The Royal Dragoneers (Dragoneers Saga)

by Mathias, M. R.

  “Calculated,” Jenka corrected, before he turned and paced away from the cell door. He took three strides then had to turn and walk back. He did this twice before he spoke.

  “We were going to escape, Zah and I. Our dragons are coming to the island as we speak, and her magic was our way out of here. Can you get word to her before they set sail?” Jenka pressed his grimy face against the door, and pleaded to the King’s Ranger with his eyes. A whiff of Jenka’s rancid scent hit Herald's face like a fog, causing him to look down and study the shine of his boots as he spoke.

  “I’ll try my best, lad. But keep your message simple, lest I get it all scrabbled up.”

  “Just tell her to keep the dragons away from Kingston until I can figure something out. Can you do that? Tell her that we will meet in the other place.”

  “I can remember that, but I’ve a got to get going ‘cause it's already nearin’ high tide, and the flotilla is about to set sail. Don’t go breaking out just yet. As soon as the king is gone, Her Majesty will try something. I’m sure of it.”

  “Thanks, Herald.”

  Though he forced a friendly grin, Jenka’s spirit had deflated completely. He needed Zah’s instruction. He enjoyed her company, and he had grown to depend on her. Now she was gone. It irked him that she hadn’t just used her power to control the situation. Jenka knew that, if he could master even a fraction of the magic that Zah had, he certainly wouldn’t be sitting here feeling as impotent and as helpless as a newborn babe. He was finding the few strands of hope that had been supporting him snapping away, and now he was falling. “I’ll be here for a while, it seems,” he finally said to Herald. “Go on, before it’s too late.”

  Herald spat a wad of phlegm off to the side, gave a short nod, and then strode out of Jenka’s range of sight. Two heartbeats hadn’t passed before Jenka was pacing again. This time his stride was deliberate, and he could only take two strides before he had to spin around.

  After a while, he grew dizzy and faint. When he lay down on his pallet, he quickly drifted away into a terrible, spiraling nightmare.

  *** * ***

  Royal did his best to pursue Gravelbone and the nightshade that had gotten hold of Prince Richard, but it wasn’t enough. Royal had been injured by the slick-skinned, hellborn beast’s searing magic. His heavy wing strokes seemed to be tearing at an open wound, near where his shoulder and wing muscles came together, in the center of his back. His bond-mate was being abducted, and he was less than pleased about it. When he was set upon by two mid-sized mudged dragons, and lost the Goblin King in the clouds, he quickly unleashed his fury. One of them, a deep-maroon colored mam, almost got him just above his wing joints near where he was already wounded. Royal twisted in flight to avoid the snapping jaws, rolling deftly over in the air. He drenched the startled mudge with his potent, liquid lightning breath. Any creature other than another dragon would have been charred to cinders by the heat of the stuff. As it was, the lesser dragon’s wings were crisped to stiffness, and it went into a sharp, spiraling dive toward the fields below.

  The other mudge flew away then, but it didn’t go far. It stayed just out of range, waiting patiently for Royal to land. Royal knew it was there, and that the mudge would start calling in its mindless kin soon. He was determined to land in an easily defensible location, but what Royal really was hoping for was a chance to get hold of the beast before they landed, so that he could avoid another battle altogether. He was so busy searching below for an acceptable place to make his stand that he didn’t see the other, larger dragon that had taken position high above him until it was almost too late.

  When he sensed the other huge mudge, Royal immediately dove away and tried to start picking up speed. He spotted yet another dragon closing from the north, but it was too far away to be a concern as of yet. Royal decided that his only chance was to go on the offensive, and he started winging toward the mudge that had been shadowing him. The sudden realization that Royal was now targeting it caused it to falter. Trying to bank away, it gave Royal just the advantage that he needed.

  From high above, the big crimson was swooping now, and when Royal lunged his head in at the smaller mudge, he made sure to be true with his bite. He couldn’t afford to miss, because he would soon have to change course, and quickly. To his disappointment, the smaller mudge somehow shifted out of his mouth when he snapped it shut.

