The Coming of the Dragon Read Online Free Page A

backtracking to rake it as well.
    When Ula came out to the field with their midday meal, they all stopped and watched her approaching, none of them daring to speak. The bond servant seemed to understand their apprehension, because as soon as she was within shouting distance, the words “He’s fine” drifted over the oats to their ears.
    The tension went out of Rune’s shoulders, and he laid down his rake, joining Skyn and Skoll in the shade of an elm as they waited for her. “Fine” seemed an overstatement to Rune when she told them more. “Sometimes he groans,” she said, and Rune saw Skyn flinch. “It hurts him, but it hasn’t festered.” She handed Skoll the waterskin and took bread and cheese from her basket. “Yet.”
    After she left, they ate in silence, passing around the waterskin until it was empty. They hadn’t gotten nearly as far as Rune had hoped; he’d assumed they would be moving on to another field by now.
    Skoll stood to piss.
    “Hey, watch it!” Rune said, scrabbling out of the way as a stream of urine spattered on the ground beside him. He stood as Skyn laughed.
    “We know about you and the scythe last night,” Skoll said. “What were you doing, putting a curse on it?”
    “What?”
    “Don’t deny it. Ula saw you.” Skoll turned toward him, his eyes narrowed. Taller than his father now, his muscles honed from hard farm labor, Skoll was the kind of person you’d want near you in a fight—unless he was on the other side. He’d never been on Rune’s side. “When I’m in charge of this farm, you won’t be bringing it down anymore with your curses.”
    “I was cleaning the blood off!” Rune said.
    “We know why Skyn’s blade slipped yesterday.”
    “It was an accident.”
    “If anything happens to my father …” He pointed a menacing finger at Rune.
    Rune felt anger rising in him, and he clenched his fists.
    “You want to fight, sword-boy?” Skoll said, his voice icy calm.
    All of Amma’s lessons about using his head instead of his fists, all of the tales she’d taught him about how feuds got started, everything fled him now except an overpowering desire to drive his knuckles into Skoll’s jaw.
    “Too bad you don’t have your fancy sword with you,” Skyn taunted as he rose to stand beside his brother. He might have been Rune’s age, a winter younger than Skoll, but he was almost as strong as his brother.
    “I’ll fight you,” Skoll said, raising his fists. “Come on.”
    The two of them stood like a wall. Rune stared at them, anger pounding behind his eye sockets. Then he dropped his fists and turned away.
    “Coward,” Skyn said.
    Rune stalked across the field in silence, Skyn’s word hanging in the air behind him. They’d ganged up on him before, and it never ended well for Rune. But that didn’t make him any less of a weakling for walking away. He clenched his fists again, wishing he’d punched them both.
    He knew why they hated him, but knowing didn’t make it any easier.
    His scythe was lying on the ground. He picked it up and started swinging.
    By the time they finished the field, his anger had dulled. There was still time to make a start on another, but they didn’t know which one Hwala had planned or where the grain was ripest.
    “You check on the far field,” Skoll said. “We’ll try the east field. Meet us back there.”
    Rune looked at him. Instead of simply going back to ask Hwala, Skoll wanted him to go all the way out beyond the stream to the field that bordered Hwala’s lands, and then come back to the field beside the farmhouse?
    Then again, he thought, it would get him away from Skoll. He started walking.
    When he got to the rocky path that led down to the stream, birds rose, chittering, from the branches. He grabbed smooth birch trunks and pulled himself along. Leaves tinged with gold and fiery red mingled with the greenery, whispering of the harsh winter to come. He crunched over wet brown pebbles and splashed intothe stream,