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Dunne came from his mill and Matthew from the church. We found ourselves at our watch posts when Joan came from her house and welcomed the rider inside. We talked, the pastor, the miller and myself, about our prospects come fall, then the weather, and finally our musings about the riders.

Late in the afternoon, the rider paused by the mill pond, long enough for his horse to drink and for us to join him.

Matthew caught the horse's reins and idly stroked its head. "Greetings," he said.

"And to you, sirs," the rider said warily. He fidgeted with the reins.

"What brings you looking for Joan Murfie?" I asked and patted the horse's flank.

He started. "I came to bring news of Thomas Murfie's death. He -- he died last night. A man -- A stranger gave me coins to bring her the news."

"Was the man dressed in red? Did he bear the arms of Glen Cluain?" Pastor Matthew asked.

The rider nodded and turned his horse abruptly back to the road as soon as Matthew freed the reins. We considered one another quietly. Evil, a long time forming, had come to roost in our village, at our Joan's doorstep.

So it was a week later that Luke Brennan sat idly by the south road instead of tending his father's flocks. He brought news of the riders a full hour before they reached the village and we were ready for them, or so we thought.

We heard the riders before we saw them, the chinking and creaking of their saddles and armor, the stamping of their war horses' hooves. Every last one of us filled the village square. We tried to seem unafraid of the High Chief of Glen Cluain and his entourage of warriors and fine ladies. We were blinded by the gleaming brilliance of the war band's armor and the richness of their ladies' dress.

A man of such immenseness that even I felt runted before him, dismounted and pushed between the snapping and snarling war dogs. He stood before me all tall and bold, smelling of sweat and sweet herbs. He was fair, with hair like bleached flax. It seemed impossible to guess his age until I looked into his hard gray eyes. His eyes and the twist of his lips showed him as old and soulless as the demon he was told to be.

He, the demon-chief, slowly pulled off his scarlet-trimmed black leather gloves and slapped them against his blood red tabbard. "Smithy," he said as he stared down at me, "your people have blocked the road."

I did not speak, could not speak, for my very throat seemed to have frozen. His voice was soft steel, like his daughter's.

He turned abruptly and remounted. "I give you one last chance to make way before I set the dogs on you."

I felt a tug on my sleeve. Daft William stood beside me so I leaned over to hear him. "She says to let him pass. You must not do this."

Others also heard William. There was grumbling; we were prepared -- finally -- to help Iron Joan and now we didn't want to be found lacking as staunch allies.

"She says you must not stop him," William insisted.

"But we want --" Pastor Matthew began.

William shook his head. "Don't you see? You cannot fight her father … only she can. Now, if only now, you must respect her enough to stand aside."

I glanced back at the High Chief of Glen Cluain. For so many years, I'd thought Thomas Murfie a brute of a man, but now I saw him for the sniveling cur he was beside this man who was Joan's father. Now I understood how she endured Thomas for so long before she changed him.

"Step aside," I said quietly. The villagers did as I said, leaving me alone in the path of the High Chief and his riders. "You'll find our Joan up the road in the stone house. She's waiting for you. Then I, too, stepped aside barely dodging the flailing hooves of the High Chief's horse.

We found our watch posts easily enough and peered hard through the dust flung up by the riders. When the dust settled, I could see Joan standing outside her house with her children behind her. I couldn't hear what she said, nor her father's reply, so I climbed down from the fence and walked a piece up the road barely aware of the others close behind me. I stopped in the shade of a tree. I was close enough now to hear and see everything.

The High Chief leaned against his saddle horn, a picture of complacent indifference, but still, there was an energy about him that gnawed like a terror-stricken rat at my gut. "I've come for the boy, Joan," the High Chief said. He gestured with his glove at the tallest of Joan's fair-haired brood, young John.

John shifted behind his mother, but stilled when she shook her head. "My John stays with me," Joan said. She stood braced and ready.

We watched her father, the villagers, the warband and their ladies. The High Chief flicked at a fly with his gloves then motioned to his daughter and her brood. "You're my daughter and as such of the High Clan of Glen Cluain. Widowed and your children orphaned, of course, you must turn to your kinsmen for succor."

"I ask nothing from the Clan," Joan said. "It has been my prayer for many a year now that if my kinsmen looked upon me they would see neither kith nor kin."

The High Chief straightened on his charger, as stiff and stern as his daughter had ever been. "Your tongue hasn't dulled these many years, Joan. We offer you kindness and comfort and you give us a full measure of your temper. Is there so little gratitude in you?" His voice had a lethal softness that stole over the gathering like a smothering quilt.

Our Joan stood staunchly. "Gratitude, Father? You offer me nothing I would thank you for."

"I would bring you and your children to the seat of Glen Cluain. Your very own children would stand in line to take my throne when I relinquish it! I'd have your children know the riches of being sons and daughters of the High Clan of Glen Cluain, inheritors of a king's fortune and members of a warrior's family." His voice was softer now, coaxing, but his bearing was that of someone willing to take a treasure by force.

She trembled, as she placed herself squarely between her children and father, and for that I hated the High Chief even more. "They would inherit a fortune stolen from the humbler people of three counties. They would be branded thieves and murderers as you and your mighty warband have been." She shook her head. "No, Father, you'll not have me nor my children." She squinted up at him then, her voice as frigid as ice. "I know that I hold no great charm for you and neither do ten of my children. No, Father, let it be known that you have come for my eldest, our own son, John -- "

"Have a care, daughter! Your tongue has gotten you in trouble before!" the High Chief snarled at her. His horse reared and pawed the air. I held my breath, fearing Joan might be hurt but she seemed all too skilled at avoiding a warhorse's hooves and came to no harm.

