Page 5 of Dragon Lord

D awn had not yet risen from its featherbed the following morn when Einin stopped at the edge of the woods to look back at her village.

In her brother Hamm’s brown shirt and britches, she blended into the darkness.

She watched her hut, the front door, through which the village elders were even now entering, led by the priest.

“Caw.” The raven on the low branch just above her gave its opinion.

Einin’s stomach clenched. If premonition hadn’t awoken her in the middle of the night, she would be waking now to hard hands grabbing her.

“The priest said I was unnatural,” she told Midnight, the black bird she’d befriended in the woods when she was a child. “He’s probably right.”

She should want to give herself over to Wilm’s godly correction instead of running from it. Something about her had been wrong as far back as she could remember. Maybe because she’d been raised by her father and her brothers instead of a mother.

“I don’t want to spend my life standing by the kitchen fire, bowing and scraping to a husband who beats me.” She wanted to run wild and free. Be her decisions right or wrong, she wanted to be the one to make them.

Weeks ago, when the men in the village had begun talking about a sacrifice to appease the great devil in the hills, Einin knew they were likely to pick her.

She had no family to protest on her behalf, nobody left.

So she’d volunteered before the priest could have put forth her name. Her choice. At least, it’d been that.

Now, having made yet another choice, Einin watched her hut with tears burning her eyes. The light of the men’s torches flickered in the windows, but not for long. Soon they came pouring out, their expressions even angrier than when they’d entered.

’Twas the rope in the blacksmith’s hand that scared her the most—a length of rope long enough to tie a witch to the stake so she could be burned.

Einin wasn’t going to volunteer again. Not today. Today, she chose to live.

“I’d best go. Be quiet,” she whispered to the bird.

She turned into the woods and hurried, her heart pounding as she sneaked away.

If the men looked for her, they’d look for her on the road to Morganton, God willing.

They had no reason to suspect that she’d head to the deep woods in the opposite direction, staying off the roads.

Nevertheless, she walked as quickly as her legs could carry her, toward Upwood, the nearest village, on the other side of the hill.

Midnight flew ahead, waiting on a low branch for Einin to catch up, then flying ahead again, playing the game for a good while before he grew bored and disappeared.

While Einin missed the company, she did not raise her voice to call the bird back.

She didn’t know who or what might hear her instead.

Menacing shadows loomed over her, the trees like hungry giants bobbing their heads to see her better.

Wild creatures called to each other in the night with sharp, frightful sounds.

A hooting owl overhead made Einin just about jump out of her skin.

An owl hooting at dawn predicted doom, the old women of the village always said. Einin shivered. The dark woods before her scared her nearly as much as the men behind her.

The bears will be waking. The wolves never cease hunting. And the giant wild boars…

Einin drew her lungs full of cold air and pushed the beasts out of her mind. She had to, or she might not be able to put one foot in front of the other.

She kept her punishing pace until daybreak. She stopped only to wipe the sweat from her brow, then kept going until the sun reached its zenith in the sky. She was tired enough to collapse on the nearest log, but a creek called from ahead.

“Caw.” The raven settled onto a low branch that hung over the water.

While he preened, Einin drank. Then she rested on a flat rock, eating most of the food she had brought.

A boiled egg, a small chunk of cheese, and the heel of last week’s bread loaf was her lunch.

She’d never baked that round of sourdough on the sideboard the eve before.

She’d been too busy worrying about the priest.

“They’re far behind me now . ” She tossed the bird a few bits of crust. “Upwood isn’t that far. Just over the hill. I’ll be there before nightfall.”

She’d bolted from her hut in the middle of the night, running for the shelter of the forest, thinking that anything was safer than the village.

Her only thought had been to grab what food was at hand and escape the coming torches.

Upwood had seemed the best choice for a haven.

She could hire herself out as a servant to one of the more well-to-do villagers.

Except… Her mind fully awake now, Einin realized the impossibility of her plan. Upwood was on the traveling priest’s circuit. So were all the other villages she knew.

She swore between her teeth. “Dratted dragon droppings.”

“Caw.” The raven tilted his head, as if asking “What’s next?”

