The Royal Dragoneers: 2016 Modernized Format Edition (Dragoneers Saga) Read online

  It was a dragon, Jenka realized, and he turned and bolted. He ran as fast as he could go down the gully into the darkness. He managed to grab up his bow as he went, but the primal urge to be away from the thing kept him from even considering using the weapon. He ran, and ran, and ran. Only after he stumbled over a tangle of exposed roots and went sprawling into some leafy undergrowth did his mad flight come to an end.

  While he lay there heaving in breath, he considered what had just happened. He couldn’t believe he had just seen a dragon, but he had. It was a small dragon, maybe fifteen paces from nose to tail, but he was certain of what it was. Master Kember had taken him and a few of the other boys out with the King’s Rangers one afternoon to look at the carcass of a dragon that had crashed into a rocky prominence during a storm. It was considered an honor to be invited on such a trek, and Jenka had gone eagerly. The dark, reddish-gray scaled dragon had stretched forty paces from tail to nose and had a horned head the size of a barrel keg. Its teeth were the size of dagger blades and twice as sharp, and its fist-sized nostril holes were charred at the edges from where it breathed its noxious fumes. Master Kember had guessed its age at about five years, which made Jenka think that the dragon he had just seen was probably little more than a yearling. He decided that if he could master his fear, he might be able to sneak back and kill it. If he did, he could claim the long-standing bounty that King Blanchard paid for dragon heads, as well as bring himself to notice so that he could begin his Forester apprenticeship sooner.

  Jenka crawled to his feet and hesitantly looked around. It was dark, but the trees up here in the hills weren’t nearly as dense as they were in the lower forest. Enough starlight filtered through the open canopy for him to see. He started back the way he came, and when he neared the hungry young dragon, he dropped to his knees and crawled as quietly as he could manage, until he could plainly see the scaly thing feeding in the firelight.

  It was amazing. Its scales glittered lime, emerald, and turquoise in the wavering light as it ripped huge chunks of bloody meat from Jenka’s kill. Its long, snaking tail whisked around like a cat's as it raised its horned head high to chug down the morsel it had torn from the carcass.

  Jenka decided that he couldn’t kill it with his bow and arrow. He probably couldn’t even wound the thing. Further consideration on the matter was rendered pointless when a heavy, head-sized chunk of stone suddenly crashed into the young dragon’s side. It screeched out horribly and flung its head and body around just in time to claw a gash across the chest of a filthy, green-skinned, pink-mouthed troll as leapt down from the gully’s edge into the firelight.

  The troll fell into the smaller of Jenka’s fires, sending a cloud of sparks swirling up into the air. Another troll bellowed from the darkness, and from another direction a second rock came flying in.

  The dragon leapt upward and brought its leathery wings thumping down hard. It surged a few feet up, and then pumped its wings again. It was trying to get clear of a troll that was leaping up to grab at its hind legs. The dragon wasn’t fast enough to get away.

  Like a wriggling anchor weight, the troll began trying to pull the dragon out of the air. As hard as the young wyrm flapped its wings, it could do little more than lift the clinging troll a few feet from the ground.

  Jenka wasn’t sure why he did what he did next, but it was done. He loosed the arrow he had intended for the dragon at the dangling troll. The shaft struck true, and when the troll clutched at its back, it let go of the dragon and fell into a writhing heap. The dragon flapped madly up into the night, leaving Jenka dumbfounded and looking frightfully at not two, but three, big angry trolls.

  He turned to run and actually made it about ten strides back down the gully before one of the eight-foot-tall trolls appeared from the darkness to block his way. It laid its doggish ears back and gave a feral snarl full of jagged, rotten teeth. Jenka whirled around to go back, but found another of the yellow-eyed trolls waiting for him. He started a mad, scrabbling climb up the side of the gulch but found little purchase there in the rocky, rain-scoured earth. He clawed and pulled with such terror and urgency that the ends of his fingers tore open and some of his fingernails ripped loose, but he couldn’t get away. He was cornered.

  More of the huge, well-muscled trolls were leaping down into the gully now. Their filthy, musky-scented bodies were silhouetted by the dancing flames of the fire and they threw long, menacing shadows before them as they came. Not knowing what else to do, and as scared as he had ever been in his life, Jenka put his back against the gully wall and turned to face the grizzly death that was closing in on him.

