Dragon Sacrifice (The First Realm Book 3)

by Klay Testamark

  “I know how that feels,” I said,

  A severed foot tumbled past Cruix’s face, splattering him with blood.

  “I hope you covered your beer,” I said. A stagehand with a basket went through the crowd, picking up limbs for reattachment.

  “Of course, the real fight must have been very different,” Dianne said. “Especially since the first humans couldn’t fast-heal.”

  “Really?” Cruix said.

  “No lie, my friend,” I said. “Eirik’s Boon had yet to take hold among my people.”

  The beast-men snarled. Their axes and swords were jagged, lined with shark teeth and obsidian. The colonists met them with steel and flame. Back and forth the battle rolled, both sides matched in ferocity. They were all human, of course. The beast-men were obviously just warriors wearing antlers. But everyone in the audience would be familiar with the story.

  “The skraelings were more animal than man,” Dianne said. “They had tools but not speech, clothes but not fire. They built no monuments, held no settlements. They wandered the

  Northlands in small and squabbling herds.”

  A skraeling brought his poleaxe down, nearly cleaving a colonist through the shoulder. The beast wrenched his weapon free and howled at the sky.

  “Still, it took us centuries to wipe them out,” Dianne said.

  The fighting died down. The colonists were victorious.

  “My brothers!” said the leader. “I do not know what land this is, but surely the gods must be with us.”

  A man pointed skyward. “The stars are different, Eirik. This is not the world we knew!”

  Eirik snorted. “I’d wager we are still somewhere in Midgard, though a bit closer to Niflheim.

  Perhaps the gods have transported us directly to Valhalla. It matters not. There are foes to battle, there is space to roam, what more does a man need?”

  “But we have women with us. And children.”

  “Aleifr, brother you were never the manliest of men, what with your dabblings with magic,” Eirik said. “Don’t give me cause to doubt your bravery.”

  “I simply wonder whether it would be better to seek warmer climes,” Aleifr said. “We still have our axes. We can build ships to cross the sea.”

  “The blood has yet to dry! You would give that up?!” Eirik said. “Maybe I should strike you now, while your sons still love you.”

  “I want to live where the skraelings don’t!”

  “And I want to live on land we’ve already paid for!”

  “Brothers, please!” a third man said. “Why not do both?”

  Eirik and Aleifr turned to him.

  “It’s these sort of half-arsed ideas that are why you are the least of us,” Eirik said. “I can’t believe we’re even related.”

  “Eirik and I are frequently at opposite extremes,” Aleifr said. “That doesn’t mean a perfect compromise is the right answer.”

  Eirik laughed. “What’re you going to do, settle under the sea?”

  Baleygr reddened. “I only wanted to stop you from killing each other.”

  “We’re past that,” Aleifr said. “Still there is the question of what you plan to do with yourself.”

  “You’ve never been the most decisive of us,” Eirik said. “That didn’t matter when it was always the three of us. But now that we are parting ways…”

  “I didn’t want to do this,” Baleygr said. He lowered his shield to show the arrow in his heart.

  “Brother!” said Eirik and Aleifr. The two caught their youngest brother and lowered him to the earth.

  “I caught my death-wound,” Baleygr said. “I would’ve mentioned it, but I wanted to you both to decide on your own. There’s been too much death today.”

  And he closed his eyes.

  The surviving brothers looked at each other.

  “He was right,” Aleifr said. “There’s been too much dying.”

  Eirik nodded. “You may go your own way, brother. I will not stop you.”

  “And what of Baleygr’s children? What of his followers?”

  “We will have to divide them between us,” Eirik said, and sighed.

  Dianne leaned close. “Eirik, of course, was the ancestor of every human now living. His children born afterward exhibited remarkable powers of recuperation.”

  “They healed fast,” Cruix explained.

  “I—knew—that!” I said.

  “Aleifr was the ancestor of both elves and dwarves. While Eirik’s people developed powers like that of the einherjar, Odin’s chosen, Aleifr’s people began to resemble the fey creatures from folklore. Baleygr’s people received no blessing and so remained unchanged.”

  Onstage, Eirik and Aleifr lit their brother’s funeral pyre. Baleygr lay in the first boat they had built. The surviving two pushed it out to sea. Shortly after that, Aleifr’s fleet sailed for warmer shores.

