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wind. Near—but not too near the body of Hallgerd. Somehow she fell asleep. She didn't mean to. But the gamut of emotion and stress, to say nothing of running and nearly drowning, took her to a deep and dreamless place. It was sometime before dawn when she woke again, cold to the bones.
     
    And hungry. Starving.
     
    It seemed really heartless, but she had to get some food. She could root around in the ashes, perhaps, but what would be left after the fire? Well. There was always fish. Salt fish was too salty to eat for pleasure. It was salted hard, so that when the wagoners came at the beginning of autumn, it could be packed like boards into their wagons, for transportation and sale inland. It would keep through the winter, and—if you had a day to soak it—and changed the water a few times, it could be made into something edible. If she chose one of the newer-caught fish that hadn't gone hard yet, she could eat it. All the kids in the village did it from time to time, despite scoldings and beatings. The newest fish were closest to the top of the slope, and Meb made her way up there again.
     
    The cod was like soft wood in texture, heavily laden with fishiness and salt. She had no knife to cut it with, which would have made things easier. However, it was still food. It did nothing much for the ache in her heart, but helped the ache in her belly.
     
    After eating she needed water, badly.
     
    She made her way back down to the village water-supply. The estuary water was salt to brackish, but someone had built a small dam on a spring up the hill. A pipe ran from there to splash into a big clay bowl outside Wulfstan's croft, before it trickled away down to the estuary. The village headman had had the best place for his croft. Close to his boat, and close to the fresh water. His wife and daughters had very little distance to carry their water-crocks.
     
    When she got there she found that someone had broken the bowl. And no water was coming out of the pipe. Meb, having eaten too much salt with her fish, was thirsty, really desperately thirsty. There was no help for it but to follow the pipe. It was made out of rolled bark and cord, and was forever rotting and breaking . . . or being stood on by something obstinate enough to break the arch of sticks that guarded it. Sighing, Meb set out to walk along it. If she could fix it, that would at least be something positive. But the rolls of spare bark would have burned with Wulfstan's croft. Weary, and thirsty, Meb started walking, following the arch of sticks up the hill. She knew that she would be able to hear the water gurgling in the bark pipe when it was intact. That sound would tell her when she'd passed the break, if the water from it didn't wet her feet. She looked forward to finding it . . . she could at least drink then.
     
    The sky was paling as she walked. It was a full mile and half to the dam.
     
    Her walk took her all the way to the dam wall, or what was left of it. The stream trickled through the broken earth and off down its original course. It would enter the little estuary too high up to be of any use to the village. Up where it was too shallow and too muddy to bring boats in.
     
    It wasn't as if there was just a hole in the dam wall. There was just no more wall. It had been knocked to smithereens. And in the dawn light Meb could see dragon prints in the mud.
     
    Meb was too thirsty not to drink the spring-water. But she was choked with anger and tears too. The dragon had left nothing undone when it came to destroying the village. And she couldn't see why. They paid their taxes, like everyone else. They were left with precious little copper, and the dragon got the gold. That was the way it was, and had always been.
     
    Once she'd drunk, Meb wondered what to do. She'd imagined being able to make some kind of temporary repair. Now, with the sun beginning to burn down already, she knew that that was impossible. The dam had raised the level of the stream