The Royal Dragoneers: 2016 Modernized Format Edition (Dragoneers Saga) Page 23

  “What is it?” a man asked from behind the unsure Captain. “There’s a storm about to run right up our arses.”

  “Ask the witch,” Herald said flatly. “I’m a King’s Ranger, and you’re being ordered to row this tub northeast until the witch says otherwise. If you don’t like it, then swim!”

  Herald couldn’t believe that one of the men actually looked at the sea as if he were about to jump over the rail. The sea rose up under them, the boat lifted unnaturally high as it floated over the huge swell. Then they went sliding back into the gulf between the waves. Rowing the boat seemed a futile effort to the crew, but they did it. Behind them, the storm wall slowly gained on them. They could only hope to please the witch so that she would call back her wind and save them from the tempest.

  After the oars were locked in, and two men at each side were rowing, Mysterian called Herald to the bow again. She had turned so that she was sitting on her backside instead of kneeling. Her head was lolling over to one side with fatigue, but her eyes were open.

  “It’s Jenka’s dragon. It’s out there floating in the sea. Don’t let these fools harm it. I can feel its terror. It’s not dead, but it’s frightened for its life.”

  Herald gulped hard. “His dragon? The yearling green he calls Jade?”

  “Yesss,” she answered. “Now let me rest while you find him.”

  It struck Herald odd that he actually felt a deep concern for the creature he had only heard about. In fact, he felt in his heart that it was his duty to his young friend Jenka to do everything he could to save the wyrm. He was a little unsettled about the idea, but he started speaking to the fishermen as if they were a group of young Foresters in training.

  “Were searching for green, men. Scaly green dragon’s hide,” he waited for the murmurs to die down before continuing. “It’ll get darker `n dark soon, so light them lanterns. It’s not a big evil beast, son,” he reassured one of the men. “It be a youngin’, and we’re going to save it or the witch will call forth a wind that’ll blow this tub straight to the bottom of the sea.”

  Herald had added the last because the hesitant men had stopped rowing themselves toward a dragon. He couldn’t blame them. What sane man would row himself towards a dragon? The times had turned anything but sane, though, and Herald had learned from nature itself that if you didn’t adapt to the circumstances then you didn’t survive. When Mysterian started cackling out crazily from the bow, the oars started to move again. Herald had to bite back a nervous chuckle that she would do such a thing to intentionally scare them.

  The last bit of velvety orange was leaving the horizon when the man up high yelled out, “Dragon ahead!”

  Jade was floating easily, but was afraid to his core because he was lost and alone, and didn’t know what to do. The impact with the water had been quite severe, but his cramps had long since left him. He had eaten a few curious fish that had come too close, and he felt that he could probably fly again if he could get out of the water to get airborne. But he couldn’t, and he was afraid.

  His young wings needed two steps of momentum to take flight from solid ground. He had long since given up hope of trying to get into the air from the sea. Several times he had tried to dive and then swim up towards the surface. He just wasn’t strong enough to get clear of the water. When he heard the man’s voice echoing across the waves, he thrashed around, trying to see where the sound had come from. The noise of the splash he made was substantial, and several of the fishermen started praying out loud.

  Mysterian crawled to the rail and pulled herself to her feet. She could feel the ozonic wrath of the sea-god Nepton in the form of the violent storm chasing them. She waited until a swell passed, and she could see the dragon clearly in the lantern light. In a voice as shaky as Jade felt, but with an unmistakable draconian accent, she spoke: “Terazal ephallenx. Friendsss of Jenka De Swassso we are. I felt your fear, Jahderialxellin. We have come to help you.”

  Like a swimming snake, Jade slithered over to the ship and slid his slightly-horned head up over the rail. She had spoken his true name as correctly as a human tongue could manage it, and it intrigued him. He blinked his melon-sized amber orbs, then flicked his long, forked tongue out at the fishermen counterbalancing his weight as they cowered against the far side of the craft.

