Excerpt

The crowd surrounded her loosely and walked toward the edge of the village, where a newly-built house waited, conspicuous with its raw unweathered wood and the younger, greener grass on its roof. A shallow pit, long and wide like the base of another house which had not been built, lay to one side. Two men were leading a brown horse across the field toward them.

An old man came toward her, bent with years and work, and she saw by his close-cropped hair and the rounded iron collar about his neck that he was a thrall, kept for light work or charity in his old age. He nodded toward her several times and worked his mouth around a language rusty with disuse. "Wife," he said in her own tongue, his voice high with age. "Wife. Bride. You are the bride."

She remembered the words of the helmeted man, the man with the dragon's voice, accepting her father's offer of her. Her father had argued he had promised her a husband, and the helmeted man had agreed to fulfill his promise despite Tikhomir's cowardly bargain. Euthalia had not believed him then nor at any time during the journey. But had he spoken the truth? Was she to be properly wed, instead of given as a slave?

"A bride to whom?" she asked the old man. "Where is my husband?"

"Bride," he repeated, obviously pleased that he remembered the word. "To the dragon."

She stared at him, certain she had not heard him correctly. Or perhaps he had not remembered the word, as it was obviously long years since he had spoken his native tongue. "No, who is my husband? The man with the helmet, where is he?"

He nodded. "The dragon," he repeated. "You are the bride. A sacrifice bride, to the dragon."

The dead animals. Euthalia's breath stopped in her throat. A sacrifice bride. She bent and vomited onto the grass.

The old man took her shoulder, leaning upon her as much as steadying her. "No, no," he said, "you go in. Sacrifice, big honor. He comes tonight. Not man. Dragon's bride."

Euthalia pushed at him, her heart racing. "No, stop," she breathed. "Not me. Not that. I will be a slave, but don't do that."

The villagers closed about her, speaking rapidly in excited tones, and they pressed her toward the house. She saw several of them carried torches, and she realized they would burn her within the new wooden house. "No!" she screamed. "No!"

But she could not escape them, for in each direction she turned she was pushed back, and as she grabbed at the edges of the door to hold herself back they pressed together against her, still cheerily arguing in words she could not understand, and she shouted protest as she fell through the doorway. The wooden door, with the clever wooden latch she had admired, closed solidly behind her.

There were no windows. Some light crept through the high parts of the roof, where the woven wattle abutted the thatching, but the interior was only dimly visible. She could make out a table, and two chairs, and a long chest, and two shelves upon the wall lined with objects she could not quite see. Along one wall was a raised sleeping surface, with painted sliding panels to enclose it for warmth in the winter. Now the door stood open, and she could see a pile of sheepskins.

It was a very lifelike grave, if it were a grave. But she had heard that the great men of the North were sent to death with all the possessions they might need in the next life, and so the completeness only frightened her further.

The torches were not set to the house. Instead she heard singing, and then the crackling of fire, but at a safe distance. They were roasting the horse, she decided, feasting upon her death.

Or maybe, if they had not killed her yet, maybe she was not to die. Maybe she really was a bride, and she had been put here to await her new husband, a man so dangerous and so respected in battle that he was called the Dragon, and the old slave had not had the words to explain a sobriquet.

She tried the door, hoping they had gone far enough and were distracted enough, but it was barred from without. She was trapped within the little house, helpless. She could only wait.

***

The dragon came at night.

Euthalia had sat long in the dark, her knees hugged close to her chest, wrapped in the bearskin the helmeted man had given her on the boat. She sat on the trunk pushed against the wall; she could not bear to sit upon the bed. Once in a while she looked at it and then looked away.

Was the dragon a figurative name for a dreadful man, a warrior feared above all others? Or was it a literal monster she awaited? Would she be raped or devoured? It was hard, not speaking a language. She could not even know what she should fear.

Birna had not seemed to worry for her, and she had even seemed happy as she prepared Euthalia for her bridal day. But that did not mean safety; Euthalia had seen people happily sacrifice animals, even precious ones, without grief or reservation. How much more should a dragon's prize be offered willingly?

And then there was a sound outside, a subtle sound which could have meant nothing on its own, but Euthalia knew, she knew, that he had come and now stood outside the door.

Warrior or beast? Man or monster?

She was seized with the sudden terror that she would scream when the door opened, and if it were a monster a scream would incite it, and if it were a man a scream would infuriate him, and so she pressed a handful of the fox-edged cape into her mouth as the wooden latch lifted.

The door swung open.

Euthalia made a tiny whimpering sound into the cape and squeezed her eyes shut. Instantly she could not stand her helplessness and opened her eyes again. But it did her no more good to look than to not—the moonless night offered no aid to her eyes, and as the door swung shut she could only get a sense of a bulk before it. He was tall and broad, if a man.

She could hear breathing. It was not her own; she was holding her breath, she realized. She swallowed and forced herself to speak. Her voice was unsteady. "Welcome, husband. I am the dragon's bride." If a man, would he even understand her?

"What are you called?"

Relief ran through her like water at hearing words so plainly spoken. For a moment she could hardly answer. "My name is Euthalia."

"Euthalia." He tested the foreign word, trying it, tasting it. After a moment, he seemed to approve it. "Euthalia. My bride."

She was so grateful to find he was human that she thought suddenly she might be able to bear what would come next. They said it was not unpleasant, if not done by force, and could even be agreeable, if the man took care to please his woman as well. She giggled a little with nervous confusion and embarrassment at her own inconsistency.

"Why do you laugh?" came the voice. It was a deep voice, and powerful, as if even the helmeted man had been only a child and had grown at last to full manhood.

She shook her head, embarrassed further. She had the uncomfortable impression that he could see her despite the darkness. "I do not laugh at you, of course, I only—I was so afraid, and now I am so relieved you are human."

There was a shifting in the darkness, and the pressure of the air about her changed as he leaned closer, lowering his head near hers. "Why do you think I am human?"

Euthalia froze, unable to speak, unable to move, unable to think of anything but the powerful voice and all her terrors of the dragon. Arms—or claws, or something—grasped her about the bearskin, cocooning her like a child, and then there was a brilliant prismatic burst of light, just for an instant, and she screamed without hesitation or shame.