The Dragon Queen

by Alice Borchardt

  “I’ll get a beating,” Issa said petulantly. “They will be able to see the sail from the village. We don’t need to warn them.”

  “No, they won’t,” Anna said. “The village is beyond the headland, and it faces northwest. The sail will be hidden by the cliffs. They won’t know they are under attack until the pirates are among them. Now, come on.” She snatched her friend’s wrist, and both women began running downhill.

  “You think that’s what they will do?” Bain asked Gray.

  “It would be what I would do were I captain of that ship. I would land my people on the beach. They can go around through the rocks and fall on the women—it’s early afternoon and most of the men will still be in the fields working—and you well know it’s the women they want. And the new wool. The houses will be full of it.”

  “We need more men,” Bain insisted.

  “No. The band is scattered all along the coast. By the time we collect enough of them, Issa and Anna both will be standing on the auction block in London.”

  “Very well. Where do we meet them? On the beach?”

  “No and no,” Gray said. “Down there, in the rocks, between the beach and the village. There are some very narrow, steep places and we will stand some chance.”

  I jumped down from my perch on the rock. Mother and Black Leg joined me. I crouched between the two wolves and looked up at Gray.

  “Run home,” he said. “Or better yet, if your kin are not there, hide in the woods and don’t come out until you are sure they are gone.”

  Then lightning struck. That’s what I have always called it since. There are many ways to see into the future. Many magics. But this is the swiftest and best, the most sure. When it has struck and illuminated the world, it has never guided me wrongly. Always in the light of the flash I have seen the world as it is in truth. Seen not only my choices, but the choices of others. Seen the path that I must follow to reach my goal, however difficult it is, however dangerous. And at that moment I first felt the stone in the belly that is fear, and I saw the choice and chose now and forevermore the thing that would be my life.

  “No,” I said. “No, I cannot go. You will need me.” My eyes met his for an eternal moment, and I knew he felt the power. He might not acknowledge it, but he felt it.

  “Yes, I will.”

  Then he turned to the rest—there were seven or eight there by now and more arriving. I was ignored. As Gray began explaining his plan to them, I sent Mother to find Maeniel. I knew the boys would need him. The boys followed Gray without a word, and they waited in the rocks just beyond the beach while the oarsmen brought the ship into the shallows.

  I went with them, but Gray lifted me to the top of a rock, a big boulder, taller than a man’s head. I crouched there with Black Leg. I didn’t know how he got to the top, but I could guess.

  They didn’t beach the boat. She rode rather low in the water. They weighed anchor by dropping a big piece of granite overboard. A rope was attached to it by an iron ring set in the stone. They secured the rope to a stanchion near the stern, then the pirates jumped overboard and splashed through the shallows toward the beach.

  “They have captives on board already,” Gray snarled below me. “Brace yourself, boys, here they come.”

  The first to reach the rocks almost ran into Gray before he saw him. Gray drove his sword through the man’s throat. The man behind Gray’s attacker, I took to be the leader. He wore boiled leather and metal armor and carried a shield and ax. He swung the ax at Gray’s head. Gray parried with his shield, and the ill-made thing disintegrated. His first sword thrust skidded on the leather armor. His opponent shoved his shield boss, a bronze spike, into Gray’s face, almost taking an eye. But in the hand he’d been using to hold the shield, Gray held an improvised mace, a big rock tied to a split tree branch. The descending ax struck the rock and the ax head broke, shards flying into the air like a swarm of glittering needles. The pirate overbalanced and fell forward. Gray swung his mace and emptied the pirate’s skull in a splatter of red.

  The one behind him was better armed. His long sword gave him a reach that Gray didn’t have and he was bigger, a man grown. He drove straight for Gray’s belly with the blade. Gray pivoted and the blade rang out a deep challenge when the mace hit it, but it didn’t break the way the ax had. He slammed his shield into Gray’s body to pin him against the big boulder and spit him with the sword. Taken by madness, I jumped, dropping from the top of the boulder onto the pirate’s neck. Blindly, Gray thrust forward, and his short sword, a Roman gladius, punched through the quilted cloth his opponent was wearing and drove through the ribs into his heart.

