FIC: The Twin Swords (a Dragons tale)
So, quite some time ago, the really excellent eira_cannaid made the most excellent fanart ever for The One About Dragons. I promised her a ficbit on any character of her choosing in the world of the story, and then totally failed to deliver for a while.
So, fanartist-of-mine, if you can possibly forgive me: 1700 words of Elisabet of the Noticeri Dwen, wife of Burt, mother of Kurt: dragon slayer, perfectionist, and all-around badass mama.
For the rest of you: this doesn't contain any spoilers that I can think of for the rest of Dragons, besides small character bits such as how Kurt's mother died and how Burt became chief. It will give you some ideas about the culture of the Seventeen Tribes that would have come up later anyway, but nothing too big :)
There wasn’t a man in the Noticeri Dwen that didn’t notice Elisabet by the time she was seventeen. She was rather like her someday-son that way.
She never did want to be anything short of the best. By the time she was ten, when the other children were getting used to their own longswords, she was practicing long hours in the early morning and late at night with a blade in each hand, working her way up from knives to shortswords to blades as long as her arm. She’d practice out behind the tents where they couldn’t laugh at her, at first, and bring her new techniques out on sparring days to kick their asses.
She was an orphan, or close enough; one parent dead on the battlefield somewhere before she could walk, the other off in another tribe or somewhere else entirely, but she was hardly the only one. Elisabet grew up surrounded by dozens of tribe children, over the nearly-but-not-quite watchful enough eyes of wet nurses and retired warriors who’d rather parent than fight, just like everybody else.
She set herself apart as a girl by not liking to lose, and followed it up by growing into one of the most beautiful young women in the tribe, lithe and lovely and spitting deadly by the time she was fifteen. She went off on a quest after a basilisk when she was sixteen, and lost both swords because only an idiot or a young, overconfident fool tries to slay a basilisk with two swords and no shield to spot it in. She had one of its fangs turned into a replacement dagger, and the other cut down as a necklace.
The story of Elisabet’s swords is also the story of Elisabet’s husband. Six months after the basilisk she fought with short knives and borrowed weapons, until the day she and a handful of others rode out against a group of black-cloaked poachers from Kroywen, who’d thought to steal dragons eggs and raise the calves as part of some rich man’s army back home. Oh, the great dragons were killers and there for any warrior to test his or her steel against, make no mistake, but no outlander slapped chains on infants in these hills. Elisabet killed three men with daggers and took the sword off the fourth, a slim, lightly-curved thing with a black-wrapped hilt that fit her hand like it was forged to fit.
That night, at the feast in camp, she cornered the blacksmith’s apprentice and showed him the sword. “Forge me a mate,” she said.
Burt lifted the blade from her hands to inspect it, ran his fingers along the outside edge, the crossguard, the hilt. “This is outlander make,” he said. “Our forges don’t get hot enough to do work like this.”
“I don’t want to pay an outlander to make my sword,” said Elisabet. “If I find you a forge, can you do it?”
“I can try,” promised the blacksmith’s apprentice, and was rewarded by the quickfire smile of the most beautiful young woman in his entire tribe. There wasn’t much he wouldn’t have done for her, after that.
It took until winter, when the tribe laid their tents out along a river at the very south of Sylvestra, half a day’s ride from the closest town. Elisabet never did tell Burt how she got the blacksmith to agree to lend out his forge at night, but she traded fresh-shot deer for coal and basilisk scales for steel, and visited him once every five days to see how he was getting on.
The blacksmiths of the Seventeen Tribes worked iron into tent pegs and nails, arrowheads and skinning knives, buckles and bridle bits, and forever horse shoes. Burt could draw wire and beat metal into cooking pots, but never had he made a blade longer than his own hand. The old master blacksmith had, but Elisabet had asked Burt in person, and he couldn’t quite bring himself to give the project over, though his master sighed and hung his head and tsked in the name of young love.
Burt forged a dozen blades that winter, each a little better than the last. The first was clumsy and unbalanced, and the second. After the first few weeks of making the ride every morning and evening, and dozing through half the day, Burt’s master rolled his eyes and came along with him, to show him the differences between working iron and hard Sylvestran steel, to help him beat the metal into place. The sixth blade was credible, but had no curve, and the eighth was the long length and width to match the original. He ruined the tang of the ninth trying to get the hilt right, for all this was the one part he’d almost done before.
