Page 6 of Dragon Lord
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, lifewasslowly 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.
The priest hadn’t been able to vanquish the great devil with his many prayers.Einin’s return with the talon implied that she might be more powerful than he was, and she a woman!Thatwas why he disapproved of her so much.
“I returned but by God’s grace,” she hurried to say, keeping her voice meek, knowing as soon as she said the words that they wouldn’t help.The priest would hate the idea that some inconsequential maiden had been chosen as God’s instrument and not him.
He proved her right the very next second.
“You boast of your unwomanly and ungodly ways,” he accused her.“Women are weak and unable to resist sin.You are too proud to subject yourself to the godly correction that is men’s duty to provide.You refuse young Wilm’s offer of marriage.”
Wilm was the butcher’s son, a beefy man two years older than Einin.He beat the family dogs, the family livestock, and his sisters, as his father beat Agna, Wilm’s mother.Einin had no wish for Wilm’s godly correction.
She clasped her hands in front of her and dipped her head lower, hoping one of the matrons on the cobbler’s front steps might speak up for her.Minde, the cobbler’s wife, cradled her youngest daughter to her side.She, and her friends, avoided Einin’s eyes.
They have their reasons.
Einin cast no blame.
The war had left few able-bodied men.When Einin had gone to the cave as sacrifice, it meant one fewer maiden to compete with these matrons’ daughters for a husband.
Her hopes had been foolish.Of course none of the women dared speak up before the priest.They saw the writing on the wall as Einin herself was beginning to see.The priest was working up to an accusation of witchery.Anyone who took Einin’s side might get caught up in the net the man was weaving.
As the “Father” went on berating her for her unwomanly clothes and other disobediences, a few of the village men ambled over to see the source of the disturbance.Einin knew them all, as they all knew her, had known her from the moment of her birth.Yet none of the men spoke up for her either.None had been brave enough to confront the dragon, and they felt shamed that Einin had done so and lived.Her very presence in the village was a daily reminder of their own cowardice.
Men were superior by the will of God, the priest always preached.By God’s will did husbands rule their wives; by God’s will did their wives owe them full obedience.Men were, by far, stronger and braver than women.And yet it’d been Einin who had returned with a talon.Unnatural.
She blinked hard as she understood at last why her victory had been celebrated upon her return but the victor had not.She’d volunteered as the sacrificial virgin, and the only thing anyone had expected of her was to die.Instead, she had shown up the men.So talon or no, she would not be forgiven.
Her instincts prickled—an indistinct premonition of danger—the same feeling as when in the woods she found herself watched by a wolf from the ridge.
The priest narrowed his beady brown eyes.“I cannot fathom why the evil beast let you leave.”
“Perhaps it is not entirely evil?”She dared offer an opinion, immediately regretting it.
“That is precisely what an evil beast would want you to think.”
