The Book of the Sword (Darkest Age) (15 page)

Fritha was looking at him solemnly; even with a trace of sadness, he thought. ‘I would like to have a friend like that,’ she said.

Cathbar pulled himself on to the shelf. ‘I’m getting old!’ the captain puffed as he sat heavily down beside them. ‘But you did well, girl, finding that route. Now, how do we get down?’

Edmund looked around. The shelf extended for several feet along the mountainside before merging back into the ice sheet. From the top it was brilliantly white: snow had collected on it, and the sun had risen high enough to shine on them now that they were out of its shadow. They could see
much more of the mountain from here, but Edmund was still unwilling to look down. Fritha, though, jumped to her feet and went to inspect the ice on the further side of the shelf, looking for possible routes.

‘She’ll find a way if anyone can,’ Cathbar said, looking after her approvingly. ‘If we’re only in time,’ he added in a lower voice.

‘In time for what?’ Edmund asked, but the captain shook his head.

‘I don’t know myself, lad. But I do know that woman wasn’t telling us half of what she’s doing here. I think she’s one of the Fay – she has their look about her.’

‘The Fay? You mean the magic people?’ Edmund was confused. ‘My mother used to tell me stories about them. Don’t they need the woods and fields to survive? How could one of them live here?’

‘Oh, they can go anywhere – places the rest of us can’t even find,’ Cathbar said. There was a note of unease in his voice. He stopped as Fritha came back to them, her face alight.

‘I found them!’ she exclaimed. ‘Come and look!’

They followed her along the shelf and looked where she pointed. The sun was glaring off the ice, but they could make out the ledge they had been following with Eolande, winding down the side of the mountain past the crevasse. As it descended the ice around it grew rougher, rising about it in ridges until the path itself was lost. But among the ridges,
only a little way further down, were two tiny figures, one in grey; a smaller one in brown. Their progress was slower now as they picked their way through the ice furrows.

‘They’re not so far,’ Cathbar said, excitement rising in his voice. ‘We can still get to them. Do you have a way down, Fritha?

‘I think so,’ Fritha said, pointing. A sound stopped her: a distant thumping, regular and soft, but heavy, and growing stronger.

‘Avalanche?’ muttered Cathbar.

Fritha shook her head, but her face was suddenly pale. The noise grew louder, and now it had a new edge to it…

Edmund found himself at the very edge of the shelf, shouting down to Elspeth – screaming her name as if he could make her hear him. For an instant he almost thought she had: a spark of light blazed in the smaller figure’s hand, and he knew that the sword had woken. At the same instant the sun was blotted out, and the dragon was above them.

Cathbar pulled him back so violently that he fell down in the snow. Fritha had already thrown herself down – but the dragon did not slow as it soared overhead. They felt the gale as the great wings flapped, once, twice; and then they were above the creature as it swooped down the mountainside. It struck once – and two tiny shapes were dangling from its claws.

Edmund reached out for the dragon’s eyes. For a second he saw Elspeth’s face, full of terror, the sword blazing uselessly in
her hand.
Let her go!
he screamed at it in his head. But behind the dragon’s ferocity he felt something else: another mind, cool and full of power, guiding the creature downwards.

He blinked, and opened his eyes to see the dragon sweeping down to the very bottom of the mountain, where the ice rose in great sculptured shapes that hid even its bulk from sight. He strained his eyes after it, but it did not reappear.

‘So it has a lair at the foot of the mountain.’ Cathbar had already recovered himself: his face was grim with new purpose. ‘Well, girl, you show me the way down. I’ve hurt this beast before; I can do it again.’

Fritha was crying. ‘The dragon mountain! Why did we come here?’ she wept, and added something else in her own language. Cathbar put his hand on her shoulder.

‘That’s foolishness, girl. Elspeth would have come here whether you brought her or not.’

Fritha scrubbed a hand over her eyes and knelt to gather her climbing tools. ‘Come, then,’ she said. ‘The way is not straight – but I take you down, as fast as we can go.’

‘No,’ Edmund said.

The thought that had just come to him was so crazy that he almost lost courage as they turned to stare at him. ‘Fritha,’ he forced himself to go on. ‘You called this a dragon mountain. So they definitely used to live here?’