  “Elves and dwarves had the same ancestors?” Cruix asked. “Is that true?”

  “A lot of humans consider dwarves to be just another kind of elf,” Dianne said. “Svartalfr rather than dvergar. Aleifr’s Boon, like the man himself, was a little unpredictable.”

  “So instead of wielding the forces of the universe, the dwarves learned to make self-sharpening razor blades? Wait, that’s not fair, they also make comfortable shoes.”

  He shook his head. “I can’t believe that elves, dwarves, and humans all used to be halflings.”

  “You haven’t seen what I’ve seen,” Dianne said. “I have entered the burial mounds. I have measured the bones. The first humans were even shorter than present-day halflings.”

  I sat up. “You broke into the barrows of my ancestors?”

  “They’re my ancestors too,” Dianne said. “They owe us the truth.”

  Cruix yawned. “I hope the next play has dragons.”

  “Ah-heh,” Dianne said. “That’s actually why I’m here. I want to apologize in advance—”

  “Fuck you, I’m a dragon!”

  A cart rolled into the square. It was just like ours, except smaller.

  “Fuck you, I’m a dragon!”

  “Am I being played by... a woman?” Cruix asked.

  “Do you know how hard it is to find an actor that looks like an elf?” Dianne asked.

  I laughed. “An inspired casting choice.”

  “Durrrrrr. Heronimo durrrrrr. Swordsmanship durrrrr.”

  I was speechless.

  Cruix laughed. “Thank you, my friend, for the show that never ends.”

  Play!Heronimo looked around as the cart trundled past a row of wooden walls. “Durrrr. Look how fair Heorot is. I see nothing out of place at all.”

  “Fuck you, I’m a dragon.”

  “How very bright and progressive is the city,” Play!Heronimo continued. “So clean! So whitewashed! So utterly fake!”

  Play!Cruix crossed his arms. “Fuck you. I’m a dragon,”

  The real Cruix frowned. “Do I only get that one line?”

  “You say it a lot,” I told him.

  All the walls fell forward, exposing a mob of humans. They wore rags and dirt. Some were limping, some were leaning, all were slouching.

  “You couldn’t get halflings to play themselves?” Cruix asked. “These are obviously humans pretending to be halflings. They look like a bunch of nobles playing dress-up.”

  “Oh, envoys of Brandish!” said one of the pretend-halflings. “Bear witness to us, the invisible masses!”

  “Oh. My. Gods.” Cruix said.

  “Fuck you, I’m a dragon.” said Play!Cruix.

  “Aye, Cruix and Heronimo, we are the unseen, the unfelt, the unsmelled. We are the base of this pyramid of flesh which daily groans beneath the pond’rous weight of callused conquerors.”

  Cruix was in tears. “Oh my gods. Oh my goooods. Oh ho ho ho. ”

  Dianne was bright red. “It’s not that bad.”

  “You went to all this effort to put up your little protest piece, but you neglected to make it a good one.”


  “We are trying to make a difference!” she said.

  “Thordis!” Ardel said. “What is the meaning of this?”

  “Don’t call me Thordis,” Dianne said. “That’s my slave-owner name .”

  “I remember you!” I said. “You’re that girl who carried books everywhere.”

  “That was a long time ago,” she said.

  “Thordis... Dianne. It’s time to go,” Ardel said.

  The protesters were being eased off the stage. These were the sons and daughters of the nobility, so the guards were gentle.

  Ardel reached up. “If you come now, Dianne, there won’t be any problems. You have my word on it.”

  “Your word as a prince?”

  “My word as your friend.” He looked at me and Cruix. “I’m sorry about all this

  “Please don’t,” Cruix said. “It was highly amusing.”

  Chapter 15: Angrod

  I’d just stepped off the gangplank when Prince Ardel greeted me.

  “Prince Angrod,” he said. “I’m so glad you’re here.”

  We shook hands. Heronimo and Cruix had given detailed reports, which is how I recognized him. It was also how I knew to take pills against seasickness, and how I was able to name the people in the prince’s entourage. The big one was Brynjar, the quick one was Eadric, and the vaguely-foreign one was Rangvald. The skinny guy to one side, that had to be Orvar.

  “I’m glad to be here too,” I said. “What can I do for you, Prince Ardel?”