  He had intended to snatch the smaller dragon up by the gruff and snap its neck, but it had twisted away. Luckily, Royal's toothy maw was as big as it was, because one of the mudge’s wings got caught in it. Royal jerked around, violently ripping the delicate appendage away. The ruined beast, roaring, tumbled out of the sky. Royal altered his own course just in time to avoid the grasping claws of the red, as it came lumbering by like some flying mountain. It was old and powerful; not so mudged that it had lost its sense. But it was slow, and easily outmaneuvered. At least, that was what Royal was telling himself when the hulking wyrm suddenly twisted into an impossible corkscrew slither and managed to rake him with a razor-sharp claw.

  It was a slight, yet debilitating, wound. Royal was winged, and he knew it. It was all he could do to maintain a straight course and try to slow himself down so that the unavoidable impact into the trees below wouldn’t be the death of him.

  The old red knew it had crippled Royal, and was hoping that the crash would kill the sparkling blue so that it wouldn’t have to risk his magic. There was one thing that the mudged dragons loved, and that was the fresh, clean flesh of a pure-blooded dragon. But they feared the magic of a high dracus. In the recent decades, the purebloods had grown scarce, but now it had one to feed on. This blue's flesh would satiate the red's vast hunger for weeks.

  The red banked a slow turn and watched with a growl of disappointment as Royal threw out his wings, despite the gash that had split the fabric of one of them. Royal hit the tops of the towering pines and began laying them over as he came down. He managed to pull his wings in far enough that they didn’t get snapped or twisted when he started his rolling, tree-snapping, tumble.

  The landing wasn’t pretty, but it wasn’t fatal, which meant that the old red would have to fly down and finish it. It figured to do it while Royal was still stunned and recovering from his tree-flattening landing, so down it went into a graceful curling spiral.

  Royal shook his head and tried to clear it. There was a broken stump puncturing up through the soft skin just in front of his hind leg. The pain was excruciating, and he couldn’t find the grit to pull himself up off of it. He noticed out of the corner of his eye that the red was easing down leisurely.

  The old crimson dragon threw out its massive wings and dropped its thick hind legs to the ground. It then ran a few upright steps across the flattened trees before folding its wings along its bulk. Its upper body came down then, making it look more like some terrible overfed four-legged snake than a creature of the sky. It stalked like a wary feline along the edge of the newly-formed glade Royal's impact had created, its tail flitting and whipping around behind it. All the while, Royal could do nothing more than gasp and wince from the pain he was feeling. The unforgiving spike that held him from getting into a defensive posture was just too much.

  The old red sensed that Royal was in no position to use his powerful magic, so it started moving in for the kill. It loped in and darted its head like a striking viper, with every intention of latching onto Royals neck to snap it, but Royal wasn’t ready to die just yet. He forgot his pain. Using the grim knowledge that his bond-mate wouldn’t survive without him as the fuel to fire his will, he twisted away, tearing the broken tree stump out of the earth as he went. Huge, yellowed teeth snapped shut just beside Royal’s head, and Royal lashed out severely with his foreclaw. He caught the old red along the neck and it withdrew its snaky head just as quickly as it had darted it in. Realizing that the wound it had taken was nothing more than a deep scratch, the big crimson dragon raised itself up high and roared out its dominant anger.

  Royal knew
that he wouldn’t be able to defend himself from the attack that was coming. He was just too wounded. The broken stump was still half inside the hole it had made, and every little movement caused him that much more pain. He had made his last stand and had failed. Now there was little he could do but grind it out, tooth and claw, with the hulking red. At least he would die fighting the filthy vermin that had been infesting the land. He wouldn’t die easily. He would spend his last energy doing his best to return the wounds he received, but he knew he wouldn’t prevail.

  He wasn’t able to avoid the mass of blood-red scales and frothing teeth when they came in at him this time. Hot sulfuric fire, the infernal blistering kind that only the reds can muster, swept across his head, singeing his lids. All he could do then was hope, and wait to feel the beast close and sink in his own fangs. When he felt the bulk of his body being chomped and tossed, like he was no more than a cub to a lion, even hope fled him.