The tenth sword was good. So was the eleventh. He set them to the side and made another.
She came to visit just as dawn was breaking the horizon, the night he finished wrapping the rough-tanned leather around the grip of the twelfth sword, and he had no choice but to pass the sword over and let her fit her hand around it. She swung it left-handed, experimental, in a wide arc that flowed into a tighter pattern, and as Burt watched, she smiled in satisfaction.
“It’ll do,” she said.
“You like it?” asked Burt, and Elisabet laughed.
“I would say I don’t for the excuse to keep visiting, but we’re pulling up and moving on in three days,” she said. “I’ll need to think of another one.”
She was a traditional sort of woman; not the kind who insisted that ‘shieldmaiden’ only apply to actual maidens, but the kind who believed that there were rules, where courting was concerned. Gifts didn’t count if they were asked for, or taken in trade, and she had gone all winter without any sort of kill that might make an impression. Burt was calm, patient with forge fires and her own dramatics, but never so impressed she couldn’t respect him for it. He didn’t mind that she was a better swordswoman than him, and wasn’t afraid of the fact that he knew more of metal than she ever would. Really, it was time for the grandest of traditional gestures.
She walked up to him in the center of camp one week later, a hundred miles from Sylvestra and surrounded by the sounds of spring, and stopped him in his tracks with a hand to his chest. “I challenge you,” she declared, loud enough for a dozen people to hear; they gathered around even as Burt raised his eyebrows.
“What are the stakes?” he asked, though he surely must know them by now.
“If I win, you have to marry me,” said Elisabet, and Burt nodded.
“And if I win?” he asked.
“That’s up to you,” she said, for traditionally it was. “Any favor you name.”
“So let me get this straight,” said Burt, so seriously it took her a moment to realize the corners of his eyes were creasing with the effort not to grin. “If I win, I get one favor, and if you win, I get favors for the rest of our lives? Not really much of an incentive to fight.”
“Who says, if we were married, you wouldn’t be the one doing me favors?” Elisabet asked archly.
Burt laughed, then, so broadly and welcoming, and said, “Done,” and she waited for him to name the terms. That was his prerogative, that was how the challenge worked. He could set her to a contest of shoeing horses and know she’d never be able to win. “Swords, tomorrow at dawn. First blood sound good to you?”
“It’s your decision,” she said, and clenched tight on the excitement in the pit of her stomach. He wanted her, too.
It was ten years later that the chief died. Elisabet lay on her side in their tent and listened to the rain patter on the leather above, nursing a set of broken ribs and watching their son play with blunted wooden knives. Kurt had a good sense for them already. He threw one experimentally at a target only he could see, on the far side of the tent, and Elisabet looked up at her husband and said, “You should put your name in.”
“What,” Burt asked, glancing up from the catgut mending stitches he was putting into one of his vests, “you don’t want it for yourself?”
Elisabet laughed, then hissed at the movement of it. “They’d never pick me, I’m too much better than they are at everything,” she said. “I don’t work well with a team. You’ve managed to put up with me all these years, I think that says enough about your ability to handle difficult personalities.”
“I’m young,” said Burt, and she shrugged, more carefully.
“Nearly thirty,” she said. “Old enough.”
“Is this about you wanting to be chief’s wife if you can’t make it as chief?” he asked, and she laughed, again, reached out to stroke Kurt’s silky hair when he plopped himself down next to her, four years old and too many hours without a nap.
“This is about me marrying the best man in the tribe when I had the chance,” she said. “Put yourself in, Burt.”
Kurt made a small, sleepy sound of petulance, and she gathered him in close to her body, settling him even as he fought her fingers ruffling his hair. The rain drummed against the roof of the tent, and her ribs ached but no worse than to be expected. Her swords lay close at hand, one crossed over the other, just in case.
Kurt inherited them, eventually, after the wyvern nesting up among the rocks south of the dwarven city of Emorhc turned out to have a mate. She’d taken a spear and a shield on that trip, because only a young arrogant fool goes up against something that spits venom and fire with two swords and no shield, but nobody can keep hunting forever. It took Kurt a few years, before he was tall enough to use them.
