat as the dragons raged across the sky, fire billowing out at each other.

  Far ahead, among the din of voices and screams and yells, Skeggi thought he heard a familiar, shrill scream. It sounded like Agi, his littlest bro
ther.

  “Agi!” Skeggi yelled.

  Three small voices started calling “Skeggi! Skeggi!” and then a Dane shouted something in his own language, and the cries stopped.

  Far ahead through the milling crowd, Skeggi glimpsed a group of Danes walking down the hill toward the seashore, their swords drawn, guarding a little group of children. Their wails and cries came to him faintly on the wind. Another Dane was driving two more children toward the group.

  “Do you see that?” Skeggi said, drawing his sword and pointing with it at the Danes and the children. “We’re going after them right now.”

  “The Danes have armor on. We don’t,” Ostryg said.

  “Do you think I give a single damn that they have armor on?” Skeggi said. Actually, he did, and he wasn’t sure how effective he would be in taking those Danes down – he, Skeggi, who was trounced in battle yesterday by a training dummy – but he rushed forward into the fray, Ostryg right at his heels.

  6

  “Save These Children!”

  A big group of Danes rushed at them almost immediately with their high-pitched war cries, blocking Skeggi’s path to his brothers far ahead.

  “Get out of my way, you damned Danish hogs,” Skeggi yelled, and smacked the first one with his sword.

  Smacked him. With his sword.

  “Try using the sharp end,” Ostryg said as he fought one of the Danes.

  Skeggi parried the Dane’s attack. “Maybe I wanted to club this idiot to death with my sword. You ever think about that?”

  “Ha ha, you cannot fight,” the Dane said, striking hard at Skeggi.

  The little owl flew into the Dane’s helmeted face, talons out, going straight for the eyes.

  “Aiee!” the Dane screamed, falling back.

  Skeggi jabbed his sword’s point into the unprotected area under the Dane’s chin. This was rewarded with a great gush of blood from the severed artery, and he collapsed.