The Dragon King Read online

  “One that will be better than the time of Greensparrow,” Gahris replied, his voice barely a whisper. “And better than what was before Greensparrow. I know it will be so, because my son will play a hand in its formation.” As he spoke, he lifted his arm and took Luthien by the hand. The old man’s grip remained surprisingly strong, lending Luthien some hope.

  “Katerin is with me,” Luthien said, and turned to motion Katerin to the bedside. She drifted over, and the eorl’s face brightened again, verily beamed.

  “I had hoped to live to see my grandchildren,” Gahris said, bringing more of a blush from Luthien than from Katerin. “But you will tell them about me.”

  Luthien started to protest that admission that Gahris was dying, but Katerin spoke first. “I will tell them,” she promised firmly. “I will tell them of the eorl of Bedwydrin, whose people loved him, and who rid the isle of wretched cyclopians!”

  Luthien looked back and forth between the two as Katerin spoke, and realized that any protests he might make would be obviously false and uncomforting. At that moment, the young man had to admit the truth to himself: his father was dying.

  “Will you tell them of Gahris the Coward?” the old man asked. He managed a small chortle. “How I bent to the will of Greensparrow,” he scolded. “And Ethan . . . ah, my dear Ethan. Have you heard anything . . . ?”

  The question fell away as Gahris looked upon Luthien’s grim expression, learning from that face that Ethan was truly gone to him, that Luthien had not found his brother.

  “If ever you see him,” Gahris went on, his voice even softer, “will you tell him of the end of my life? Will you tell him that, in the end, I stood tall for what was right, for Eriador free?”

  Katerin eyed Luthien intently as the moments slipped past, realizing that her love was in a terrible dilemma at that moment, a crossroad that might well determine the path of his life. Here he was, facing Gahris once more, with one, and only one, chance to forgive his father. Gahris needed that forgiveness, Katerin knew, but Luthien needed it more.

  Without saying a word, Luthien drew out Blind-Striker and lay it on the bed, across Gahris’s legs.

  “My son,” Gahris said again, staring at the family sword, his eyes filling with tears.

  “It is the sword of family Bedwyr,” Luthien said. “The sword of the rightful eorl, Gahris Bedwyr. The sword of my father.”

  Katerin turned away and wiped her eyes; Luthien had passed perhaps his greatest test.

  “You will take my place when I am gone?” Gahris asked hopefully.

  As much as he wanted to comfort his father, Luthien couldn’t commit to that. “I must return to Caer MacDonald,” he said. “My place now is beside King Brind’Amour.”

  Gahris seemed disappointed for just a moment, but then he nodded his acceptance. “Then you take the sword,” he said, his voice stronger than it had been since Luthien had entered the room, stronger than it had been in many days.

  “It is your—” Luthien began to protest.

  “It is mine to give,” Gahris interrupted. “To you, my chosen heir. Your gift of forgiveness has been given and accepted, and now you accept from me the family sword, now and forever. This business with Greensparrow is not finished, and you will find more use for Blind-Striker than I, and better use. Strike hard for family Bedwyr, my son. Strike hard for Eriador!”

  Luthien reverently lifted the sword from the bed and replaced it in its scabbard. The verbal outburst had cost Gahris much energy, and so Luthien bade his father rest and took his leave, promising to return after he had cleaned up from the road and taken a meal.

  He kept his promise and spent the bulk of the night with his father, talking of the good times, not the bad, and of the past, not the future.

  Gahris Bedwyr, eorl of Bedwydrin, died peacefully, just before the dawn. Arrangements had already been made, and the very next night the proud man was set adrift in a small boat, into the Dorsal Sea that was so important to the lives of all in Dun Varna. No successor was immediately named; rather, Luthien appointed a steward, a trusted family friend, for as he had explained to his father, Luthien could not remain in Dun Varna. Bigger issues called out to him from Caer MacDonald; his place was with Brind’Amour, his friend, his king.

  Luthien and Katerin left Dun Varna the very next day, both of them wondering if they would ever again look upon the place.

  Katerin noticed the change in Luthien immediately. He slept well and rode alert and straight as they made their way back to the south, to Diamondgate and then to the mainland.

