Dragon's Ring by Dave Freer Read Free Book Online

enough for it flow twenty yards or so down an earth ditch to the pipe. Without the dam, the water was confined to this gully. She had brought nothing with her to carry water in. By the time she'd walked back down to the village, she'd be thirsty again. And she was really too tired and miserable to think clearly or properly. For a while, as the sun rose higher, she just sat. Sat and stared at the water that had been the lifeblood of the fishing village. Eventually, she stood up. She walked uphill to the spring itself and drank. She might as well drink enough before starting to walk back down again.
     
    As she reached the top of the little ridge that had separated her village from the stream's natural flow, she saw them. There were people moving around in the village! Up on the dune among the fish-racks too. For a moment she thought that it was the raiders back again . . . but it could also be the other villagers. She'd only seen two dead bodies. Surely some of the others must have got away? There were no ships—except the burned ones, pulled up on the shore.
     
    She walked back trying to do two things at once . . . see who it was, and keep a low profile, in case she needed to get away.
     
    By the time she was halfway back she was very sure that it was just the villagers who had survived the raid. Some were digging through the ruins of their houses. Others were gathering fish off the racks. Piling them up on what looked like some sailcloth. That was odd.
     
    She walked a little faster.
     
    She arrived hot and out of breath, and inevitably, thirsty. The first person she saw was Wulfstan. The headman was staring moodily at the charred ribs of his boat. He'd loved that boat more than his wife, which, if you'd met Alfrida, was quite understandable. "What's happening?" she asked.
     
    Wulfstan looked at her with some puzzlement. "Who are you, boy? Get to work. We want the fish ready for loading by the time Serbon gets back here with a wagon. Not that it'll be worth as much as if it were properly dry, but we can't just leave it here."
     
    She blinked. Realized it was the boys clothes and haircut. "It's me. Meb," she explained. That she wasn't his favorite person, was something that was belatedly coming back to Meb. Hallgerd had apparently insisted on keeping her, the foundling baby that she'd picked up on the beach, after the great storm. Wulfstan had always said, on every occasion that he had fought with her stepmother—and there were many—that ill-fortune would come of cheating the sea of its prey.
     
    He looked at her incredulously, and then rounded savagely on her. "So. You've done it finally. Brought your evil luck down on all of us. And on poor Hallgerd too. And all the while you've been off behaving like a hoyden somewhere, to come back in some lad's clothes. What kind of decent woman dresses like a boy? So you cut your hair off. Who did you think you'd fool?"
     
    She'd certainly fooled him, initially. "But I . . ."
     
    "Be quiet," he thundered, building himself up into a weak man's rage. "If I want you to speak I'll ask you to. There'd be no place in my village for you, if there still was a village! Get out of my sight, you little trollop." He advanced, swaying on his feet, swinging a piece of burned timber he'd snatched up. "Go and don't come back."
     
    "But where . . . ?"
     
    "Run before I beat you. Go back to the sea that should have kept you." Plainly he'd—somehow—been drinking. And equally plainly he was taking out his fury about his lost boat on her. She was a lot softer target than yesterday's raiders had been. Huh. He should have fought them, not her. He was getting very close. Meb's nerve broke, and she turned and ran. Not too far, but far enough for Wulfstan to give up the chase.
     
    She sat there, in among the gorse, thirsty again, hurt and angry. And half fearful that it might be true. Had the raiders come to destroy the village because the sea had been cheated nearly seventeen