The Dragon Queen

by Alice Borchardt

  Dugald reached out and, it seemed, caught the spark in his hand. He gestured at the dark-haired man, who was wearing a cuirass of scale mail. Suddenly smoke began to rise from his clothing, and Maeniel felt the thermal warmth on his face as the metal began heating. The dark-haired warrior screamed, dropped his sword, and began clutching his body as the heat cut through his padded undercoat and began to sear his skin.

  The rest of the war band backed away, staring open-mouthed in horror at what was happening to their leader.

  Dugald yelled, “Run!” and suited his actions to the word. Maeniel threw down his captured weapon and followed.

  So I began my life suckled at a wolf’s teat while Dugald and the Gray Watcher fled north into the land of the Picts. His wife—for that is what she was, four legs, gray coat or not—went with us, and also his three sons and her brothers. We were a family. A strange one to be sure, but a family nonetheless.

  The first night out I heard Dugald trying to explain magic to the Gray Watcher. We had concealed ourselves in a cave overlooking the sea. The wind screamed and waves lashed the rocks in the darkness beneath. When the tide came in I could taste the salt spray on my lips even high up as we were, for I had crawled toward the mouth of the cave and tried to look out and down.

  “Watch her. She’s a bold one,” he said as he gathered me up and placed me within the curve of the wolf’s body.

  The wolf laved me with her tongue and I laughed. Then I crawled toward the source of all pleasure, the teat on her warm belly.

  “She will need to be bold,” Dugald said, “for many will seek her and for a variety of cruel reasons. If the war band catches her, they will give us to the sea, I along with her. And that may be the kindest fate she might meet. Others would rather have her sold to the Saxon raiders to be taken away to the golden horn at Constantinople that she might perish or wear out her life whoring in the streets of that or another Greek city. Others would send her to Rome to be a cloistered nun given to the church, as some are, before she can learn to speak her name and, all unknown, live and die devoted to prayer and good works.”

  The Gray Watcher snorted. “Very romantic, old man, but convents and monastic orders keep records. If she comes from a great family, as you claim, I think some ambitious bishop would probably make sure she doesn’t get lost. Best she be properly prepared for the life she will probably lead. Now, stop evading my questions. I have offered myself and my family to you, and we have entered your service.”

  “Your family,” Dugald choked out. “Six wolves!”

  “Just so,” the Gray Watcher snapped.

  His wife, the she-wolf, gave both Dugald and the Gray Watcher a rather sardonic look. The pups at my side—I was working that teat, it had been an active day—were too young to care that they were being talked about, but the she-wolf’s brothers raised their heads. They were lying at the back of the cave far from the fire and gave Dugald disapproving yellow stares.

  “Begging your pardon, please.” He bowed in their direction. “Yes, I suppose they are your family, and I suppose you have entered my service.”

  “Fine.” The Gray Watcher continued, “Now, first, what did you do back there to the warrior who attacked us and what is this all about?”

  “What I did back there was magic.”

  “Real magic?” The wolf’s eyebrows lifted.

  “Yes, real magic. One of the few tricks I have left because I am old and my travels and troubles have wearied me. I will tell you something that probably will be new to you.”

  Maeniel nodded.

  “The proverbial magus is always seen as an old man with a long white beard, but this is a lie, no doubt promulgated by some antic practitioner who wished to appear venerable. In truth, magic is a young man’s—or for that matter, a woman’s—game. The old lack both the erotic drive that powers its chancy operations and the energy to sustain them. There was a time when I could have sent every one of those fools hopping and howling—though even then it would have cost me dear—but that day is long gone. All I succeeded in doing was catching a few sparks from his clumsily wielded sword and turned them against him. And even so, I was burned by my efforts.” He extended his hand to Maeniel, who saw several small but obviously deep burns on the old man’s hand. “You pay for every trick you pull; the difference is when you’re young, you don’t notice it as much.

