Dragon's Bait (2 page)

It was only when the villagers were totally confused that he finally told her she could speak.

"I'm innocent," she started, "I—"

"Only the Blessed Virgin is innocent," Inquisitor Atherton bellowed. "Born into this world without blemish on her soul. How dare you compare yourself to the Mother of Our Lord?"

She heard her father groan. "But," she stammered, "but..."

"Do we burn her at the stake now?" Etta asked, unable to mask her enthusiasm. "Or do we throw her into the water first?" Water was sure proof. If the accused floated, that meant she was a witch and she was taken out and burned. If she sank and drowned, that meant she hadn't been guilty after all, and the village elder would apologize to any surviving members of the family.

Gower gave his daughter a dirty look. The last thing he needed at this point was a chance for Alys's name to be cleared.

But in any case Inquisitor Atherton was shaking his head. "We can solve two problems
at once. A dragon has been terrorizing Griswold and the other villages on the north side of the mountain. It is a
small
dragon, as dragons go, contenting itself so far mostly with sheep and the occasional dog. Perhaps a
small
token of our respect will keep it from bothering the villagers themselves."

"Dragon?" Alys breathed. Her knees almost gave out under her. /
will not
, she commanded herself,
I will not give them the satisfaction
.

"Only a small one," Inquisitor Atherton repeated. With a smile.

In the end it was Alys's father whose knees buckled. Without uttering a sound, he clutched at his heart, then dropped to the floor and lay completely still. Nobody moved: perhaps because they were so surprised, but then again perhaps because he was father to a convicted witch.

Alys tore away from the two farm lads who had assigned themselves to guard her. Her hands were still bound behind her back, but escape was not what she had on her mind. "Father," she cried, throwing herself to the floor beside him. "Father!" But his chest no longer moved up and down with breath.

I will not beg for my life
, she told herself,
and I will not let them see me cry
.

"Look at her," she heard some of them murmur. "Her heart is made of ice."

And others: "It's made of stone."

And again: "She's given it to Satan."

Someone jerked up on the rope that bound her wrists, dragging her up onto her feet. She forced her face to hide the pain. Instead she concentrated on the crucifix that hung on Inquisitor Atherton's chest, all gold and gems though she had never heard that Griswold was a rich town. She thought once again of Father Joseph, who had worn a cross his own father, a casket maker, had carved from wood.

"Get a cart to transport her," Inquisitor Atherton commanded. "We'll bury the old man when we get back."

And once more he smiled at her.

I
T WAS DUSK
by the time Atherton called a halt to the parade that had followed out of Saint Toby's to the place where Alys was to meet her judgment.

It was also raining.

But despite the dark and the churned-up mud, Alys could see clear evidence of the dragon. First of all it looked like dragon country: fertile farms scattered about, a large nearby lake, a series of peaks and plateaus separated by deep valleys and crevasses and thick woodlands that would confound pursuit by those forced to go on foot rather than by wing. Alys had heard it all in ballads, and although she had never seen a dragon, had never met anyone who had personally seen a dragon, had never heard of a
dragon in these parts in her lifetime, she recognized the signs: the trampled farms closest to the foot of the mountain, the scorched trees, the deep grooves—no doubt left by dragon claws—in a rocky outcrop by the lake. The cart horses kept tossing their heads and making nervous
huff
sounds and showing the whites around their eyes, as though something that only they could see or hear or smell spooked them.

Her mind shied away from the thoughts that crowded her. She tried to regain the image of her and her father. She pictured their heads together, with sunlight streaming through the shop window as he patiently explained tin craft to her as thoroughly as if she'd been born a boy and could really be his apprentice.

I will not give them the satisfaction
, Alys repeated over and over, so afraid she could hardly think. But the repetition had kept her back straight during the journey as she'd sat in the cramped cart, which smelled of stale turnips. It had helped her to focus beyond the gawking faces and the jabbing fingers. And if her teeth and bones felt all rattled loose from the ride, surely the people who had walked, slogging
those last miles through mud, were hardly to be envied.