  All along the line I could hear and even feel the shock of combat as the very thin line of young and worried boys met the older, experienced fighters and tried to hold them back. And at least for a short time succeeded. The pirates drew back; the narrow passages between the boulders were death traps for an attacking force. The boys had, thanks to Gray’s intelligence, caught them by surprise, weapons undrawn, and killed or incapacitated a half dozen. But this couldn’t last, and I knew it.

  Another leader waved his arm and the force moved forward, to Gray’s right to turn his flank. Once behind the rocky scarp, they could slaughter us at will. I heard Gray grit his teeth and moan. In the broken ground, we could still make a fight of it, but we were doomed.

  Many peoples’ proverbs say it is better to be lucky than smart—and we got lucky. The pirates ran into Maeniel, the Gray Watcher, when they tried to turn our flank, and he is as deadly a man as I have ever known. Two of the pirates staggered back, dying, from the notch in the rocks where he’d stationed himself.

  At almost the same moment the boys got reinforcements from the village. Not all the men were working in the fields. Some of the women came along also, and they’d armed themselves with anything they could carry: clubs, kitchen knives, hay forks, even the hot soup and porridge for the evening meal. Another force from the village came rounding the headland, a fishing boat loaded with all those who hadn’t the stamina to climb the steep, rocky headland. The oarsmen pulling frantically, men and women standing in the boat ready to attack from the rear. The pirates decided the pickings weren’t worth the price and ran for their ship.

  I was standing beside Gray, and he lowered his mace and sword, saying, “Not a bad day’s work,” as he cast an eye on the corpses scattered on the shingle. They were mostly raiders, and they wore their plunder on their backs. Armor, weapons—fine weapons—gold rings on their fingers, gold and silver belts, bracelets, torcs, all decorated their bodies. He and his men were rich.

  As we watched the first of the raiders splash into the water, we both saw something was happening on the ship. Her cargo had shifted, as it were, and the captives streamed onto the deck. They were all women. They went bare-handed for the men left aboard. As we watched, some of the women died, but not enough, not nearly enough, and the men on the boat went down under a squirming mass of bodies.

  Then one of the women pulled free. She had a knife in one hand and an ax in the other. She cut the anchor rope. One of her eyes was gouged out, but she didn’t seem to feel the wound; the moist, red socket glared out of her face at me across the narrow strip of water between the boat and the beach.

  Panicked, the pirates tried to catch at the gunwales with their fingers and pull themselves aboard. But the one-eyed woman cut fingers and hands off, sometimes using the ax as a long-bladed cleaver, sometimes simply slicing with the knife. She also seemed to find it fun to ignore fingers and take ears, noses, and even lips from the men trying to clamber aboard.

  At first I thought she would surely be overwhelmed, but then the other women joined her and they got into the spirit of the thing. The long boat drifted quickly into deeper water, and a few of the pirates tried to make a stand in the shallows. The boys from the war band and the villagers, howling like the legions of the damned, charged in to finish them, but the final blow was dealt by Dugald. He stepped out from behind a rock and gav
e an exemplary demonstration of power.

  Cobbles, large gravel, and water-worn pebbles rose from the beach and began to fly at the pirates with the force of sling stones. Within moments half the remaining men were down and the others were fleeing in all directions. The rest was just revenge. I cannot think any of them escaped. They were hated everywhere along the coast. As to the women aboard the vessel, they had seen their fathers, brothers, husbands, and sons killed by the slavers. Many had been raped, some repeatedly, and those pregnant or with babies at the breast had seen their newborns killed, because a woman with a child at the breast was worth less than one without. They showed no mercy.

  The fishermen hauled the ship ashore and beached her above the tide line while the erstwhile captive women drowned the few remaining wounded pirates in the surf after they deprived them of their eyes, ears, noses, and other offending body parts. For when women take revenge, it is with all their hearts and souls, not to mention considerable inventiveness and ingenuity.