  “Now, as for my quarrel with the head of my order.” Dugald took a deep breath. “When the great queen failed against the Romans, her kin—all her kin—and people were marked down for extermination. The brutality of the Roman commander’s revenge was so terrible that the Romans themselves recalled him lest he ruin the province.”

  Maeniel nodded.

  “But there were survivors,” Dugald continued. “There are always, it seems, survivors. They fled to Ireland, assisted by the Veneti, who were guest friends of the royal house. Their mother was legend, and her daughters were able to marry well. They made matches appropriate to their rank.” He indicated the child sleeping among the pups at the wolf’s belly. “Did you know that once this was not an island? Did you know there were people here before it was an island?”

  “What has that to do with anything?” Maeniel asked.

  The old man gave a start. “Why?” He looked astounded. “Why, I must have been dozing. Please, pardon me. I’m very tired.”

  “You just broke off the story of the Iceni to tell me that this island was once not an island and I asked what that had to do with anything.”

  Dugald smiled a beautiful smile. “Why, everything and nothing. But, please, I’m very weary,” he said and yawned. “Let’s get some sleep.”

  The Gray Watcher rose and went to the back of the cave. “Not us,” he said. “It’s time for the hunt.”

  A few seconds later there were three wolves where only two had been, and then there were none as they slipped through the crack in the rock that was the entrance to this den. Dugald yawned again and then tried to pull me away from the she-wolf. She bared her fangs silently at him and stared him full in the face.

  As for me, I was just as happy to stay where I was. She was warm as a blanket. So Dugald, his face a mask of fatigue, not readily understood by a child, sank down on an improvised bed of dried grass and went to sleep. I snuggled down among those I was already beginning to think of as my brothers and slid into darkness.

  But—and this is why I remember that night so well even though I was very young—I woke again deep in the night. It was very late and I am sure the world was preparing for morning. The fire was burned down to a heap of red coals. We had, in the trust and wisdom of sleep, drawn close together for warmth. Dugald, the she-wolf’s pups, and I all shared the pile of dried grass. The she-wolf’s muzzle lay across Dugald’s outthrown arm. The pups and I lay pressed between the bodies of the two adults, wolf and man. A pair lay at my back, but one, the largest, most strongly marked one, lay in my arms, but he was not a wolf at all, but a dark-haired boy who slept, long lashes against his cheek, fist in his mouth, nestled in my embrace.

  They never agreed on what to teach me, but I learned a lot anyway just from listening to them argue, because they both knew a lot. In between, I ran wild. Mother—because that’s how I thought of her, the Gray Watcher’s mate—and my brother, Black Leg we called him because he had one forepaw darker than the others, remained together. The gray brothers went off to found their own packs and find their own hunting grounds. The next spring she had more pups, and eventually they also left. When I think about it now, I must have been a nuisance to Mother, because I was nearly seven before I gave up the comfort of her teat, or rather before she finally pushed me away for good.

  Dugald and the Gray Watcher got into one of their usual arguments about it, Dugald thinking it unnatural for me to be so affectionate with a creature like a wolf, and the Gray Watcher telling me I must grow up. I ended by running down to the beach, one where the dragons didn’t nest, and crying to myself. But Mother joined me, and my brother, also.
>
  “You have too many teeth,” Mother said.

  I don’t know when I began to be aware she was speaking with me, but by seven I could understand her very well.

  “A wolf pup would have been grown and gone by now,” she told me, “but because humans are backward, I put up with you, but now no more. Your teeth are a trial to me, and besides, you eat very well of everything that cannot run faster than you.” She poked me with her nose and said, “Go, catch me some fish.”

  They come in at low tide to feed in the shallows. She and Black Leg taught me how to hunt. You stand where the sun will not throw your shadow across the water. They will come in to nibble at your toes. Simply sweep your two fingers down through the water and catch them behind the gills, then toss them up on the beach.