Einin looked at the forest, at familiar rocks and trees. She’d often walked the woods with her father and their goats. This was where she’d always felt the happiest, the freest—jumping around with the dogs, chasing them, then letting them chase her.

Now and then, a goat would disappear, and the whole family would search for her. Einin never looked too hard. She liked thinking about those goats out there, living free, running wild through the endless forest, visiting distant lakes and ruins, seeing the world as she would never see it.

Back in those days… Other than keeping the cottage in order, her job had been milking the nanny goats.

Her brothers helped with other tasks like butchering and selling the meat.

Her father made kidskin gloves that a merchant carried to faraway castles.

Her oldest brother, Seb, made wineskins that never went farther than the nearest village markets.

Her youngest brother, Hamm, was a great maker of cheese.

He said their mother used to make the fattest cheese rounds in the village, along with the best goat milk soap, but Einin couldn’t remember.

She’d tried to make soap, but she didn’t know the recipe, and her soaps never hardened, no matter what she did.

Her favorite part of being a goatherd’s daughter had been playing with the kids.

Her father used to laugh and say Einin was like a goat kid herself, and at times, Einin wished she were a runaway goat. Wild and free.

“Now I’ve done it,” she told the raven as she lay back on her flat rock. Ran off into the woods. Yet, instead of excitement, fear filled her veins.

The creek sang behind her, the birds chirped in the trees, the forest full of life. She knew where she was, but she was more lost than she had ever been. With a painful certainty, she knew that she could never go back home again. “I’ll never again see my father’s hut.”

She could never return to Downwood. And neither could she go to Upwood.

“Caw.”

“Can’t live in Morganton either.”

Aunt Rose did not, in truth, have a fever, nor would Einin know if her aunt did.

It had been a year since a traveling tinker last brought word from Morganton.

While Einin didn’t doubt that a helping hand would be welcome in the modest house of her mother’s sister, another mouth to feed would be a burden.

“We shall survive in the woods.” She pushed to her feet, marshaling all her confidence.

“Caw.”

Snow still lingered in the deep shadows in the trees. The nights were freezing. Few plants grew, the trees barely budding. And the wild birds had not laid eggs yet. But other than that…

“I will start with building a lean-to.” Einin marched forward to gather sticks.

She worked herself breathless, but when she had her pile, she realized she had no strings to tie the sticks together. Here and there, she could see clumps of long grasses, but in the sunny spots, their leaves were too dry and brittle, while in the deep shade, wet and rotten.

“A fire, then.” She searched her bundle, but she couldn’t find her flint. Either she’d forgotten to pack it, or else she dropped it as she’d hurried through the night forest.

She had no knife to throw, no bit of wire to build a snare.

She blinked hard, her eyes burning as she faced the truth. This past winter, the whole village, everyone pulling together, had barely survived the punishing cold and hunger. Attempting to eke out a living in the woods would mean nothing but slow starvation. If Einin didn’t freeze first.

She looked at the raven, who was hopping in a circle around her as if playing a child’s game.

“My only choices are,” she counted them out on her fingers for the bird’s benefit, “either the agonizing death of being burned at the stake in the village, or the slow death of starvation in the woods, or…” She swallowed. “A swift death delivered by sharp dragon teeth.”

“Caw.”

“I think a swift death would be best.”

She returned to the flat stone by the creek and slumped onto it. She needed just another moment to gather her courage. She heaved a deep sigh, then lay back and stared at the sky. Midnight kicked off and rose to the air, flying circles above her.

The sun shone warmly on Einin’s face. She closed her eyes.

She thought of the village, and she thought of the dragon, but soon those thoughts drifted from her.

She had not slept nearly enough the night before.

Anxiety had kept her awake—a good thing.

At least, she’d heard the men coming. As she lay in the sun by the water, sleep pulled her under. She let it.

Dusk was falling by the time she woke, shivering.

At first, she didn’t see Midnight anywhere, but the raven came quickly enough once Einin opened the bundle that held her meager leftovers.

She shared her remaining boiled egg and the wrinkled old apple that was the last of the previous year’s harvest. She drank again from the creek and washed her face.

“No sense in delaying any further.”

“Caw.”