  He had never been able to just leap into the air like the mature dragons could, but he thought that after the storm blew over he could try. He knew he could slither up into the ship. As small as it was, it was still twice as big as he. If he could eat a meal and rest for a few hours he could try to leap into the air from the ship. Even if he failed to take flight, he could swim alongside the boat until they led him to land. He wasn’t lost any more. He felt reasonably certain that these friends of Jenka De Swasso that could speak his draconian name held him no ill will, so he decided to trust them.

  Jade gave Herald a long, tentative look, then turned to Mysterian. “Thank you, ssswitch,” he finally hissed. Mysterian had no idea how the perceptive young wyrm could know that she was a witch. Jade slithered his bulk over the side of the boat and curled his wet, scaly body around the mast pole, forcing the craft to ride dangerously low, but steadier in the water. It was Mysterian’s turn to be afraid then, not because of Jade, but because the storm had caught up with them, and Nepton’s rage was potent.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Prince Richard wasn’t sure if he was alive or not. If so, he wasn’t sure he wanted to be. He felt a thousand years old, as if his skin had been fired in grease until crisp, and his bones felt like…well…they felt like gravel. The very fiber of his being had been scorched with Gravelbone’s evil taint. Richard’s vision was a milky, cloudy haze that revealed only a faint shadow world. His mind was mostly a jumble of incoherent ramblings, but every so often a coherent thought would manifest itself and linger.

  He could tell that there were more orcs in the main cavern by all the noise they made. A few of the big, green-skinned ogres had been enslaved into doing the Goblin King’s bidding, as well. All of them had heavy iron tools. Richard could tell by the sound the metal made as it clanged and dragged on the cavern floor. The vermin were excited and restless. There was a pungent plant smell in the air. Something was about to happen, and he was sure it was bad. He had felt Royal absorbing the demon’s insane magic with him. He had felt his bond-mate’s rage, and he knew that the sparkling blue was coming. He knew it was a trap, and he knew that Royal knew. If he could have mustered enough gumption to do more than stare blithering at the floor, he might have tried something crazy again. Anything to give his dragon an edge, but it wasn’t to be. Already, he had forgotten what he was thinking about and was wondering what that clanging metal was again.

  His attention refocused when he heard the nightshade's vile shriek. It came swooping into the cavern calling out some preordained signal. Prince Richard heard his dragon then. Royal was right behind the scale-less black wyrm. Royal landed before he entered the cavern, and when he came loping in, a half dozen orcs erupted into a hacking rage at his sides. They swung picks, axes, and scythes with heavy, penetrating blows. Royal let loose a terrible blast of prismatic energy that sent the nightshade flinging back against the cavern's stony side. Then he roasted more than half of the orcs that had been closing around him.

  His neck was decimated by the bladed weapons, but he didn’t retreat. “Come, my friend, and fly with me,” Royal spoke to Prince Richard with his mind. “The demon didn’t kill us, and now we are stronger for the sssuffering.”

  Royal thrashed and squirmed, and had all but ended the hacking vermin on either side of him, but the nightshade was regaining its wits and Royal hadn’t forgotten that the Goblin King was around there somewhere, too.

  “Come, my prince,” the dragon coaxed and projected. “Come straight to my voice.”

  The nightshade was coiling to strike when Royal saw the dragon-bone cage where his bond-mate was being held. Royal spoke something in Ogrish and two of the enslaved creatures turned
on the orcs and the nightshade as it struck. The other ogre went for Prince Richard.

  Richard didn’t see the blue-scaled tail that almost removed his head as it bashed away the bars of his cage, nor did he see his blood-soaked, raging dragon set into the hellborn nightshade. He did feel the grip of a large hand as it covered most of his forearm, and he felt himself being pulled into a cooler, quieter place where there weren’t even any milky shadows to see by.

  “Grunx druih vhagen cruxa?” the ogre asked. Prince Richard was too afraid to respond to the garbled voice, but he couldn’t remember why. He had no idea what the thing had said anyway.

  Behind them, a deep and primal roar resounded. It was followed by another terrible screech. The ogre pulled the crown prince deeper into the darkened cavern and loped at a pace that, for Richard, was a steady run. They moved like that for a very long time.