  Mother usually took them in the air. Black Leg could fish for himself. He had been doing it since he was a puppy. He was also a scourge of the sea birds, because he liked eggs and could go places a wolf usually couldn’t climb to get them.

  At first I had thought my experience with him was a dream, but the Gray Watcher could go back and forth, and it seemed he had passed on the trait to his son, though he was loath to use it. But climbing among the rocks, it gave him an advantage, and from time to time on our forays I would see a laughing human face attached to a lithe, sun-bronzed human body slipping into places a wolf could never go. But he didn’t seem to want to use his powers except to satisfy his desire for fresh eggs and on the rare occasions when he had something to say that wolf speech wouldn’t cover.

  So, we all danced and played in the surf, enjoying the sweet largesse of the great untouched world around us, when something dark appeared on the billowing clouds at the horizon. Mother saw it first and paused.

  “Something moves,” she said. She was staring out to sea at the far horizon.

  I looked and saw a sail. It was fully unfurled and filled by the winds. The dark part was the design dyed into it: a raven. I was used to ships—the smaller, hide-covered craft used by fishermen and other clumsy merchantmen glimpsed in the distance beating southward toward Roman lands. But this ship moved swiftly, skimming like a bird over the water. Sail alone could not account for such speed.

  I first thought to tell the Gray Watcher but then remembered he and Dugald were gone hunting. Beyond the headland, to my left, was a village. The people fished and farmed a small valley nearby, grazing their flocks among the mountains in the summer and overwintering them with hay cut from the meadows on the lower slopes. It and a dozen others like it scattered along the coast were the only human presence among these peaks forming the extreme land’s end of Britain looking out across the north sea.

  Dugald and Maeniel talked. Oh, how they talked, more than enough to make up for mine and the wolves’ long silences. And what they most often talked of was how these villages were vulnerable to raids both by their fellow Picts closer to the wall—the great wall of Hadrian that flowed across the downs in the south—and by pirates with oared, shallow-draft vessels. They came for what little gold or silver was taken from the mountain streams by the people, wool—the fabulous long wool of the mountain sheep combed out by the women every spring and dyed to rainbow colors in their workshop—and, most deadly of all, for the women themselves.

  When he cautioned me to be wary of strangers, the Gray Watcher told me that there were places where a captive woman skilled in weaving was a unit of value, where women were compared to so many pounds of silver or gold.

  The raven, sister to the wolf, like the one who accompanied Gray Watcher, was not a bird of good omen. She was the war bird.

  “It has a raven on the sail,” I told Mother. “We should flee.”

  She made the low sound in her throat that passes for agreement among wolves.

  “No,” Black Leg said. “War band.” Then he grinned, tongue lolling. “Girls.”

  Mother laughed also. “They have been telling me they were here for the last two hours in the wind. The boys in the war band and the girls.”

  This said it all to me.

  The villages along the coast supported the war band. It was made up of young men from all the villages. In the summer they watched for raids along the coast and from the south. In the winter they dispersed back to their homes. They were out now, running wild, and they paused to flirt, or sometimes a lot more than flirt, with the girls of the village. They were not loved by the more prosperous farmers and artisans but rather tolerated. Most of the members were surplus males with little or no prospects. Potential disaster for a family with a marriageable daughter.

  But since they lived off the land six months of the year and provided a modicum of protection from raids by land and sea, the village chiefs tried to keep them at arm’s length without driving them entirely away. They were kept under control because they needed shelter through the winter, and any of those wild enough to make serious enemies among the settled farmers and fishermen would find himself a hunted outlaw skulking through the coverts without shelter from the cold, with every man’s hand against him. The boys were tough enough, but few were so foolish as to risk this fate. Most looked to distinguish themselves in battle and be taken into the household of a man of property or marry a woman who was heir to land and a clever cloth worker, or, best yet, seize a fine bit of plunder and be able to buy their way into the cattle- and sheep-grazing privileges of one of the chiefs’ houses. An opportunity to do this was not to be missed, and the ship rapidly approaching might be one.