So, fanartist-of-mine, if you can possibly forgive me: 1700 words of Elisabet of the Noticeri Dwen, wife of Burt, mother of Kurt: dragon slayer, perfectionist, and all-around badass mama.
For the rest of you: this doesn't contain any spoilers that I can think of for the rest of Dragons, besides small character bits such as how Kurt's mother died and how Burt became chief. It will give you some ideas about the culture of the Seventeen Tribes that would have come up later anyway, but nothing too big :)
There wasn’t a man in the Noticeri Dwen that didn’t notice Elisabet by the time she was seventeen. She was rather like her someday-son that way.
She never did want to be anything short of the best. By the time she was ten, when the other children were getting used to their own longswords, she was practicing long hours in the early morning and late at night with a blade in each hand, working her way up from knives to shortswords to blades as long as her arm. She’d practice out behind the tents where they couldn’t laugh at her, at first, and bring her new techniques out on sparring days to kick their asses.
She was an orphan, or close enough; one parent dead on the battlefield somewhere before she could walk, the other off in another tribe or somewhere else entirely, but she was hardly the only one. Elisabet grew up surrounded by dozens of tribe children, over the nearly-but-not-quite watchful enough eyes of wet nurses and retired warriors who’d rather parent than fight, just like everybody else.
She set herself apart as a girl by not liking to lose, and followed it up by growing into one of the most beautiful young women in the tribe, lithe and lovely and spitting deadly by the time she was fifteen. She went off on a quest after a basilisk when she was sixteen, and lost both swords because only an idiot or a young, overconfident fool tries to slay a basilisk with two swords and no shield to spot it in. She had one of its fangs turned into a replacement dagger, and the other cut down as a necklace.
The story of Elisabet’s swords is also the story of Elisabet’s husband. Six months after the basilisk she fought with short knives and borrowed weapons, until the day she and a handful of others rode out against a group of black-cloaked poachers from Kroywen, who’d thought to steal dragons eggs and raise the calves as part of some rich man’s army back home. Oh, the great dragons were killers and there for any warrior to test his or her steel against, make no mistake, but no outlander slapped chains on infants in these hills. Elisabet killed three men with daggers and took the sword off the fourth, a slim, lightly-curved thing with a black-wrapped hilt that fit her hand like it was forged to fit.
That night, at the feast in camp, she cornered the blacksmith’s apprentice and showed him the sword. “Forge me a mate,” she said.
Burt lifted the blade from her hands to inspect it, ran his fingers along the outside edge, the crossguard, the hilt. “This is outlander make,” he said. “Our forges don’t get hot enough to do work like this.”
“I don’t want to pay an outlander to make my sword,” said Elisabet. “If I find you a forge, can you do it?”
“I can try,” promised the blacksmith’s apprentice, and was rewarded by the quickfire smile of the most beautiful young woman in his entire tribe. There wasn’t much he wouldn’t have done for her, after that.
It took until winter, when the tribe laid their tents out along a river at the very south of Sylvestra, half a day’s ride from the closest town. Elisabet never did tell Burt how she got the blacksmith to agree to lend out his forge at night, but she traded fresh-shot deer for coal and basilisk scales for steel, and visited him once every five days to see how he was getting on.
The blacksmiths of the Seventeen Tribes worked iron into tent pegs and nails, arrowheads and skinning knives, buckles and bridle bits, and forever horse shoes. Burt could draw wire and beat metal into cooking pots, but never had he made a blade longer than his own hand. The old master blacksmith had, but Elisabet had asked Burt in person, and he couldn’t quite bring himself to give the project over, though his master sighed and hung his head and tsked in the name of young love.
Burt forged a dozen blades that winter, each a little better than the last. The first was clumsy and unbalanced, and the second. After the first few weeks of making the ride every morning and evening, and dozing through half the day, Burt’s master rolled his eyes and came along with him, to show him the differences between working iron and hard Sylvestran steel, to help him beat the metal into place. The sixth blade was credible, but had no curve, and the eighth was the long length and width to match the original. He ruined the tang of the ninth trying to get the hilt right, for all this was the one part he’d almost done before.
