The dubious look that came over the king’s big, round face held much contempt, as well as a degree of mirth. Jenka was about to lose the favor he had somehow gained with his king if he didn’t speak carefully here. “The islands are dependent on the resources of the frontier,” Jenka opened his hands wide with open palms up, indicating that he wasn’t certain of anything. “Once the Goblin King has forced us behind the wall, the way of life people here have come to enjoy will cease to exist. What will they do on Gull's Reach for firewood? How will the forges operate, and the kitchens? Captain Corda said that twelve ship loads of wood come from the frontier every month. That, and the clay pits, and the lake’s water, and the iron and copper up in the mines will all be lost to you here.”
The king's brows had narrowed, as he began to see where Jenka was going with all of this. “We receive shiploads of lumber from South Port, and Mainsted Harbor too. So do the other islands. What will he do once we are pinned, do you think?”
“That, I can’t perceive,” Jenka shrugged. “We must cut the trolls and goblins down and drive them away for good. We can’t sit behind the wall and quietly wait for them to go away. We must take the initiative while we still can.”
“You are your father’s son, Jenka,” King Blanchard said with a bit of pride. “Did you know that Jericho and I competed here once in the archery competition?”
Jenka didn’t know it, but the idea of his parents being here reminded him that he had a message to deliver to the old Hazeltine Witch that his mother had once worked for. He would have to ask an attendant, or maybe Prince Richard, how to find her residence.
Down on the field, the man who had been injured was finally hauled away to the cheers and jeers of the people. This meant that Prince Richard's joust was coming up soon.
“I think we should cautiously open our arms to the High Dracus, Majesty. Make them show their loyalty to you by helping us defeat the Goblin King.”
The king had that dubious look again, but he also showed some regard for the deep intelligence reflecting in Jenka’s eyes. “Do you still want to be a Ranger like your father was?” the king asked suddenly.
Jenka took a deep sip of his peachy offering, and he shook his head in the negative. “I want to kill the Goblin King before he destroys everything I’ve ever known. I wasn’t born on the Islands, Highness. I wasn’t even born in your kingdom. I was born in those hills on the mainland under the peaks, just like the trolls and the dragons were, and that is my home as much as it is theirs. I will not let them take it from me.” He paused to bite back a tear then decided that his emotion was clouding his judgment.
“My son wishes to speak with you on matters of the mudged,” the king said, seeing that the Prince’s squire was getting fidgety. Already, the joust was being announced. “He has taken a queer interest in the dragons. Go with his squire, but when the competition is over this evening, we will meet again in the annex. My Commanders will be there to hear your thoughts. Together we will form a plan. I sent two more shiploads of men last night to fortify the wall and help the folks at Three Forks. Another ship is going up the eastern coast all the way into Seacut. They will free the people up at Kingsmen’s Keep, and they will get your mother and the Rangers to safety.” With that, the king turned back to the games and began clapping politely for the man who would be competing against his son.
The squire led Jenka and Zahrellion down a long, tight, spiraling stair, which opened into a segmented stable area. Men and horses stood patiently in various stages of armament, as squires, pages and stablemen ran about, fretting franticly over the contestant they were assigned to attend. The crowd was roaring for their Prince, as he trotted his beautiful white destrier out into the sunlight. Jenka felt a bit of jealous awe at the sight of him.
Prince Richard wore a gleaming breast plate, lobstered gauntlets, and a polished steel helm, with golden hawk wings sweeping back from the temple. All of the armor was chased with dark blue enamel work. He looked larger and more substantial than he had the night before, more warrior than Prince now. In the right light, the wings looked a bit like horns, and his faceguard lent his brows a sinister sharpness. The squire urged them over to a ground-level railing where they could watch the competition. The Prince spun his mount around and snarled at the crowd, adding to the terrifying effect of his helm. Jenka got the idea that the look was intentional, and meant to strike fear in the Prince's competition.