‘You heard her,’ Cathbar snapped, as Fritha nodded. ‘Now are we going to get moving?’

‘No! It’s too slow!’ Edmund grabbed Fritha’s arm. ‘Are there
other
dragons here? If we can find one, I can make it fly us down there.’

Both Fritha and Cathbar looked at him in astonishment. At length Cathbar spoke, more gently than before. ‘It’s a brave thought, Edmund. But you’re talking about a dragon, not a dog. Even if we could find one, we couldn’t control it.’

He thinks I’m running mad
, Edmund thought, looking at the captain’s concerned face.
And maybe I am. But it’s the best chance we have!

‘You’re forgetting,’ he told Cathbar. ‘I am Ripente. I can control creatures through their eyes – and I’ve borrowed that dragon’s eyes before.’

The captain hesitated. He still thought this was foolishness, Edmund could see – but maybe not madness.

‘Listen to me, Cathbar!’ he pleaded. ‘I can’t get through to Torment here. Someone else is controlling it – if not Loki, then one of his followers, like my uncle was once. But it shows that dragons
can
be controlled! If there’s another dragon here – one that isn’t being watched – I think I can reach it. We’d be down there in moments, and we could go wherever the blue dragon goes.’

There was a silence. Fritha broke it, her voice as small as a child’s. ‘There are no more here like that one. The rock dragons are few, and they live far from each other. But my mother told me a story … There were dragons once that came from the ice: many, many of them. They flew from
Eigg Loki
, and they returned here. She said that they sleep here, always,
under the glacier. And one day, they will wake again.’ She looked at Edmund, wide-eyed. ‘There is a place on the mountain called
Dreka-minning
– the memory of dragons – where they flew back into the ice. My mother showed it to me.’

‘Could you take us there?’ Edmund asked, hardly trusting his voice. ‘Quickly?’

Fritha nodded, already scanning the mountainside for a route.

Cathbar let out his breath in an explosive sigh. ‘So it’s both of you, is it? You mean to go dragon-hunting – to gamble on a children’s tale, while Elspeth’s in danger!’

Edmund turned on him, all his fear and desperation breaking out as fury. ‘I care as much for her safety as you! How many children’s tales have turned out to be true since we’ve come here? Ice spirits … a god under the mountain … why
shouldn’t
Fritha be right about this dragon? And we’ve no
time
!’

Cathbar shot him an approving look. As Edmund subsided, out of breath, the captain clapped him on the shoulder.

‘Then let’s be off, lad. Of course, as your father’s son, you could just have given me an order.’ He turned to Fritha. ‘Lead on, girl, and let’s find this nest of dragons quickly. I hope you’re right about it, for all our sakes.’

Even without a guiding spirit, the sword had a good blade. It gashed the scales of the dragons, and kept their claws from me – but they did not bleed, nor tire. And then I saw my wife. She has always had the gift of speaking to birds and beasts. She was calling: at first to the dragons, and when they would not hear her, to the birds of the forest. A cloud of them came – crows, doves, even starlings. They settled on the dragons, covering the scales with black and brown till the creatures crashed to the ground. And still my wife called: to the hawks and eagles, which flew like daggers at the dragons’ eyes. The battle turned.

– You see! she said in triumph. You have no need of swords. The creatures of this land can protect it.

– And against fire? said one of the Fay.

Caught twice – like a fish in a pond! What kind of fighter do you think you are?

Elspeth’s sword arm was free this time, but it did her no
good: the dragon had gripped her round the waist, face down, twisting and writhing like a fish in a gull’s claws. And writhe as she might, flailing with the sword, she could find nothing to hit except the claw holding her. In her first terror and fury she had slashed at it, and gashed the surface, but the sword would cut no deeper: she guessed it would not allow her to harm herself, or perhaps would not let her fall here.

The white ground soared to meet her as the dragon swooped downwards. Eolande hung limply from the dragon’s other foot, the foreleg that Cathbar had wounded before. The whole leg dangled lower than the one that held Elspeth, so that Eolande was almost dashed against the ice as their captor skimmed down the mountain. The woman’s face was pale and her eyes were closed. Elspeth felt a stab of bitter guilt: this was not Eolande’s battle. She had brought this fate on them both.