Joan looked at her father's riders and then back at us. "Do you think you can still shame me to silence, Father?" She crossed her arms and stood her ground. "You branded me seductress and whore in your house when your second queen found you in my bed." She ignored his thunderous demand for her silence as she continued, her words spilling out in an unstoppable flow. "I was shamed before the clan you would have me show gratitude to and cast out with little more than the clothes on my back. So, now that your queen cannot whelp you a son, you take more interest in the boy you got on me."

"Enough!" the Chief commanded. "This talk is not meant for open company!"

Iron Joan turned and looked at us -- at me -- as though judging her revelations' effect. I did not turn away. These many long years she had worked to become one of our own and I would not deny her her just earned respect.

"You can no longer silence me, Father!" She looked at the riders behind her father. They would not meet her gaze. She spat on the ground in front of them. "You shamed and shunned me, knowing what he'd done! You follow him like dogs to your deaths!"

"You've gone mad," the High Chief declared.

Iron Joan smiled. The first I'd ever seen from her. There was power in that expression. A power that seemed to wash over her.

Daft William tapped my arm and pointed toward the stone house. "See! She has summoned her dragon!" he whispered.

I squinted down at him, sure that he was mad. He pointed insistently and I could not help but look. At first, I did not see it, then, as I was about to call him a fool, I caught the suggestion of a great scaly back in the stone house. As it had in those early days of building, a monstrous shape could almost be seen -- if you looked for it, if you believed in such things. The craggy tree which seemed to extend from within the house was a long neck. A great wind swept in from the sea, billowing the cloaks of the High Chief's riders and rattling the upper branches of the tree as it shifted and contorted … like a mighty dragon stirring from a long slumber.

"Do you think I didn't know Thomas took your gold in those early years? So that you might know what became of me? So that I might be indebted to you?"

"Hold your tongue! Have you no respect --" her father began, glaring angrily at those who stood to witness his evil revealed.

"Respect, Father? What should I respect?" Her rage was in full bloom. Around her, winds billowed and small stones in the house began to shift as if the dragon continued to stir, restless in his sleep. "I grew up fearing you. I tried to love you and honor you as a daughter should. Did you respect my gift? No, like anything in your house, it was trod beneath your boot. When my mother could no longer get you an heir, you called her a witch and let her burn at the stake. You left me in the hands of kinsmen who feared me because I was my mother's daughter while you attacked innocents, taking what you wanted and leaving ruin in your wake. Anything that lived wilted at your touch. Your legacy is death, chaos and grief!"

"And what have you to show for your life, Joan? Eleven brats? A drunkard husband? A patch of land no bigger than my barn! You shame yourself and your children, revealing yourself as you have!" the High Chief spat.

The wind buffeted Iron Joan's thin body as she gathered her children to her. The sky roiled with sudden dark clouds. A thatch loosed itself from her roof and scattered in the faces of the demon-chief and his subjects. The dragon shape shifted. Was that a blinking eye? Or only branches tossing in the wind?

With her arms around her children, Joan turned to her father. "You have sewn hatred and poison that taints all you touch. For every coin you stole, I sewed a seed. For every murder, I have brought healing," she said. She turned her face into the rain as it began to fall. "Tears from heaven, Father."

We stood there, in the rain, waiting for Joan's father to speak … for his warband or one of their ladies to do something. The rain fell, soaking us to our skin, and still everyone waited and watched. Then, the youngest, the lowliest of the High Chief's band turned his horse toward home. Without a word, others followed. The High Chief sat rigid in his saddle only turning to stare at his company of riders as the last of them left.

He sat there, astride his horse, stiff and silent for the longest time. When he spoke, he nearly erupted from his saddle as he spewed his anger and humiliation. "You have brought a shame that will never heal upon my house!" He pulled his mighty sword and raised it over his head.

Lightning flashed. I glanced back and saw that only Daft William, Farmer Brennan, Pastor Matthew and I remained to witness the end. I pointed towards the war-chief and yelled through the storm that we should do something. Matthew shook his head and pointed. I looked back at Joan, her children behind her, as she stared up at her father. A strange expression creased her face and then she laughed -- a free and unfettered laugh that rang with power.

"It wakes!" William said excitedly, pointing at the house.

The stones that were once Iron Joan's house were now clearly the pebbly scales of a craggy necked dragon. It swung its mighty tree-like head as though summoned by the bell-like laughter of our Joan. The High Chief spurred his warhorse toward his daughter and swung his great sword in what was surely meant to be a killing blow. Instead of striking Joan, the sword bit into the rocky flank of the thundering beast and there it stayed. The wind howled round the monster as it seized the armored man off his steed and into its great maw.

Thunder clapped and a second bolt of lightning cut through the sky. The storm rolled overhead and spewed fist-sized hailstones at us, forcing us to duck low to protect ourselves. Even through the deafening storm, we heard a scream of such mortal terror that behind me, Pastor Matthew whispered a prayer. I could only hold my breath. Then, just as it began, the storm was over.

We waited a long moment, crouched beside the fence. Somewhere a bird sang and Grania called from the forge. We looked to the village as our neighbors came from their houses. We looked slowly toward the stone house, half-expecting to see a rocky, scaled dragon, but all was normal.

Young John was already clambering up to the roof to fasten down the fly away thatches and the younger children were herding the animals toward their pens.

I stood beside Pastor Matthew and Farmer Brennan and stared at the farm. Had I imagined it? Then Iron Joan met my eye, stared me full in the face and smiled a slow, warm sunny grin as she gathered up her youngest and went into her house.

I looked to my neighbors, but they seemed as confused as I, until William tugged at my sleeve. We looked to where he pointed. There, in the tree, sticking out of the wood as if it grew there, was a scarlet and black leather glove … and above it, in the branches, a bit of shiny metal winked in the sun.