The tenth sword was good. So was the eleventh. He set them to the side and made another.
She came to visit just as dawn was breaking the horizon, the night he finished wrapping the rough-tanned leather around the grip of the twelfth sword, and he had no choice but to pass the sword over and let her fit her hand around it. She swung it left-handed, experimental, in a wide arc that flowed into a tighter pattern, and as Burt watched, she smiled in satisfaction.
“It’ll do,” she said.
“You like it?” asked Burt, and Elisabet laughed.
“I would say I don’t for the excuse to keep visiting, but we’re pulling up and moving on in three days,” she said. “I’ll need to think of another one.”
She was a traditional sort of woman; not the kind who insisted that ‘shieldmaiden’ only apply to actual maidens, but the kind who believed that there were rules, where courting was concerned. Gifts didn’t count if they were asked for, or taken in trade, and she had gone all winter without any sort of kill that might make an impression. Burt was calm, patient with forge fires and her own dramatics, but never so impressed she couldn’t respect him for it. He didn’t mind that she was a better swordswoman than him, and wasn’t afraid of the fact that he knew more of metal than she ever would. Really, it was time for the grandest of traditional gestures.
She walked up to him in the center of camp one week later, a hundred miles from Sylvestra and surrounded by the sounds of spring, and stopped him in his tracks with a hand to his chest. “I challenge you,” she declared, loud enough for a dozen people to hear; they gathered around even as Burt raised his eyebrows.
“What are the stakes?” he asked, though he surely must know them by now.
“If I win, you have to marry me,” said Elisabet, and Burt nodded.
“And if I win?” he asked.
“That’s up to you,” she said, for traditionally it was. “Any favor you name.”
“So let me get this straight,” said Burt, so seriously it took her a moment to realize the corners of his eyes were creasing with the effort not to grin. “If I win, I get one favor, and if you win, I get favors for the rest of our lives? Not really much of an incentive to fight.”
“Who says, if we were married, you wouldn’t be the one doing me favors?” Elisabet asked archly.
Burt laughed, then, so broadly and welcoming, and said, “Done,” and she waited for him to name the terms. That was his prerogative, that was how the challenge worked. He could set her to a contest of shoeing horses and know she’d never be able to win. “Swords, tomorrow at dawn. First blood sound good to you?”
“It’s your decision,” she said, and clenched tight on the excitement in the pit of her stomach. He wanted her, too.
It was ten years later that the chief died. Elisabet lay on her side in their tent and listened to the rain patter on the leather above, nursing a set of broken ribs and watching their son play with blunted wooden knives. Kurt had a good sense for them already. He threw one experimentally at a target only he could see, on the far side of the tent, and Elisabet looked up at her husband and said, “You should put your name in.”
“What,” Burt asked, glancing up from the catgut mending stitches he was putting into one of his vests, “you don’t want it for yourself?”
Elisabet laughed, then hissed at the movement of it. “They’d never pick me, I’m too much better than they are at everything,” she said. “I don’t work well with a team. You’ve managed to put up with me all these years, I think that says enough about your ability to handle difficult personalities.”
“I’m young,” said Burt, and she shrugged, more carefully.
“Nearly thirty,” she said. “Old enough.”
“Is this about you wanting to be chief’s wife if you can’t make it as chief?” he asked, and she laughed, again, reached out to stroke Kurt’s silky hair when he plopped himself down next to her, four years old and too many hours without a nap.
“This is about me marrying the best man in the tribe when I had the chance,” she said. “Put yourself in, Burt.”
Kurt made a small, sleepy sound of petulance, and she gathered him in close to her body, settling him even as he fought her fingers ruffling his hair. The rain drummed against the roof of the tent, and her ribs ached but no worse than to be expected. Her swords lay close at hand, one crossed over the other, just in case.
Kurt inherited them, eventually, after the wyvern nesting up among the rocks south of the dwarven city of Emorhc turned out to have a mate. She’d taken a spear and a shield on that trip, because only a young arrogant fool goes up against something that spits venom and fire with two swords and no shield, but nobody can keep hunting forever. It took Kurt a few years, before he was tall enough to use them.