Page 67 of Dragons of the Great Wyves: Fire and Song
The answer was yes, but I did not want to say it. I had seen a few goats in the village, but after a long flight, Yuánchi could have downed them all as a soup course. We could not strip these people of their livestock.
Mr. MacLeod, firebrand or not, had been listening to his daughter with a fond smile. He gave a wry snort. “Does yer dragon like sheep?” He pitched that to carry across the tables, and laughs rose.
In truth, sheep were not Yuánchi’s favorite—the wool caught in his teeth—but he would eat them. “He does. But you have been generous already. We cannot eat your flock.”
Mr. MacLeod rubbed his hands together with glee. “Och, but we’re arse deep in sheep! The more he eats, the merrier.” There were scattered “Ayes” again, but Mistress MacLeod frowned.
“Why are ye come here?” she asked.
The meal had been quiet, but now there was true silence. Every breath seemed to stop.
“We seek something from the past,” Darcy answered, choosing his words carefully.
The expectant quiet soured into shuffling feet and disappointed expressions.
“Thepast?” Mr. MacLeod blurted in disbelief. “What about the present? Yer astride a bleedin’ dragon!”
“Hush,” his wyfe scolded. “What from the past?”
Darcy hesitated, looking at me for guidance.
“They’re seeking the flute,” Mr. MacLeod broke in flatly. “Said so by the castle. It’s the legends come true!Banrigh nan Dràgonheard our call. She’ll bring justice.” Boots pounded throughout the room.
Mistress MacLeod rose, and the noise stopped. “Justice is cool headed. We’ve a right to anger, but a fist swung by anger is revenge, not justice.” She flapped her hand at the audience. “Look at ye gawking. Naught more’ll happen today. Time’s wasting. Get on with ye.”
The crowd filed out with curious glances and whispers, leaving the MacLeods with us.
Mistress MacLeod sank to the bench and rubbed her temples. Her thinned face was shadowed by the morning sun pouring through the open door. “Never seen a dragon afore today, and the sun is bare risen, but I’d be hard pressed to say if that creature you ride is scarlet or black.”
“He is the scarlet dragon, Yuánchi,” I said. “He is… ill.”
“Scarlet. But ye carry the dagger, lass.”
“I am the wyfe of war,” I admitted.
Mr. MacLeod slapped his palm triumphantly on the table.
His wyfe waited until the clap had faded. “Hard to imagine a wyfe of war satisfied by stories, but stories is all we have of the flute.”
“We would have your stories, if you will share them,” Darcy said.
“The story is told by the stones. I’ll hae to think on it.”
The MacLeods insistedon hosting us as their guests, scoffing good-naturedly when Darcy offered to pay for lodging. There was no space for Yuánchi to land in the village, so Mr. MacLeod hiked up Helmsdale hill with us to retrieve the saddlebags.
At the top, he stared slack-jawed at Yuánchi’s bulk. “Thesizeo’ him.” He shook his head as if rattling his brains, then barked a laugh. “Feeding him’s nae problem. There’s big flocks inland a few miles.” With a grin, he pointed. I imagined the distant sheep, and Yuánchi was in pursuit the next moment. We braced against the hammering gusts as he powered off the hill’s edge, led by the pair of firedrakes and following the river upstream.
Back in the village, the MacLeods’ bound lindworm waited by their threshold. I rested my palm on his scaly head in greeting, and he returned a muscular,steaming yawn. The home itself was a long, narrow rectangle, the rooms placed one after another. There was a parents’ bedroom with an alcove for a baby, then a combined kitchen and eating room heated by an open and smoky peat fire, then another tiny bedroom used by their daughter. She cheerfully presented it to us, rescuing her cloth doll off the pillow before moving to her parents’ room. That left us a single, narrow bed buried in homespun wool throws and a strip of empty wooden floor about a pace wide. There was a window the size of a book with blurry, cheap glass polished scrupulously clean.
Mistress MacLeod bid us to settle in, adding, “Rest ye after yer travel. It’ll be a long day tomorrow,” before departing.
That left Darcy and me alone. Darcy’s posture was over-exact, a tall man in a small room. My own hands clasped awkwardly. Since the lake, we had barely touched each other. When we first met in that forest clearing, dodging his blade had been a delightful game, a contest that left me amused and excited. That memory felt foreign now, but the thrill heated my thoughts, like the private glee I had felt sparring words with proud Mr. Darcy when he first arrived in Hertfordshire. I had an unpleasant suspicion that some poorly repressed part of me thought assaulting men, verbally or otherwise, was flirtation.
But contests between us were in the past. There was no person in my life I trusted more, no one with whom I had shared more intimacy, in mind or in body.
“I will leave you to rest,” he said abruptly, bowing formally.
I blinked. How long had I stared at him silently? “Do not go. It is morning. I am not tired.”