  He saw that his bow was lying back where he had dropped it. His knife wasn’t at his hip either. Beyond the flames, he saw the shredded remains of the stag’s carcass. The dragon had torn half the meat away in only a few seconds. The trolls would have the rest of it, he figured. After they had him.

  A fist-sized rock slammed into his chest, knocking all of the wind from his lungs. Other stones followed, and the primitive troll beasts soon went into a frenzied ritual of howling and savage fighting over feeding position. Luckily for Jenka, a well-thrown chunk of stone bashed into the side of his head and spared him from having to see himself being torn to pieces. All he could think of as he slipped into unconsciousness was that he would finally get to see his father, and he hoped his mother would never have to gaze upon what the trolls left of his body.

  After that was nothing but blackness.

  Chapter Two

  In the swimming world of liquid darkness where Jenka found himself, he felt like a tiny fish caught up in a powerful current. He had no memory of how he had gotten to wherever he was, or how long he had been there. There was a fleeting terror still lingering in the back of his mind, but he had no inkling of what the source of his fear might be. All he knew was he was tumbling helplessly through a vast, serene emptiness.

  After some time, he opened his eyes and was shocked back into reality by the blood-dripping, horn-headed visage looming down over him. Slick, iron-hard scales sparkled like emeralds as they reflected in the fire’s dancing light.

  Like some curious, amber-eyed child, the young, green-scaled dragon leaned over Jenka’s prone body, locked gazes with him, and then spoke.

  “Thank you,” it hissed in an unnaturally soft and slithery voice. “The trellkin almost had usss. They almost had usss, but we have besssted them.”

  Jenka’s temples pounded and the world spun crazily with his effort to accept what was happening. His eyes closed for a moment, but he didn’t let the dark current pull him back under just yet. “How are you speaking to me?” He asked the dragon. He didn’t remember much of what happened, but here he was, somehow speaking to a wyrm that had ribbons of torn and bloody troll flesh dangling from its pink, finger-long teeth. It was incredible.

  “I just am.” The dragon responded, more into Jenka’s mind than audibly. “I’m not supposssed to go near your sort. My mamra says that, though you are small and tasssty, you are a dangerous lot. She says that you like to kill our kind. But I wasss drawn to you. You saved me from the trellkin, ssso I saved you in turn. That makes us friendssss, doesss it not?”

  “Friends then,” Jenka agreed, thinking with perfect clarity that such a friendship could never be. King Blanchard hated dragons. Everyone in the kingdom hated them. The wyrms had been completely eradicated from the islands. Now, out here in the mainland frontier, when a herd was pilfered or a lair was found, the King’s Rangers always went hunting and tried to find and destroy the creature responsible. Jenka figured that it would be that way until the entire frontier, the Orich Mountains, and even the Outlands were cleansed of the deadly creatures.

  “My people are wary of your kind as well,” Jenka said matter-of-factly. His head and side hurt terribly and it was anguishing to speak. “Make your lair deep in the mountains where men cannot go, and don’t ever get caught by the King’s Rangers, because they will try their best to kill you.”

  The dragon nod
ded his understanding with closely-knitted brow plates, and then snorted out two curling tendrils of acrid smoke from its nostrils. “Nor should you ever wander too far into the peaks. I have a feeling that we will sssee each other again. Thisss happening was no coincidence. I will be pleased when that time comes, but other dragons, the wild onesss, will feast on your flesh, ssso be wary.”

  “Do you have a name?” Jenka asked with a shiver at the thought of being eaten. “Mine is Jenka De Swasso.”

  “My name is impossible for you to sssay, but you can call me Jade. It isss the color the sunlight makesss when it reflectsss from my scal—”

  A savage roar echoed through the night from a great distance away and caused the young green dragon to look up and give a call of its own.

