Mated to the Dragon

Chapter 17

A few centuries ago

She breathed the night, unseen as the mist began to curl about the tops of the trees, the air beneath cooling slowly as the sun set. From deep within the earth, she could feel the powers of Night and of Moon and of Man stirring. And she sighed in her slumber, rolling gently like an undulating wave. Would she be called? Would she rise tonight? At last? The night came onwards, and she continued to dream...

Cassandra licked her fingers and dipped them into the honeyed mead in the glass pitcher again, barely avoiding being swatted at by her mother's chubby hand.

"Leave that till later, child!" said the surly woman.

Cassie smiled and dashed away, running down the halls of the stately Roman mansion. She felt free tonight, suddenly free and wild.

Tonight was to be her first Moon ceremony. She'd only previously viewed them from the base of her family's henge hill, a girl watching in white robes with the other children. But now, this year, she was old enough. This would be her first true ceremony since she had become a woman and suffered the rites of passage. Her moonflow had come, and she had been told by her mother that she could wear make up if she wished, and the skirts that showed her bare sandaled feet. She could put the paint of the traveling merchants on her lips and cheeks, mark her eyes boldly with finely tipped charcoal pencils, and use blue tint on her forehead to outline the tattoo of a crescent moon done there in now-fading wode.

Cassandra had become a woman, a valued member of the secret tribe of men and women worshipping the gods of the old times. And tonight, they would all gather on the henge hill, children at the base, mature members at the top, and bring down the power of the Moon to join with the power of the Earth in a ceremony Cassandra's family had been keeping alive for centuries, for as long as family history could remember.

The setting sun was a sign of relief to him. He could feel his mount's shaking legs growing more weary with each step. But on the wind there came the scent of cooking meat. The road they were traveling on would surely bring them to an inn or tavern or some farmstead.

He hoped they would be generous. Otherwise, he'd have to kill them.

He hadn't eaten in two days. His warhorse needed watering and rest. And his own wounds, covered now with a thick scabbing of dried blood, needed washing.

The bulky form of the warrior, crouched over the heavy horse's neck, leaned forward slightly. With his un-gloved hand, he patted the side of the beast's great, heaving neck, comfortingly.

"There, now, Reordenne. You can smell it, can't you? We're almost there. Then we can rest, but only for the night."

The horse seemed to understand, and its feet moved just that much quicker as the two traveled down the road.

Just around this last bend, he thought to himself.

Then we'll surely be able to rest.

The sun had set and the earth was cooling. The mist had fallen to the bases of the thick oak trees. In her dreams, she wondered if those trees remembered her, knew her, loved or hated her. She could feel the feet walking above her head, and she purred, the noise almost audible in the oncoming darkness. They were going to call her, she knew. She could feel their thoughts, see into their hearts. She smiled to herself, her eyes still closed. But no longer did she writhe and squirm. Resting, still as a stone, she waited for them to call.

"Mama, Mama! A man is coming!"

Cassandra looked up when her third younger brother called out, her green eyes looking down the road.

He was right. A man was coming on a warhorse that looked like it had run through the fires of Hades and back before finally finding its way to the gates of her family's home.

"Cassandra! Go bid him welcome, I can't take time right now!"

"But Mama! He could be an enemy! How will I know?" "You'll know, child. Now go bid him welcome and give him the proper treatment of a guest. You know the rules. I have to finish here!"

As her mother turned back to the kitchen, fussing with the ancient cook over seasonings for the several lambs that were almost done roasting on a spit, Cassandra was torn.

She was a woman of the household now, and no longer a child. It was her duty to offer this stranger the proper hospitalities of her family's estate. But the child in her, so recently squelched, was afraid and rebelling. The man seemed so weary, and yet he loomed from on his horse, seeming taller and taller as he came closer and closer.

I am not a child, Cassie scolded herself, pulling her loose skirts up in one hand and trotting down the courtyard to the man's horse.

I will do as I am told, and I will grant him whatever he requires, just like any of my cousins would in my place.

But she gulped as she paused at the horse's massive head, feeling its quick hot breath against the bare nape of her neck. She looked up at the man sitting on the horse's back, and put the back of her hand over her mouth to cover a gasp.

War, death, famine, plague. All seemed to look back at her from his steely gaze.

Inwardly, he sighed. The girl was going to scream, he could tell she was fighting a genuine scream. That's all he'd need right now, to have some fool girl-child screaming her head off and causing a ruckus.

If Reordenne was startled now, the great beast might find just enough energy to lift up his front hooves and dash the girl's brains out. But likely not before all the men folk came running at her screams.

Then, he'd be obligated to slaughter the lot of them. And he just didn't feel like he had the energy.

"Please," he said as softly as possible.

But his own voice sounded strange. He hadn't done anything but shout for the last week and a half, battle cry after battle cry, command after command. He sounded hoarse and dangerous. He swallowed.