  In the main cavern, Royal and the nightshade were in a wild tangle of tooth, tail and claw. The two ogres still helped the blue wyrm when they could, but there remained several orcs and a few trolls to contend with. One of the ogres called something out, and Royal shifted around in his grasp of the slippery nightshade to respond. Royal agreed, in the brutish ogre tongue, that the Goblin King would be on them soon. With all the strength his lungs could muster, he sprayed the wicked black wyrm with his liquid lightning breath. While the Nightshade writhed and squirmed, trying to get the sticky dragon’s spume from its flesh, the two ogres charged up and out of the cavern. Royal backed defensively down the tunnel the other Ogre had led the Prince down. If it was all he could do, he would guarantee that nothing followed after his bond-mate. He was bleeding profusely about the head and neck and would die soon. It didn’t matter. Royal calculated that getting around a dead dragon in a tunnel was probably just as hard as getting around a live one.

  The two fleeing ogres were not who Gravelbone expected to see tearing up out of his lair where he was waiting in ambush. When he unleashed the devastating blast of dark crimson power he had intended for the big blue wyrm, he was more than a little disappointed. The two ogres were destroyed instantly, just as Royal would have been if he had come that way. The Goblin King let out a roar of anger, but then turned to find a wild-eyed silver dragon and an even wider-eyed boy flying down the cavern at him. His jaundiced yellow eyes grew scarlet and the makings of a spell began forming on his snarling visage.

  Silva was no fool, and she was small enough that she thought she could corkscrew herself around and go back the way they had come. The demon had to duck a shower of flying stalactites that Silva broke from the ceiling with her whipping tail as she attempted her turn. Gravelbone lost concentration, which saved them from the spell he had been about to unleash. When the sleek silver dragon executed the maneuver, she didn’t forget to leave the Goblin King a present similar to the one Jade had given the ancient red that had nearly killed Royal. The blast from her explosive spell sent her and Rikky tumbling up out of the cavern shaft wildly. Luckily, the lake was there, and Silva managed to twist them in that direction, for if they hadn’t splashed down into the freezing clear water, their bones would have surely been broken to splinters on the ground.

  Echoing up out of the grottoes, the Goblin King’s raging voice could be heard for miles.

  Silva gathered herself and wondered why Rikky was now laughing hysterically. When she asked him what was so funny, he replied, “I can’t help it. Every time I start to swim toward the shore I go in a circle.”

  Jade slept until the heart of the storm was upon them. When he woke, he yawned and spread his wings wide. They caught air and started pushing the craft steadily ahead through the downpour. Already, his weight had saved them from being tossed around like a leaf in a raging stream. It was hard to tell where the sea ended and the rain began, for everything was soaking wet. The men all had to bail water, Herald too. It was either that or sink, so they bailed with all they had. Mysterian helped direct the churning wind where she could, but she was too tired to be much help.

  Where the humans were afraid for their lives, afraid of Nepton’s rage, Jade was elated by the experience. It was a terrific feeling, the hot lightning filling the air with sweet static, and the feel of the powerful gusts of wind on his wings. As for the rain, it was better having the wet stuff fall on him continuously than being trapped in the sea waiting to drown.

  Jade knew that up above the storm clouds was fresh, wide open sky. He could have lifted out of the boat on a swell and flown away several times now, but he could tell that the boat wouldn’t last without his weight to keep it pressed into the waves as they rolled crazily beneath them. He didn’t want any harm to come to these friends of Jenka, who had saved him from the sea. He wanted to help them through the storm.

  The witch had told him that Jenka had come back to the mainland looking for him. It made Jade feel the bond that much stronger. As he hugged the mast pole, he let his mind wander and saw Jenka, all wet and bedraggled, huddled against a beautiful, tattoo-faced girl. They were in the lee of a boulder before a hissing, blue-flamed fire. Jade knew the girl from Jenka’s dreams. She was the rider of the ice dragon. She was one of them.