  “That isss my mamra calling,” Jade explained. “If I don’t go, ssshe will come looking. I must leave you, my friend, for both our sakesss.” The dragon stepped away from Jenka and poised to leap into the air. Before he went, Jade gave Jenka a curious look. Yellow, jaundiced eyes flashed first to amber, then into cherry-red embers. Jenka felt the dragon’s gaze tingling over his skin. Then he quickly sank back into the peaceful and painless current of liquid darkness from which he had just come.

  “Jenka! Jenkaaaa! Where are you?” a familiar voice called over the angry chirping and indignant cawing of several feasting crows.

  Jenka’s face felt warm and slick. He tried to pull himself free of the clinging emptiness that still gripped his mind, but he couldn’t quite get loose of its grasp. He felt something small and hairy crawling across his chest and a pair of fat, black flies kept buzzing around his nose. The air smelled coppery and sweet.

  “Jenka! Jen—” The voice was closer now, and it suddenly stopped in a sharp, gasping intake of breath. “By the gods, man! Look at this!” The man paused a moment, then started calling out with a more vigorous urgency. “Over here! He’s here, Lemmy, he’s alive! It looks like he’s killed a half a dozen trolls. Hurry man! Hurry it along!”

  The excited voice belonged to Master Kember. He was a former King’s Ranger who had taken a crippling injury to his thigh in a fall several years ago. He was now the village Crag’s Head Huntsman and the unofficial mentor and Lesson Master to Jenka and a few of Crag’s other miscreant boys.

  Marwick Kember had known Jenka’s father well. He’d been there when the trolls had gotten hold of him. Jenka thought that maybe Master Kember had pledged an oath to his father to watch over Jenka, or to protect him, or something of the sort, because Master Kember did both efficiently.

  Jenka was glad he could register who was yelling for Lemmy. It meant that his mind was starting to work again. He only wished he could find the strength to respond, or at least to brush the little crawly thing from his chest. He hoped it wasn’t a scorpion or a blood ant.

  He tried to open his eyes and was rewarded with a searing pain that flashed from his eyeballs deep into his brain. It was bright outside—mid-day he guessed. He squinted and saw Master Kember back-sliding gingerly down into the gully. A fit of coughing overtook Jenka then, reminding him of the heavy stones that had smashed into his head and ribs. He rolled to his side and vomited. All of the exertion caused his head to pound with powerful surges of more sickening pain.

  “Don’t try to think, lad,” Master Kember said as he knelt next to Jenka and went about inspecting his wounds. “Lay it back. Your head's been bashed in, and your arm bone looks bent.” The look on the old huntsman’s face graduated from attentive concern to pure pleasure after he saw that Jenka was in a survivable state. Looking around at the carnage the dragon had left behind, the old hunter shook his head in wonder. “How, by all the gods of devils and men, did you survive what happened here?” Then he looked directly into Jenka’s bloodshot eyes. “What did happen here, Jenk?”

  “It’s a long story, sir,” Jenka managed before another bout of heaving overtook him. When the debilitating fit subsided he said, “I think my cage is cracked.”

  A heavy clod of dirt came thumping down near the two of them, causing Jenka to reflexively curl up into a fetal ball. It wasn’t another troll attack. It was only Lemmy trying to get Master Kember’s attention. Lemmy was nine or ten years older than Jenka, and he was a mute. All of the women in Crag seemed to marvel over his wheat-golden hair and his easy manner. Though he seemed like a dunce a lot of the time, Jenka knew that he was as smart and able as they come.

  “Lem, go find Solman and Rikky, and point them our way,” Master Kember ordered. “I’ll throw some green on them coals over there and make a smoker to mark the way. Then you take a steed and you ride back to Crag and figure a way to explain to Lady De Swasso that her young dragon is alive and well enough for wear. Let her know that we’ll have him home by dark fall.”

  Jenka heard the words “young dragon” and most of the previous night’s terror came flooding back into his brain; the stag he had killed, the trolls, and Jade. How he knew the dragon was called Jade he couldn’t quite work out, because the conversation they’d had seemed more like a wishful fever-dream than any sort of reality, but the memory of those magical amber eyes was vivid enough.

