Dragon and the Fair Maid of Kent

Chapter 1 Jim (Baron Sir James Eckert, Lord of Malencontri Castle and its environs, and also now uppermost-level apprentice in Magick) woke two hours before moonset; and rose from bed, going to the nearest of the Solar windows to look out. Behind him in their bed his wife, Angie (Lady Angela),slept peacefully. Beyond the window it was still full night, but cloudless and moon-bright. From just under the top of Malencontri's tower, where the Solar's large, single room was, the full moon itself was still up, and everything far below him stood out clearly. The tall trees beyond the cleared space surrounding the castle blended together in an unbroken wall of blackness; the stubbled ground of the cleared space showed a faint shine on its patches of grass, evidence that the night's rain had stopped only recently. As he watched, two figures, bent under the loads on their backs, came out of the woods to his right and cut across the cleared space at an angle to enter the woods again on its further side. They walked slowly, heavily, one figure taller than the other, the large bundles riding high on their shoulders. The prospect of dawn must have roused them, with its hope of sun to dry their worn clothesfor clearly all they owned was carried on their shoulders nowand put a little heat into their bones. So they had roused from whatever forest nest they had made in the rain for the night and were once more moving on; to what they did not know, but someplace better than this, and much better than wherever they had left. Standing before the six-inch squares of glass that made up the panes in the Solar window, warmed by the blazing fireplace, refueled even while he and Angie slept by the servant who, with a man-at-arms, was always on duty outside their door, Jim felt a chill go through him. They grew more numerous every day, these drifters. Running from news of the bubonic plague, now in Francealways traveling west, always so poor they did not even have a donkey to carry their belongings, and with no real goal in sightdriven on only by the instinct for survival. The chill deepened in Jim. There they trudged, cold, undoubtedly hungry, if not starving. All doors were closed to them out of a fear of the very sickness they fled from. No community would take them in, for the same fear. Some member of the Church might put oat food for them, but otherwise could not helpprobably would not help. They had probably given up hope of aid, even from Heaven. Faith and Love, those two great Pillars of Strength in the medieval worldavailable to even the poorestwere almost surely lost to them by now. Faith, that offered hope even beyond the grave, would have been drowned in the animal effort to live. Love, in all its meanings of this timelove of wife, children, comrades, community, and countryall the ways the word wove together in the tapestry of medieval society, had once made the fabric of their lives. All gone now. What was left now was no more than the blind urge to run, and under that instinct, they trudged mindlessly westward, ever westward, like cattle before the driving, level snow in the fierce wind of a blizzard. Jim remembered how he had lied about being a knight and a baron when he and Angienow his wifecame to this medieval world, a far different version of the Earth into which he had been born and grown up. He stood here now, warm, protected and fed as what he had claimed to be. It was true he had done what was required of someone with the rank he had claimed. He had followed the rules. He had fought with the proper weapons when necessary, according to the customs herenot well, but well enough to get by. But his attempts to live had been rewarded. Those two out then had not There was no more fairness in this time and placeDickson, Gordon R. is the author of 'Dragon and the Fair Maid of Kent' with ISBN 9780812562729 and ISBN 0812562720.