Page 3 of Dragon Lord

H alf a dozen women surrounded the stone lip of the village well, chattering as they drew water in turns. A raven circled high above them.

“You seen the weddin’ cakes?” Esbeth, the miller’s daughter asked the other two new wives next to her, heads bent together. “A full dozen. ’Nough to feed the whole village.”

“You seen the dowry?” Dorin replied. “Two goose-down pillows, a wool blanket, a cast iron pot, and a skillet, six tin plates. Six!” She rolled her eyes. “And who are they expectin’ to dinner? The queen?”

Einin stood next to them, but they didn’t include her in the conversation. If they looked at her at all, they shot her wary glances. Having returned from the dragon a fortnight before—with a talon!—set her apart.

Virgins went to the dragon to die as sacrifice. They did not return, not one, not ever before. Einin stuck out of order, like a protruding nail from a sitting bench. People’s gazes and thoughts snagged on her every time she passed by. ’Twas as if the dragon had tainted her somehow.

As the matron in front of her finished with the well, picked up her buckets, and hurried away, Einin stepped up to the stone lip. She did not intend to go back to the great beast. In time, people would forget about her unusual adventure, and life would return to the way it had been.

Einin was but a no-account village maiden, small prey. The dragon had likely already forgotten her. He would have fed by now and gone back to sleep.

His kind could sleep a decade at a time, the old folks said. Who knew, by the time he awakened again and remembered her, if he remembered, Einin could be married and long gone to another village. The beast would never find her.

Or would he? Would he come in wrath and destroy Downwood and everyone in it? That was the thought that kept Einin up at night. Her heart clenched. She had given her word.

She drew water, feeling as wretched as when she’d first volunteered to be the sacrifice. She’d gone to the cave that once, had worked up the nerve. She didn’t think she could do it again. She’d changed her mind at least twice a day in the past two weeks.

She drew another bucket of water, then stepped back.

Agna, who had been a friend to Einin’s mother moved up to the well’s lip next.

She was swollen with her twelfth child, a woman considered lucky in the village as all but five of her children were living.

As Agna reached for the well’s bucket, the sleeve of her worn brown dress rode up, revealing the imprint of her husband’s fingers.

When she leaned forward a little more, she flinched.

She must have had other, hidden injuries.

Einin leaped to help. “Let me.”

With a grateful smile and a tired nod, Agna shuffled aside, just as her youngest daughter ran up to her with a bruised knee.

Agna soothed her crying daughter, pushing the child away at the same time. “Best you go back to your chores before you make your father angry. Go on.”

The child scampered off, hiccupping.

Agna called after her. “Run!” Then she caught Einin watching, and she smiled. “You’ll have your own wee ones soon, you’ll see. A strong husband to guide you, a man for you to serve, in the natural order. My Wilm will make a good husband, he will. You just accept him and see.”

Einin glanced at the woman’s blue wrists where her sleeves rode up again.

Agna covered them up with a shrug. “I deserved it, I did. Too slow with milking the cow, and late with dinner. I’m lucky to have a husband to give me God’s correction. You will soon see how it is.”

Einin filled Agna’s buckets. “I best be on my way. The bread dough must have risen by now.”

She also had socks to darn and dry beans to soak. Her chores were never done. She had to do everything alone.

As she walked, she sniffed the mouthwatering scent of baking meat pies that wafted from a nearby hut.

She smiled at the clanging of metal sounding from the smithy, because it matched the rhythm of the lively song the blacksmith was whistling.

She was listening so intently, she nearly crashed into a flock of children who were chasing a honking goose.

The poor fowl was probably trying to escape its fate as the main course at the cooper’s daughter’s wedding.

Einin murmured her support under her breath. “Godspeed!”

The crooked streets of the village were busy, people rushing about.

Spring had come, but darkness still fell early.

Everyone was intent on the chores they needed to finish before nightfall.

Einin had already cleaned her hut, laid in wood for the fire, and laundered what few clothes she had, but she still had plenty of work left.

She was halfway home, her shoulders straining under the weight of her two full wooden buckets, when the priest stepped into her path.

A raven high above called “Caw!” as if in warning, but too late.