  “Please, just Ardel. Walk with me.”

  “Call me Angrod,” I said, falling into step . Our people followed. So did Serrato. Two deckhands carried something on a pole.

  “What are you doing?” Meerwen asked them.

  “Have to make a delivery to the palace,” Serrato said.

  Heorot was a city under siege. The citizenry looked like they were a dragon fart away from bouncing off the walls. Everyone was too awake, too alert. Even the children had dark circles under their eyes.

  I’d seen this before, in halfling villages terrorized by man-eating wyverns. For an entire human city to be struck by the same fear...

  “My father and I are at the end of our wits,” Ardel said. “We post guards, it strikes where there are no guards. We set patrols, it evades the patrols. We send the army, it destroys the army.”

  “What?” I said.

  “Right now we couldn’t even fight off a bandit raid.”

  “That’s a hell of a thing to tell me, when my people always wanted to annex the Northlands.”

  Ardel looked at me. “I’ve been following your adventures, Angrod. You wouldn’t do that.”

  No one had seen the beast and lived. It was a kind of wyvern, that much was clear from the footprints. It was bigger and stronger than the usual killer lizard. And judging by its behaviour, it was smarter. More savage. It didn’t just hunt, it inflicted carnage, killing far more than it could eat.

  “One child, we found most of her half-buried in the mud.”

  “The entire army couldn’t harm it?” Heronimo asked. “The entire army?”

  “It stood its ground a few times. Lots of broken spears and sword blades, but not so much as a drop of the creature’s blood.”

  Ardel’s men had other theories. One was that it was a giant wyvern statue, given life by evil dwarven magicians. Another was that it was a mechanical monster, again given life by evil dwarven mechanists.

  “The dwarves have to be responsible,” Eadric said, while Mina grit her teeth.

  A woman planted herself before us. Two other women took position to either side. One started banging a drum. The other brought a flute to her lips.

  “What—” I said, but then the first woman spoke:

  “Short is a man’s span of time on this world

  His strength a fleeting thing, a season

  He starts losing it the moment he finds it

  His days speed to the hour of his death

  “Oh yes, you have to find your path

  No less, walk the earth, found your empire

  The people demand from you feats of daring

  Boys are meant to be men are meant to be heroes

  “So go forth and do great things

  Don’t fear what comes anyway, death

  The ultimate reward is honour, not awards

  No medal can outshine an honest battle scar

  “A freelancer

  An adventurer, a hero for hire, a mercenary

  The gods don’t care what you care to call yourself

  They only care that your deeds mark you as a man

  “Some day, some night

  You too will die

  The end will take you by surprise

  Some fight, some raid

  Sun up or sun down

  Somebody will close your eyes

  “What?” I said. She’d spoken in Elvish, but still. I’d never been ambushed by poetry before.

  Meerwen stepped forward. “Elsa. So you survived Snow Mountain.”

  “Yes, I did survive,” Elsa said. She crossed her arms. “A cat always lands on her feet.”

  “After they’ve had their heads caved in?” Meerwen asked. “I’m impressed. Whose side have you infiltrated this time?”

  “I did that on my lord’s orders. I am between lords at the moment, so I’m here for myself.”

  She put her hands on her hips. “I will destroy the monster, take the prize, and start a new nation. A better nation.”

  “What was that music all about?” Meerwen asked. “What, busking was your backup career?”

  “I am a sorceress, if you couldn’t tell. I was simply dispensing wisdom to these fine young men.”

  “Is she talking about us?” I asked.

  “Enough!” Serrato said. “You ambushed me with poetry! No one ambushes me with poetry!”

  Everyone tensed as he reached behind him, into hammerspace. But instead of swords he pulled out... a pair of maracas.

  “That was brutal,” I said.

  “I’ve never seen so many grown men weeping,” Ardel said.

  “Make it stop, they said. One guy promised Serrato his firstborn. Who knew show tunes could be so scary?”

  “It is an entirely different thing when you are singing said show tunes against your will,” Cruix said.

  I suppressed a grin. “We tried to pull you to safety, but you were dancing too fast.”

  “Perhaps you would have had better success if you weren’t laughing so hard,” Cruix said.

  “It’s not often you see water magic of that scale or complexity,” Meerwen said.