Jenka’s assessment was confirmed when the Prince trotted over near them and gave them a sincere, boyish grin. He cut his eyes at his squire before he lifted his visor, and the man stepped quietly off to retrieve the Prince’s lance. “I am pleased that you, my fellow Dragoneers, are worthy of the duty that fate has given us. I had feared I would have to face the coming storm with children or fools at my side.” The Prince's expression grew troubled. He glanced up at the terrace where his father and mother were watching with the kingdom's notables, and sighed. “I am sorry that I didn’t meet you sooner, for your sake, Jenka, what I am about to do must be done. Do not interfere, Zahrellion. We will see each other again soon enough.” With that, he spurred his mount over to his squire, snatched his lance up just under the vamplate, and raised it high to feed the frenzied crowd’s excitement.
It was then that Jenka saw a tiny speck in the distant sky, streaking purposefully towards them just beneath the clouds. It was only a speck at the moment, but Jenka knew that it would grow larger as it came nearer. There was no question in his mind what it was. It was a dragon.
Chapter Fourteen
Rikky didn’t know what to think. He was in so much pain that he hated trying to think at all. Worse, it was the lower leg and foot that wasn’t even there anymore; the part of him that had been eaten by that horrid little goblin, which was hurting him so badly. He had enough of his thigh left that he felt he could get a long peg-leg fitted, and he was hopeful, but he wouldn’t even be able to breathe until the pain began to lessen. He longed to be fighting the trolls that were now harrying the people of the frontier into the Stronghold, or even fighting the pain of learning to walk again. He did not want to be fighting a ghostly pain that shouldn’t even exist.
Outside the small closet-of-a-room he had been assigned next to the barracks in Three Forks Stronghold, Rikky could hear the frustration of the men. The trolls were pushing them in seemingly organized bunches now, they said. The Goblin King and his dragon had gained a couple of winged allies, and now other dragons swooped and harried everything that they saw moving.
The Goblin King’s horde had herded the people out of the frontier and behind the walls of the Stronghold. The gates were closed now, and a hundred or more people -- some women and children -- who hadn’t been fast enough, had been torn apart and eaten within sight of the Walguard, as they watched from atop the Stronghold's wall. There was nothing they could have done to save them except waste arrows trying to arc one out that far and get lucky. The city of Three Forks was aflame. Captain Corda admitted that they were about to be in a pinch. There were over four hundred people packed into the hold, a third of them women and children. The kitchens were thin, for the harvest was coming up and the stocked staples hadn’t been replenished since last year. There were only seventy-three trained Kingsmen and Walguard combined. The rest of them, sent out to the settlements and towns, hadn’t returned.
Captain Corda said that they needed to be back behind the Great Wall. Three Forks would be completely cut off from the rest of the kingdom soon, and things weren’t looking so good for making a break for it.
Rikky cursed the Gods and mocked the Life Giver. He just wanted to stop hurting long enough so that he could wrap his mind around something other than agony, but it wasn’t to be just yet. Pain engulfed him, and he fell back into the cool sea of oblivion that often saved him from losing his mind in the hurt.
When he opened his eyes again, Spell Master Vahlda was there, and so was Stick. Stick told him that he had made it back from the clay pits with the Kingsman and a few others
. He looked like he had been raked across the chest by filthy claws a few days ago. Three long, festering scabs cut from his shoulder down to his ribs, and were oozing pus. His normally mahogany skin was pallid, and his eyes were sunken back into his skull. The Spell Master was working a healing spell, and Rikky clenched his jaws and shifted himself up so that he could better see. He had seen Master Vahlda do the very same thing on several other wounded men, and each time Rikky couldn’t help but be drawn to watch the bewildering magic firsthand.
Stick sat on a cot with his hands high over his head. Master Vahlda was moving his open palm over the wound like he might do if he were scrubbing it with a rag. A warm, yellow glow radiated from beneath his hand, and a tangible static seemed to make the air around them hum, and crackle, and hiss. As the glowing power scrubbed over them, Stick’s festered wounds were ever so slightly starting to lose their angry redness.