“Beg yer pardon.” Einin ducked her head, dropping her gaze to the priest’s dusty brown habit rather than looking at the harsh planes of his face.

She didn’t dare to meet his eyes that filled with disapproval every time he looked at Einin.

And he looked a lot. Every time Einin turned around, she found his gaze on her.

He was bald and gap-toothed, with small, mean eyes. She tried to step around him, giving him a wide berth. Of course, she managed to slosh some of the well water on her leg. She jumped back. Ack, ’twas cold. Yet not half as cold as the priest’s tone.

“Einin.” The way he said her name cut like a whip.

She froze. Then, when he said no more and it became apparent that he was in no hurry, she set her heavy buckets by her feet. She was in for it now.

“I hear you chopped wood this morn.” Each word dripped with disapproval. “Wearing man’s clothes. Doing man’s work.”

The three women coming out of the cobbler’s cottage behind him stopped on the steps and ceased their chatter, probably as much out of respect for the priest as the better to hear.

Einin winced. Fool! She should have put on one of her mother’s old dresses to go to the well, even if they were all too loose on her.

She’d adjusted them time and time again and never got them right.

She was no good with the needle. Her youngest brother’s clothes fit her better and were more comfortable for work.

The temptation to slip into them had been too great.

The priest’s eyes flashed with judgment. “Did I see you the day before last, on the roof, repairing the thatching?”

“No man left in the family, Father.” That last word tasted bitter on Einin’s tongue. She had loved her own father and grieved him still, could never understand why she must call the traveling priest by the same title.

“A woman doing man’s work is against the laws of God and nature.” His words were cold and sharp like icicles.

She did not dare argue, not with the priest. She feared him more than she feared the dragon. If the dragon chose to harm her, one snap of his powerful maw and her suffering would be over. The priest, on the other hand…

One of Einin’s earliest memories was of this same traveling priest’s first visit to her village and the women he’d accused of being witches.

He’d burned three grandmothers who’d never been anything but kind to Einin, one the very midwife who’d birthed her, another known for her knowledge of herbs, and the third with nothing to call her to the attention of the priest but a mole on her cheek.

The old women had taken a long time to die.

Einin still couldn’t stand as much as to look at anything charred. The smell of burned meat made her stomach heave. Not that she had much meat in her pot this past year, not since the war had taken the last of her brothers.

“You have not confessed your sins,” the priest said, and if winter suddenly blew back into Downwood, the street could not have turned colder.

Einin shivered. Who had time to sin? She worked every minute of every day to survive. Although, life was slowly improving in the village.

Somewhere nearby, a babe cried, but not the keening sound of hunger they’d all grown weary of.

People had enough milk once again. Four days prior, six stray cows had turned up in a clearing just past the edge of the woods.

An odd piece of luck. Upwood, the nearest village, was on the other side of the hill, the rocky path far too steep for the animals to have walked.

The cows were wild-eyed and scared to death, but calmed soon enough once they were tied up in various barns.

They were a boon on top of all the other changes of the past fortnight.

From the moment the blacksmith’s eldest lad had tied the talon to a twenty-foot pole in the middle of the village, things had begun to turn around.

Every time someone began losing heart, he looked up at the top of that pole and thought, If someone from this very village could take on a dragon, nothing is impossible .

People expected a turn of luck, and so it happened. With the backbone of fear broken, they were nicer to each other, more helpful. Tasks were done more easily; more was accomplished before each nightfall. Improvement was visible in every corner of the village of Downwood.

“You have returned from the dragon,” the priest said, arriving at the root of his true dislike for Einin at last. He tapped the side of his hawkish nose with his forefinger. “God has sharpened my senses so I might root out evil. I sense something unnatural about you, girl.”

Einin tucked in her chin. Why can he not be happy for our change of fortune? He’d given many a sermon about the village’s sufferings, always blaming the great devil in the hills. Why would Einin’s victorious return fill him with anger?

Understanding came in a sudden flash, and Einin blinked, nearly raising her gaze to his, catching herself at the last second, snapping her head back down and biting her lip. But even as she hid her reaction, she could not unthink the thought that shouted in her brain.