  Chapter Nineteen

  When Jenka fell dizzily onto his filthy woven sleeping mat, he went into a strange, tumbling slumber. The world grew thin around him. The air became insubstantial and hard to breathe. Eventually, everything stabilized, but he was no longer in his dungeon cell, at least his mind wasn’t. He was suddenly surging up and forward through a misty cloud. After the sensation subsided, he drifted. He seemed to start falling, but only for a moment. Then he surged forward again, and he felt the cool air blasting at his face. He could hear the savage growling and snarling of two huge, battling predators, and then he could see them as the clouds swirled and parted away. He could smell things too, but what information was contained in those strange and complex aromas, he had no idea.

  A huge line of felled trees led up to a massive, red wyrm that was in the process of chomping on the neck of a wounded blue. The blue looked like the dragon that had taken Prince Richard from the tiltyard. It was that dragon, Jenka decided. It was Royal, and as if he had a second consciousness speaking to him, a familiar voice spoke excitedly in his head.

  “It isss the Royal,” Jade hissed. “You are with me, inside me. I needed you, ssso I ssummoned you.”

  “I’m what?” Jenka looked around and realized that he was seeing out of the young green dragon’s amber eyes as if they were his own. Jade forced his wings downward, and they went surging up and forward again, toward the battle ahead.

  “Where is the prince?” Jenka tried to turn his head and look around, but he found that he didn’t actually have the ability to control his host’s movement. Jade felt his intention, though, and quickly complied. The prince was nowhere to be seen, and Royal was floundering wildly. His long, snaky neck was clamped tight in the gigantic red dragon’s jaws. The forest had been trampled, the trees laid over and broken as if they had crashed there. One of Royal’s hind claws had stilled, but the other raked and scraped frantically at his attacker.

  “Dive on him, Jade,” Jenka commanded. “Get right in his face. Rake his eyes or blast them with your fire. That is one of our companions down there.”

  “Yesss,” Jade hissed. “I’ve not mastered fire, but my mam gave me spellsss before she died.” The young dragon threw his wings back and started streaking down. The force of the wind against Jenka was so strong that he couldn’t even draw breath into his lungs. He began to suffocate and struggle, causing Jade some discomfort.

  “Do not,” Jade hissed into the ethereal of Jenka’s mind. “You don’t need air. You are only here in ssspirit. Your body isss still trapped back in that stone fortresss. Just lend me your confidence.”

  Jenka tried to relax himself, but it was next to impossible. The earth was right there coming up at him, and far too swiftly. Seeing out of a dragon’s eyes was unsettling to say the least. When Jade blinked, his lower eyelids came up and over his eye like some filmy, amber-tinted veil. Jenka did manage to fight away the urge to draw breath. He didn’t think that they would be able to save Royal. They were little more than a pesky insect compared to the ancient, red-scaled beast, and the mighty blue wyrm was no longer growling and struggling to defend itself. It was just twitching and jerking now under the bigger dragon’s bite.

  Jenka had to find Prince Richard. The prince was the future of the realm, and though Jenka was born out here in the frontier, he had been instilled with a sense of loyalty to the throne by all the men who had been around him as he was growing up. Finding the Crown Prince was his duty. Besides that, Prince Richard was the only one who could clear Jenka’s name with King Blanchard. His desire to find the prince had deeper roots, as well. Prince Richard was one of them, one of the five that would face the storm that Crystal had spoken of, and as that idea struck him, a real sense of urgency gripped him. He started to mentally voice this dire concern when Jade turned an invisible corner in the sky and really started to dive.

  Words as strange and powerful as anything Jenka had ever heard filled his mind, as Jade began casting the spell he was about to unleash. They were streaking downward insanely, directly at Royal and the big red, and after Jade spoke the particular word that completed his spell, the ancient red let go of Royal and turned toward them. Jenka felt the same thing that the other dragon had sensed. The feeling was similar to what he had felt when he had first used magic to make fire in his cell, but this powerful magic was raw, and magnified beyond imagining.

  Jenka was consumed by the tingling electric energy, but he saw everything happen as if time itself had suddenly slowed to a crawl. The wagon-cart sized head, with its two yellowed horns and its bright, terrifying, yellow eyes came round at them. All the while, the beast was sucking in a deep breath of air into its lungs. They seemed to be about crash into the thing, and Jenka reflexively tried to clench his eyes closed because the old wyrm was opening its huge bloody maw to blast them with its infernal fire.