"I -- I'm to offer you our hospi -- hospitality. Sir."

Surprisingly, the girl was regaining her calm. She had wisely torn her eyes away from his and was now making a show of curtseying to him in her long skirts. As she stood up, pretending to raise her face to his, he took in her features.

Pagan, of an ancient bloodline he couldn't recognize. But the chiseled profile of the Romans, those he could easily define. As he moved his eyes over her hair, the red locks straying from the golden band around her crown, he noticed the faint crescent moon in her forehead.

So, he thought to himself, his eyes now roving over the willowy girl openly.

She was of the old kind, was she? How many of their "traditions" did she know? And what of their sense of hospitality? Did she know of the Friendship of Thighs?

Now he grinned, not realizing the leering menace of that upon his worn and scarred face, nor was he aware of what he looked like to a woman newly come into her role as hostess.

To her, he looked like Death itself come for her soul.

The night was tension, electric and cast about in shades of blue. The full moon was rising, a silver coin of great value pressed flat against a sky of darkest velvet. A sky that was deepening in depth as the minutes wore on. Speckles of flickering white made themselves known to her senses. The stars, she thought. Shake the sky and the stars could fall! But that moon that she treasured, and so dearly missed. It was eternal and would never stop rising!

In an upper chamber of the palisade-like house of her family, Cassandra carefully pried off the man's boots. The stench of his feet was atrocious, but she was accustomed to soldiers returning from battle as bruised and beaten as this man.

Well not really, she said to herself as she began to wash his feet with lukewarm water and a rag.

Usually, they were a lot less abused than this man. He had to have seen a great deal of war, and very recently. The acrid stench of blood was all over him.

Cassie moved to where he sat on a stool, standing behind him and pulling gently at his hair. He had the braids of a seasoned warrior in his matted brown locks. She carefully extracted what leaves and branches she could. Then, using a cup and a basin, she poured water over his naked back, his shoulders, his arms. She caught as much water as she could, but let the rest slip to the floor.

It was part of their tradition, their homage to strangers the family welcomed into the house. Water was precious, always to be cherished. And it was an honorable thing to have so much that they could afford the water to bathe a stranger.

The girl ran her hands over the large unstitched surface wounds, wondering if she should find a bone needle and some sinew thread and ask to sew them.

On the shoulder blade of the man's back, she found a strange tattooed mark the size of her palm.

Her fingertips ran over it gently, tracing the ancient knot-work. What was it?

Cassie tilted her head, pressing into the skin and moving the man's hair.

It was a dragon, the rearing head of a dragon.

Then, lightning quick, his hand reached back and grasped at her wrist.

Cassandra whimpered.

The touch of a woman's soft fingers against his hair and his skin had ignited in him hunger. And he couldn't wait anymore.

When the old women in the kitchen had seen him, their eyes had been quick to note the crest stitched into the arm of the leather tunic showing beneath his chain mail. And they had known him, known he knew of their old ways. And they had nodded, instructing the young girl to take him upstairs.

To treat him as a friend of the family.

As she cowered now before him, as he forced her to her knees before him, her slender wrist bones feeling as light and hollow as those of a bird's, he realized something very new and significant.

The girl did not know what was expected of her. She did not know what "friendship" meant in the days of the old ways, when families could not afford dowries and had to be careful to introduce new blood to their own bloodlines. She did not know of the Friendship of Thighs.

Outside, the others of the family and household were winding their way up the distant hillside, the flickering candles the only sign in the growing darkness of their travels. They wouldn't light great bonfires like they surely did once upon a time. It wouldn't do to have the Emperor's soldiers find them worshipping their pagan gods, doing their pagan dances.

He could hear them chanting, and he brought the girl with him as he went to the slitted window.

"Do you know what ceremony they are going to do, girl? Do you know their dance well?" he whispered, pushing her infront of him.

With his mouth hot on her neck, he brushed her hair away. He could feel her trembling beneath his hands as he held her from behind by the shoulders.

"Yes-s," she stammered.

"Good. Because you will not be with them tonight."

He turned her to him, and his mouth on hers was hungry, starved. As her small hands fluttered like doves against his chest, he eased himself onto the bed, pulling her with him.

At first, she fought him. His fault, really, for forgetting himself and thinking only of his own needs. But as he moved with her, as he taught her the oldest dance of all, she rose to greet him and soon, she learned moves of her own.

Undulating. Rising. Pressing up into the earth and stone. Moving through the grainfields and grasses. Upwards, seeking the sky and the night. Upwards, she rose like an angel, wings outspread. She could hear them chanting, hear them calling her. Calling to her. Calling for her. They wanted her blessing. At last, she turned her orb-like eyes upwards, to the sky. And there she found the moon. Lovely diamond colored Moon, silver coin Moon. Eternal Moon. She flew upward, to greet the moon, free at last.

The dragon had found its mate…