  Katerin worried about him for a long while, seeing that he was not grieving for his loss. She couldn’t understand this at first—when she had lost her own father, to a storm on the Avon, she had cried for a fortnight. Luthien, though, had shed few tears, had stoically placed his hand on his father’s chest as Gahris lay in the small boat and had pushed it away, as if he had pushed Gahris from his mind.

  Gradually, Katerin came to realize the truth, and she was glad. Luthien wasn’t grieving now because he had already grieved for Gahris, on that occasion when the young man had been forced to flee the law of Bedwydrin. To Luthien, Gahris, or the man he had thought Gahris to be, had died on the day the young Bedwyr learned the truth about his brother Ethan and about his father’s cowardice. Then, when Katerin had arrived in Caer MacDonald, bearing Blind-Striker and news that Bedwydrin was in open revolt against Greensparrow, Luthien’s father had come alive once more.

  Luthien, Katerin now realized, had viewed it all as a second chance, borrowed time, a proper way to bid farewell to the redeemed Gahris. Luthien’s grieving had been long finished by the time he knelt by his dying father’s bed. Now his cinnamon eyes no longer seemed full of pain. Gahris had made his peace, and so had his son.

  GYBI

  Proctor Byllewyn stood solemnly on the sloping parapet of the Gybi monastery, staring out from his rocky perch to the foggy waters of Bae Colthwyn. More than a hundred gray ghosts slipped through that mist, Colthwyn fishing boats mostly, tacking and turning frantically, all semblance of formation long gone. The sight played heavy on the shoulders of the old proctor. These were his people out there, men and women who looked to him for guidance, who would give their lives at his mere word. And indeed, it had been Proctor Byllewyn’s decision that the fishing boats should go to meet the invaders, to keep the fierce Huegoths busy out on the dark and cold waters and, thus, away from the village.

  Now Byllewyn could only stand and watch.

  The captains tried to stay close enough for their crews to shoot their bows at the larger vessels of the Huegoths, but they had to be perfect and swift to keep away from the underwater rams spearheading those terrible Huegoth longships. Every so often, one of the fishing boats didn’t turn swiftly enough, or got held up by a sudden swirl of the wind, and the horrible cracking sound of splintering wood echoed above the waters, above the shouted commands and the terrified screams of the combatants.

  “Twenty-five Huegoth longships have entered the bay, by last accounting,” said Brother Jamesis, standing at Byllewyn’s side.

  “It is only an estimate,” Jamesis added when the proctor made no move to reply.

  Still the old man stood perfectly still and unblinking, only his thick shock of gray hair moving in the wind. Byllewyn had seen the Huegoths before, when he was but a boy, and he remembered well the merciless and savage raiders. In addition to the rowing slaves, twenty on a side, the seventy-foot longships likely carried as many as fifty Huegoth warriors, their shining shields overlapped and lining the upper decks. That put the number in the bay at more than twelve hundred fierce Huegoths. Colthwyn’s simple fishing boats were no match for the deadly longships, and the men on the shore could only hope that the brave fishermen would inflict enough damage with their bows to dissuade the Huegoths from landing.

  “One of the raiders flies the pennant of The Skipper, upside down, on its forward guide rope,” the somber Jamesis further reported, and now Byllewyn did flinch. Aran Toomes
and all the crewmen of The Skipper had been dear, longstanding friends.

  Byllewyn looked down the sloping trail to the south, to the village of Gybi. Already many of the townsfolk, the oldest and the youngest, were making their way along the red-limestone mile-long walk that climbed the side of the knoll to the fortress monastery. The more able-bodied were down by the wharves, waiting to support the crews when the fishing boats came rushing in. Of course, the small fleet had not put out with any intentions of defeating the Huegoths at sea, only to buy the town time for the people to get behind the monastery’s solid walls.

  “How many boats have we lost?” Byllewyn asked. With the refugees now in sight, the proctor was considering ringing the great bell of Gybi, calling in the boats.

  Jamesis shrugged, having no definite answer. “There are Colthwyn men in the water,” he said grimly.

