by Dave Freer
“I can understand you wanting to do that, I suppose,” said Fionn. “If we get through, we can stop. If we don’t…we can stop in a mile or two.” He took on his dragon form, spread and stretched his wings. Warmed them up with a few flaps. All good things for a dragon to do, but seldom done. He was putting this off, he knew. He leapt upwards into the purple sky spattered with the first stars and still with the memory of red on the western horizon. He flapped his way upwards, and then dived, spreading wing tendrils and talons to make the loudest possible air-shriek.
As pale faces turned upwards, he gave their wagons and mess tents a brief wash of flame. And then began to climb again, to arc around, letting his claws rip canvas down one row of tents, sending men diving into the mud. Then he climbed again, looking down at the chaos he’d stirred.
The camp was scattering. Parts of it were burning.
But, to his annoyance, the pikemen assembled before the gate had not joined the chaos. They’d turned their formation to defend the gate. Their officers must be made of stern stuff, and the pikemen, hard men.
Normally, with dragons, that would have meant crisp men. Fionn climbed higher, and dived again, this time coming from behind the gate that they had just turned away from.
Dragon fire seared over them, melting pike points, causing considerable blistering.
But they held. Fionn flapped upward. Someone even managed to loft an arrow at him. He burned it midair, to discourage that.
“Hold hard, the forty-fifth!” bellowed a voice that would have done a bull mammoth proud. “About…turn! Face the gate. They must be planning to break through!”
Fionn sighed. It was cook them or give up and go around. So he flew back and picked up Díleas, and flapped off into the night.
The glorious forty-fifth would remember their night of triumph. By the looks of it, half of the rest of the army wouldn’t. From a bit of altitude and in the infrared spectrum, Fionn could see them scattering. He dropped down and encouraged a few to keep running, and then flew onward, to the gate into Vanaheim.
He stopped a few miles down the road, to tuck Díleas in, and apologized. “I can’t just cook them, Díl. It’d be easier if I could.”
“Hrf.” A resigned sort of “Hrf.”
“There is no point in your getting out of the basket. You’ll get killed back there. We’ll just go around them. It won’t take any longer than your walking would.”
They flew on. Fionn had the feeling that his status was a little dented. But when they landed at the little stone Tolmen, Díleas gave Fionn a lick. On the nose.
They walked through together. Into sunlight and a crackling breeze.
***
The queen of Shadow Hall was tempted to spit into her seeing pool. She knew it would not make her vision any better or sweeter, and they would not feel it on the other side, but it might make her feel better.
She’d worked so hard on Annvn. And now, when an army twenty times the size of anything Lyonesse could possibly manage, with siege engines and good maps and wagonloads of provisions, and more and more reserves pouring in…
A revolution. A slave uprising too. The army dispersed and their stores demolished, and half their war machines burned. And the survivors were all very pleased with themselves for holding off the dragon. Why had the fools not let it through to ravage Lyonesse?
With an exasperated sigh she turned her attention to the next place the Changer would link Lyonesse to. Or should. She looked to Vanaheim. She’d kept them from their normal happy pastime of butchering each other for the last few years and goaded them into building a vast fleet to attack Lyonesse instead.
It seemed, on looking at the empty harbors in West Vanaheim, that the fleets were at sea.
Sweeping her gaze around, she found them to the southeast, heading for shelter…
Loaded for war and conquest.
Only the wind wasn’t helping.
Where did they think they were going! She’d prepared them for her use against Lyonesse, not their own petty wars. She had her cauldron-men among them of course. She would find out.
And she did. They had own seers and seid-women, the völva. Ones who were as capable of finding the Ways and when they were open.
They were sailing to attack Lyonesse. Just as soon as the wind cooperated.
The queen set her muryan slaves to work, moving Shadow Hall to Vanaheim.
It was late that evening that it occurred to her to check on the gate in Annvn. She might as well start the slow process of reorganizing against the next cycle.
Out of habit, she checked the Way.
And it was open too.
