And thought: now just a minute.
It hurt so much, hauling myself onto my side so I could see. I was in tears.
Later, I figured out what had happened. When Ebba saw me go down, he grabbed the boar-spear and ran towards me. I don’t imagine he considered the dragon, except as an inconvenience. Hold on, I’m coming; all his thoughts in his words. He got about half way when the dragon pitched—it must’ve swooped off and come in again. As it put its feet down to land, he must’ve stuck the butt of the spear in the ground and presented the point, like you do with a boar, to let it stick itself, its momentum being far more effective than your own puny strength. As it pitched, it lashed with its tail, sent Ebba flying. Whether or not it realised it was dead, the spear a foot deep in its windpipe before the shaft gave way under the pressure and snapped, I neither know nor care. By the marks on the ground, it rolled three or four times before the lights went out. My best estimate is, it weighed just short of a ton. Ebba—under it as it rolled—was crushed like a grape, so that his guts burst and his eyes popped, and nearly all his bones were broken.
HE WOULDN’T HAVE thought: I’ll kill the dragon. He’d have thought, ground the spear, like boar-hunting, and then the tail hit him, and then the weight squashed him. So it wouldn’t have been much; not a heroic thought, not the stuff of song and story. Just: this is a bit like boar-hunting, so ground the spear. And then, perhaps: oh.
I think that’s all there is; anywhere, anytime, in the whole world.
I TRIED PRESERVING the head in honey. We got an old pottery bath and filled it and put the head in; but eight weeks later it had turned green and it stank like hell, and she said, for pity’s sake get rid of it. So we boiled it out and scraped it, and mounted the skull on the wall. Not much bigger than a big deer; in a hundred years’ time, they won’t believe the old story about it being a dragon. No such thing as dragons, they’ll say.
Meanwhile, for now, I’m the Dragonslayer; which is a joke. The duke himself threatened to ride over and take a look at the remains, but affairs of state supervened, thank God. Entertaining the duke and his court would’ve ruined us, and we’d lost so much already.
Twice I’ve cheated. Marhouse was straight as a die, and his end, I’m sorry, was just ludicrous. I keep telling myself, Ebba made a choice, you must respect that. I can’t. Instead of a friend, I have a horrible memory, and yet another debt I can’t pay. People assume you want to be saved, no matter what the cost; sometimes, though, it’s just too expensive to stay alive. Not sure I’ll ever forgive him for that.
And that’s that. I really don’t want to talk about it anymore.
LEAF AND BRANCH AND GRASS AND VINE
KATE ELLIOTT
A HAND POUNDING on her cottage door woke Anna, just as it had that terrible night almost three months ago. Jolting upright, she wiped a hand across her mouth as if to wipe away the taste of fear and grief but it did not go away. Beside her on the wide mattress, her two youngest children slept like the dead, and she was glad for it. No sense in cringing and stalling; the bad news would come whether now or at dawn, and she did not want the children to wake.
From the other room, where she had long slept with her husband, rose a murmur of voices: her daughter and her new husband waking to the summons.
She wrapped her well-worn bride’s shawl over her shift and padded to the barred door. Pointless to bar the door, really, since she had left the glass window unshuttered. The light of a full moon bathed the plank floor in a ghostly light, enough that she need not grope for a precious candle. By the measure of the shortened shadows, she knew it was barely past midnight.
She set a hand on the latch. “Who is there?”
“Anna, it is Joen. No trouble here, but I need you at once.”
Her brother’s familiar voice calmed the pounding clamor of her heart. She let him in just as the door into the other room opened and Hansi stuck his head out, holding a lit candle in one hand and his butchering knife in the other.
She said, “Holding a light in the darkness means the other man can see you but you can’t see him.”
Hansi chuckled. He was a good natured young man, slow to take offense to his pride. “My apologies, Mother Anna. Is that Uncle Joen I hear?”
“It is,” said Joen, “and I would ask you to get everyone dressed.”
Anna grabbed Joen’s thick forearm. “I thought you said no trouble.”
“There’s been a skirmish fought in and around West Hall. Rumor says the Forlangers are involved. The family should hide in the caves until we are sure they’ve moved on.”
Anna’s daughter Mari appeared beside Hansi, resplendent in her bride’s shawl and so heavily pregnant that she lumbered. Her face was solemn as she took the candle from her young husband and examined first her mother and then her uncle by its smoky light.
“We’ll get the children up and go at once,” Mari said.
Hansi brushed his fingers down Mari’s forearm, and the gesture of affection made Anna glad all over again that her daughter had found a good man.
Joen nodded, shifting his crutch. His empty trouser leg swayed. “Take provisions, everything you can carry and cart, but be quick about it. But I need you, Anna, if you will. There are dead and wounded at West Hall.”
She turned on him, her mood gone bitter at once. “I will sew up none of those cursed Forlangers. They can die in their own rot.”
“Truly,” he said, patting her shoulder, “but it was General Olivar’s men they fought.”
“That changes matters then. For the sake of the general, I will do everything I can to help. I’ll get my things.”
Now that she was awake, the sour morning taste was rising in her stomach, a reminder that her husband’s death had not left her entirely alone. But she did not speak of it. Mari suspected, but it was ill fortune to count on the harvest of fruit that might not ripen. If the gods willed it, then they would bless her with his last child.
Hansi rousted the children as Anna dressed and afterward collected her bag. She kissed them all and left, Joen shifting impatiently as he waited. The full moon bathed the world in a glamor. She had many soft memories of this time of night, for summer’s tide had washed her youth in many sweet meetings. But now he was dead.
The houses of the village sprouted in clusters along a cart track that led to the tavern and the temple and, most magnificently, the new market hall built under the supervision of General Olivar ten years ago. She had to measure her pace to allow Joen to keep up without it seeming she could easily out-stride him and, because he was her older brother, she dared not joke with him about it; he would take it amiss, for he had been a soldier for ten years under the general’s command before he had lost his foot.
Her husband would not have cared. His sense of humor had never failed, even as he was dying of a rotting wound her herbs and wise nursing could not heal.
The treacherous Forlangers had the king’s ear and bragged that they were his most loyal subjects. But out here beyond the King’s City people knew them for the greedy, cruel mercenaries that they were, always ready to steal from villages wherever they guessed the king would not notice. Only the general and his men stood between the villages and the raiders.
Someone had lit the crowing cock lamp atop the market hall’s steep roof. This beacon called to the folk hurrying forward now, carrying their children, cages with chickens, and bags stuffed with grain and such produce as they could carry. It was not late enough in the season that beasts had been slaughtered for the winter’s meat, so the older boys and girls were being dispatched to drive the animals out to the far pastures where they might hope to bide unseen until the danger was past.