The Coming of the Dragon Read Online Free

its sheath. His eyes snapped open. Then Amma’s wooden stool creaked as she lowered herself onto it, and Rune’s eyelids drooped again. He heard her opening her little pot of whale oil, and now he could smell its rancid odor, too. He didn’t need to see her to know that Amma was dipping a rag into the pot and rubbing oil along the length of the blade, inspecting every crevice, every carving, checking for rust or dirt. He waited, listening for her song to start, first the humming and then the words, rhythmic and low.
    It was the same song she always sang when she polished the sword, the one about the lady who’d lost her kinsmen in a feud. “Bitter breastcare hardened her heart,” he heard before her voice dropped so low he could barely make out the words. But after all these years, he knew them as well as she did.
    What he didn’t know—what she would never tell himwhen he asked—was why she spent so much time with the sword when she was dead set against fighting. If the king hadn’t insisted on it, Rune knew Amma would never have allowed him to learn swordfighting during the winters, when the farm folk gathered in the hall. Hwala always stayed with the farm to care for the livestock and to repair tools, but ever since he’d been a boy, Rune had gone with Amma and his foster brothers to spend the winter in the hall. Like the other farmers, he was drilled in the proper use of ax and spear, but unlike them, he also learned the sword. It hardly made him popular, not with the other farm boys and not with the boys who lived in the stronghold. The ones whose fathers were warriors trained with their swords all year long, leaving him at a permanent disadvantage.
    The fact that the king was always so kind to him, greeting him each winter when he arrived at the hall, asking him questions about himself, about Amma, about the farm, should have made things easier. Instead, it set him apart even more.
    He pulled the blanket over his head and reached for the pendant he wore around his neck, rubbing his thumb over the marks incised in it, to calm himself. The last thing he saw before he fell into troubled dreams was the image of the scythe coming down on Hwala’s leg.
    In the morning, he woke to the sound of Amma’s bracelets clinking as she kneaded bread on the stone before the hearth. He opened one eye and peered straight up throughthe smoke hole in the thatch. The sky was still gray, not yet pink. He stretched, yawned, and sat up.
    “There’s whey in the bowl,” Amma said.
    He yawned again, slurped down the whey, and pulled on his shoes.
    “Will you finish the west field today?” She handed him a chunk of bread, and he nodded.
    He knelt to leave a pinch of grain on the altar to Thor and then, taking a bite of the bread and ducking to keep from hitting his head on the lintel, emerged into the reddening dawn.
    The cold morning air made him shiver as he headed to the farmhouse, where his foster brothers were just coming out of the door. Neither of them said anything about their father, so Rune didn’t ask. He fell into step behind them.
    They got to the west field just as the sun peeked over the horizon, the three of them walking silently, scythes in their hands, rakes over their shoulders. They spaced themselves out and bent to their work. By the time they were at the end of the first row, the sun had warmed the air. Normally, Rune loved this time of year, the clear blue of the sky, the honking calls of geese overhead, the crown of mist on the giants’ mountain in the distance, the way insects bounded out of the oats ahead of him. But today, Hwala’s absence made their every move fraught with the knowledge that they must complete the harvest without him. Their uneven number made the work harder, too; instead of pairing up, one person cutting while the other raked up theoats and gathered them into shocks, they had to work out the pattern with three. Finally, Rune moved to the far end of the field, cutting a row and then