Rhiana

Instead, Rhiana explained, should the dragons again come, Lydia and Odette must remain in the castle for their safety. Should they be on the streets, they must enter the first house possible. They mustn’t risk trying to run home, for the dragons were swift and seeming hungry for the first human close enough to snatch.

Lydia nodded and agreed, her focus averted by rolling the fine flour and sugar pastry out on the cool stone table. An excuse she must return to her baking was taken with an accepting nod from Rhiana. Her mother did never face adversity, but instead, looked away. If she could not see it, then it could not harm her.

They two were so different. Where had she gotten her mind to chase dragons? Certainly not from Lydia.

“You are off then?” Lydia wondered.

“Yes.” For a few moments Rhiana stood there, sensing the tension, the unspoken words. Of late Lydia had been even more distant, almost as if she wished that by not looking at Rhiana she could make her disappear. “Good day to you, mother.”

The fire in the armory was low; Paul never doused it unless he was to be away from the shop for more than a day. The curved walls of stone were lined with half-finished swords, plates of armor for every portion of the body, and spurs twisted in ruin and in need of repair. Paul did all the metalwork for the village’s knights. A quality product—once requested by King Charles VII himself—kept him busy. Though he was not so busy as an armourer who furnished an active garrison, which suited Paul just fine.

Paul wasn’t in the shop. Rhiana recalled his offer to go to the castle and speak to the baron with a few others on the Hoard Council. She must assume he would return without the news she so wished for. Guiscard would not put forth a single knight to aid her. She knew it as she breathed the air.

Sitting before the worktable, Rhiana propped a foot on the highest rung of the stool. The heat of the fire warmed her ankle.

Most unladylike! she could imagine Odette admonishing. Your skirt rides to your knee!

With a smile, Rhiana straightened and put down her foot. She assumed a vain pose, hand to her hip and lips pursed. That was how Odette and Lady Anne did it. For some reason, the feminine always felt wrong on Rhiana. But just because it felt wrong did not mean she could not strive for it.

For all purposes, she was well beyond the marrying age. Yet, many in St. Rénan married in their later twenties. Rhiana figured this was because the pickings were so slim. She had no intention living life alone and unhappy. Sure, there was room in her family’s home, should she wish to remain with mother and Paul. But she did not wish it. Independence tempted.

You have independence. Would you give it up for a man?

“Never. The man I marry must accept me as a partner, not chattel.” It wasn’t very likely she would find such in this village.

Sighing, she turned to prop an elbow on the table and splayed out a scatter of mail rings. She traced a fingertip around a close-to-perfect circle of wire. She fashioned the rings herself, hammering and drawing to first form the wire. Wrap that length about a steel dowel and cut the rings. A hole punched in one end of the delicate ring was then riveted to the opposite end, but not until actually weaving the mail. Tedious, but fulfilling work.

Years ago, Paul had decided that if Rhiana were to linger about the armory so often then she may very well learn the trade. Much as she’d wanted to learn the real work, pounding out metal over a hot flame, Paul’s generosity had not allowed him comfort in teaching her that dangerous task. A man’s labor, he’d say, ’tis sweaty and hard on the muscles. No work for a female, no matter her mettle. So small, less strenuous mail-work it was. But no less satisfying to see the finished product.

Drawing one ring out from a scatter of hundreds of rings, Rhiana tapped it impatiently. There was at least one other dragon out there. It had snatched up a man from the bailey this afternoon. One rampant should prove little trouble to take down, whether or not any of Guiscard’s knights came to aid her.

Yet, who was she to endanger the village should she fail?

And why was Guiscard so adamant she not attempt the task?

“Why am I thinking failure?” she asked herself.

Would it not be better to at least try, than to not try at all? To wait for a slayer—a man—could prove too long.

Indeed. She was not the person to toe the line, then step back and wait for another to push out ahead of her. A dragon must be slain!

Lifting her head and clasping her hands about her shoulders, Rhiana closed her eyes. Summoning deep within those tendrils of the unknown that ever challenged her, she found the well of ambition, of honor and valiance that brewed.

