“Take mine,” Nezeru said. “It was made by the weavers of the Blue Cave.”
He accepted the coil of silver-white cord from her, then found a stone outcropping that he could not budge no matter how he pulled. He tied one end around it, then pulled his gloves on tightly and lowered himself over the edge.
The rockfall had taken more than rocks in its passage, and within moments Jarnulf was walking himself backward over broken trees as well as fallen boulders, a pile of large, heavy obstacles that he knew had to be supported by something below or they would have continued to slide down the slope and into the misty crevasse. He had no idea how firmly they were held, though, so he did his best to touch lightly and take most of his weight on his arms. As a result, his muscles were trembling by the time he reached the giant, who was caught in a tangle of splintered trunks and icy stones.
“I’ve pulled out the end of my rope,” Goh Gam Gar said, his voice a soft growl that Jarnulf could still feel in his feet as he lit on one of the trees pinioning the giant’s chest. The giant’s face was bloodied with dozens of scratches, which did not make him any handsomer. “Tie it to yours and send it up. Tell them to wrap it around something strong.”
Jarnulf considered this, but he did not want to be without a support of his own when the giant was breaking free of the rockslide. Instead he took the massive cord, wide as his forearm, and draped a single, astonishingly heavy loop of it over his shoulders, then worked his way a few yards back up the slope to where he could perch on solid mountain stone again. “Throw down another rope!” he shouted to the Talons.
It took a few moments, but another of the slender spidersilk ropes spun down from above, which Jarnulf tied around the end of the giant’s rope. “Now pull it up and tie it to something that will support his weight,” he called. Jarnulf wanted to be well out of the way before Goh Gam Gar began to break himself loose, so he swung a bit farther to the side of the rockfall. He missed his footing trying to land, and for a moment swung free over dizzying depths like a spider in a windstorm. By the time he had his footing again, the giant’s rope had been drawn up out of sight.
A short while later Makho shouted something from the path, and although Jarnulf couldn’t make out the words, the giant could: the rope tightened and creaked as the great creature put his weight on it.
A loud crash startled Jarnulf into grabbing for a handhold on the mountain’s face, but it was not another slide. The giant had dislodged one of the trees supporting him and sent it spinning down into the white void. Stones and broken trees showered down too, but even as the giant struggled free, most of the slide remained in place, tons of stone, snow, and shattered timbers wedged in a huge crevice shaped like the bow of a ship, its bottom end some ten or twenty cubits beneath Goh Gam Gar. Out of the top of this pile the beast emerged like some bizarre birth, shoulder and back muscles bulging beneath his pale fur as he slowly climbed the rope, pausing only to dislodge the larger trunks and whole trees that still clung to him.
As the giant made his way upward Jarnulf had only one task, which was to watch for anything sliding from above and stay out of its way. When Goh Gam Gar had climbed past, Jarnulf braced to swing himself back into a more direct line with the anchor of his own rope, but something in the rubble down near the bottom of the slide caught his attention, a smear of yellow and rusty brown quite unlike the rest of the debris. He knew the Norns would not hesitate to leave him if he delayed them long, but his curiosity was aroused, so he swung over to where the giant had been trapped. He looked up to be sure the great beast was not going to lose his grip and come plummeting down on top of him, but Goh Gam Gar was now on secure footing and appeared to have nearly reached the top. Jarnulf let himself down a little way, then braced his feet on a bit of solid stone to rest his aching arms and see what he had found.
It was such a strange, disarticulated thing that at first he thought it was only the remains of trees and stones curiously crushed together into one mass, melded by age and elements into a single shape, but then he saw a pale, puckered blister in the largest piece and realized he was looking at the dried and frozen remains of an eye the size of his own head. A huge skeleton dressed in rags of dried flesh hung in the tangle of stone and broken trees—the bones of a massive, long-dead creature. However it had previously rested on the mountainside, the slide had dislodged it in almost one piece. The limbs and spine and long tail had been twisted into an unnatural shape by the elements, but the long, reptilian skull gave it away.
“The giant is safe!” Nezeru shouted from somewhere above, beyond his sight. “Come up!”
“And I have found a dragon!” Jarnulf shouted back. “Come down and see!”
As he waited, he reached out to touch the nearest part of the carcass, the curled bones of a mighty foot with curved talons as long as daggers. One of the claws came off in his hand. As he marveled at its size, his finger began to sting fiercely. A clot of crumbling black material at its base was burning his skin as painfully as if he had sliced the skin in a half-dozen places. Cursing, Jarnulf dropped the long claw to frantically scrape the painful substance from his fingers onto a nearby stone as the claw bounced against the pile of scree, then caromed off into emptiness. Black as a night without stars, the sticky stuff had eaten through the tip of his glove like fire.
Dragon’s blood, he realized. Mother of God, even years old and almost dry, it still burns!
Two of the others were now slithering down from the top on ropes of their own—Makho and Saomeji the Singer, as best as Jarnulf could tell from his angle. As he waited, Jarnulf had an idea. He pulled his salt jar from his pocket and emptied out the last few grains. He used the sleeve of his jerkin to protect him as he worked another huge claw loose from the desiccated corpse, then wiped the thick, black residue from it on the inside of the witchwood jar. When the jar did not melt or burst into flame, he scooped the rest of the blood-paste off the claw, a sticky ball of the stuff about the size of a raven’s egg, then scraped that into his jar and stoppered it. The claw was too big to hide easily from Makho and the rest, but if nothing else, he would take a keepsake of dragon’s blood with him from this mad expedition. He might even be able to sell it to some Tungoldyr thaumaturge for a tidy sum.
He wiped the rest of the black smear from his sleeve, which was already beginning to turn black where the blood had touched it. Then, his face as calm as he could make it, Jarnulf waited for the other climbers.
“It had fur or quills along its spine—I saw them,” said Saomeji as he clambered onto the edge of the broken path. Nezeru stepped well back out of his way, in large part because she simply did not much like being near him.
Kemme was still pulling up Makho, while the giant Goh Gam Gar, despite the many wounds he had taken in the slide, had insisted on being the one to pull Jarnulf back up to the path. “It must be the carcass of great Lekkija,” the Singer continued, “Igjarjuk, as mortals named her—the daughter of great Hidohebhi.”
“How long has the worm been dead?” Nezeru asked.
“It does not matter,” said Makho as he appeared from below, scowling fiercely. “A dead, bloodless dragon is no use to us.”
Despite being the last to begin the ascent, Jarnulf, reeled in by Goh Gam Gar’s huge hands on the rope, came over the edge and onto the path only a moment after Makho. “And a dead giant is no use to you, either, or I think you would not have been in such a hurry to send me down after him,” Jarnulf told the chieftain with a cold look, then coiled Nezeru’s rope and tossed it back to her. “My thanks, Sacrifice.”
Nezeru could not look him in the eye. She had seen the glance that passed between Makho and Kemme when the Rimmersman had first called, before he had spoken of finding the dead dragon. It was clear that they had been considering simply cutting his rope and letting him fall. But why? Either the mortal was useful or he was not. Why let him come so far only to murder him? It was strange beyond understanding that her loyalties were beginning to shift from her rightful chieftain—the queen’s choice!—to a mortal and the monster Goh Gam Gar, but she could not deny her mistrust of Makho was growing deeper each day that passed. Jarnulf, whether he meant to or not, had cursed her with his questions about why she had been chosen and what the hand’s true mission might be.
“You said you wanted a dragon,” said Jarnulf, rubbing the muscles of his arms. “That was a dragon. You told us we must find dragon’s blood. If you did not notice, despite my pointing it out, the carcass still had a great deal of blood on it, even if it was dry.”