The Royal Dragoneers (Dragoneers Saga)

by Mathias, M. R.

  Rikky looked up to see the Goblin King looking down at him through the branches. The mighty black dragon was gliding around to make another pass over him. He tried to run left, but immediately changed direction when a troll came loping out of the trees up ahead of him. He turned the other way and ran smack into a smaller, gray-skinned creature that had stepped out from behind the trees. It was a goblin, or maybe a young orc. Rikky had seen neither creature before so he couldn’t say for certain. Whatever it was, its snarling mouth, full of needle-sharp teeth, was snapping at Rikky’s crotch as its razor-sharp claws began tearing savagely into his arms and chest. Beyond the little creature that was determined to shred him to ribbons, Rikky saw two tall lanky trolls; one with its bright, pink tongue lolling out the side of its mouth as it came charging in at him. He tried to turn and flee the other way, but he fell hard to the ground. The wind was knocked from his heaving chest. He felt claws and teeth tearing into his legs and spine as the haze of oxygen deprivation began to cloud his brain. The last thing he remembered, before blackness completely engulfed him was his body jerking and wracking, trying to gasp in one last breath of air.

  Chapter Nine

  Zahrellion led Jenka beyond the limits of the city at a brisk, steady trot. She had studied a map of where she intended to go and went about getting there with confidence. Jenka had no idea that she was as nervous as he was. They rode south and left the main road, moving west, riding out past most of the outlying ranches and huts on a rutted dirt track, similar to the one they had taken out of Crag.

  At the moment, they were moving through a stretch of marshy, overgrown field that lay just north of the first of the three river forks that gave the town its name. The moon was a sliver of silver, low in the cobalt sky, and the stars were out in abundance. The earlier rain had freshened the cool air, but the precipitation had left the ground soggy and soft. It was slow going for the horses. They were also out in the open, and that had Jenka nervous. At least once, he thought he had seen part of the sky being eclipsed by something gigantic flying swiftly overhead.

  Zah explained that a smaller bird or bat flying lower in the sky would have the same visual effect, and Jenka dubiously contemplated that concept while they rode.

  About half a mile away, on a rise to the south, a caravan or a wagon-train was encamped by the river fork. The banter and song from the great distance, and the lights from their bonfires only served to make the area around their destination; the huge, whitish-gray up thrust of rock that Zah was leading them toward, seem that much more dark and secluded. Which turned out to be a good thing, for it was no lump of rock that they were approaching. The thing was suddenly moving, causing Jenka to tremble with both awe and fear. Millions of shimmering scales reflected the starlight from the sky. It was like watching a slithering mound of diamonds shifting and worming on a black silk cloth. The slithery creature’s scales were a pearlescent white, each the size of a small child’s palm. The dragon was as big as a barn, and its great, toothy maw came looming in at Zahrellion so fast that Jenka’s horse nearly threw him, as it tried to shake its bridle and flee.

  “It’s all right!” Zah called over the dragon’s heavy intake of breath. Her own words came out of her mouth in a cloud of steam, for the dragon’s breath was as frigid as the high mountain air. “This is Crystal, she is my friend. She is the one that told me of your bonding. That’s the reason why I offered the King’s Rangers my services the night the rangers killed that young mudge. It was so that I could meet you.”

  Whether it was just a natural sound that a dragon sometimes makes, or a reaction to the term “mudge,” Jenka couldn’t say. But after Zah had spoken the word, Crystal hissed like a scalded cat and withdrew her head. She rose up high, fluttering her wings wide into a more dominant posturing. Her leathery wings were a shimmering grayish-white. Jenka could imagine them wrapped around her body, blending her perfectly into a snow-capped peak like some long-frozen stone.

  Jenka’s horse was trembling violently beneath him. He wasn’t sure he would be able to keep it from bolting much longer. Nor was he sure he wanted to, because as beautiful as Crystal was, she could still snatch them both in a single bite.

  “I see that you have mastered the Summoning,” Crystal said, more into Zah and Jenka’s mind than aloud. Her voice was low, but decidedly feminine, which went well with her big, glacial-blue, vertically-slitted eyes. “You must teach it to the boy. Not so long from now, his bondling will be ready to leave its nest and join us. But for now, it cannot.”

