As Jarnulf knew well, once the Norns set their minds to a thing, they were extremely thorough and as patient as water eroding stone. Day after day, they continued to hunt the mountain for the dragon’s slot until they had found enough tracks to discern what seemed to be a regular path.
“The greatest worms are all female,” Makho said as they considered their next step. “The drakes are smaller, and come to the females only to mate. By its small track, this must be such a wandering drake. Perhaps something in the scent of the dead queen dragon called to him, or perhaps he was born here on this mountain and lives here still. Perhaps the dead queen was his mother. In any case, we must find a spot he often passes over and there make our trap.”
“So now you agree we need a trap?” Jarnulf asked, sourly amused.
As he expected, the chieftain ignored him, but Saomeji was not so reserved. “We must take this dragon alive, mortal. It is the blood of a living dragon our queen desires.”
“Alive? But even if its track tells that this is a smaller beast than the dead one, it is still far larger than any of us, even the giant!” Jarnulf said. “Have any of you hunted a dragon?”
“Silence,” said Makho. “We are the Queen’s Talons. We will do whatever must be done.”
They chose a wide, flat plateau on what seemed to be the creature’s regular route of passage. Jarnulf guessed that Makho meant to dig a pit, but there was far more rock than soil, and as Nezeru quietly pointed out, they were not even certain how large their quarry was, only of the size of its feet.
“What about a springe?” asked Jarnulf. “Some of these trees, could we bend them down, would—”
“You are a fool, mortal,” Makho said. “Even with bait confusing the scent, the beast would know we were close by and never go near it.”
Instead, after careful sampling of the wind over the course of an hour or two, Makho set Jarnulf and the rest at points around the chosen spot, none closer than a hundred paces, each placed behind something, a stone or a copse of trees, that could keep them hidden. Each of the hunters also held a coil of rope with a slipping noose at one end.
“When I give the word,” Makho said, “you will catch the beast by the neck or foot with your rope. The other end you must hold tightly, not letting go at any cost, until you have secured the loose end around something strong, a large tree or rock.”
“What if it is the kind that spits fire?” Nezeru asked.
“There are not many of those,” Saomeji said.
Makho hardly seemed to hear him. “Then we will be burned up, and the queen will send another hand to redeem our failure.”
Jarnulf said nothing—he had learned what the chieftain thought of questions—but as he watched Kemme bait their trap with the haunch of a goat they had killed many days before, he wondered how Makho thought four or five of them could wrestle down any full-grown dragon, even with the considerable help of Goh Gam Gar. It was nowhere near the first time since he had joined the Norn company that he had feared for his life, but Jarnulf could not help wondering whether this time he had pushed his luck farther than it would stretch.
The giant had his massive ax and his own great coil of rope, but because Makho said his stench would make the dragon fearful, he had been dispatched to a spot not just downwind but far away. Goh Gam Gar’s exile made Jarnulf restless and concerned. Makho might not care if most of them were killed by an angry monster before the giant joined the game, but as one of the weaker playing pieces on Makho’s shent board, Jarnulf felt differently.
Preparations made, they settled into a long, cold time of waiting.
? ? ?
It was on the cusp of morning, with the sun’s light beginning to warm the sky along the eastern rim of the world, brightening it from impenetrable violet to deep blue, when Jarnulf saw the giant up on the mountainside raise his arm. At first he thought he must be mistaken, that it had been just another curl of the blowing snow he had mistaken for signals several times already. Jarnulf’s head was heavy and his eyes were dry, and he had long since decided that there was no creature more stupid in all of Osten Ard than an ex-slave who would throw his fate in with the doings of his former masters. But after he blinked several times and even rubbed at his eyes with the rough sleeve of his jacket, the smear of white high above him on the slope continued to look like a hairy white arm raised in warning. Jarnulf’s heart sped, and he began to move in slow, squirming movements, trying to get blood back into his limbs and feeling back into his fingers. He peered slit-eyed at the dragon-path through the murk of blowing snow and the chill mist that clung to the slope. At first he could see nothing, but after what seemed an achingly long time he finally saw movement on the northern side of the slope. What made it was nearly impossible to discern because it was the same color as the snow and ice over which it crawled, but he could see by the shadow of its movement and occasional puffs of snow that it was long and low to the ground.
Now Jarnulf’s heart began to beat swiftly indeed. He couldn’t make out its exact shape, but he could see that the moving whiteness must be something like ten or twelve paces long from head to tail-tip, bigger than one of the monstrous cockindrills his father had told him lived in the southern swamps, and at least two or three times even Goh Gam Gar’s weight. Jarnulf had fought giants and other unnatural creatures, but almost never by choice, and the sheer folly of trying to capture a dragon, even a small one, suddenly struck him with the force of a blow.
I’m only here because of my ridiculous, swollen pride—because of an oath I made that nobody but myself and God heard—and I’ll likely die here on this Godforsaken peak, fighting beside the very Hikeda’ya monsters I am sworn to destroy.
He said a prayer, then another, asking his blessed Aedon to take pity on a believer far from home. Nobody else would, that was certain. If he died here, even the halfblood would soon forget about him, though there was no guarantee she would survive either. All of them, even the giant, seemed completely expendable to their chieftain. The queen of the Norns would be satisfied as long as one of them survived to bring the dragon’s blood to her, and Makho planned to be that one.
Jarnulf’s hatred of Utuk’ku, which he had done his best to keep buried during his time journeying with her Talons, suddenly blazed up again.
Heartless, ancient bitch, he thought. Murderer. She-demon. My dear God, if I am spared death today, I promise I will fulfill that oath I made so many years ago when I was little more than a boy. I understand the task You have given me, and how these cruel Norns will help me fulfill it. I will see the queen of treachery dead by my own hand.
But if he did not join in to help the rest, Jarnulf doubted he would ever make it back down the mountain. And if he fled for his life this moment, Makho would make a point of chasing him down and killing him—no, not just a point, but a gleeful exercise.
Jarnulf wrapped his hands around the rope the Blue Cavern weavers had made, silently touched his sword hilt to make sure it slid easily in its scabbard, and waited.
As the white thing drew closer to the spot where the goat haunch lay, Jarnulf could see more of it, and it was not what he had expected, not exactly. He had never seen a living dragon, but from drake-lore he had heard over the years he had supposed it would be longer and thinner, like a snake with legs. Instead, it seemed to have a more rounded shape. Its tail was short and blunt, as was its snout.
Could it be something else? he wondered. God alone knew what other horrors might lurk here at the edge of the world. In any case, killing such a thing would be difficult enough; trying to capture it alive now seemed like the grossest folly imaginable.
The wind eased for a moment and the flurrying snow began to settle. Jarnulf could suddenly see clearly. He could no longer doubt it was a dragon of some sort—the long, toothy jaws and reptilian head proved that instantly—but its back looked to be covered with thick white bristles, or even porpentine quills. As it dipped its head to the lure, Jarnulf saw Kemme rise and step forward from the jumble of rocks where he had been hidden and let fly an arrow, all in an instant’s swift movement. An eyeblink later the Norn arrow dangled from the creature’s shoulder, a single black quill among the white. The dragon let out an echoing honk of pain and surprise.