The Dragon Hammer (Wulf's Saga Book 1) (31 page)

Chapter Thirty-Nine:
The Gray Elf

It was late afternoon of the next day when Wulf finished the travel from Bear Hall and climbed the eastern side of the valley to Raven Rock. It had been a good ride through the Shwartzwald Forest. The day before, the war council had made its plan. He’d felt at ease. Ready.

Now, suddenly, he did not.

A lot depended on what would happen over the next few days.

Otto was dead.

Ravenelle had used the new celestis to delve into the mind of the brother of the Sandhaven deserter. There wasn’t any doubt about it.

And the deserter himself had brought news of Adelbert’s death.

Two brothers in a week. It was almost overwhelming. Would have been, but he needed to keep going.

They knew much more about what the Sandhaveners were doing in Raukenrose.

The deserter had been a Sandhavener officer. He’d felt betrayed by his king into mental slavery. Something had gone wrong when he’d been issued the new black-colored celestis, the ater-cake. His mind had been nearly burned to a crisp by the draugar.

But he hadn’t died. Instead, Ravenelle had saved him. Whatever she’d done, the Sandhavener was now completely devoted to her.

And found out his captain was the leader of the elite force from the Nesties, the Hundred.

The mission had been to capture or kill the Hundred captain. They had captured him. And released him to go back to the castle.

Otto was dead.

Adelbert, too.

And I am in a murderous frame of mind, Wulf thought.

I don’t care about recapturing the town. I don’t care about an old relic.

I want to kill Sandhaveners. Personally.

He knew he needed perspective. Knowing was a lot different than
getting
though.

The dragon never showed you things
you
wanted to see. It showed you what it wanted you to know.

He had to try.

He had to stop his bloody circle of thoughts.

He had to get over it.

Because he was never going to be able to
actually
kill Sandhaveners until he did.

Which set him to thinking about killing them all over again.

Raven Rock overlooked both Bear Valley and Raukenrose. It was supposed to be a place where a portion of the land-dragon surfaced. It would be a good place to come if the dragon was calling.

Suddenly, though, the dragon wasn’t calling. The feeling had grown weaker, at least. Had he been imagining it before? No. There had been no doubt. Until now.

The rocky overlook marked the northern end of Bear Valley. Below him, the “army” of Shenandoah was camping. Tomorrow they would finish the march on Raukenrose and then attack the following dawn.

At least, that was the plan.

Raven Rock was shale. It was made of huge slabs jutting along a ridge at a steep angle. The path to the overlook led between these jutting slabs. Buzzards nested along the way, and Wulf was careful to avoid them. Buzzards could make a brutal assault when they thought their hatchlings were threatened.

At the end was the highest slab stabbing up into the sky. The path wound along behind this, ending where the rock slope began. A hundred paces up the angled rock was the summit, Raven Rock, with a view of Bear Valley to the west and the Shenandoah Valley and Raukenrose to the east. The slab was just level enough to climb up the rock without having to crawl on hands and knees.

Wulf used a trick that Rainer had taught him while they were rock climbing steep slopes in the mountains outside Kohlsted. The method was to keep your weight over your feet. But to do that you had to lean back, way back. This felt
very
wrong and possibly fatal. Nagel soon had enough and flew off to find a perch at the base of the rock.

But the technique worked.

When Wulf got to the top, the rock flattened. The summit was a spot where three people could stand if they crowded close. Wulf was alone.

The late afternoon sky was blue with fluffy white clouds. There was a light breeze and it was warm enough that he’d left his new cape at the base of the rock with Grim.

Raven Rock was supposed to be connected to the sleeping dragon below.

But it wasn’t working. He touched the rock. He lay down on the rock. He tried to use his dagger to make a connection—the dagger Grer Smead had made him to replace the other that got stuck in the Olden Oak. No good. Nothing.

I’m fooling myself. The dragon calls
you
, you don’t call
it.

Twilight came, and a sliver of moon rose. It was getting colder. He regretted that he’d left his cape below with Grim.

Otto. Adelbert. Kill the cursed scum. Kill them.

And the thoughts started over again.

He was also getting a very sore butt. The top of the rock was flat, but that didn’t mean it was smooth. There wasn’t anywhere to sit that wasn’t on some bump or another.

“You have good reason to want them all dead.”

“I know. But I can’t let it control me. Besides, it’s my fault. I started it all by stabbing Gunnar.”

“Oh, I doubt that
you
were the first cause of anything.”

Wulf snapped back to attention. Had he dozed off? Had he been dreaming?

An elf was sitting across from him.

The elf had the elegant elven face that seemed forever young. Even in the twilight, Wulf could see that his hair was gray. His eyes were the same light gray as his hair.

He wore a cloak of buffalo fur loosely around his shoulders, but it had either been bleached or it was from a rare white buffalo. His other clothing, pants and a simple shirt, was gray wool. His boots were black, the only dark color on him.

“Hello,” the elf said.

Wulf called out in alarm. But there was no answer from below.

“They won’t be able to hear you. Don’t be upset. We don’t mean any harm. We won’t be long.”

“What are you doing here?”

“Passing through. We try to come by this place when we’re nearby.”

“Who is ‘we’?”

“My company.”

He motioned down the rock slope at nothing. But then shapes seemed to grow out of the Raven Rock surface. They took the shape of cloaked figures. Then they sat back down and they were just rocky shapes once more.