  “I will,” Zah sighed to clear her mind, and tried to gather herself. Though she had spoken like this to Crystal several times, and had even ridden her once, being this close to the mighty creature still thrilled her to the core. She had to concentrate to keep from forgetting the questions she needed to ask. “Is there really a Goblin King riding around on a big black mudge?”

  “Yessss,” Crystal hissed. “It is the evil force I told you about before, but it is no goblinkin, and it is no mudged dracus that it rides either. It is the demon Gravelbone who has come, and the hellborn beast he commands is not a dragon, but a nightshade. They are weak now, but they are gaining strength with every bit of fear and anguish they instill. Gravelbone has returned for vengeance. He is not the only dark thing that has awakened, but for the time being he is the one who concerns us.”

  Crystal slithered down into a curled position, where her head came to rest on her foreclaws. “Gravelbone will lead the goblinkin and the mudge against you. The mountains are infested with the lesser of the vermin, and they number beyond count. Worse, they are simple-minded and easily riled into action. The goblin hordes, when they come, will charge, blindly and willingly, headlong into death, for Gravelbone. They will try to consume everything in their path that their bodies will digest. The orc think a little more, but are twice as terrible. They will fight with their kin against you. Without our help, man will not survive here.” She flicked her purple tongue forth and tasted her surroundings. Her breath wafted across the humans like a gust of frigid air. “Thisss demon won’t stop at the mainland, either. If he succeeds in driving you that far back, then he will attempt to vanquish your islands as well.”

  “You said, 'without our help' ,” Jenka spoke to the dragon cautiously. “Whose help, exactly?”

  Zah was drawn toward Jenka’s boldness. It was no easy thing to speak to a dragon. Jenka had done so directly. She weighed his question and judged it not too ignorant or offensive. She realized then that it was a very good question. She listened intently to Crystal for her answer.

  “There should be five when the Time of Confliction is upon us, and five of you as well, but that terrible dilemma will never come to pass if we let Gravelbone keep his head. Here, in this land, at this time, there are only three High Dracus that have felt the calling. One of us is too infantile yet to be of much help. The other has bonded with the hope of your people’s future, but the strength of that tie is tenuous at best. You will meet him very soon, but his drake has bade me not to expose his identity, and I know that that is for the best.”

  “Are we still supposed to try and get King Blanchard to unite with you? I don’t understand.” Zah looked a bit let down. “I thought that there were hundreds of you that were going to help us, dozens at least. King Blanchard will not make a pact with just three dragons, will he?”

  “Ahh, my full-hearted girl! It isn’t whether you succeed in convincing him to join us, but that you convince him that the possibility of peace between man and dragon exists. We are all pawns in a fairly grand design, and don’t be surprised if you have to pay a price for your convictions. Remember what we have discussed before, yesssss? Faith, yesss? Trussst and faith in one another, and the hope that we can forge a peace for the future.”

  Jenka got the feeling that the glorious dragon was manipulating Zahrellion more than just a little bit. Sort of like how she sometimes manipulated him. The circumstances took on a new light, and doubt about Zah’s assessment of the situation began
to creep into Jenka’s mind.

  The dragon must have sensed Jenka’s uncertainty, for it loomed its big head over and captured him in that deep, liquid-blue gaze. Veins of scarlet and gold pulsed and throbbed like lightning flashes in a tempest through the dragon’s glacial orbs. They were as big around as pumpkins, and inside their depths, slitted pupils focused down to a sliver. Above the eyes, terrifying brow plates, as long as a man’s arm, narrowed under milky, clear, icicle-like spiked horns. The big snow wyrm’s breath was freezing cold, and Jenka began to shiver, as did his horse.

  “Jade will wean himself soon, clever boy. Then you will have your hands full, I assure you. When time gifts you in abundance, which I think it soon will, do not waste it. Learn from Zahrellion, find your magic, and soon your bonding, and ours, will be completed.”

