Chapter 22: Heart-to-Heart I

The night sky had come down on top of them.

It had come with the speed of the fastest gale and the silence of the deadliest owl, and none of the three of them had caught up with any of it yet.

Seeing dragons was nothing new.

Not to most of them, who had grown up in the north.

And yet there was something in the presence of a Night Fury, and in the idea of one, that was unlike any other dragon they had ever laid their eyes upon.

The void of its scales blurred at the edges.

The dragon sat on the rocky shore with the sea behind it and the night sky above, and the eye kept losing the seam between them.

Only the two green lanterns of its eyes betrayed there was anything there at all.

Then the rider came off its back.

He came down the great curve of the Night Fury's neck without any hurry in him at all, and his bare feet landed on wet rock.

A wet THUD.

That was the whole sound the pair of them made, arriving.

This time there was no distance to hide behind.

The Night Spawn stood barely a few lengths away.

Its skin was paler than any living man's, almost entirely unblemished. One pale ridge across the left shoulder, old, and plainly older than this island. Two or three seams on the forearms not yet finished closing.

Nothing else on it anywhere.

A thin robe of pitch-black wool hung off the lean frame of it and moved in the sea wind, snapping softly, the only part of it that seemed to belong to the weather.

The crown of horns, swept back off his skull.

And the eyes.

Green and faintly glowing, as if they had caught flame from somewhere behind. Long slits down their centres and masking an intelligence so plain and so patient that one could stand there and forget he was supposed to look away.

Haaland did not forget any of it.

He had been in enough bad rooms in his life to know the feeling crawling up the back of his neck, cold and slow, gathering into a sweat under the collar of his furs in the middle of winter.

In fact, he was intimately familiar with the feeling.

His sword was already out. It had been out since the wind of those wings hit them. He hardly remembered drawing it and his grip had already gone white.

He heard Emerald's breath catch behind him.

Then he heard her take a step back. One small crunch of shingle, then another.

He risked a half glance and found her shaking, it was not the cold this time. She was looking at the pale shape on the rocks and seeing something else. She was seeing this same beach, and these same chains, and its hand raised over her head.

Oddr had gone quiet, but there was a glint in his eye that said the old man had been expecting this, or something close enough to it.

Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck.

Nobody moved.

It was the stillness of prey caught in the open. Haaland knew.

And yet what could he do. Run? Half a lifetime of fighting for other men's money had taught him something about predators.

You never, ever turn your back on one.

So he set his teeth, and he set his feet into stance.

He was already standing between it and the other two, his blade up in a guard he did not remember choosing.

Eight paces. Nine at the most.

Flat wet stone with no footing worth the name. No cover between here and the waterline. Cliffs at their backs and a mile of open shore in every other direction.

Nineteen men had stood on this exact rock.

Nineteen. Armed. Mediocre with the sword at best, caught off guard, with their backs against the ships, but sober enough.

He had not watched it happen and he had not needed to. He had seen the state of the corpses after. He had walked through what was left of them in the night with a shackle still on his wrist, and there had not been one body whole.

A drop of sweat ran the length of his spine, cold as meltwater.

His heartbeat had climbed into his ears and stayed there, and around it the world began stripping itself down the way it always did before killing started.

The wind went quiet.

The sea went quiet.

Emerald's breathing behind him went quiet. All of it narrowed down to the terribly unhurried way it was not doing anything at all.

The creature drew a long breath.

Haaland's grip tightened until the leather creaked under his fingers, every muscle in his back wound down onto the balls of his feet, he thought, with the clarity of someone with few options:

Fucking thing, you want to play. Let's play.

Here it comes.

3. 2. 1-

"I apologise for choosing to meet at night for this."

The voice was low, and rough, and its use of the northern tongue was rusty in a way that betrayed he had not used it in years.

"However, it is safer this way. For both of us."

Nobody breathed.

It did talk.

Emerald had told them it talked.

She had said it at the fire and again in barely a night ago, both times she had watched the doubt move behind their eyes. She hadn't been making stuff up. It actually talked.

Not only talking.

It was apologising.

Haaland's arm did not come down.