They dug a hole, deep to go beneath the shifting mud, then set up a rough-hewn pole, tamping down the dirt to hold it fast. Gower pulled her from the cart, using more force than was needed considering she didn't resist. They never untied her arms, but ran another rope through the bindings and then around the pole.

"Iron's surer," Gower complained.

"Fey creatures have an aversion to iron," Inquisitor Atherton said. "We don't want to frighten the dragon away." Then he stood before her and bellowed, "Do not, therefore, let sin rule your mortal body and make you obey its lusts. No more shall you offer your body to sin as a weapon of evil. Rather, offer yourself to God as one who has come back from the dead to life, and offer your body to God as a weapon for justice. Then sin will no longer have power over you."

It was bad enough they were going to kill her; she wasn't going to let him twist Scripture to fit her. She spat at him, remembering what they had said about Margaret's goat. The action
lost some of its effectiveness since he was already soaked with the rain and she couldn't even tell if she had hit him.

But Atherton could afford to be magnanimous. "Repent," he told her, "and save your immortal soul."

She stared beyond his right shoulder, to a place in her mind where dust motes played in the sunlight and her father's big but gentle hands guided hers over a piece of tin that would eventually become a cup.

Atherton was willing to be magnanimous, but he wasn't willing to get wet for nothing. He instructed them to stick some of the flaming torches into the ground so that the dragon wouldn't have any trouble finding her. Then he sketched the sign of the cross in her general direction and turned his back on her.

The villagers followed him, returning down the slope lest the dragon come and make a meal of them all. She could hear the creak of the cart and a snatch or two of excited chatter, and then the rain swallowed up the sounds as thoroughly as the shadows had swallowed the people themselves. The torches sputtered and smoked in the dampness.

I should have left them with a nice curse
, Alys thought.
Something to keep them up nights, shivering in their beds
. But Alys didn't know any curses, and anyway it was too late now.

She found a position where she could lean against the pole without any of the rough places sticking into her back.

At least she was alone, and for a while that was a comfort. But she could no longer form the picture of her father's workshop. Pieces of it kept slipping away, like shards of tin falling to the floor. And when she'd concentrate on those elusive parts, force them into being, other things would dissolve until eventually she couldn't even picture her father's face.

Then, with no one there as witness, she finally cried.

E
VENTUALLY THE RAIN
stopped. Clouds like tattered rags raced across the face of the almost-full moon. Alys was certain the rope around the pole was loose enough that she could slide down to rest her legs, but she wasn't sure she could get back up. The pole had been shaped so quickly, so roughly, that it was likely to snag the bindings, and that would be a terrible way to die:
caught in a half-crouch, her bottom all muddy from sitting on the wet ground.

How would the dragon kill her? Perhaps she would be less afraid if she figured out just what to expect.

A blast of flame?
Not likely
, she decided. In the stories, dragons frequently asked for young maidens. If they simply incinerated their victims, why worry about age or gender or lack of ... Alys's stomach tightened. Despite what Inquisitor Atherton had shouted at her about sin and lust and Satan ruling her body, she
was
a maiden. In the village of Saint Toby's, there were girls who had been born the same year as she who were already married; two of them—Nola, whose father had gone to sea and never returned, and Aldercy, who was wed to Barlow's second-youngest son—already had babies. But Alys had never had much use for the village boys, who had all seemed coarse and pushy and who never dreamed of anything beyond Saint-Toby's-by-the-Mountain and one day running their own fathers' shops. Alys had always thought ... she'd thought...

What difference did it make what she had thought? Here she was tied to a pole as dragon's
bait, and if the dragon ever got around to coming, it would kill her in some fashion that probably would not be with a blast of flame.

Which undoubtedly would have been the quickest.

