Dragon Tame - Ophelia Silk

CHAPTER ONE

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I Am Katla

IN TWO WEEKS, my fainthearted, peace-greedy village will send a sacrifice to the false god, to placate him for another year. To keep the dragons away. To maintain our cowardly existence in this frozen portside town of weaklings.

With each passing sacrifice, I want all the more to swing my axe straight through the false god’s heartless chest. If that bastard is so determined to keep the dragons away, then he can use his own blood to do it. Better yet, the great monsters can return. If the village of Lundr is to go down, we should go down fighting, not cowering and offering up our friends as sacrifices.

This year’s choosing ceremony seems to set the village especially on edge. The great fire in the Jarl’s hall roars with such might that its smoke gathers in the wooden-arched ceiling, making the whole place reek of charred pine and ash and coming death. No one speaks above a whisper. No one speaks to me at all.

I hunker in the corner, propped between the frame of the massive front entrance and a wooden pillar, braiding the stray strands of my golden hair as I watch our Jarl. Seated on his stone of luminous rainbow rock, he closes his eyes and throws the bones. They clatter to a stop around his feet. He kneels and draws his gnarled hands over each painted, square piece. When he finally picks one, his motions are too slow, too indecisive. Nothing like the warrior Jarls of old.

“Night blues,” he announces.

I tuck my green slip of linen into my pocket as those with the deep blue ones come forward. Most of them tremble, pulling their embroidered tunics tighter and fidgeting with their braids. All but the smallest. Jytte.

My heart thuds a little faster. I tell it to shut up.

I’ve no attachment to my young cousin. I don’t have time for that sort of nonsense. But Jytte—brave little Jytte who snuck up to me five months ago asking for knife throwing lessons, even after my aunt and step-uncle and every other one of our worthless feeble family members told her not to—she has the heart of a warrior.

When the stick she draws comes up short, her mother cries. Her father nods solemnly. Her siblings turn away. I ignore them all, ignore the way my chest hurts, and I leave, heading for home. Heading for my weapons.

In front of my door, Magni greets me with his broad shoulders and perfect glare. “I know what you’re planning.”

I duck around his crossed arms, admiring the sword strapped to his back. A beautiful thing, heavy as Thor’s hammer and nearly as deadly as my axe. He refused to name it, so I’ve dubbed it Dragon Beheader the Treacherous in his place.

Not that either of us have killed a dragon, despite being the only people in this whole damned village who could succeed at it. The thought of the dragons returning doesn’t make me doubt myself. If they come, the rest of Lundr will just have to learn to kill them too.

“Then join me,” I reply, sauntering into my house, my arms spread wide as I twist back toward him. Magni’s towering form makes a stunning silhouette in my doorway. Damn his gorgeous sandy braids and thick beard and skull-crushing arms. Damn him.

“The two of us alone aren’t enough to take him down,” he says.

I retrieve my weapons: my three knives first, then my axe. The smile I paste on my face has a bad aftertaste. “I can handle one measly god, Magni.”

He grabs my arm. “This is too dangerous, and you know it.”

I pause, because I kind of like that he doesn’t do stupid things, that he doesn’t put himself anywhere I might lose him. I like that almost enough to marry him. But not quite. Smelling like that sickly smoke of the choosing ceremony, I shove past him, out my door, and ascend towards the false god’s caves. Alone.

I heft my faithful double-sided axe a little higher on my shoulder as I stalk through the forest. Sharp Edge the Back Biter, I call it. Sharpie, for short. I’ve carried its well-loved, leather-bound handle with me from my first practice blade as a child. Now, it rubs into the grey pseudo-fur wrapped around my shoulders, the snow crunching beneath my boots. I wore my best grey armor for the ceremony.

If I die today in the caves of Katane, they’d better keep me in it when they send me out to sea on