Night of the Highland Dragon

by Isabel Cooper

  “Anyone inside?” Judith asked.

  “No, m’lady. They’re all here.” Sure enough, Old Hamish was struggling out of his seat in the corner, with the assistance of one of his fellows. His son—Middle-Aged Hamish?—and his wife were making their way through the crowd, which parted for them.

  Judith nodded once. Now beside her, William heard her let out a quick breath. It barely qualified as a sigh, and she didn’t produce another one. Rather, she turned to the assembled villagers. “The grocer’s is aflame.” She raised her voice to be heard over the muttering, which died down quickly, but she didn’t shout.

  “Finlay, take four men and go get the pumper to the loch. I’ll need ten men to start work with buckets while they’re gone. You, you, you—” she continued, pointing to young men and one or two sturdy young women, including Claire’s friend Ellen.

  “And me,” said William, stripping off his jacket. A bit of scarring aside, his arm was as well as it ever had been, and he’d carried much heavier things than buckets in his day.

  He’d expected Judith to argue with him or at least to look surprised, but she just nodded. “Follow the others.”

  * * *

  Loch Arach had a well in the center of the main street, bordered by low stone walls and covered with a slanting blue-tiled roof. It looked much like any other well in any other rural village, and William hadn’t given it much notice before. Now it was the center of his and everyone else’s attention—that and the flames and black smoke rising from the grocer’s roof. All eleven of them kept glancing that way as they approached the well, and William would have bet that the others were asking themselves the same questions he was.

  How fast are the flames moving?

  Will we make it on time?

  Will the fire spread?

  “For a mercy,” Ellen said from a few places in front of him as they waited to fill their buckets, “there’s no wind.”

  “Aye,” said the black-haired youth standing beside her, “and those trees are all bare. The dry leaves would ha’ caught like paper, and then the whole village would be like to burn. We’ve a chance as it is.”

  “We’ve a chance,” echoed Ellen, and the pump worked steadily in the background, like a metallic heartbeat.

  Years had passed since William had pumped his own water, but the knack of it, thank God, came back quickly when he stood at the well. He filled his buckets and followed the others back toward the store. No longer in a line, they went as fast as they could without spilling the water, spurred to even greater speed as they got close enough to start coughing from the smoke.

  It was bad.

  As Young Hamish had said, the chimney had caught first, and the flames had spread quickly to the wooden shingles. By the time William reached the store, half the roof was alight and flames were coming out of the upstairs windows. The smoke formed a dense, black cloud. He had to draw close to see that ladders leaned against the house, and men at the top were throwing buckets of water onto the flames. Two people stood near the base of each ladder, handing the men buckets from William’s most recent comrades.

  It might have been helping. He couldn’t tell through the smoke.

  He neared the bottom of one ladder. “Here,” he said, holding one of his buckets out to a figure there. She turned and he saw it was Judith, with the sleeves of her dress rolled up and her skirts kilted to the knee.

  Neither of them had time for surprise or banter. She took the bucket and handed it up with one hand, using the other to support the ladder. After a second, she held out a hand for the other bucket. From above, William heard grunts of effort and splashing—but mostly the crackling roar of the flames eating away at the building.

  On his way back to the well, he wiped sweat from his forehead and realized that he hadn’t seen any on Judith’s face, though she’d been far closer to the fire than he had, and passing buckets up the chain didn’t exactly seem like easy work. She was wearing wool too, and ladies’ fashions called for several more layers than men’s.

  It was a quick moment of curiosity. Mostly, he was too busy to think.

  When William got back with his second load of buckets, Finlay and his crew had returned. With them had come the pumper: a vast iron tub mounted on wheels but carried on long wooden shafts, with a hand crank and a hose attached to it. Men were passing the hose up to the top of Judith’s ladder, and an older, stouter gentleman was turning the crank with steady speed.

  As William watched, the man at the top of the ladder sprayed a gout of water onto the chimney itself, sending smoke hissing up into the air. The flames seemed to have died down—and a cheer from the ladder confirmed that as the man turned the hose on other parts of the roof—but William knew there was still a great deal more to do.

  Back and forth he went. He lost count of how many times. The water splashed onto his legs, and the wind felt like ice against the wet patches on his trousers, even as the rest of him sweated. Waiting for the pump, he rolled up his sleeves, which helped a little bit. Now their task was endurance rather than haste. The first few buckets of water, and particularly the pumper’s spray, had stopped the fire’s rapid spread, but killing it would take a great while. The fire broke out hydra-like in one place as soon as the men had stamped it out in another.

  From time to time, William’s awareness broadened enough to take in other details. Other villagers had come down from the castle. Many—too old, too young, or generally too frail to be helpful—stood at a distance and watched. A few others acted. As William held a bucket with one hand and waited for the man on the ladder to finish with the second, he heard a woman clear her throat nearby. Turning, he saw Claire Simon holding out a cup of tea.

