Page 110 of Edge of the Wild

More galloping hoofbeats announced Magnus and Lars, riding up on either side of the column, bearing standards that streamed the seals of Aeres: the wolf in Magnus’s grip, and the stag in Lars’s.

This, Oliver realized with a thrill, was the Great Northern Phalanx. The force that he’d been sent North to retrieve – at the head of which he now rode…as royalty.

Of a sort. Consort counted.

Ahead, the ground sloped gently upward, studded with rocks that protruded from the snow. Above the horizon, the mountaintops they’d been chasing the last two days still seemed small, and far away. Oliver leaned forward onto his horse’s neck – the climb was steeper than he’d thought. Up, and up, and up – to a crest.

And then…

“Gods,” he breathed, stunned.

A valley lay below them, a wide, shallow bowl, at the center of which gleamed a frozen lake, edged with black rocks, and narrow, dark-green conifers. At the opposite side, the feet of the mountains lay overlapping, their sharp ridges edged with snow, their sheer faces shingled with black shale. It had been an optical illusion, Oliver realized, that the peaks had seemed so small; the ground had been sloping upward for longer than he’d realized, and the peaks seemed small because the mountains were vast, taller than any he’d seen, points thrust up into the clouds. They stood shoulder to shoulder, blotting out the sunset, a jagged row of black and white teeth that cupped the valley, and then marched off into the distance to either side, farther than the eye could see.

Amidst gleaming streams and small stands of forest below, he saw the rectangular longhouses that the Northmen had lived in before palaces like the one at Aeres had come into fashion. Two-story, wooden, their peaked roofs heaped with snow, smoke curled from chimney holes, ribbons of gray against the white background.

Erik reined up a moment, while he stared. “This,” he said, his tone strange, caught somewhere between pride and dread, “is Dreki Hörgr.”

Oliver could only stare, nodding. “I never asked. What does that mean, exactly?”

Erik snorted. “Dragon Hold.”

“What?”

A falcon wheeled overhead, screaming.

“Come along,” Erik said. “Let’s see what’s for supper.”

~*~

A tedious, switchback path that was, regardless, wide enough for them to ride abreast, led down into the valley, plunging through occasional stands of pine and fir; they splashed through a creek that ran fast enough it hadn’t frozen, the air damp and fresh-smelling, beneath the cover of swaying tree limbs. Birds called and alighted, darting, colorful signs of life, even in a place such as this.

When they reached the valley floor, they found humanity. Wild humanity.

Small domed, hide tents like their own studded a field, fur-wrapped men and women tending kettles over cookfires, children running shrieking, long, braided hair streaming out behind them. Several of the men stood, staring boldly as they passed, their expressions blank. A few children pointed, shouting, their accents too heavy for Oliver to make out the words.

“The Bryti,” Erik said, under his breath. “Stewards of the eastern sea wall. They’ve come a long way.”

Over another creek, around a stand of firs, a larger field stretched off to the left, marked at its center by a longhouse belching smoke. A picket line held reindeer who milled about, nosing at the snow. The tents that surrounded the building were rectangular, with peaked roofs and an elaborate system of stakes and lines holding them up. He saw no women, only a huddle of four men – tall men, with long, dark beards braided to points, and metal hoops gleaming in their noses and eyebrows, thin gold rings braided into their hair.

“TheJotunns,” Erik explained, voice tighter. “Don’t venture into their camp.” A flat order, without explanation.

One of the men, both brows bristling with little hoops, flashed a stained, gap-toothed smile. Oliver hastily looked away.

Their path wound its way through a fairytale landscape of ice crystals and ornately carved longhouses, all with the same wooden device affixed to the front peak of the roof, like the figurehead at the prow of a ship: a snarling dragon.

“So,” Oliver said, casually, as they skirted the edge of the lake. Dusk was coming on, washing over the ice in a dazzling display of sugar-pink and plum. “When were you going to tell me this was some sort of shrine to dragons?”

Erik snorted. “It’s not a shrine. The legend goes that the first cold-drakes were spawned in these mountains; that they swam in this lake, and hunted these fields. That they allowed men to gather here – not to live, but to partake in their bounty. A coming-together in common cause. The first Midwinter Festivals were in fact great hunts: the wild reindeer herds traveled these paths, and the trees provided cover from which to spring upon them – and shelter. Before the longhouses were built, this place marked a respite amidst the harshness of the mountains and the tundra. A sheltered place with clean, running water, and wood with which to make tools, mines where they found copper and iron ore. The dragons shared their home with them, in the deepest, darkest part of winter, and in return, the men brought jewels out of the mines, and offered them over to the dragons – dragons like trinkets, or so the stories go.”

Oliver stared out across the sunset-kissed lake, and, beyond, a low hill topped by what must be the largest of all the longhouses. “And now?”

“Now, the dragons are gone, the reindeer herds have rerouted – but the clans come together here, for sport, and friendship, and negotiation.

“And,” he added, tone growing heavier, “to remind us in Aeretoll where we come from.”

Oliver pointed toward the distant longhouse, its two chimney holes belching smoke, its shadow growing long across the snow. “Is that ours for the night?”

“Yes. The King’s Hall.”

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