Then she began feverishly checking the others, cackling with glee. Rubbing her bony hands in delight. How had he botched so? Ha ha ha.
At last. At long, long last! She began sending out messengers to her cauldron-men, to those she had implanted as counselors and advisors to the kings, queens, princes and chieftains of the nineteen worlds.
Someone was at her outer door.
How dare they interrupt her triumph? And how could they? Shadow Hall was moving steadily. It was not easy to see. And it had its defenders. She used the seeing bowl to look.
The creature of smokeless flame, which the locals would probably call a demon, had no trouble keeping up with Shadow Hall, or with seeing it. And it could probably devour her cauldron-men, if they succeeded in attacking it.
She’d done business with them before, so she went to see what it wanted. She had some defenses on hand, but theirs was a mutually beneficent arrangement. She could kill this one, if she needed to, but she would rather hear what it had to say.
The hooded creature bowed respectfully. That, of course, was something it would do, and she was not fooled. They had scant respect for any other life-form, except where that was reenforced by fear. Among their own, of course, they were hierarchical to the extreme. Other life-forms were theirs to use…if they could. If vanity was the key, they’d use it. She did not bow back. “Well. Why do you interrupt my work?”
“My apologies, great queen of Magic Workers. My master’s masters…offer great rewards for a simple service.”
They paid. They paid in whatever form she asked and without any form of haggling—no matter how ridiculous her asking price. The entire funding of that Spathos had come for the hire of one cauldron-giant. Giants were hard to make, being so large, and needing thus to be assembled in sections, but still…“What do you need?” She had a list of raw materials for the cauldron needed from other planes. She’d had difficulty getting them before.
“My master’s masters require the disposal of two beings. One is in Lyonesse, and one is proceeding there. We think he is in Vanaheim now. We believe you will be in the best position, with your seeing device, to find them and destroy them. I have images of both.” He handed her a crystal into which a three-dimensional image of a young woman with an axe sprang into existence, sitting in a little coracle.
“A little warrior princess,” said the queen of Shadow Hall, faintly amused. The child had a determined chin. But, as she had found out when she had tried her own hand at armed combat, those many, many years ago, men were physically stronger. You had to defeat them more subtly.
“She goes by the name of Meb. We believe she fled Dun Tagoll. Briefly she was on the water but she has returned to land.”
“If she fled Dun Tagoll she is hardly an enemy of mine.”
“She is one girl-child,” said the flame creature dismissively. “There are many such, but my master’s masters have concerns about her associate. She must die, to control him. Name your price.”
“Tell me about the other one,” said the queen.
The flame creature produced a second crystal. In it was the image of a black dragon.
“The dragon that thwarted me in Annvn,” said the queen.
“He’s a shape-changer. Turn the crystal over, and more images will show. We had a very good visual trace on him, but it has been obscured. He is both clever and a grea
t deal harder to kill than most dragons, and dragons are not easy to kill. This one can only be bespelled with gold, and only confined in adamantine.”
She had quite a bit of that. The Shadow Hall relied on adamantine hardness, as well as the ductility of its joints to survive the inevitable strain of moving all the time. Her first three attempts had jolted apart. “I have been wanting a dragon for my cauldron.”
“That can be provided. But you are no match for him in physical contest.”
“What are his weak points?” asked the queen. There was no point in telling the demon she’d kill this one for nothing. Merely as repayment for what he’d done to her many years of work. And the girl…well, most of those in Lyonesse would die. They might as well pay her for the killing. The cauldron took certain rare materials, and of course raising a war took gold and silver, a great deal of it.
“He does not kill intelligent life-forms.”
She turned the crystal over, and a tall, dark-skinned, foxy-faced man appeared. Ah. They’d had Spathos hunting him. Cutting out the middleman, as it were. But, she admitted, it was possible they had not known that he was her lackey.
It appeared Spathos had vanished in the rebellion against Prince Maric.
It would seem that brushing up against this dragon could be unhealthy even if he did not kill.
“Is this what you pitted my other cauldron-creatures against?” she said, suddenly suspicious.