  “It clears your throat a bit,” she said without any trace of hesitance or infatuation. The teapot was in her other hand, and neither cup nor pot shook at all. William smiled his thanks, took the cup, and tossed the tea back in three swallows. It did help with the smoke, and the warmth sank into him, giving him new strength. He passed the cup back to Claire, who went on to the next man in line, just as her mother and some of the other village women were doing at other ladders.

  Nobody really spoke otherwise. Words slowed one down and weren’t necessary—one knew what needed doing, did it, came back, and did it again. Passing a group of the spectators, William did see one old man catch his eye and nod in grim approval of the outsider making good. He probably didn’t do that to any of the local men. They didn’t need anyone’s judgment.

  William became so used to the sound of the flames that it was odd when they began to die down, and he frowned, not comprehending what had changed and why. Then he saw the men at the pumper picking up the shafts again, and the man who’d held the hose coming down the ladder.

  “Roof’s out,” said a voice, a man who’d either seen William’s puzzled face or was commenting to a general audience. “They’ll be going ’round in force tae the windows now.”

  Indeed, the men were moving the pumper around a corner of the store, and a small crowd was going with them, carrying buckets and ladders. The roof smoldered above, a sullen black ruin. Two chunks of it had fallen in. As if a reminder that nobody was out of the woods yet, a tongue of flame licked out of the upstairs window.

  William followed as well, found the tub full when he reached the pumper, and went around to the next ladder, joining two or three others. Over to one side stood the Connohs, blanket-draped and surrounded by concerned neighbors. A gap between people showed their tearless, stunned faces.

  “They’ll rebuild,” said Judith’s voice, close at hand. “I’ll see to it. Hand over one of those, will ye no’?”

  Neither her voice nor her expression allowed for chivalrous refusal. William passed her a bucket and inwardly confessed himself glad to be shed of the extra weight. Judith took it without complaint or apparent effort. William reminded his pricked vanity that she hadn’t been carrying wat
er the whole time, but it didn’t do much good. She looked nearly as tired as he felt. She also looked relieved.

  “The danger’s past?” he asked.

  She shrugged. “Not if we stop now. But aye, there’s no chance to it anymore. ’Tis but mopping up from here on in.” Coming from her, the term struck William as odd, but his mind was too fatigued and smoke-clouded to produce a reason why. “You all made a fine job of it. I’ll say as much up at the castle later—over food.”

  “The praise is nice, but the dinner’s more alluring just now,” William said.

  Judith laughed. “Aye, I think you’d have company in that sentiment.”

  She was looking forward as they walked, focused on the ladder that was their goal. So was William, but he was closer to the building. It bought him half a second as he saw the flaming bit of wood—a scrap of furniture or windowsill that their efforts had dislodged—plummet through the cold air. It was still burning when it hit Judith’s bare arm.

  “What?” she asked, sounding more annoyed than distressed. Before William had time to move, she batted the debris away with the bare fingers of her other hand, just as she might have flicked off a troublesome insect. It landed on the ground, where William immediately poured half the contents of his bucket onto it, then trod the smoking black remnants into the dirt.

  After that he looked up, his heart going still in the aftermath of danger. At least Judith wasn’t screaming yet. “Are you all right?” he asked and looked immediately toward her arm.

  The skin there was smudged with ash. He couldn’t tell anything for sure. But he would have expected blistering or at least redness. As far as William could see, Judith’s arm looked as it always had: slim, muscular, slightly darker than fashionable—and completely uninjured, as were all of her fingers.

  “Oh.” She followed his gaze and gasped. It sounded overdone to William, and the relieved smile she gave him looked shifty. “I must have brushed it off before it could burn me. Thank God for absentmindedness, aye? And reflexes.”

  “Yes, quite,” said William.

  He did give thanks, despite himself. He thanked God for whatever had left Judith whole and unhurt instead of writhing with charred flesh. He just didn’t know what that had been.

  Twenty

  It happened at sunset.

  Sunset had never been Judith’s favorite time of day. Even at its prettiest, the sight of the sinking sun still made her feel twitchy. It was too red, too angry, at once too much like blood and too much of a reminder that, whatever else the sun might be, it was also fire greater than even she or any of her family could control or withstand. Even with the sun so far away, she couldn’t be entirely easy with that knowledge. It was doubly true now that she’d known enough of war and magic to be sure that the future would produce at least one damned fool who’d try to bring that power to earth.

  Her mother, sorceress that she was, had told Judith once that sunset was one of the between times, neither quite one thing nor another. There was great power in those times and places, Riona had said. Doors to other worlds opened more easily. That hadn’t helped Judith’s discomfort.

  Dawn was another one of those times, but she’d mostly seen dawn on early watches or after a night of revelry when weariness or drunkenness, or both, had distracted her. Now she simply slept through it—being the lady of the castle had its privileges—and at sunset she distracted herself with tasks or books.

  The day after the fire, sunset found her on the road, walking back from the village where she’d been calling on the Connohs in their new lodgings. The store was going to take a while to rebuild and even longer to be habitable, rather than just a place to store and sell groceries. Meanwhile, the family was living with Young Hamish’s married sister, and the accommodations didn’t look too cramped. They’d resisted all of her hints about finding a place for them in the castle. After a while, Judith had admitted defeat.