  After Lemmy grunted acknowledgment of his orders and loped off to carry them out, Master Kember stood and better took in the scene around him. Here was a troll torn completely in two, both halves ripped open where savage claws had gripped it. Down the gully was another troll that had no head and only one arm. Lying half-scorched in an exhausted fire was a troll that had been ripped open from shoulder to groin, and right beside that was another with one of Jenka’s expertly fletched arrows buried deep in its back. Master Kember knew the Fletcher’s work because he purchased the steel-tipped arrows himself down in Three Forks every fall. He awarded them to his young hunters when they achieved the goals he set for them. Jenka had earned quite a few of the good shafts. The decimated remains of a sizable stag lay shredded and strewn amid all the gore, and upon closer examination, Master Kember found another of Jenka’s arrows. He walked around, shooing the noisy crows, and studied the scene a bit longer. Then he stopped altogether and cocked his head. He saw something glinting emerald in the sun. The retired ranger paced across the gulch, stooped and pulled the object from one of the troll’s clawed hands. Looking closely at what he had found, he let out a long, low whistle.

  “You, my young pupil, might be the luckiest boy in the entire kingdom,” the old hunter started. “Killing that troll by yourself is certainly a feat of notability, but surviving the battle that took place after is simply amazing. Did you see it? Did you see the dragon that finished them?”

  Jenka started to say yes, that he had even talked to the creature, but common sense bade him do otherwise. He didn’t want everyone to think he had lost his mind, and he certainly didn’t want a bunch of the King’s Rangers up here trying to hunt Jade down and kill him. “I’m not sure what happened after I was hit in the head,” he replied flatly. “I thought I was done for.”

  “You should be troll scat right this very minute, boy,” Master Kember scolded. “What were you thinking, following that old stag all the way up into these hills? You should have ran back to Crag and found me or Lem.”

  “It was too late in the day,” Jenka groaned as he slowly sat up and brushed the irritating bug out from under his shirt front. “I didn’t want the tree-cats to have it. It just…” He leaned to the side and went into another bout of coughing. After he spit out a mouthful of mucus and blood, Master Kember grimaced.

  “Lay back down, Jenk. Be still.” The older man moved in to hover over Jenka and began feeling roughly along his sides. “Looks like you did crack your cage. Maybe a rib’s poked a hole in your gizzard. You’re gonna be a long while healing from this, but by the gods, boy, after killing a troll single-handedly, and surviving a dragon attack, you’ll make Forester this year for certain. You’ll be a King’s Ranger before you know it!”

  Before you could become a King’s Ranger you had to be a Forester for two full years. Outside of performing a rar
e feat of notability—one that was worthy enough to find the king’s ear—the only way to make Forester was to place in the archery competition or to kill the stag in the hunt at the annual Solstice Day festival on King’s Island.

  Jenka tried to smile. He had been training for both events most of his life, he had just never had the coin to get himself ship’s passage across to King’s Island. This year he had finally saved enough, but now he probably wouldn’t need it. This was definitely a rare feat of notability, and since it involved a dragon, the king would most likely hear about it. Since Master Kember had helped save Prince Richard from the trolls the day Jenka’s father died, the king would listen to anything Master Kember had to say.

  Jenka decided right then and there that if he was going to keep a good part of what really happened here to himself, then he might as well lightly embellish the rest of the story to protect Jade. “I think I got the dragon in the brow,” he wheezed. “The trolls tried to scavenge my kill. I tried to stop them, but the dragon came tearing through. It was as dark as the forest itself and fast as lightning, but I think I got lucky and got it in the eye. Tell the Rangers to look for a black-scaled wyrm with only one eye.”

  “That’s my boy, Jenk.” Master Kember praised as he used a kerchief and water from a canteen to wipe some of the gore from Jenka’s face. “I bet you did get it in the eye. I bet that’s why it fled, isn’t it?”

  “I don’t know.” Jenka coughed some more. “My head hurts, and I can’t remember everything that happened. It’s all jumbled up in my mind.”

  “Just rest, boy. Don’t try to talk, or even think right now,” Master Kember spoke soothingly. He saw that the wound on the side of Jenka’s face was already healing, but he paid the unnatural phenomenon no mind. “We’ll get some hands to haul you up out of this ditch, and a travois to drag you home so that your witchy mother can fill you full of her herbs and her horrible tasting potions and whatnot.”