  The sun was low, casting a lurid light over the beach, the surf foaming like stained lace against the violet water. The killing was finished. We went to the chief’s hall to undertake a division of the spoils. It was then Gray gave me the head, the head of the leader of the pirates. He placed it before me in a bag as I sat between Dugald and the Gray Watcher in the chief’s hall. I opened the bag and looked at the face. The pirate chief looked annoyed at being a trophy, as though he were about to protest his slaying at the hands of rank amateurs, boys only. He had not expected to die today.

  Odd how I remember his face. I cannot now call to mind the faces of those I have loved all my life, those for whom more than one time I would have sacrificed everything.

  Dugald, shivering next to me, drained with the effort of his magic, said, “That’s no gift for a child.”

  Maeniel studied the head. “We will place it in cedar oil and dry it in the smoke from our hearth fire.”

  Gray nodded. “She was the one who first saw the sail and warned us. Without her, we would have been taken by surprise.”

  The one-eyed woman was spooning soup into Dugald’s mouth. She spat in the chief’s face. “He died too easy. I wish I’d gotten my hands on him. He gouged my eye out because I fought him when he tried to have me. He said one eye was all a weaving woman needed. He promised me worse this night.” And she laughed. “Seems he won’t get to keep that promise.”

  “The ones who did live long enough to meet you regretted it,” the Gray Watcher said.

  It was a good feast, and we all drank our fill, even the captive women. They remained because none of us knew how to send them home. None of us had any idea where they might be from. The boys from the war band all got good offers from the people in the village, though Bain strutted and preened as though he’d won the battle single-handed.

  When we left to go home, the one-eyed woman went with us. She told Dugald, “Look at the three of you, dirty, dressed in rags.” She twisted my head toward her. “Gray called you she. Are you girl or boy?”

  “Girl, and I regret it. I would like to join the war band like Gray and Bain,” I said.

  “Yes, well, you need a woman to look after you at present.”

  “To be sure,” Dugald said. “That’s why you won’t do. I would rather share house room with a wolf pack.” Then he remembered. “Oh, good God, I do.”

  Mother and Black Leg were striding along at my side.

  When the one-eyed woman came to our hut, she exclaimed at the disorder and filth. Mother and Black Leg gnawed bones on the hearth and none of us were particular about table manners. But first Dugald and Maeniel put her on a bed. She looked ready to fight when they did that, but Dugald, still shivering, said, “My God, woman. I am burnt to the socket, and—” he gestured at Maeniel “—he is not human.”

  Maeniel put off his weapons, went wolf, and settled down at the fire. She laughed when she saw him do it.

  “That’s a trick I’ve never seen,” she said.

  Dugald poulticed her eye so that it took away the pain, then gave her something to drink that he said quiets the soul. She told us her name was Kyra.

  Our house was built after the old manner and it was part of the currents of the world. It was round with wooden uprights and three courses of dry stone walling between them. Flexible canes were lashed to the uprights and formed a skeleton for the dome. This was covered with boiled cowhide and then a layer of green turf. More turf was piled against the walls to keep out the storm winds. So it seemed to rise, a green mound near the sea. It was warmed and lighted by a hearth in the center. The chimney—we knew of no such things then—was a smoke hole in the roof. A lattice that could be moved aside covered the hole.

  I woke deep in the night to hear Kyra weeping. She lay beside me. There were only two beds in the room. Dugald had the other. The wolves slept near the hearth in the center. Dugald slept as one drugged. The wolves were also quiet, curled tails covering their noses. The Gray Watcher had slung the head above the hearth and slightly to one side, so it could begin to cure in the smoke. It hung by its long, dark hair, and as I watched, half asleep, the face seemed to take on the lineaments of life. The eyes opened and stared at me malevolently. The skin was no longer sallow and the cheeks sunken. It seemed as though blood flowed in the veins and the heart still beat.

  “Doesn’t weeping hurt your eye?” I asked Kyra.