  This sunset was of the sullen red-and-gray winter variety. Brittle grass and browning heather brushed the sides of her skirt. Hard dirt crunched beneath her shoes. Cold wind knifed through her coat.

  Eyes watched her.

  The feeling came from nowhere, and she could see nobody around, only barren fields to each side and behind, and the castle and forest ahead of her. Yet she was completely certain of the scrutiny.

  She knew words in Latin that let her see hidden things: spirits, auras, and lines of magical force. As their mother had done, Stephen called it “invoking the Wind that Parts the Veil.” Colin talked enthusiastically these days about energy and magnetism. Judith knew and cared only that it worked. She stopped in her tracks, a tall, dark woman standing alone in the midst of late-autumn desolation, and said the words aloud.

  The world clouded. Grass, heather, trees, and houses all became misty and insubstantial. As far as Judith could observe, her own aura was as it always was: bright green, shot through with streaks of glimmering silver. She didn’t spend long looking at that this time. Other things caught her attention.

  Literally, “things” was the first word that came to mind. Little, six-armed rat-things—just looking at them hurt Judith’s eyes. Six of them lurked around her in a rough semicircle, any one of them staying perhaps ten feet behind her. If she hadn’t been looking, she might have missed them, even with magical sight. She hadn’t—and her stomach clenched at the thought that these miniature horrors could have been following her for a good month now. If they had been, they’d kept more distance. Now they’d grown bold enough and perhaps strong enough to attract her attention.

  The longer she looked, the more nauseated she grew. The rat-things had nasty-looking teeth and sharp claws at the end of each arm—now the wounds on Finlay’s dead sheep made sense—but they weren’t a physical danger. They were clearly spies or scavengers, not killers. They weren’t harmless, though. By their very presence, they caused damage, not directly to people or things but to the fabric of the world nearby. There were no exact words for what they did, but rough synonyms came to Judith one after the other.

  Fray.

  Tear.

  Twist.

  Corrupt.

  Rot.

  She remembered Shaw Senior telling her that he’d checked his ladder before starting work. She remembered Agnes talking about Murray’s horse suddenly going vicious—and she wondered just how the fire had started at the Connohs’ store. Things went wrong with these creatures in the world, and although Shaw’s injury had happened while she’d been in the castle and therefore in close proximity, the others had been farther and farther away. The effect was spreading.

  She turned and started back toward the castle, moving at her same unhurried but purposeful speed while her mind whirled. Odds argued against the rat-things being natural, which meant they’d been summoned for a purpose. That purpose might include spying. Tactically, it might be best to let them keep watch and pretend she had no idea they existed—but she couldn’t let them stay in the world, not with the damage they were doing.

  How to get rid of them? Assuming their master wasn’t already seeing through their eyes—Mother had said it was damnably hard to ride along with a demon, and that people who did usually couldn’t even fake sanity for long—she didn’t want to risk even one getting away to bear tales.

  The wind picked up again. She barely felt it. The demons were tagging along behind her, maintaining a steady distance. Judith glanced back briefly to confirm this, then looked quickly forward again. Watching the creatures move was even worse than looking at them in the first place.

  Could she take all six of them? In a fight, yes, almost definitely. But if one ran, she might not have the reflexes to catch it. Small things were fast and slippery. She’d learned that hunting rats on her first ship and had spent twenty years with a scar on one arm to remind her. She had the instincts of a soldier, not a predator.

  Not in human shape, at least.

 
When a narrower path branched off from the main road to the castle, Judith took it and headed toward the forest. At this distance, she could make out individual trees rather than a single dark mass. The still-green bulk of pine and fir surrounded the leafless branches of the other trees. Protective, she thought, but perhaps she was just looking for protection.

  She was also looking for concealment. The trees would function admirably in that regard. That much was not subjective.

  Still walking without haste, Judith crossed the first line of trees and immediately went off the path, ducking between trunks and dodging undergrowth. She did look back once in a while, making sure that the rat-things were still following her, and she took an easier route than she might have otherwise. Although she hadn’t been in the forest in a few weeks, she knew almost every inch of it from the ground and the air alike. She couldn’t count on the rat-things being good at navigation.

  They did keep up though, and without any apparent effort or distress on their part—although she didn’t know what either would look like on such creatures. Whether natural or as abnormal as they were, their senses were good, as were their speed and mobility. Abstractly, Judith found that alarming, but for her purposes just then, it was the best thing she could have hoped for.

  Gradually, the trees around her became larger and older, and the ground beneath them clearer. With the thick leaves overhead cutting off their sun, the plants in the undergrowth had died out. The soil they left was thick, dark, and moist. It had rained yesterday, too late for the Connohs’ store but at least in time to help Judith.

  This was the most ancient part of the forest. Her ancestors had gone to the nearer portions for wood throughout the generations, and villagers had even hunted in there when there was no danger of disturbing the MacAlasdairs in their other forms, but this part had never known a woodsman’s ax, and she doubted if anyone on two legs had ever hunted there.