In all likelihood it would eat her. The call for maidens could conceivably have something to do with the quality of taste. All she had to worry about was whether it would start to eat her right away, while she was still breathing and screaming and knowing what was going on, or kill her first, perhaps with a swift flick of those claws, which had cut through the stone by the lake, or maybe by biting off...

This wasn't helping. This was making things worse.

It would probably be fast, she tried to convince herself.
I won't cry again
. It wasn't enough that Gower and his horrid family and Atherton and all the rest couldn't see her, would never know: She wasn't going to cry again.

It
would
be fast. She'd seen the claw marks on the stone, the trees knocked out of the way of the creature's passing. It had a wingspan hundreds of feet across, and it was incredibly strong. It would be fast.

In the distance a wolf howled.

Alys shivered, a combination of the cold breeze through her rain-soaked clothes and the thought that a wolf wouldn't be fast.

The moon was no longer directly overhead. It wasn't exactly sinking below the horizon, but what if the dragon didn't come? What if she remained here for days, starving, fevered from the chill she was surely already catching? And what of wolves?

She twisted her arms and realized the rope that held her wrists was looser than she had anticipated. She tried to think back, to remember all the way to this afternoon and to who had tied her.

Perryn the wood-gatherer. Ah yes. Not that he was of a kinder disposition than the others, but he never could get anything right.

Alys folded her thumbs and little fingers in, trying to make her hands as narrow as possible. The twine rubbed painfully against her flesh as she tugged.

She yanked and nothing happened.

She pulled with steady pressure and felt the rope ease down over her right hand. Again she tugged.

This time her right hand came loose. She shook the tangle of knots off her left wrist, and that rope, still entwined with the rope that went around the pole, dropped in a heap to the mud at the foot of the pole.

Her arms felt as though they were going to fall off. The burning pinpricks of pain were so bad she almost wished they would. She flexed her fingers, her wrists, her shoulders—to get the blood moving again.

Now what?

She couldn't go back to Saint Toby's. They'd just bring her straight back here, and this time make sure she was tied securely. And even, she thought,
even
if they did take her escape as proof that she was innocent and forgave her, how could
she
ever forgive
them
, live with
them
, see
them
every day for the rest of her life knowing what they had thought, what they had caused to happen to her father, what they had wanted to do to her, what they still might do?

And she couldn't just go to a different village and try to make a new life. It wasn't like she was a boy with a trade, or even one who could be apprenticed. A very young girl child might be taken in on mercy, but she was too old by at least half.

Wrapping her sore arms around herself for warmth, Alys stooped down to ease her legs. She was no longer tied to the stake, but she had not really escaped for she had nowhere else to go.

That was when the dragon came.

H
ER FIRST INCLINATION
was to hope the dragon hadn't seen the torches and that she'd have time to run under cover of the nearby trees. It was hard to judge how high the creature was flying—above the treetops, below the almost-full moon—without knowing how big it was. And it
was
big, whatever the distance worked out to be. Its enormous wings carried it halfway across the sky with one powerful beat. The thing was close enough that she could see it had a mane, which she had never heard mentioned in any of the legends, but far enough away that she couldn't make out the individual scales.

Then she realized the dragon
hadn't
seen her, and that if she stayed still for a few moments longer, she was free. But she was soaked
to the skin and cold, and she hadn't eaten since early morning—and here it was, almost dawn of the following day—and she was an orphan with nowhere, absolutely nowhere, to go. And she remembered the wolves.

Her choices, as she saw them, were to die quick or to die slow.

She chose quick.

Standing, she flung a rock with all her might. "You stupid dragon!" she screamed. "Come and get me!"

Her muscles, cramped and strained from being tied so long, rebelled. The rock arced and plummeted to the ground far short of the dragon. But her movement, or her shout, attracted its attention.

Probably the wrong choice
, she thought, as the creature wheeled gracefully and glided back toward her. She closed her eyes and braced herself.