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

by M. R. Mathias

  Linux chuckled. “That is not the correct question to ask, Jenka, but it’s a good one.” There was a flash as a small flare of sapphire druid’s fire burst forth on the wick of the candle sitting on the table between the two beds. After a beat, the blue color burned from the flame, leaving a typical yellow glow. Linux grinned at Jenka’s unease. “You should ask me if I have descendants that washed up on Gull's Reach after the Dogma was swallowed by the sea. Now that is the proper question.”

  Jenka looked at the strange man for a moment. The pointed beard made Linux' head look unnaturally long, and his eyes were a clear liquid blue that rivaled the depths of Zahrellion’s lavender orbs. But other than that, and the tattoos, he looked perfectly human to Jenka. Jenka shrugged. “Well?”

  “Yes, my ancestors were on the Dogma, and so were Zahrellion’s, but neither of us are completely human. Nor are you. There were a handful of the elvish on the Dogma, and a few of the little folk, if it is to be believed. It’s true that some of the members of our sect have a touch of high elvish in their blood, but it is thin in most of us. A few, though, are still more elvish than human. There are smatterings of high blood in a good portion of the kingdom’s people, but if you tell anyone about it, I’ll be forced to spell you into a tree-sloth or a mud busker.”

  Jenka met the strange druid’s gaze and was relieved to see a wide, toothy grin spread across Linux' eerie, tattooed face. Jenka wasn’t sure about how much of what he had just been told was true, but he didn’t doubt any of it. He was quickly finding out that the foothills and forests around Crag and Kingsmen’s Keep were only a tiny little piece of a gigantic world, full of far greater concerns than his meager hopes and desires.

  “What are we supposed to do to convince King Blanchard that the dragons don’t need to be killed? Ridding the Islands of the deadly wyrms had to be a long and bloody business. Master Kember says that it’s a grim sort of work, but it has to be done. He says that killing dragons is part of our heritage, that by conquering the dragons and trolls we are displaying our dominance over the frontier, like the leader of a pack of wolves does over the others.”

  “Ah, eliminate the competing predator before it can eliminate you,” Linux shrugged helplessly at the foolishness of it. “Men are not as primal as most species, but they are animals, Jenka. I’ll not get into that argument with you, though. Zah seems to think that she has a plan. She hasn’t told me what it is yet, but she is a clever, clever girl. She said that you were a dimwit,” the suddenly juvenile-seeming druid chuckled. “I’ll save you some trouble, Jenka: That means that she likes you.”

  Morning came far too swiftly for Jenka. Linux felt sorry for him, and saddled his and Zah’s horses while Jenka and the other boys went through their morning exercise drills with the two Foresters.

  The day was pleasant, and the first half of it went by fairly swiftly. Jenka spent most of his time turning over stones of thought deep within his skull, while enjoying the wide open carillon sky and the vigorous life that flourished in the world. Zahrellion’s beauty, and the idea that she liked him, kept him wondering. The complexity of what she wanted him to believe, and how it affected his future, kept a brooding look on his face. But every now and then he would catch Zah giving him a curious look. After that, he would beam for a little while. Once he caught her staring at him from behind a fist-sized gourd nut she was sipping. She held his gaze when he caught her.

  A little after midday, the road eased up next to the Strom River. The Strom came out of the Orich Mountains up near Crag, but it wound away to the west before turning its flow southward toward the sea again. A man with a strong arm could probably throw a stone all the way across it, but it ran swiftly and looked fairly deep. The rutted road would follow the river’s general course the rest of the way to Port.

  “We won’t get to cross the Strom until we get almost to Three Forks,” Mortin, the carrot-haired Forester, said to the other boys. “Tomorrow we’ll pass by Demon's Lake. That’s where Crix Crux used to hole up before the pilgrims and the Kingsmen ran him up into the hills.”

  “How do you know?” Rikky asked in disbelief. “If that’s true, then Crix Crux has to be older than water.”

  Jenka and Stick both chuckled at the young hunter’s sound reasoning.