  Jenka’s doubt evaporated, as visions of soaring through the skies riding Jade’s sleek turquoise- and emerald-scaled back filled his mind’s eye. Beside him, Zah, on Crystal, and another unidentifiable person riding a richly colored blue wyrm, banked and curved through the sky as they flew toward the shimmering, orange evening horizon. Ahead of them, Jenka saw the silhouette of an impossibly tall castle thrusting up out of the sharp mountain peaks. He knew that it was his future home that he was looking at, and that fact simply made the vision all the more compelling. When would this come to pass? He wondered to himself, Is it really my future to live this?

  “Yessss, Jenka De Swasso,” Crystal hissed out loud her response to the question Jenka had asked solely within his mind. She then rose to her haunches and leapt into the starry sky. She threw out her wings with a snap, and a few deep thumping wing beats later, she was gone.

  *** * ***

  Rikky felt the claws and teeth that had been tearing at him turn loose, and he half-crawled half-hopped as fast and far away from the little goblin as he could, which wasn’t very far. His left leg felt horribly wrong. Suddenly, men were thundering in from everywhere on horseback with flaming brands held high. They were shooting arrows with bows and crossbows, and calling out to one another urgently. A few of them wore the blue star of the King’s Rangers, others the red shield of the Walguard. Some sported the Kingsmen’s spread-winged hawk. Rikky didn’t care who they were. He was just glad they were there, and that he was no longer being torn apart. The wounds he had taken suddenly began to burn intensely. Afraid to look down at himself, he gauged the eyes of one of the Kingsmen as they rode past and looked at him. Not seeing any shock or disgust in the man’s face, he chanced a glace and immediately wished that he hadn’t. The lower portion of his left leg was virtually meatless, leaving his shin bone completely exposed. Shock overtook him then, and everything disappeared from his mind completely.

  He woke after a while and opened his eyes to find that he was tied like a grain sack over someone’s horse. For a moment, there was no sensation other than the jarring and bouncing of the galloping animal, and the sound of terrified calls of hardened men tactfully fleeing from something. Then the pain came again. Everything went blood red in Rikky’s mind, and it seemed like he might actually die from the raw agony he was feeling. An explosion of hot, sticky gore burst from his guts up through his throat, splattering down across the rump of the animal he was tied to. After that, unconsciousness mercifully took him under again.

  Later, Rikky opened his eyes to find that it was morning. He was lying down under a wild-limbed oak tree beside a pair of curious looking Kingsmen.

  “I think he’s coming out of it,” one of the two men said to the other.

  “Ask him, then,” the darker-haired man urged his companion. “Ask him if he seen it, too.”

  “Did you see it?” the other man asked stupidly. “Did you see the horn-headed troll on the dragon?”

  “Aye, I did,” Rikky rasped. “I’m gonna kill that bastard.”

  “Ha!” the darker-headed man laughed. “Kill that, will ya? I doubt you’ll survive the night, boy. And even if ya do, there’s no doubt you’ll lose that leg.” Then to his companion, “I told you we wasn’t seeing things. Lets’ try and keep him alive till we get back to Three Forks so that Commander Corda can hear his bit of the tale too. He was one of the ones we was sent after, I think.”

  “Wasn’t you riding with that crippled ranger? Kember?” the lighter-haired Kingsman asked.

  “Aye,” Rikky grunted. The pain was becoming too intense to bear, but he gritted it back and went on. “A troll bashed his head in. It snuck up on us while we was watching that big black Wyrm.”

  Rikky wanted to get to Three Forks badly. He had to tell Jenka about what had happened to Master Kember. He was fever-stricken, and he wanted to scream out in agony and cry until his tears ran dry over the loss of Master Kember, but he wouldn’t show his emotion to these men he didn’t know. He was afraid. He didn’t have any kin, save for his mother. He didn’t want to lose his leg, and he wanted the pain that gripped his body like an ever-tightening vice to go away. But more than any of that, he wanted to survive. He had to survive. How else could he avenge Master Kember’s death and kill the Goblin King?

  Chapter Ten

  By the time Zahrellion and Jenka made it back into Three Forks Stronghold, it was nearly time for the group to rise and prepare for the day’s journey. No one had questioned their absence during the evening, save for Herald, who had readily believed the tale Linux had told him. Jenka had just shut his eyes, when Herald tapped on the door to Linux' room to wake them.