Ambition she had been born with. It had kept her skirt hems dirty and her eyes focused to adventure. Honor she had witnessed in the skill and grace of Amandine Fleche, and in Paul Tassot’s heart.

Valiance is something she would ever strive for. To stand boldly in the face of danger, no matter the consequences.

Rhiana murmured the phrase Amandine had taught her two summers earlier, “Memento mori.”

’Twas Latin, and meant: Remember that you must die.

It wasn’t so much a morbid statement as a reminder that all life eventually comes to an end. Live it, before it is stolen from you. Seize it! “Meet all challenges,” Amandine had said to her. “For in the end, you will then look back and know you did truly live before death.”

Rhiana liked the phrase and thought of it as her motto. In fact, Paul had engraved it into the twisting dragon design that graced the stock of her crossbow. It served a reminder to her—and an epitaph to those dragons that fell courtesy of her crossbow bolt.

Hooking her foot upon the high stool rung and nodding to herself, Rhiana’s smile grew.

“No dragon is invulnerable. They all have a kill spot.”

And where there was a way, Rhiana was determined to find it.

A spring mist fell upon the bailey, beating down the loose dust stirred up by hooves and feet, and wetting the limestone castle walls to a dark sludge color. Narcisse waited inside the main doorway beneath the grand arches that bore the Guiscard family crest in gold medallions fixed to the stone. Champrey had sent a squire to retrieve his rain duster. One thing he could not abide was rainy weather. It made him sniffle and gave him the shivers.

The duster rushed to his side, the squire bowed and then helped slide it up Narcisse’s arms and flipped the heavy velvet hood upon his head. The generous hood completely shielded Narcisse’s face. He favored the foreboding menace look. Anne said it granted him power. But he already had power.

“Let’s be to it, then.”

He strode outside, followed by his entourage. At least six knights at all times to protect him from any who thought to protest their lord and master. Rarely were they called to arms, but the security could not be overlooked.

Narcisse had heard the whispers: the son was nowhere near so valiant as the father. Never make a benevolent lord.

And why should he? Everyone had exactly as they wished. There was no need for him to step beyond and show great mercies or benevolence. They had it all!

Oh, what a miserable life to be so satisfied. One must desire. One must…crave. And Narcisse did crave, which set him apart from all others.

“The beast was dragged from the bailey,” Champrey explained. He winced at the increasing rain and hunched his shoulders where water ran in rivulets over his brushed leather gambeson. “Took eight destriers to do the task!”

A massive beast lay at the bottom of the castle steps. Narcisse skipped down them. “Mon Dieu! What has been done?”

Ignoring his fallen hood, he bent over the carcass of scale, horn and talon. That someone had felled so magnificent a beast. Narcisse understood the threat to innocent lives, but no one could know what a boon the dragon served him.

“My…life,” he murmured. “What have they done?”

Oh, but there! There, between the eyes, yet leaked thick, dark blood from a horizontal cut in the transverse of the cross, a mark put there by God himself.

’Twas the first time he’d been so close to a dragon. And yet, he embraced the idea every evening. To look it over and marvel, yes, marvel, must be done. Indeed, they were deadly; a bane to a man’s well-being, why, his very mortality.

Narcisse scrambled over the meaty hind legs—thick as a log hewn for housing. Groping his way around the outstretched wing, he swung down to kneel before the belly. A small dragon, about six horses combined, yet to stretch out the tail would surely add twice the length. The belly scales were pale, like burnished gold, and they glittered even under the assault of the rain.

Pressing his palm to the slick scales, Narcisse slid his hand along them, moving toward the hind quarters of the beast, as the scales overlapped, so as not to cut his flesh on the sharpened edges. Minute warmth yet remained; he could feel it.

About him, his men strode around the massive beast, commenting on its lack of fierceness now it was dead.

“Not so ferocious now, is she?”

“Look here at the tail,” Gerard Coupe-Gorge said. “I could make myself an ax with this odd dagged scale. That would bash nicely through enemy skull.”

Why the man remained in St. Rénan, when he lusted so mightily for blood, was beyond Narcisse’s reckoning. But he would endeavor to keep Gerard in his lists, and not make an enemy of him.