  “It’s called Demon's Lake because the wind makes a deep groaning sound where it passes over the grottos, not because of the Crix Crux fable,” Zah informed them. “When our ancestors first left the Islands and started settling here on the mainland they feared the place because of the sound and called it Demon's Lake.”

  “That’s true, lass, about them howlin’ caverns, but that en’t why it’s called Demon's Lake,” Herald heeled his horse over and added to the history. “Way back when they was building the Great Wall, a 'fore any pilgrims ever dared to venture farther inland than the coastal strongholds, they came a 'hollering that a lake monster had slunked up out of the caves during the night and snatched a man and the cattle he was watering. After that, it went and killed and ate a dozen caravan men who had just filled the king’s water wagons at the lake.” He paused and spit a wad of phlegm off to the side. “A group of Kingsmen went down into them grottoes and found some cattle carcasses, and half a man’s body, too. Then, after about half of them got roasted to ash, they realized that they had holed in on an old fire wyrm. They went back to the construction settlements, where the wall was going up, and got reinforcements with lances and crossbows. They came back to kill the savage red bastard, but by the time they returned it had killed most of the troop and fled for the peaks.”

  “If that tale is true, then those men got what they deserved,” Zah said with a touch of defiant anger in her voice. “How would you feel if some strange creatures came and violated your home and tried to kill you?”

  “How would you feel if you was one of them innocent farm folks that fire breathin’ bastard was a' eatin’, miss?” Herald’s expression was a study in indignant righteousness. He spat another wad of dark phlegm. Then he spat his words. “I lost a fist full of friends and a few kin to them scaly fargin wyrms over the years. If you ever knew the truth of things, about how them dragons nearly killed off our first ancestors and ended us, then you’d have a different bit of reasonin’ in your pretty skull.” He huffed away some of his ire and glanced around at the group. “When the survivors of the Dogma first washed up on Gull's Reach, they had to fight the dragons just to get from the shore into the thickets. Learned druid or not, you haven’t read all the books there is, miss. There’s a bundle of journals wrote by them survivors. I read some of them back when I was stationed on King’s Island.” Herald’s grizzly expression softened a bit as a fond memory intruded on his anger. “My betrothed was a scribe there. She’d been markin’ copies of old manuscrifts to preserve them.”

  “They are called manuscripts.” Zah snorted. “And I am sure it was hard those first years out on Gull's Reach, but we washed up in their land. We are the ones who…who…um…” She faltered and mumbled something else but no one heard what it was.

  Everyone was suddenly sitting still in the saddle and holding their breath. Even the horses had seemingly frozen in place. All eyes, including Zahrellion’s, were now staring at the dark, sinuous thing in the sky that had just completely eclipsed the sun as it passed over them.

  It was a dragon, a big old red, and it looked back and down at them. Curls of dark smoke streaked out of its snout with its slow exhalation, and its scales glittered scarlet and ruby in the afternoon sun. It was an intimidating beast, and it was banking around for a closer look.

  Jenka scanned around in a panic. There wasn’t a tree or a sizable bush in sight. Besides the swiftly churning river, there was absolutely no place for them to run for cover. Solman and Mortin panicked and charged their willing horses away from the group. Master Kember just managed to catch Rikky by the saddle and stopped him from joining them.

  “Stay together!” Linux and Herald both commanded at the same time. Herald added, “Mind your horses
now! Don’t let them get away from ya!”

  Jenka pulled on his reins and his horse backed up close to Master Kember and Rikky. He looked around for his fleeing friends, and his heart dropped to the grassy turf. Solman and Mortin had almost made it over to the river, but Zahrellion was by herself, about halfway between them. A glance at the sky told Jenka that if the dragon wanted to kill her then she didn’t have a chance. Then, to make matters even worse, Zah’s horse reared up and tossed her from the saddle. It instantly rolled itself back to its hooves and tore off in a mad dash, away from the flying death that was now streaking down from the sky.

  Before he could stop himself, Jenka found himself spurring his steed forward in a valiant gallop out to save her.

  Behind him, Master Kember let out a long desperate, “Nooo!” But it was already too late.

  Chapter Five

  Jenka charged his horse towards Zah, which put him directly in the dragon’s path. Over his thundering heart, he heard Master Kember screaming his name and the loud, low hissing the dragon made as it drew in the breath that would probably roast him to ashes.