  Byllewyn turned his gaze back to the mist-shrouded bay. He wished that the skies would clear, just for a moment, so that he could get a better feel for the battle, but he realized that the shroud was in truth a blessing for the fishermen. The Colthwyn fisherfolk knew every inch of these waters, could sail blindly through them without ever getting near the shallows or the one reef in the area, a long line of jagged rocks running straight out into the bay just north of the monastery. The Huegoth mariners also understood the ways of the sea, but these were foreign waters to them.

  Byllewyn did not ring the bell; he had to trust in the fisherfolk, the true masters of the bay, and so it went on, and on.

  The cries only intensified.

  Stubbornly, the proud fisherfolk kept up the seaborne resistance, darting all around the larger Huegoth vessels, boats working in pairs so that if the Huegoth made a sudden turn to intercept one of them, the archers on the second would find their line of sight opened for a stern rake on the longship. Still, the fisherfolk had to admit that they were doing little real damage to the Huegoths. A dozen Colthwyn boats had been sent under the dark waters, but not a single Huegoth had gone down.

  Captain Leary of the good boat Finwalker noted this fact with great concern. They were making the Huegoths work hard, peppering them with arrows and probably wounding or killing a few, but the outcome seemed assured. The more boats the Colthwyn defenders lost, the more quickly they would lose more. When a dozen additional Colthwyn ships were caught and sunk, the support for the remaining boats would be lessened, and all too soon it would reach the point where the defenders had to flee back to port, scramble out of their boats helter-skelter, and run the path to the monastery.

  The defenders needed a dramatic victory, needed to send one of those seemingly impregnable longships to its watery death. But how? Arrows certainly wouldn’t bring one down and any attempt at ramming would only send the Colthwyn boat to the bottom.

  As he stood in thought, Finwalker rushed past the wolf’s-head forecastle of a longship, close enough so that the captain could see the Huegoth’s ram under the water. The Huegoth was in the midst of a turn, though, with little forward momentum, and Finwalker’s crew got off a volley of arrows, taking only a few in return as the boat glided past.

  Leary looked to the woman at the wheel. “North,” he instructed.

  The woman, Jeannie Beens, glanced over her shoulder, to the longship and the two Colthwyn boats that had been working in conjunction with Finwalker. If she turned north, she would leave the Colthwyn boats behind, for one of them was sailing southeast, the other due west. The Huegoth, though, was facing north, and with those forty oars would soon leap in pursuit.

  “North,” Leary said again, determinedly, and the steerswoman obeyed.

  Predictably, the Huegoth came on, and though the wind was from the southeast, filling Finwalker’s sails, the longship was swift in the pursuit. Even worse, as soon as the general battle, and the other two Colthwyn boats, were left behind, the Huegoths put up their own single square sail, determined to catch this one boat out from the pack and put it under.

  Leary didn’t blink. He told his archers to keep up the line of arrows, and instructed the steerswoman on the course he wanted.

  Jeannie Beens stared at him blankly when she deciphered the directions. Leary wanted her to swing about, nearly out of the bay, and come back heading south much closer to the shore.

  Leary wanted her to skim the reef!

  The tide was high, and the rocks would be all but invisible. There was a break along the reef—Nicker’s Slip, the narrow pass was called—that a boat could get through when the water was this high, but finding that small break when the rocks were mostly submerged was no easy task.

  “You’ve sailed these waters for ten years,” Captain Leary said to the woman, seeing her uncertainty. “You’ll find the Slip, but the longship, turning inside our angle and flanking us as they pursue, will only get their starboard side through.” Leary gave a mischievous wink. “Let’s see how well half a longship sails,” he said.

  Jeannie Beens set her feet wide apart and took up the wheel more tightly, her sun-and-wind-weathered features grim and determined. She had been through Nicker’s Slip on two occasions: once when Leary wanted to show her the place for no better reason than to prove to her that she was a fine pilot, and a second time on a dare, during a particularly rowdy party when a dorsal whale had been taken in the bay. On both of those occasions, though, the tide had been lower, with the rocks more visible, and the boats had been lighter, flat-bottomed shore-huggers that drew only a couple of feet. Finwalker, one of the largest fishing boats this far north in the bay, drew nine feet and would scrape and splinter if Leary tried to put her through when the tide was low, might even rub a bit now, with the water at its highest. Even worse for Jeannie was the damned fog, which periodically thickened to obscure her reference points.

