The Dragon Queen (8 page)

“It has a raven on the sail,” I told Mother. “We should flee.”

She made the low sound in her throat that passes for agreement among wolves.

“No,” Black Leg said. “War band.” Then he grinned, tongue lolling. “Girls.”

Mother laughed also. “They have been telling me they were here for the last two hours in the wind. The boys in the war band and the girls.”

This said it all to me.

The villages along the coast supported the war band. It was made up of young men from all the villages. In the summer they watched for raids along the coast and from the south. In the winter they dispersed back to their homes. They were out now, running wild, and they paused to flirt, or sometimes a lot more than flirt, with the girls of the village. They were not loved by the more prosperous farmers and artisans but rather tolerated. Most of the members were surplus males with little or no prospects. Potential disaster for a family with a marriageable daughter.

But since they lived off the land six months of the year and provided a modicum of protection from raids by land and sea, the village chiefs tried to keep them at arm’s length without driving them entirely away. They were kept under control because they needed shelter through the winter, and any of those wild enough to make serious enemies among the settled farmers and fishermen would find himself a hunted outlaw skulking through the coverts without shelter from the cold, with every man’s hand against him. The boys were tough enough, but few were so foolish as to risk this fate. Most looked to distinguish themselves in battle and be taken into the household of a man of property or marry a woman who was heir to land and a clever cloth worker, or, best yet, seize a fine bit of plunder and be able to buy their way into the cattle and sheep grazing privileges of one of the chiefs’ houses. An opportunity to do this was not to be missed, and the ship rapidly approaching might be one.

I could have simply run away and hid, but that never occurred to me. I found them at the edge of the forest. They were scattered among the trees. The two oldest with the best weapons were together with a brace of the village girls. One, I was surprised to note, was the village chief’s daughter, Issa. The leader of the war band was tall, blond, muscular, and handsome. I still remember his name: Bain. As usual, they had paired themselves with two plainer people that they might show off their good looks to the best advantage. The other boy, Bain’s friend, was dark with thick, coarse hair, arms that seemed almost too long, and a strong, rather squat body. Issa’s friend was a very skinny, wiry redhead.

Issa was smiling up at Bain, looking totally entranced by whatever he was saying. When I spoke, it was obvious he didn’t want to be interrupted.

“There is a sail,” I said.

He spared me a quick glance. “There are always sails,” he replied. “Go away.” Then he turned his attention back to his adoring Issa.

“Listen to me.” I picked up a pebble and shot it past his face. It snapped against the trunk of the cedar he and Issa were leaning against.

He turned angry eyes toward me. “You little scruff, you’re lucky you missed. Otherwise, I’d be teaching you a lesson about how to treat a warrior.”

“I didn’t miss,” I said, and sent another pebble sailing in his direction. This one took him square in the middle of the forehead.

He let out a yell and began to draw his sword, but his long armed friend clapped a hand on his wrist and kept it in its sheath. “Are you mad, Bain? That’s a child.”

“He’s no one of note,” Issa said. “He belongs to the madman and his servant. They live near the shore.”

They thought me a boy. Most people in the village did, because Dugald and the Gray Watcher dressed me that way and kept my hair cropped.

“Will you listen?” I asked. Somehow I knew the time was short. “That’s all I want you to do. Listen.”

“Very well,” Bain’s friend said. “Bain, we don’t need trouble with these people. Keep your sword in its sheath.”

“You needn’t worry about them,” Issa said haughtily. “It’s likely as not they are runaway slaves.”

“Slaves,” I said, outraged. “I’ll give you slaves,” and began reaching for another pebble.

“You stop that now,” Bain’s friend said. He got between me and Bain and strode toward me. He was fast. I saw that at once. I barely evaded his grip and made a quick dash toward the hilltop. He slowed when he saw Mother and Black Leg appear from the brush, one on either side of me. I noticed the thin redhead had followed him.

“Ahh,” she said. “The child has friends.”

Mother was showing her teeth in a most unpleasant snarl.

“To be sure, Anna,” the dark one answered. “Large, unpleasant friends. Very well. Show me this sail.”

We were only a few steps from the bald knob of rock that formed the hilltop.

“Look!” I said, pointing out to sea.

The sail was a lot closer. The ship could be seen clearly now, oars lifting in and out of the water.

The dark one could see it just as well as I could from where he was standing. His skin turned pale under his swarthy complexion. “Mother of Christ, pirates!”

“Yes,” I crowed triumphantly. I saw the skinny redhead had gone as white as he with fear.

“Gray, Gray,” she whispered, “are you sure/”

Bain and Issa had come up behind them.

“Oh no,” Issa said and moaned. “I’ll catch a hiding. Bain, protect me.”

Bain didn’t look as though he wanted to protect anyone. His blond good looks had abruptly faded and he seemed, if possible, even more frightened than Gray. “We will need more men,” he said.

Gray sighed. “Bain, there isn’t time. Not another hour will pass till they are ashore. We must meet them with the dozen or so we have.”

“Are you crazy?” Bain shouted. “There will be three times that number on the ship—and professionals, too.”

“What’s a professional?” I asked from the hilltop.

Gray took the trouble to answer. “The men aboard that ship make their living by raiding. They will almost certainly be experienced fighters.”

“And better at it than you?” I asked.

“Probably,” he said.

Bain was blowing his horn to summon what force he had.

“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, 1 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 gave an exemplary demonstration of power.