The black and white piebald mare was certainly fleet of foot, Roric had to admit. At first he had frowned when Karin climbed up to the loft room to tell him that she now had a horse of her own to ride. He feared that Goldmane would have been faster, even carrying two. But the mare matched the stallion’s stride easily, even lazily, as they followed the faint track down the long hillside from the gray oak buildings of the manor.
“All right,” he shouted, smiling at Karin. “We don’t need to race any further-and I haven’t pushed Goldmane yet!” They both pulled their horses to a trot. “And it’s good to have food in our packs as well as a horse for you. I was right to trust you to speak for us both at the manor.”
He was faintly aware that he had been very brusque with her several times since escaping from Hadros’s kingdom, and he did not want to be-this was, after all, Karin, the woman whose love meant more to him than all the lords of voima. Her ruined finery was gone, and she wore a brown wool dress they had given her at the manor, against which her russet braids lay bright. Even though he kept being surprised that a woman could make plans for the two of them, he told himself that so far she was doing very well.
A river ran along the bottom of the hill, in a narrow defile dense with willows. A wooden bridge crossed it.
Karin’s mare’s hooves rang on the bridge as she started across before him. Mingled with the sound of those hooves was another sound, moist and squishy. Roric knew what it was and kicked Goldmane wildly forward. A troll eased itself out from under the bridge and directly into her path.
The piebald mare reared, front hooves flashing, teeth bared. Karin clung desperately to the mane as the horse went higher and higher, threatening to go over backwards. Goldmane stopped short of the bridge, front legs stiff, almost catapulting Roric over his head.
Roric kicked his feet from the stirrups and leaped off, his sword out. “Stand back, troll, or taste cold steel!” he shouted.
This was not the nearly-domesticated troll of the stream below King Hadros’s castle. This was a troll of enormous yellow teeth and great muscular arms, now reaching up toward Karin: a troll that did not fear sunlight.
Roric’s sword darted forward. It rang from the troll’s body as though it was made of iron rather than soft flesh. But the troll turned its red eyes from Karin toward Roric, and its mouth opened, showing rows and rows of teeth and a greedy tongue. The mare came back down abruptly, Karin still in the saddle.
Roric danced out of the way of a reaching troll hand and struck again. This time his sword bit, for green blood welled from the wound. He grinned fiercely, though his next strokes bounced again. He had to keep dodging the powerful, flexible arms reaching for him. Fighting this great, wet mass of troll was not like fighting Gizor-the troll at Hadros’s castle had never attacked an armed man.
He yelled and sprang closer again, raining down blows, and was just too slow to avoid an enormous hand that closed around his boot.
The hand jerked, and his feet went out from under him. Wildly he tried to scramble back up, flailing with his sword. But he was drawn closer and closer to the enormous mouth, from which a bubbling laugh came. Karin, her knife in her hand, approached warily, but the troll’s other long arm snaked across the bridge surface toward her. In a second it would have them both.
“Troll!” came a completely unexpected clear voice. “Let them go!”
Roric’s foot was suddenly released. He scrambled backwards, his sword before him, not daring to take his eyes for a second from the troll even to see who had spoken.
The troll pulled its arms back towards its body, its mouth wide open in frustrated rage. “Troll, you should not be out in daylight!” came the voice again.
Roric dared at last one look over his shoulder. It was the lady of the manor, wearing a flour-dusted apron, her hands white with dough. “Shall I threaten you again with the powers of voima?” she demanded.
The troll snapped its mouth open and shut. It hesitated a moment, meeting her stare, then slowly, with a soft squishing noise, lowered itself back over the edge of the bridge. It disappeared into the stream beneath with a splash.
“Well,” said the woman, turning toward them with hands on her hips. “I regret the troll bothered you. When you have just escaped death at the hands of raiders, you do not need to meet a troll!”
Roric remembered just in time that Karin had told this woman they were fleeing raiders.
“How did you do that?” asked Karin in wonder.
“And how did you know we needed help?” asked Roric, eyeing her carefully. She looked like a completely normal woman, with none of the indistinctness of the creatures in the Wanderers’ realm, and not like someone a troll should obey.