  In front of him, Zah rolled herself to her feet. She managed to give Jenka an irritated but appreciative snarl, then raised her chin defiantly at the closing wyrm.

  Jenka was almost to her now. Her eyes were sparkling like chips of maroon-colored glass as she waved her hands around in quick, frantic gestures. Pink light seemed to trail from her fingertips, and it began to look as if she were writing in the sky. Jenka chanced a glance back, and his heart nearly stopped cold in his chest. The dragon’s wagon-cart-sized, horned head was right there on them, and those slavering jaws were showing him a mouthful of terrible-looking teeth.

  Jenka actually clenched his eyes shut and scrunched himself down into the saddle in anticipation of the crunching inferno that was about to end him.

  “Jenka! Nooooo!” Master Kember yelled again, but it was too late.

  As the dragon's jaws came snapping down at Jenka, Zah raised her hand and held her palm out, as if that might stop the streaking beast from having her next. With fierce determination, she called out a sharp, commanding word. A thundering blast of sparkling, yellow power pulsed forth from her open palm in an expanding wave that rippled outward through the fabric of the world.

  Jenka felt the heat of the dragon’s foul breath and could hear the horrifying roar that came along with it, but only until his guts were jolted. After that, everything was absolute silence, even as his horse stumbled and fell, throwing him headlong into the rough ground just beside Zah.

  The dragon had pulled up at the very last moment and had managed to avoid the brunt of the druida’s magical blow, but the concussion that pounded through the world, and the raw arcane power of Zah’s spell, caused the creature to instinctually flee north towards the mountains as swiftly as its wings could carry it.

  “By all the gods of devils and men, is it gone?” Master Kember asked, as he and Linux both spurred their shaky horses over to see about Jenka and Zah.

  “It’s not coming back,” Linux said over his shoulder.

  Herald, Rikky and Stick trotted over to where Mortin and Solman should have been. The old King’s Ranger quickly took in the tracks and sign and concluded that both of the fools had let their horses charge right into the river. He figured they had been swept halfway to Demon's Lake by now, if they hadn’t drowned.

  Jenka was on his knees clutching his ears. Beside him, Zah was curled up into a fetal ball crying like a heartbroken little girl. Her tears were not from fear or sorrow, though. The expulsion of so much magic had emptied her, leaving her with none of her normal poise or self-confidence.

  “It was probably a mudge, Zah. It might have had him, and you did what you had to do to save him,” Linux spoke soothingly. “Don’t judge yourself for it.”

  “That’s not why I’m crying, Linux.” She growled through her tears. “After King Blanchard hears of this he’ll never… Oh, never mind. Just leave me alone and go see that I didn’t just scramble what few wits Jenka has.” He nodded, wondering at the strange emotions of women, and went to do as she’d asked.

  “I can’t see King Blanchard ever siding up with something like that,” Herald said as he trotted up. He hadn’t heard Zah talking to Linux, but his statement put a sharp exclamation point on her sorrow. He told them what he had found, and that Stick and Rikky were scouting down the river looking for signs of the other two. He didn’t expect them to find much. He was impressed and a little intimidated by Zah’s show of arcane power, but he felt that his argument with her had been proven completely. Still, when he spoke to her, he did so in a kind, grandfatherly sort of way.

  “You see, miss, I just…” he started, but she stared fiercely up at him, and her severe look made him bite his tongue.

  “You say that you have seen dozens of men killed by beasts like that one,” She wiped at her tears as she spoke. “Well, all those men died because all of them, all of you people, from the king down to his mighty Rangers, are ignorant!”

  “Now miss…You…Your…thinkin…somethin…”

  “Naw! Naw! Naw!” she cut over his stammering. “You’re the experienced King’s Ranger, Herald. I’m just a stupid little girl! You’ve fought scores of trolls and a dozen or more wyrm. You have all that valuable experience, but your hate for the dragons and your lack of respect for the trolls has blinded you! You’ve never even come across a true High Dracus. Linux, explain to him what a Mudge is, and see if a bit of light starts to shine in that ranger’s empty head!”