A slight drip of greenish yellow fluid started down the young man’s chest, and he voiced his discomfort. Master Vahlda soothed him with unknowable words as he continued. The Spell Master’s face was beaded with sweat, and his eyes began to sink into darkening sockets, but he didn’t give up. Eventually Stick's long gashes faded into dark, ugly scar tissue, but the doing of the deed cost Master Vahlda a lot.
The act ended with the Spell Master pitching forward. Stick dropped from the cot he had been seated on to catch him. Master Vahlda was exhausted and incoherent, so Stick carefully laid him out on the cot across from Rikky.
“He’ll recuperate,” said Rikky. “You heard about Mortin?”
“Yeah,” Stick rubbed and scratched at his scars curiously while looking curiously at the Spell Master. “They couldn’t save the leg?”
“Nah, I was too slow getting here to keep it.” Rikky heaved a frustrated sigh. “I’m gonna kill that fargin Goblin King, or I’ll die trying. I swear it on Master Kember’s soul.”
“Them’s heavy words, Rik. You en’t seen how bad it is out there now.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Rikky snorted, and pointed at his missing leg. “It’s as bad as it gets right here. I might die, but that’s not so bad. I’ll die on my own terms, and that’ll be trying to kill that fargin thing out there. Will you help me?”
“I will,” Stick nodded. “I’m a made Forester, though, so I still have to follow orders. But where I can help you, Rik, I will. What do you need?”
“I need a smith, or maybe a woodworker ... or both, to come see me here,” he winced. He was just a boy, and wasn’t certain what he really needed. “I don’t have hardly any coin, but I might be able to impose on Commander Corda for enough to get done what I need.”
“A leg?” Stick moved over and pulled back the flattened sheet to see Rikky’s stump.
The leg was gone from mid-thigh down, and a lot of the meat that should have been there had been eaten away, so the grotesque limb was thinner and more scarred than it should have been. It hadn’t had time to start healing at all. Stick swallowed hard, but started nodding hopefully. He could actually envision a sleeved piece sliding up onto the stump and maybe buckling diagonally across Rikky’s chest and over his shoulder with leather straps. “I think you got enough to work with, but you need a lot more healing before you try to get around again.”
“Na, Na, Na. It hurts like molten fire,” Rikky clenched his jaws. “It can’t hurt any worse than it does now, no matter what I do. I’m feeling the parts that en't there no more, nothing else. It’s maddening. I’d rather not just lay here. Will you fetch me who I need? Will you talk to them craftsmen that came in from the frontier and help me?”
Stick looked down at his chest and shook his head affirmatively. “Should I get someone to tend to him while I go?” He indicated Spell Master Vahlda’s peacefully sleeping form.
“Nah,” Rikky answered with a nod of respect toward the mage. “He does this after almost every healing, and there have been way too many in the last few days. He needs the sleep.”
“I’m off, then,” Stick told him. “I’ll try and get someone over here that has an inkling of what you intend, but I got to hurry about it before I get new orders. Them trolls is closing on the Stronghold, and we might have to make a charge back to the Great Wall.” He patted Rikky on the shoulder. “I’m sorry about Master Kember, I really am. And if we go retreatin’ to the wall, I’ll make sure you get there.”
Rikky nodded his thanks, and though he didn’t see Stick again, a man with a knotted string and a set of scribe tools came later that evening and started measuring and sketching ideas for Rikky to ponder.
Rikky added and took away from the design, and even grew a little excited about it, but the pain of his missing extremities never lessened. He began to savor the hurt, and used that pain to strengthen his resolve. He would get a peg-leg, and he would walk and ride again. He would suffer every single minute of it if he had to, and when the time came, he would kill that fargin Goblin King. “I will rise up and come for you,” he told himself over and over again when the pain gripped him the most. Two days later, his peg-leg completed, the mantra of his revenge was scalded into his mind for good. “I will rise up and come for you.”
When he tried his first step with the peg-leg, he fell face-first into the foot board and spent half the afternoon vomiting from the intensity of the pain, but he got up. “I will rise up and come for you,” he told himself.