  I could have simply run away and hid, but that never occurred to me. I found them at the edge of the forest. They were scattered among the trees. The two oldest with the best weapons were together with a brace of the village girls. One, I was surprised to note, was the village chief’s daughter, Issa. The leader of the war band was tall, blond, muscular, and handsome. I still remember his name: Bain. As usual, they had paired themselves with two plainer people that they might show off their good looks to the best advantage. The other boy, Bain’s friend, was dark with thick, coarse hair, arms that seemed almost too long, and a strong, rather squat body. Issa’s friend was a very skinny, wiry redhead.

  Issa was smiling up at Bain, looking totally entranced by whatever he was saying. When I spoke, it was obvious he didn’t want to be interrupted.

  “There is a sail,” I said.

  He spared me a quick glance. “There are always sails,” he replied. “Go away.” Then he turned his attention back to his adoring Issa.

  “Listen to me.” I picked up a pebble and shot it past his face. It snapped against the trunk of the cedar he and Issa were leaning against.

  He turned angry eyes toward me. “You little scruff, you’re lucky you missed. Otherwise, I’d be teaching you a lesson about how to treat a warrior.”

  “I didn’t miss,” I said, and sent another pebble sailing in his direction. This one took him square in the middle of the forehead.

  He let out a yell and began to draw his sword, but his long-armed friend clapped a hand on his wrist and kept it in its sheath. “Are you mad, Bain? That’s a child.”

  “He’s no one of note,” Issa said. “He belongs to the madman and his servant. They live near the shore.”

  They thought me a boy. Most people in the village did, because Dugald and the Gray Watcher dressed me that way and kept my hair cropped.

  “Will you listen?” I asked. Somehow I knew the time was short. “That’s all I want you to do. Listen.”

  “Very well,” Bain’s friend said. “Bain, we don’t need trouble with these people. Keep your sword in its sheath.”

  “You needn’t worry about them,” Issa said haughtily. “It’s likely as not they are runaway slaves.”

  “Slaves,” I said, outraged. “I’ll give you slaves,” and began reaching for another pebble.

  “You stop that now,” Bain’s friend said. He got between me and Bain and strode toward me. He was fast. I saw that at once. I barely evaded his grip and made a quick dash toward the hilltop. He slowed when he saw M
other and Black Leg appear from the brush, one on either side of me. I noticed the thin redhead had followed him.

  “Ahh,” she said. “The child has friends.”

  Mother was showing her teeth in a most unpleasant snarl.

  “To be sure, Anna,” the dark one answered. “Large, unpleasant friends. Very well. Show me this sail.”

  We were only a few steps from the bald knob of rock that formed the hilltop.

  “Look!” I said, pointing out to sea.

  The sail was a lot closer. The ship could be seen clearly now, oars lifting in and out of the water.

  The dark one could see it just as well as I could from where he was standing. His skin turned pale under his swarthy complexion. “Mother of Christ, pirates!”

  “Yes,” I crowed triumphantly. I saw the skinny redhead had gone as white as he with fear.

  “Gray, Gray,” she whispered, “are you sure?”

  Bain and Issa had come up behind them.

  “Oh no,” Issa said and moaned. “I’ll catch a hiding. Bain, protect me.”

  Bain didn’t look as though he wanted to protect anyone. His blond good looks had abruptly faded and he seemed, if possible, even more frightened than Gray. “We will need more men,” he said.

  Gray sighed. “Bain, there isn’t time. Not another hour will pass till they are ashore. We must meet them with the dozen or so we have.”

  “Are you crazy?” Bain shouted. “There will be three times that number on the ship—and professionals, too.”

  “What’s a professional?” I asked from the hilltop.

  Gray took the trouble to answer. “The men aboard that ship make their living by raiding. They will almost certainly be experienced fighters.”

  “And better at it than you?” I asked.

  “Probably,” he said.

  Bain was blowing his horn to summon what force he had.