It could not. His body had locked itself around the grip and would not hear one word his mind had to say about it, and his mind, just then, had nothing to say at all.

He was aware of his own eye, wide, the lashes stiff with cold. Of a single bead of sweat crawling out of his temple into his beard, slow as an insect. Of the way his pupil had pulled down to a pinprick and refused to widen.

Because some old animal buried under most of a life of soldiering had taken the reins clean off him and was screaming one word.

Run.

Yet he steeled himself, dammit running is not an option. For the love of the gods, he could not falter here.

So he did what he had always done when the fear came, which was to put it to work.

No weapons, the note had clearly pointed. Come to the shore, the three of you, and bring no weapons.

He had read that line by the fire and understood, he had written orders like it himself in another life. Yet, you do not disarm a man you intend to talk to.

You disarm a man you intend to have at your mercy.

He had brought the sword anyway, he had spent the whole walk down telling himself he was only being careful, but standing on this beach with a horned thing nine paces off he understood that if it had wanted them dead, they would have been set aflame by the dragon's fire.

Instead, it had not asked twice. In fact, it had not asked at all.

Which meant either it did not care that he was armed, or it had never needed them helpless in the first place, and he could not decide which of those frightened him more.

His grip shifted a quarter turn on its own. More years of habit than he cared to count, finding the angle.

Because here was the thing: He had walked through the after on this beach. In every torn body and every broken blade, there had not been one single sign of any technique.

No parries. No stop-thrusts. Nothing that had been fenced.

This thing had gone through nineteen armed men the way a wolf goes through a pen. Faster than reckoning, stronger than sense, and completely without craft.

It had killed them through sheer physical superiority alone.

He could work with that.

He had put down bigger men than himself with nothing but technique, wits, and skill. Perhaps that is why something in him, some professional and witty part was ready for the worst

Nine and a half paces.

It comes low and straight, they always come straight. Half a step off the line, let it commit, and there is a hand's width under the arm where the ribs are. It's limping there.

He would die. He was fairly sure of that.

Still, the thing would probably kill him in its last moments.

So it was not much of a comfort. It was the only option on offer, and it was enough to keep the point of the blade up and his feet where they were.

The devil, demon, night spawn. Whatever it's name was, looked at the tip of his sword.

It did not tense. It did not lift a hand. It considered the blade the way a man considers the breeze.

"That is fine," it chuckled. "You can keep that pointed at me, if that makes you feel safer."

Then it sat down.

It simply folded onto the flat stones like a tired traveller, one knee up, an arm hung across it. Behind it the enormous black shape lowered itself in a slow coil and settled its head near the ground.

The dragon and the demon waited there together, as though the three of them had all the time in the world to decide what to do about it.

"Though I would ask you to stay where you are if you keep the sword up," it snorted. "Not for my sake. Toothless does not know your faces yet, he is very protective, so I would rather not find out how he handles a surprise."

The Night Spawn's slit gaze brushed against his. And as if the words had been an order, the dragon's eyes tracked to Haaland's sword and stayed there.

Haaland did not sheathe his sword.

Still, the point of his blade came down. Only a hand's width. He probably did not know he had done it.

"I know you have questions," it went on. "I imagine you have a great many, actually. I do not want to fight you. I have never wanted to fight, if you will believe me. So ask, I will answer what I can and what I cannot answer, I will just admit it plainly."

Nobody took him up on it.

The cold came in off the black water and went through the seams of their furs, and nobody said a word.

The sea worked at the rocks below, one long drag of shingle and then another, patient and enormous and completely uninterested in the four of them. Somewhere further out a wave rolled,

the wind moved the ragged hem of that black robe, and the great dragon breathed, and for a while that was all there was.

Haaland's mouth had gone dry. He had questions. He had a hundred of them and could not make one of them climb up his throat.

"Why?"

It was Emerald.

Her voice came out thinner than she had meant it to. She had finally span herself out of the daze and was the first to speak.

She had been carrying the question for weeks and it had grown too heavy to keep, it came out now because there was not going to be a better moment and she knew it.

"Why did you spare us? On the beach. You said you would make it quick." She swallowed. "Why didn't you."

The thing's green eyes moved to her, surprised.