  “Yes,” she said, “but the pain in my heart is so much worse than any pain my body could endure that it doesn’t seem to matter.”

  I was a child and my imagination couldn’t bridge the gap between my state and hers, but I wanted to give her something that would allow her some peace. “It’s cold,” I said. “The fire is low.”

  “Is it? I thought it was only my grief that chilled me. In a moment I will rise and build it up. I can’t expect to live among you, whatever you and your people may be, without making proper recompense.”

  I was yet young, but I didn’t want one who had suffered so much to feel she must be my servant. “No,” I answered. “That will be my task. Tell me, the one whose head hangs over the hearth—what was his name?”

  She answered me after the old fashion. “Once I had a man and a son and a child at the breast.”

  I glanced at her and saw the front of the rags she was wearing were wet and stiff with milk from her nipples. It was leaking out with no child to take it.

  “Now I have no man, no son, and no baby. Its name was Cymry.”

  “Cymry,” I said, trying the name on my tongue. The eyes blinked. On the head, the mouth moved. “Cymry,” I said. “Cymry, build up the fire.”

  The flames leaped high, filling the room with light and warmth.

  Kyra laughed. “So there is truth in the old tales.”

  “So it would seem,” I answered.

  The fire was dying down again, but there was plenty of fuel on the hearth. It made a pleasant blaze. The head was quiet and death took it.

  “He is paid out for the things he did,” I said. “You may rest easy.”

  But she was already sleeping.

  Things went well after that. This surprised a lot of people, because we were all farmers, and farmers never think they will prosper. Or possibly they don’t care to attract the anger of the gods by too much complacency.

  Kyra quietly improved the house, finding hides for the floor and strewing rushes. As soon as she could begin to weave, she set up the sort of warp-weighed loom under the trees that our women have used since … since … who knows how long—before they sailed south and traded with the people who became the Greeks at a place called Troy. She washed and cooked better than the two men. Much better. I liked her food. But we quarreled when she tried to make me dress as a girl.

  “You are one, you know,” she told me, “and will have to act like one. The priests say it is an abomination not to.”

  I spat like an angry cat. “And what did being a woman get you?” I asked. When she stood silent, then turned and walked away, I knew I h
ad hurt her, and that was the first time I’d hurt the feelings of any human being. I was unhappy and it made me sad, so I ran after her, trying to say I was sorry. At first she wouldn’t listen to me or talk, then I saw she was crying and I felt worse. But at last she stopped, sat, and buried her face in the old dress she wore, in terrible sorrow. She was silent, and we both sat in a little patch of cedar trees high on a cliff and watched the play of light and shadow on the sea. Black Leg, Mother, and I sat beside her, and a time or two, Mother thrust her nose into Kyra’s hand as though offering her comfort.

  The morning fog had lifted, and the clouds were rushing by, white and glowing at the tops, dark at the bottom, the color of the Gray Watcher’s coat in winter. Far out to sea, it was raining. I saw the long, trailing veils of the storm darkening the horizon like misty smudges in the distance, and sometimes when the sun shone into the storm shadow, I saw the double arch of a rainbow leaping from the sea to the clouds.

  She sat quiet, arms around her knees, looking out into the distance. “You are right. Being a woman didn’t get me much of anything. When they had killed all I ever loved, I fought them because I hoped they would kill me also. That was when he gouged out my eye, saying it would make me more compliant, and he was right. The pain was dreadful. Rather than let them blind me, I behaved the way the other women did, doing what I was told, even seeming to welcome their embraces. He was so sure I was tamed, he left me untied. It was I who freed the others.

  “They wouldn’t even let us bury the dead. I hope … some must have gotten away … I hope they performed the rites. I was told they cannot sleep unless the bones are first burned, then reduced to a powder, and given to the wind. Their spirits are unquiet and will walk. The man and my son were old enough to make the journey, but the baby … he can’t be old enough to find his way alone.”

  She was silent for a space and didn’t talk.

  “You hear him at night?” I asked. “Don’t you? And then you awaken and wonder if he is lost in darkness.”

  She nodded.