“Yes,” said the creature of smokeless flame. “Or rather, his guide.”
It did not even try to lie. Interesting. And it spoke of its master’s master. Very high. Very powerful. “This will be very, very expensive,” said the queen.
“Name your price.”
***
Vanaheim was a place where dragons felt at home. Someone had to. Dragons liked volcanoes and jagged new mountains, and a vast blue sky feathered with thin cloud. The land, where it wasn’t edging into sea cliffs, was mostly fells full of sheep. Fionn knew the other coast had a gentler slope, a warmer current and forests for Vanar’s fleets. This piece of the Celtic was colored by their Nordic conquerors—a gift the islanders liked to spread around. Fionn was convinced it was the long, cold, dark winters that made them so homicidal—that or their beer. Or it could be eating slow-fermented basking sharks. Fionn had sampled this “delicacy” once.
From up here, where the Tolmen Way had brought them, they could see the fleet was on the water—every longship the islanders could find by the look of it.
And also by the look of it, most of them were returning to the fiords of Vanaheim, because there really was a stiff onshore breeze blowing. A few determined ships were trying to row their way into it, but most had turned for home.
Besides their taste for mayhem and loot, fermented basking shark and too many salt herring dishes, the other flaw that Fionn felt the Vanar culture had was their desire to shoot dragons, and they had strong muscles, good composite bows and strong nerves that made it possible. Fionn understood fully that the desire was fueled by conflict over who would eat the coarse-haired fell sheep. But it made flying low anywhere near the coast—where the Vanar lived—quite a dangerous pastime for dragons. It took a lucky shot to kill or even seriously injure a dragon, but it could damage their wings. And killing the dog would be easy too. The air here was cold. At altitude it was winter-arctic cold. It added a layer of complications to flying to the next Tolmen Way. One forgot the flexing in time between worlds. He’d expected to fly on in the night, not to waste another day!
Díleas was already heading across the meadow, down toward the fiord below. “Where are you going, you fool dog?” asked Fionn.
“A dragon!” came a sudden shout. The Vanar warrior charged, swinging his double-bladed axe and blond plaits.
Fionn knocked him down with a swipe of the tail. Just because he wasn’t supposed to kill them didn’t mean that he had to put up with someone swinging an axe at him. Fionn rolled him over and sat on the warrior, as Díleas came charging to the rescue. Fionn changed his form as the stunned seat groaned. “Have you been eating those mushrooms again?” demanded Fionn. Agaric tended to make for berserker warriors…and some strange visions. And this one smelled of the mushroom. Fionn got up and rolled him over, kicking the axe away. “You just called me a dragon, tried to chop me up, and fell over my dog,” he said accusingly. “What’s wrong with you?”
“There was a dragon…”
“No, there wasn’t. If there was, do you think either I, or the sheepdog, would be here?”
The large warrior sat up. Groaned. “I gotta go. I promised Thor Red-Axe I’d join his war band.”
“Where are you going?” asked Fionn, although he suspected he already knew.
“Vleidhama, to find a ship. The völva say that the way is open to Lyonesse! We must go aviking!”
Which translated as “loot, rape and pillage and maybe even stay in a place where it isn’t dark for half of the year.” Fionn clipped him, hard, behind the head. He fell over again. “You were right, Díleas. Just let me relieve him of these fashion accessories, and we can walk down and join a boat.”
The Vanar warrior was relieved of his mail shirt, helmet, axe and woolly breeches. Fionn looked into his travel bag. A side of salted smoked salmon, a loaf of rye bread, a bag of coarsely ground oatmeal, and yes, dried red-and-white-spotted mushrooms…a leather bag with a little money—the clumsy coinage of Vanar: iron, copper and a little gold. Díleas growled at him. “Another one of these mushrooms and he wouldn’t know I relieved him of it. But you’re right. I’ll leave him with some of Spathos’s silver. I’m not that fond of silver, but it’s valued here. And his cloak. But to make you my partner in crime, I’ll give you some of the salmon. It’s mostly salt and smoke with a bit of fish. Consistency of leather. Keeps well and exercises the jaw. We’ll leave him the bread and that flask which I think might make him see more than dragons, by the smell of it.”