  Back in the moment came a high-pitched, keening call over the booming and rumbling of the storm. It was a sound that only Jade could hear. It was a call from another dragon. He returned the supersonic call as any pure dragon would. A moment later, the icy white wyrm was streaking down out of the roiling clouds, tendrils of vapor trailing from its chilly scales.

  Herald gasped, and Mysterian looked up long enough to see the rare spectacle. The two dragons communicated somewhat telepathically, and soon Jade was using the tilt and pitch of his extended wings to guide the boat after Crystal. They began moving faster, for Crystal couldn’t just hover in the violent wind. The boat was sluicing through the storm-ravaged waters so swiftly that the men had stopped bailing and had begun praying again. Herald just stood there watching the mist trail away from Crystal’s wings, as the warm rain condensed near her cold scales. In all his years as a frontiersman and a King’s Ranger, he had never seen anything so strange and amazing.

  The storm was getting worse. Lightning, bright and jagged, leapt from the sea and lit up the sky below the clouds. The men all saw the land then. They were running east, parallel to a length of bluffs facing southward into the sea. They would have been washed into them soon and been bashed into pulp and splinters for the crabs to eat had the white dragon not guided them away from their previous course.

  As it was, the man acting as the captain of the boat took up the tiller again and was helping Jade keep them from getting too close to the danger. He ordered his men to start bailing water again, and they complied. Their fear of the dragons had all but evaporated. The crew, with the hope of getting through the storm starting to seem like a realistic outcome, began working together to get the water out of the hull. It was in this manner that they rode the storm out. Hour after terrible hour they bailed and prayed and followed the white dragon through the tempest until finally they slid out of the darkness into a fresh, sunny afternoon full of calling gulls and gentle waves.

  “Clear and blue!” a sailor called. Jade nearly flipped the boat when he leapt out of it and began winging his way after Crystal. He couldn’t wait to be with Jenka again.

  The king’s flotilla of ships reached Port just ahead of the storm.

  Linux had shaved his pointed beard and donned a mummer’s wig with hair long enough to conceal the dark, walnut-colored triangle on his forehead. The other tattoos, he hid with the makeup from a theatrical kit he had stolen back in Kingston. He moved about the gaggle of young bravados that happened to be on the ship and cursed himself for his mistake. They tried his patience to the end. If any one of them ever came face to face with a troll they would shit themselves. They were fools, and there were other ships full of eager men just like them, all about to be led into a slaughter.

  The king had been on this ship, one of the finer of the royal line, but he crossed a plank-way to another
just before they left Kingston harbor. He then moved to a third ship and Linux had lost him. Linux had wanted to be on the ship that King Blanchard was on. He had a plan that would save them all a lot of trouble, would have saved them all a lot of trouble to begin with had he thought of it sooner.

  Linux had no idea, nor did any man on any of the three dozen ships in the flotilla, that the crown prince was the Goblin King’s captive. The rumor was just spreading across the rails now. Men shouted the state of things from the docks to the nearer ships, then from ship to ship as they heard them. The docks were swarming with people come to see their king bringing them aid. Often, cheers erupted for no real reason that Linux could discern.

  “The trolls took Three Forks and Outwal,” a man yelled.

  “Killed three thousand women and children in the doing,” added another.

  “There be dragons in the skies everywhere now,” a skittish man repeated what he had been told. “Just look to the north and sooner or later you’ll see one.”

  “They say Prince Richard saved a man and was riding on a big blue dragon over by Midwal.”

  This caught Linux' attention.

  “That was afore the Goblin King killed the wyrm and captured the boy!” a more authoritative voice called up, far below them from a row boat holding its position so that one of the many ships could maneuver into the crowded harbor. By the look of his clothes, Linux marked him as a local. “The commander at Midwal has gone missing, too,” the man continued. “A whole battalion went out to try and free some holed up folks near Del, but they got eaten by them little goblins that are helpin’ the trolls now. They said there was orcs, too. I heard `em with my own ears, calling the news out to the king’s ship a short while ago. Commander Corda from Three Forks went out on the queen's command to retrieve the crown prince just two days ago as well, and I seen them dragons across the wall with my own eyes, too.”