  Linux looked up from where he was treating Jenka’s bleeding ears and shrugged. He didn’t think that these men, especially Herald, cared what a mudge was, but he was wrong.

  “Tell us, then,” Master Kember’s expression and tone showed that he was actually willing to listen. He was speaking to Zah, though, not Linux. He wanted her to answer the question. “What is a mudge?”

  Zah strode confidently, if a little weakly, over to Herald, who was still on his horse. She took the canteen from the horn of the Ranger’s saddle as if she owned it. After taking a few long sips, she handed it up to him.

  “A mudge is a dragon whose blood is so impure that it has lost its elemental conscience. They remain somewhat intelligent, but they are half-crazed. It’s the black ones mainly, because they inbreed like rabbits, and they don’t school their young very well. But the darker reds and blues can be mudge, too, especially when they mate with a black.” Zah seemed to be regaining herself as she went on. “Those dragons are the ones you catch sampling the cattle and venturing close to your settlements. Think about it, when is the last time a King’s Ranger, or anybody else, killed a silver, or sparkling blue? You haven’t had any trouble from, much less even seen, a snow dragon up close in a century, but yet we know they are up there in the icy peaks because every now and again we see them in the sky. Think back on every wyrm you’ve ever encountered and you’ll know it’s true.” She paused a moment, letting all of that sink in, then continued. “What the mudged strains of dragons have lost is still very strong in the purer High Dracus. There are living dragons up in those peaks that were considered old when the Dogma’s survivors washed up on the islands. They have watched us, and they respect all that we have done for ourselves. They are highly intelligent creatures, so much smarter that we are, and they would rather the humans than the trolls and the mudge populate this land.” Zah let out a sigh of relief, feeling that she had finally explained herself well.

  “That’s only because we taste better, lass,” Herald deadpanned, which caused Master Kember to burst into laughter. Linux laughed, too, and thus the tension was broken. As much as Zah tried to hold onto her affronted expression, she couldn’t help but break a smile with them.

  Jenka missed the whole exchange. He couldn’t hear a thing. The inside of his ears felt like they were crawling with stinging blood ants, and his eyes wouldn’t stop watering. For a good, long while he was only able to sit up and sip water and look around at the blu
rry world.

  The first words he actually heard came later, after the sun had set. After they had given up on finding Mortin and Solman, they built a camp around Jenka. They rounded up Jenka's and Zah’s horses, and searched the marshy area for washed up wood, but there were no trees to provide the fuel for a fire. Herald grumbled as they munched on bread and sausages around an eerie blue-green inferno that Linux had spelled to life. The flames burned with a hiss, didn’t flicker very much, and were so hot that everyone sat a good distance away from them. For Jenka, it was a very surreal feeling to be a part of such a scene, especially when you couldn’t hear. He was feeling better and better with each passing hour. His ears had stopped burning, but they felt completely closed. Then all of a sudden, he yawned. His ears popped, and with a flood of relief, he heard Master Kember complaining to Herald.

  “… fargin magic creeps my crotch. It’s unnatural.”

  “Actually it is natural,” Zah corrected softly from the opposite side of the fire.

  “Things you can’t see, powers that can destroy like what you did today, aren’t natural,” he shot back.

  “What of the wind, then?” Linux asked, looking at them all with open palms. “It can blow the thatch off of a house, but you can’t see it. In the peaks, it can blow ice so hard that it’ll skin your face raw. Is a twister evil? Is it natural?”

  “Bah!” Master Kember gave up his argument and found his bed roll. “I’ll take the last watch,” was all he said as he went. It was obvious that he was upset and worried about the two young men who had been swept down the river.

  “I’m going to give Jenka’s ears a look-see,” Zah told Linux, then went to her saddle pack to rummage for something.

  “Keep watch till well past midnight, boys, then give Master Kember a shake,” Herald rumbled to Stick and Rikky, who were at the far edge of the illuminated, blue area. Then he made to turn in for the night. “If there comes a problem, don’t wake me,” he added with a nod of grudging respect at Zah’s back. “Wake that girl. Let her deal with it.”