It would be no small feat to master the raw agony the device caused him, but he knew that he eventually would. It fit his stump well, and it would work, but when the call to evacuate the Stronghold finally came he still couldn’t walk. He could do little more than cling to his wooden prosthesis with all he had as he was hauled like a sack of grain and tossed into a wagon with some other men. “I will rise up and come for you,” he kept saying in his head as two excited horses and a terrified driver started them out of the gates in the dark of night. It wasn’t until they were being hounded by howling trolls, heavy rocks pelting the canvas, that he had his first doubts. “If I survive this flight, I will rise up and come for you.” he amended with a snort of disgust at the idea of falling prey to the trolls again. “If I don’t survive, I’ll haunt this world for all eternity.”
*** * ***
On King’s Island, Prince Richard’s armor sparkled like sapphires and polished silver in the midday sun. His horse snorted and pranced eagerly at their end of the long, divided jousting lane. At the far end, an ornery black steed carried a huge rider, plated in armor as dark as pitch. His horse’s caparison was also black, and his banner sported a fat, blood-red spider.
Suddenly, the horn was blown, and both of the combatants spurred their eager destriers into a forward charge. The crowd cheered madly, waving their hands and urging on their favorite. Above them all, high in the sky, unseen yet by any there save for Jenka, was the approaching dragon. It grew in size as it came, and more swiftly now. Jenka caught a sapphire glint of reflection, then another. It was the blue from the vision Crystal had showed him. It was the mighty blue drake that had been flying towards that deep mountain castle with him and Zahrellion.
In the tiltyard, the two great masses of flesh and steel thundered toward each other. Jenka only spared them the briefest of glances because the dragon dove sharply and began corkscrewing its way down from the sky at an impossible speed.
Some in the crowd had spotted the wyrm, and the people began to scream and point up at the creature, even as Prince Richard and his foe met at full gallop. The Prince shrugged out of the way of his opponent’s lance and twisted to deflect the blow even further. His lance burst into a shower of splintery shrapnel against the other knight’s chest, sending the man out of his saddle. The man hit the ground hard, and rolled, then came up clutching at his shoulder.
When the prince turned to shake a victorious fist at the crowd he saw that the crowd was no longer concerned with the competition. They were looking up at the dragon. It was right there, swooping in, with its lower claws extended.
From the balcony, frantic o
rders were being called out. Kingsmen were running down the lanes between the tiered seats to defend the Prince of the realm. The Prince was out in the open, vulnerable, and his mother was hysterical. King Blanchard wasn’t much better off. He had just been contemplating what Jenka had told him, giving it some weight, and now here was a sparkling blue dragon, come to attack them on right here on King's Island!
The dragon snatched Prince Richard off of his horse and was about to turn and flee, when someone threw a big spear from atop a nearby tower.
The screaming crowds trampled one another, each and every one of them overtaken by the dragon fear that the huge wyrms emanate naturally. Zah wasn’t afraid. She threw her arm forth and sent an ear-shattering, directionally focused blast of crackling, yellow energy at the missile the Kingsman had launched. The streaking spear would have hit the dragon in its gullet, and could have hit the Prince had Zah not intervened, but instead it went flinging away like a single strand of straw blowing in a gale. Now, Kingsmen and city guard alike were all starting toward her too. Jenka didn’t know what to do, and he fell to the ground when the first of the Kingsmen threw him to the side to tackle Zah.
The dragon was lifting above the futilely fired arrows, and seemed to be crushing the prince in its claws. Jenka knew better though. The dragon was cupping its claws protectively to shield the Prince from the stray arrows and spears, but that’s not how it looked.
Up and out of bow range the dragon lifted the prince, then into a long, wing-stroked flight out over rocky land to the north. From different places in the arena, King Blanchard and Jenka helplessly watched the beast fade into a speck and eventually disappear.
Zahrellion was yanked roughly to her feet. It took Jenka a moment to realize why. She had stopped the dragon from taking that spear. She had just thwarted King Blanchard’s defenders. These men had come to arrest her, and probably him too.
The Royal Dragoneers (Dragoneers Saga) Page 13