Royce and Esrahaddon returned less than an hour before sunset and found a parade of animals driving up the road. It looked like every animal in the village was on the move and most of the people were out along the edges with sticks and bells, pots and spoons, banging away, herding the animals up the hill toward the manor house. Sheep and cows followed each other fine enough, but the pigs were a problem, and Royce spotted Pearl with her stick, masterfully bringing up the rear.
Rose McDern, the smithy’s wife, was the first to spot them and suddenly Royce heard “He’s back!” excitedly repeated among the villagers.
“What’s going on?” Royce asked Pearl, purposely avoiding the adults.
“Movin’ the critters to the castle. We all stay’n there tonight, they says.”
“Do you know where Hadrian is? You remember, the man I arrived with? Thrace was riding with him?”
“The castle,” Pearl told him, and narrowed her eyes at the thief. “You really catch a pig in the dark?”
Royce looked at her, puzzled. Just then, a pig darted up the road and the girl was off after it, waving her long switch in the air.
The castle of the Lord of Westbank was a typical motte-and-bailey fortress, with the great manor house built on a steep man-made hill, surrounded by a wall of sharp-tipped wooden logs that enclosed the outbuildings. A heavy gate barred the entrance. A halfhearted attempt at a moat ringed it but amounted to nothing more than a shallow ditch. Cut trees left about forty yards of sharpened stumps in all directions.
A group of men worked at the tree line, cutting pines. Royce was still a bit vague on names but he recognized Vince Griffin and Russell Bothwick working a dual-handled saw. Tad Bothwick and a few other boys raced around, trimming branches with axes and hatches. Three girls tied the branches into bundles and stacked them on a wagon. Dillon McDern and his sons used his oxen to haul the logs up the hill to the castle, where more men labored to cut and split the wood.
Royce found Hadrian splitting logs near the stockade gate. He was naked to the waist except for the small silver medallion that dangled from his neck as he bent forward to place another wedge. He had a solid sweat worked up along with a sizable pile of wood.
“Been meddling, have you?” Royce asked, looking around at the hive of activity.
“You must admit they didn’t have much in the way of a defense plan,” Hadrian said, pausing to wipe the sweat from his forehead.
Royce smiled at him. “You just can’t help yourself, can you?”
“And you? Did you find the doorknob?”
Hadrian picked up a jug and downed several swallows, drinking so quickly some of the water dripped down his chin. He poured some in his palm and rinsed his face, running his fingers through his hair.
“I didn’t even get close enough to see a door.”
“Well, look on the bright side”—Hadrian smiled—“at least you weren’t captured and condemned to death this time.”
“That’s the bright side?”
“What can I say? I’m a glass-half-full kinda guy.”
“There he is,” Russell Bothwick shouted, pointing. “That’s Royce over there.”
“What’s going on?” Royce asked as throngs of people suddenly moved toward him from the field and the castle interior.
“I mentioned that you saw the thing and now they want to know what it looks like,” Hadrian explained. “What did you think? They were coming to lynch you?”
He shrugged. “What can I say? I’m a glass-half-empty kinda guy.”
“Half empty?” Hadrian chuckled. “Was there ever any drink in that glass?”
Royce was still scowling at Hadrian when the villagers crowded around them. The women wore kerchiefs over their hair, dark and damp where they crossed their foreheads. Their sleeves were rolled up, their faces smudged with dirt. Most of the men, like Hadrian, were topless, wood shavings and pine needles sticking to their skin.
“Did you see it?” Dillon asked. “Did you really get a look at it?”
“Yes,” Royce replied, and several people murmured.
“What did it look like?” Deacon Tomas asked. The priest stood out from the crowd, looking fresh, clean, and rested.
“Did it have wings?” Russell asked.
“Did it have claws?” Tad asked.
“How big was it?” Vince Griffin asked.
“Let the man answer!” Dillon thundered, and the rest quieted.
“It does have wings and claws. I saw it only briefly because it was flying above the trees. I caught sight of it through a small opening in the leaves, but what I saw was long, like a snake, or lizard, with wings and two legs that—that were still clutching Mae Drundel.”
“A lizard with wings?” Dillon repeated.
“A dragon,” a woman declared. “That’s what it is. It’s a dragon!”