Disguised as a Vanar warrior—a not very rich or bright one—who came down from the sheep in the mountains, Fionn walked into the nearest crowded fishing village. Finding a place for himself and Díleas on one of the good Skei was not likely, but some of the bigger Busse were struggling to find oarsmen. Anyone who thought they were anyone wanted a place on one of the faster ships, so a slightly slow-witted shepherd who wasn’t prepared to leave his smart dog behind could find a place, and be away for the shores of Lyonesse just as soon as the wind turned again. That, according to the weather wise would be sometime after midday, and the captains were trying to keep the oarsmen sober until then…or at least not quite paralytic.
Fionn found it amusing, seeing as his multiple livers meant he could drink their Branntwein and barley beer until it ran out of his ears without any effect. The Hákarl they were eating with it was a different matter. He’d need more than multiple livers for that. It was considered a manly thing to eat.
Fionn was glad he was a dragon, and not in need of eating ammonia-scented, fermented shark meat to prove this. Díleas, however, had embraced local behavior with gusto, eaten far too much salty smoked salmon, and was now throwing up, and needing water, along with Vanar’s finest warriors. Perhaps this was why men and dogs had such a natural affinity, reflected Fionn, noting that the wind was dropping.
CHAPTER 20
Meb looked at the javelin, and at the group of…possibly people, all with more throwing spears at the ready, in the forest shadows on either side. She could see the weapons clearly enough, and their sharp stone points. The wielders…were a mat of hair and twigs and vine. Rather like bears that had rolled in honey and then down a steep brush slope, thought that dispassionate part of her mind. She wondered in a panic if it would do any good at all to try and “hide” Neve and herself. Probably not, thought the pragmatic part of her mind. They would throw their spears the moment she and Neve disappeared.
And then she realized that she and Neve had not walked alone into the deep woods after all. And if anyone was in trouble it would certainly also be the spe
armen. Not that she and Neve would be any the better off for the fact that the muryan bit the attackers to death.
The odd spear wielders plainly spotted the tide of muryan. They lowered their spear points warily. But how do you point a spear at thousands of foes, each smaller than a thumbnail? Quite a few spear wielders backed off completely, vanishing into the shadows. “Are you the Wudewasa?” said Meb. “Because we were told to look for you.”
“Who sent you?” said one of the hairy, twiggy people stepping out of the dense leaf-mottled shade, away from the muryan. “We have no dealing with incomers. Even ones served by the muryan.” He sounded a lot more doubtful about that part.
“One of the spriggans,” said Meb. “They said the Land wanted us to come to you.”
“Just who are you, and where are you from?” asked the hairy man, with the added leaves and twigs.
Why did they all want to know that? Did it really matter?
“She’s the Defender,” said Neve, proudly touching Meb, who still stood holding her axe. “Prince Medraut and Mage Aberinn didn’t believe her, but she made the sea-wall window come back. And it was her, not Aberinn, that defeated the Fomoire’s evil eye! The fay come to her. They look after her. Have you ever seen the muryan before? They feed us, and protect us.”
“We see muryan from time to time in the woods. We leave them alone, maybe leave them some scraps of food, and they leave us alone.” He looked at the ground, and at the warrior muryan there. “I’ll grant I have never seen them seeming to defend anyone before. But the prince and the mage and all the rest: they mean nothing to us. We stay in our deep woods and they do nothing for us and we owe nothing to them. This is our land. Our forest.”
“Yes, but we’ve knockers and spriggans and even the piskies helping her.”
“Even the piskies! Now that would be something to see,” said the hairy man sounding faintly amused. Looking closer now, Meb could see that not all of it was growing on him, but that some of it was woven into a kind of cloth. Hairy cloth. “But it seems your friend has lost her tongue. Maybe she can talk for herself?”