“The Gray Company. I’m called Eifer. I think you must be Wulfgang.”

“How did you know that?”

“The dragon dreams. You are someone who shares them. So am I.”

Wulf hesitated. But what was the use of lying?

“All right, yes. My name is Wulf.”

“And since nobody but a von Dunstig male would do that around here, you must either be the duke or one of his sons. You are not the oldest. Otto is in his late twenties, and you are clearly younger. I have met Adelbert—”

Wulf cut in. “You’ve met my brother? When? Where?”

“It was on a ship in the Chesapeake. A story for another time.”

“I want to hear it.”

“He may tell you himself.”

“He’s dead.”

Eifer reached up and touched his own forehead with his fingertips. Then he touched his heart. He gazed into his own palm for a moment. He seemed not so much sad as puzzled. “I am very sorry to hear that,” he finally said. “Adelbert was a good man.” The elf looked back at Wulf. “You aren’t Adelbert or the duke. That’s why I know you’re Wulfgang.”

“You know me, but I’ve never heard of you.”

“We are passing through. Headed for my kin in Eounnbard.”

“The Smoke Elves?”

“Yes.”

“Why are you here?”

“This rock? The same reason as you, Wulf. It’s a gate into the dragon’s dreams.”

“The dragon isn’t showing me any dreams. I’ve been here all day.”

Eifer ran a hand over his smooth chin. “I wouldn’t be so sure,” he said. He gazed at Wulf for a moment. “There are all kinds of dreams.” He seemed to be considering something.

“What?” said Wulf.

“My company can’t go into battle with you tomorrow,” the elf said. “I wish we could, but we are genuinely needed in the south.”

“I don’t expect you to join us.”

“I can give you something, though. I will.”

He took a pendant on a metal chain from around his neck. The chain looked like steel. The pendant was a stone. It was brownish-black, flecked with white bits. It was small enough to fit into the elf’s palm.

“What is it?”

“A piece of a fallen star, Wulf.”

“It’s some kind of magical talisman or something?”

“No. It isn’t magic. Not in the way you mean. It is just a piece of star.”

“That sounds pretty useless.”

“You might be surprised. It’s a star stone. A meteorite. Will you take it?”

“Why?”

“Why not, Wulfgang?”

Wulf took the stone on the chain in his palm. He ran his finger over its pitted surface.

“I guess it can’t hurt,” he said.

“Lean forward a bit.” Wulf did. The elf took the chain back from him and draped the necklace over Wulf’s head. The star stone rested on Wulf’s chest.

Wulf looked down at the stone, then past it to the moon-traced bumps of Raven Rock.

The stone in his hand changed. Its surface cleared. He could look
through
the stone at the rock below him.

It was as if Raven Rock was the surface of a clear lake. If he held his vision one way, he could see the rock bumps and cracks like still waves on a still lake. Now he concentrated on looking below the surface, and the waves disappeared. The layers stripped themselves away, pulling back and disappearing.

He was seeing
inside
the Earth. Deeper and deeper. And it was—

Dragons. Thousands and thousands of them. Dragons were wound about one another, clamped tightly together. And even though he saw heads and tails and bodies, it was hard to tell where one stopped and another began.

“There must be…there are so many of them.”

“Some little, some big,” said Eifer.

The dragons seemed chaotic, all twisted together in many sorts of ways. But there were patterns within the confusion that seemed to almost come together in Wulf’s mind, and then everything seemed chaos again, a compressed, round clump of dragons.

“The whole world is a clutch of dragons,” said Eifer. “It’s an egg filled with young dragons waiting to be born.”

“Blood and bones, what did this thing do to me?”

“I told you. The stone can help you see clearly,” the elf said. “We have to go.”

Wulf sat clutching the star stone, trying to understand what he’d just experienced. He risked a glance down through the stone again, but the rock was just a rock now.

“Weren’t you here to…commune with the dragon?”

Eifer laughed. “Have you ever heard the saying ‘the souls of men are the souls of dragons’?”

“It’s from a really old skald song.”

Eifer nodded. “Your brother said you had the makings of a lore master.”

“I guess,” Wulf answered. He fingered Eifer’s stone. “What is this?”

“It’s someone,” Eifer said. “Someone I once loved.”

“You were a star?”

Eifer stood up. “I am a star,” he said. “She gave hers up, and it fell.”

“What was her name?”

“Brenunn Temeldar,” said the elf.

Wulf looked hard at Eifer. “That’s the name of the Pillar of the South in the old cosmos tales.”

“It is.”

“
This
is Brenunn Temeldar?”

“Yes,” said the elf. He offered a hand to Wulf. “Now I have to go. And you should get some sleep.”

“I’m still waiting for the dragon,” Wulf said. But he gave the elf his hand and stood up beside him.

Eifer laughed. “I have a prediction, Wulfgang,” he said. “I foretell that waiting for the dragon will be the story of your life.”

The elf motioned, and the Gray Company rose like a ghostly mist from Raven Rock.

“Go with God and the divine ones,” Eifer said.

He turned and walked easily down down the Raven Rock slope. The Gray Company silently followed.

Wulf stood a while longer. Nothing. Finally, he made his way back down the rock. He was careful of his steps in the darkness.

When he got to the bottom, Grim was waiting with a cup of coffee and a blanket.