“I was watching you go,” she said easily. Roric glanced up the hill. They were at least a mile from the palisade that surrounded her manor, and she had stood at the gateway waving as they rode away. “The troll has lived here many years. We long since had to reach an agreement with it, or we would have had few of our flocks left.”
“Thank you,” said Karin somewhat belatedly. “Thank you very much. We owe you our lives now.”
“And I may require those lives of you at some point,” said the woman, still lightly.
When Roric turned to glare at her, Karin nudged him hard, and the woman laughed. “I do not seek to harm either of you,” she said. “It is much better that you be alive than that you be dead, but at some point-who can say? — I may ask for your living strength. Now, I need to get back to my bread making. No more trolls should trouble you, Roric No-man’s son.”
She started back up the hill at a walk. Roric caught their horses and untangled the reins. He went across the bridge first this time, his sword out, but Goldmane crossed now without hesitation and there was no sign of the troll.
On the far side he reined in hard and turned around in the saddle to stare after the woman, a distant figure now, trudging back to her home. “Karin,” he said between tight lips, “I thought you said you had not told her our names.”
Long, long, ago, even before your great-grandfather was a little boy, and many, many miles away to the north, a raider buried his treasure trove deep inside the mountain. He intended to return one day for it, but he was killed on his next raid and his treasure long lay unguarded and forgotten.
That is, until it was discovered by a dragon. He was a young dragon, coming down from the frozen Land of Ice to the Fifty Kingdoms, when he caught a whiff of treasure scent. And he flew down with a flurry of leather wings, and clawed into the mountain side with his long claws, and he established his lair there. And every month he flew out in search of more treasure and carried it home, until his trove was wealthier than three kingdoms.
But it gave him no pleasure, and as he grew older the golden rings began to pinch his belly as he lay on them, and the silver swords pricked him as he moved. He became stiffer as he grew older so that flying was more difficult, but he never stopped growing until he stretched five hundred feet long. So he went no more in search of greater treasure, but every week flew a short distance to a nearby village and ate one of the villagers.
Then the king of that kingdom, a man named Thaar, heard of the dragon. “I shall no more allow this serpent to eat my people,” he said, for he was a young and strong king, the descendant of a line of glorious kings, and he desired honor more than wealth or even life. So he strapped on his helmet and shield, put his good sword Irontooth at his belt, and gave his crown to his queen for their infant son.
He sailed his ship alone along the coast to below the dragon’s lair. “Come out, bloody-mouthed serpent!” he called. He held up his sword with its long, triangular blade and rubies set into the hilt. “Come out and see what dragon teeth can do against Irontooth!”
And deep within his lair the old dragon heard him and stirred. He shook off the coins and jewels that clung to his scales and burst out of the mountainside. Like a whirlwind he descended on King Thaar’s ship, breaking the mast and smashing the timbers.
But when he poked around with his long snout in the sea, he could not find the king. Puzzled, he was pulling himself back up on land when he felt something sharp against his belly, something that bit deeper than he had ever been bitten. The dragon lifted himself into the air with a roar but it was too late. For King Thaar, swimming deep, had come up below the dragon, and the triangular blade of the good sword Irontooth had thrust into his belly. And as the dragon tried to fly all his guts writhed free.
Thaar stood on the shore, dripping wet and holding his sword high in triumph, but only for a second. For the dragon, dying and in fury, descended on him, racking him with his claws and crushing him beneath his bloody body; and, just before his serpent eyes closed for the last time, his teeth bit through the mail and into the king’s heart.
They buried King Thaar with his sword in a great mound that still stands by the sea, but the dragon they burned in a pyre whose flame could be seen for a hundred miles. Some of the treasure, the armbands and jeweled collars, they buried with the king; some, the golden chalices and unset gems, they offered at the Weaver’s cave to the lords of voima; but to keep away the curse of dragon’s gold, the rest they buried deep within the mountain. And there the treasure has remained ever since, untouched by dragon or man, for never since those days has there been a dragon so huge and fearsome, or a king so brave and full of honor.