  When the high dark outline of the monastery dipped behind her left shoulder, Jeannie Beens began her wide one-hundred-eighty-degree turn back to the south. As Leary had predicted, the Huegoth turned inside Finwalker, closing some ground and giving chase off the fishing boat’s port stern. Now the Huegoth archers had a better angle and their bows twanged mercilessly, a rain of arrows, broadheads, and flaming bolts falling over Finwalker.

  Two crewmen fell dead; a third, trying to put out a fire far out on the mast’s crossbeam, slipped overboard and was gone without a cry. Leary himself took an arrow in the arm.

  “Keep to it!” the captain yelled to Jeannie.

  The woman refused to look back at their pursuers, and blocked out the growing shouts of the Huegoths as the longship rapidly gained. The wind did not favor Finwalker any longer; her turn had put the stiff breeze straight in off her starboard bow. Her sails had been appropriately angled as far as possible, and she made some headway, but the Huegoths dropped their sail altogether, and the pounding oars drove the longship on.

  More arrows sliced in; more of Finwalker’s crew fell. Jeannie heard the roars, heard even the rhythmic beating of the drum belowdecks on the longship, prodding the rowing slaves on.

  Huegoths called out taunts and threats, thinking they had the boat in their grasp.

  Jeannie blocked it all out, focused on the shoreline, its features barely distinguishable through the heavy mist. There was a particular jag signaling the reef line, she knew, and she pictured it in her mind, trying hard to remember it exactly as it had appeared on those two occasions when she had gone through Nicker’s Slip. She focused, too, on the bell tower of Gybi monastery and on the steeple of the meetinghall in the town, further ahead to the south, recalling the angle. She had to calculate their angle so that the two towers would line up, three fingers between them, at the moment Finwalker passed the jag and entered the reef line.

  Leary gave a shout and fell to his knees beside her, holding his now bleeding forehead. Beyond him, Jeannie noted the bloody arrow that had just grazed him, embedded deep into Finwalker’s rail, its shaft shivering.

  “Hold steady,” Leary implored her. “Hold . . .” The captain slumped to the deck.

  Jeannie could hear the oa
rs pounding the water; smoke began to drift about her as more of the flaming arrows found their deadly hold. She heard a Huegoth call out—to her!—the barbarian apparently excited to find that a woman was on board.

  Jeannie couldn’t help but glance back, and saw that a pair of massive Huegoths were standing along the forward edge of the longship, preparing to leap aboard Finwalker. The longship could not come up beside Finwalker, Jeannie realized, because its oars would keep it too far away for the Huegoths to board. But positioned just to the side and behind, the prow of the longship could get within a few feet of the fishing boat.

  They weren’t much further away than that right now, and Jeannie wondered why her fellows weren’t shooting the brazen Huegoths dead. Then she realized, to her horror, that none of Finwalker’s crew could take to their bows. Most of the crew lay dead or wounded on the deck, and those who could still function were too busy battling fires to battle the fierce men of Isenland!

  Jeannie turned her eyes back to the reef and the shore, quickly determined her angle and made a slight adjustment, putting a few extra feet between Finwalker and the longship.

  She saw the jag, instinctively lifted her hand up between the images of the bell tower and the steeple, thumb and little finger tucked back tight.

  Three fingers—almost.

  Finwalker groaned and shook, her starboard side scraping hard. She leaned hard, but came through, and though her sea-worthiness had surely been compromised, the reef was behind her.

  The longship did not fare so well. Her prow hit the rocks, bouncing her to the right, and she plowed on, her left bank of oars splintering and catching, swinging her about. Nicker’s Slip was a narrow pass, and as the seventy-foot craft hooked and turned, her stern crunched sidelong across the gap, into the reef. Huegoths tumbled out by the dozen, and those poor slaves at the oars fared little better as the great ship split in half, to be battered and swallowed by the dark waters.