  Their destination, Outwal, sat just this side of the Great Wall. It would take every bit of the day to get there, but this part of their journey wasn’t going to be made on horseback.

  Though he was exhausted from his all-night adventure with Zah, the excitement and promise of the day's travel gave Jenka enough energy to get the carriage loaded. After that, he slept, his head bobbing in the corner of the once plush, but now dingy and overused, hard-topped buggy.

  Herald was riding boltman up on the box with the driver, so Jenka had his legs stretched out to the side, taking up the entire width of the seat across from Zah and Linux. Zah was asleep for the first part of the trek as well, her tattoo-covered but otherwise pleasant face scrunched and slobbering in her bald-headed companion’s lap.

  They were awakened when the driver suddenly pulled the wagon to a halt. Herald began speaking excitedly to a group of men outside. No one was alarmed. Though they were still outside the Great Wall, they were in the heart of civilization. There were ranches and clusters of homes, even larger dwellings, where multiple families lived all under one roof, all around them. Travelers and herders passed by constantly, and every few miles was a well-manned Kingsmen’s outpost, or a tavern room that served as the same. There was no danger of troll attacks or dragons here. There were bandits, but they would have little interest in a carriage full of people. They would be after cargo or coin, not common folk. Herald still insisted on riding guard and manning the crossbow, and this gave the passengers a little more comfort and confidence in their safety.

  By the conversation outside, it sounded like a group of Herald’s fellow King’s Rangers were trying to sort the gossip and rumors they had been hearing from the truth. The stop was short, and the carriage was quickly jerked back into motion and picking up speed. Jenka couldn’t sleep after that, and he gladly accepted a bread roll, stuffed with ham and cheese, that Linux produced from a basket at his feet.

  After he ate, Jenka drank from a canteen, then began to think about what Zah’s dragon had said, and what it had shown him in that vision. More vivid than a favorite memory, the scene had been so perfectly clear, as if he were actually living that moment. Crystal had said that the other dragon of the three had bonded with their future. What does that mean? Jenka wondered to himself as he looked out the small, dirty portal at the strange, progressing world outside.

  They were continually passing amazing feats of human ingenuity and constructions beyond anything Jenka could have thought possible. There were mechanical plows, with dozens of steel-forged m
oving parts, working the fields, and an intricately-carved marble statue of Lady Herron -- the firstborn of the realm -- that stood a dozen feet tall. There were spiraling towers built at the corners of some of the prouder buildings, which were topped with roofs of hammered copper that shined like molten, golden spear heads in the sun. Flamboyantly-dressed jugglers entertained in an open pavilion on a busy intersection of roads, and a silver-haired man dressed in black robes blew flames forth from his mouth as if he were part fire drake. Some of the carriages and wagon carts they passed looked streamlined, and they were constructed and painted so cleverly that Jenka thought the gods themselves might have had a hand in their design.

  As they neared Outwal proper, the congestion and proximity of the growing structures became so dense that it felt to Jenka as if they were passing down a long, high-walled corridor. The sun was leaving the sky, and the landscape ahead of them fell away towards the sea, giving only the slightest hint at the size of the protected peninsula that lay beyond the Great Wall. They had a hilltop view of the kingdom lands all the way south to Port, and the sea coast to which they clung. Jenka held the carriage door open rather than enjoy the sight through the grimy glass. On one side of the city called Port was the sea, but on the other was nothing but wide-open landscape that stretched east and south as far as the eye could see. The view shed some perspective on all the overcrowding, reminding Jenka that, crammed and busy as the cities were, there were still thousands upon thousands of miles of open land and forest out there that hadn’t been touched.

  Just then, Jenka caught his first sight of the formidable Great Wall, and he was taken aback. The stone block monstrosity rose up over forty feet above the ground and stretched its way across the land in a gentle arc until it disappeared into the eastern horizon. There were towers spaced every so often along its length, and men moved about between them on the wall top. The western end went right into the sea and ended a good distance out in the bay with the great octagonal tower of a light house. Beyond the light house, the fading, rose-colored sky looked to be brewing the makings of a summer storm.