  Like some ever-widening cavern that they could probably fit completely inside, red-pink stained teeth bared themselves. Long, slitted pupils focused into a fine sliver of a line. Jenka found that he half-wished that he was safe back in his dungeon cell. Then, just as the ancient wyrm roared out and blasted a geyser of orange flame at them, Jade coughed hard and tweaked his wingtips slightly. A purple ball of roiling energy shot from Jades mouth like a wad of spit right down into ancient dragon’s gullet and fizzled out. Like a ball swinging round a pole on a tether, Jade put them into a sharp, banking turn that the young dragon soon lost control of. Jade rolled over into a dizzying tumble. Once, then again, he flipped clumsily through the sky. It was all Jenka could do to keep from losing his mind. As they went skittering over the treetops like a poorly skipped stone, Jenka wondered why the spell Jade had cast, or whatever it was that he had done, had failed. Jenka tried once again to close his eyes. He had no desire to see the tree limbs tear his dragon’s young body apart, but like before, Jade's eyes blinked amber, but wouldn’t close.

  Behind them, a blast erupted, so violent that it jarred the sky out of kilter. The massive concussion silenced the world completely. The force of energy that radiated outward, caught Jade from behind and pushed them. Like some struggling swimmer lifted by a surging wave, they rose above the dangerous trees, just long enough for the young wyrm to get his flight back under control. Jenka tried to turn and look back again, but Jade's long neck didn’t comply. The dragon banked sharply around, and Jenka was immediately horrified by the amount of gore that he saw settling to the ground. He could taste sweet, coppery blood in the air, and the idea of it made him want to vomit. The hulking red’s tail was still twitching lazily, but there was nothing left of its neck above the shoulder, save for the bits that had splattered out and painted the fallen forest crimson. Jenka soon felt the hunger that the flavor and scent kindled in Jade, and he, too, began lusting for dragon flesh.

  “Look,” Jenka spoke with is mind. “He’s still alive, see? Spell him healed, like you did me when the trolls got me. You can feed after. We need Royal.”

  “I am weary, Jenka De Swassso,” Jade hissed into Jenka’s head. “I will try this, but then I must feed and
rest. We should be away from here. The trellkin will come to feed, as will the mudged. There will be many of them.”

  “Aye,” agreed Jenka. “But we have to help Royal get away, too. What did you … how?” Jenka wasn’t exactly sure how to phrase his question, but he tried. “What just happened? What did you do?”

  “I cannot explain it,” Jade replied. “It is complex.” He came flapping down near Royal’s wounded body like a giant, green-scaled duck, and landed awkwardly on the slick, blood-saturated trees that Royal’s crash had laid over. Jenka saw for the first time how huge the red dragon had been. It was as big as the pig barns behind Swinerd’s lodge. Royal was fairly big as well, and he was grievously wounded.

  When Jade eased cautiously up near the larger dragon, the limp blue wyrm let out a long, groaning hiss. “Gravelbone hasss him,” Royal's voice was weak, but plainly audible. “Leave me. Leave me to my fate and go save the prince. The hellwyrm carried them toward the lake. The demon must not be allowed to hold him long. Tell his father, Jenka. Ask the king why my brother’s head sits in his armory, why my dracar was even on that island in the first place.” Royal’s greenish-yellow eyes rolled upward, then, and Jade let out a long, sorrowful whine.

  Something changed around Jenka, something substantial. He started falling backwards out of Jade's mind.

  “Heal him, Jade,” he shouted almost desperately. “Heal him, and then come for me!” The loud reverberation of his own voice echoing off of the stone walls of his dungeon cell was the only response he got.

  *** * ***

  Back in the dungeon, Jenka came at the steel door, pounding and screaming for the guards to immediately fetch Herald, or the queen, or even King Blanchard himself. He was frantic. He had to tell them what was happening.

  “Shut your fargin grub-hole, boy!” the guard responded with an angry chuckle. “If you wake me up again, I’ll see that your fast is broken with pissed oats and moldy bread.”