The dragon pulled itself up from its plunge, wheeling dizzyingly in the air so that they now faced the mountain. They were flying towards another crevasse – no, a deep rift in the rock itself, stretching down nearly to the mountain’s foot. The creature brought its wings in close to its sides and began to glide down towards the opening.

This could be its lair
, Elspeth thought.
Is it taking us back to eat us?
She fought down panic, concentrating on the sword in her hand and trying to picture herself stabbing the dragon as its jaws came down to bite, as Cathbar had done. But the creature could have eaten them on the mountainside, surely, or killed them to eat later. No: their captor must be serving
someone else, just as it had been before, when it had snatched her and Edmund from Venta Bulgarum. It was taking them to its master.
To Loki
, she thought: who else could tame a dragon? And after all, she was to be brought to him, pinioned and helpless.

There was a rush of wind as the dragon unfolded its wings again. It brought them down with a crack like the breaking of tree trunks, pulling itself up in the air with a jolt. Elspeth looked down. Something was moving on the ground just below them, flowing up from the foot of the mountain and gathering in the dark opening to the rift. Living creatures, long-bodied and low to the ground, their coats a soft silver-grey against the snow.

Wolves. White wolves.

Eolande gave a low cry, and Elspeth saw that she had opened her eyes. The dark-haired woman gazed down at the wolves, her face eager and intent, her lips moving soundlessly. The animals had gathered in a tight pack, barring the entrance. Dozens of sets of yellow teeth were bared in snarls. The dragon might have been able to fly over them, but its wounded leg hung down too low: already those at the front of the pack were leaping up, and Eolande had disappeared among a flurry of white bodies.

‘
No!
’ Elspeth screamed. She tried to slash downwards at the wolves, but the foot that held her was still too high. The dragon beat its wings once more, throwing itself back into the air; some of the wolves lost their hold and fell to the ground,
yelping, but three or four still held on to the great scaly foreleg. Hanging in their midst, still gripped by the claw, Eolande seemed to be unwounded, though the dragon’s black blood ran around her. It seemed a miracle to Elspeth, but she had no time to feel relief. The dragon was swooping down again, shooting a jet of blue flame at the wolves, who scattered around it as it made once more for the opening. Elspeth flinched as a ridge of stone flashed by, inches from her face – and then she was being carried through a dark tunnel, with a rocky floor beneath her and grey walls stretching up to either side. A sliver of blue sky was still visible far above.

Something hit her in the back. A wolf had thrown itself against the foreleg that held her, and now it hung above her, growling, jaws clenched in the dragon’s scaly skin as its hind legs scrabbled on Elspeth’s back. She flinched as another wolf flung itself towards her face, its jaws dripping – but its yellow teeth clashed shut above her head, in the flesh of the dragon’s foot. They were attacking the dragon, not her! A clawed foot scraped through her hair. She held the sword still by her side as more of the beasts leapt, caught, and tried to scramble up her body.

Through the press of rank, furry bodies, Elspeth glimpsed the dragon’s other leg, still dangling low. The claw was empty. Eolande was free! But she could not see her companion, and the dragon was still gliding down the tunnel taking her and the wolves with it, wings swept back, unable to flap or to turn. It tried to flap once, the crack of air buffeting Elspeth’s
face, but the passage was too narrow to allow the creature to stretch its wings out fully, and it could not turn. It swept on, driven by its own momentum; neither the wolves’ bites nor Elspeth’s struggles seeming to slow it at all.

And then a shudder went through the claw that held her. Elspeth felt the grip around her waist slipping until she was held under her arms, her feet dangling. Next moment, her feet jarred painfully on stone. With a roar that brought fragments of stone down around them like rain, the dragon loosed its hold, sending her crashing down on to the rocky floor, with the wolves in a snarling, snapping heap on top of her.

The wolves’ hot breath steamed around her as she watched the dragon retreating. In a few heartbeats it had reached the tunnel’s end. The stone floor suddenly stopped; the dragon swept out into empty space; and the great wings unfurled. In the dim light that filtered down, Elspeth saw its scaly tail lashing and the empty talons dangling, one lower than the other. A single wolf was still clinging to the foreleg that had grasped Elspeth; one flap of the wings dislodged the beast and it fell, howling into the emptiness below. Then the dragon was lost in darkness, flapping slowly away into the void at the heart of the mountain.