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

by M. R. Mathias

  His proof came later in the evening. While Jenka, Zah, and Linux were making their way through the crowded streets of Three Forks, a trio of riders came charging into the town, hollering that the trolls had attacked their party on the river road.

  Jenka, Zah and Linux had gone to a leather shop. Jenka, following Zah’s advice, had purchased a new pair of well-tanned woodman’s pants and a matching vest with hardened steel shoulder pieces sewn into it. It gave his torso a triangular look; the point coming together at his navel, the other two corners making his shoulders look more substantial and a bit wider than they really were. Linux had paid for the fine-but-functional garments and had given Jenka a few coppers for the work he had done as their attendant. Jenka tried to refuse, but Linux insisted. Zah had then dragged the two men through a fragrant chandler’s hut, then to a material shop that sold lace and other exotic fabric brought in from the islands. Linux explained to Zah that the material would be much less expensive on King’s Island, and that there would be more designs to choose from as well. This allowed Linux to lead them to an armory that had been recommended to him. On the way to the armory, they tried to decide if they wanted to dine at the Melodious Mermaid Tavern, where a lovely woman supposedly played a harp every night and sang all the great old ballads of land and sea, or if they were going to The Jester’s Corner, where jugglers, fools, and mimes entertained the patrons in the evenings. Those were the only two choices in Three Forks for entertainment unless you wanted to see half-naked women dancing and doing tricks for coins. It was the frontier, after all, and there were far more men than women trying to settle it. Three Forks was where they all came to get rowdy.

  The trio was just outside the armory’s opened doorway, and Jenka was salivating at the prospect of purchasing himself a good new bow, when the men that had been attacked came riding through and ruined the afternoon.

  “As bold as Kingsmen, and twice as fierce they were!” one of the men called out to the curious folk out on the busy street. “They killed Rodger Poston and Garred Wheatly dead, and they ate Will Prestam's arm! We’re going to tell the commander now.”

  “Half a score of them tree-tall bastards, maybe more, set on us like starved dogs on a hambone!” another one of the riders added as he trotted by Jenka and the druids. The men were making their way through town toward the Stronghold to make their official report, and now the gossipmongers were running rampant with exaggerated half-tales of coming doom at the hands of the trolls. A tangle of mild hysteria ensued in the street, causing Linux to lead his younger charges back toward the Stronghold gates.

  What had begun as the makings of a promising evening in Three Forks had been turned into a chaotic mass of confusion. And if this new turn of events wasn’t bad enough, a bright, jagged streak of lightning split the sky as it started to rain.

  Linux’ uncanny ability to move between people got his group through the crowd and directly behind the procession of men who had survived the recent attack. As they went through the gates and the rain started to fall, Linux led them in with the others, as if they were a part of that group, too. It was because of this that Jenka got to squeeze into the Stronghold’s great gathering hall behind Zah, to listen to what the men actually had to report.

  “Who speaks?” A stern voice asked. Jenka knew Commander Corda’s voice, even though he couldn’t see the herculean man. He was the reluctant commander that had spent his early afternoon hearing Herald and Zah’s arguments, and quizzing Jenka about his two encounters with the wyrms.

  “I’m Bandle Millson, Commander.” One of the attacked men answered. “I haul wood and shale for Bartlet’s Outfit with my wagon rig.” The traumatized man gulped in a well-needed breath of air, then started into his tale. “We was set upon by a score or more of them trolls out near Westfork Bend. We was loading cut wood for Master Drail’s forge and for the kitchens here at the Stronghold. They just came a loping up on us out of the lumber groves and started to bashing us with limbs and such. Me and Harner, over there,” He pointed to one of his haggard-looking friends. “We runned off, `cause we en't fighting men, sir. We're just humble wagoneers. But that boy over there stood up to one of `em so we could get away and got his shoulder smashed for it. There was something in the sky over the trees, too, but I didn’t see it that well. The boy did, though. He saw it good.” The speaker indicated the other man that was with them. He was clutching his shoulder, exactly like he had been when they had ridden through town. He didn’t look capable of speaking because his teeth were gnashed together as tight as a bear trap. “He was just a wanderin’ down the river bank when we first seen him. He saved us. His wounds might just need a look-see. I mean, if you have a man.”

  In the brief silence that transpired, everyone in the hall looked at the boy who had been brave enough to attack a troll to save the wagon drivers. Jenka got a glimpse of him and his heart thundered with excitement. “I think that’s Mortin.” Jenka’s voice carried into the silence.

  Zah gasped with relief as she, too recognized the filthy, injured person.

  The boy looked up, and Jenka was pretty sure that it was the lost Forester. Mortin’s face — his entire body — was just far too dirty for his carrot-red hair to show.

  “Mortin,” Jenka yelled, and he started to worm his way through the crowded hall. When he got there, Linux was already wrapping his cloak around Mortin’s shoulders. Herald had appeared from somewhere, and was now bulling his way toward them, too.

  “Clear the hall,” Herald called out over the rising din. Then up at the commander who had a heavy gavel raised to strike. “This be the Forester we told you about, Commander! I don’t know how he got all way round to Westfork Bend, but this is the king’s own business here! Clear the hall, man! Get your men riding as far north as they can. We got good folk living all the way up into the foothills! Them trolls be startin' a war!”

  Chapter Eight

  Mortin had been so badly traumatized that he couldn’t properly communicate what had happened to him. He moaned and wailed, but nothing that made any sense came out of him. The haunted look in his eyes was pitiful. It caused more than one hardened frontier veteran to look away and wonder what could cause such a thing. Only after the Stronghold’s Spell Master gave Mortin a potion did the Forester even begin to speak intelligible words. Jenka would have thought that the stuff was pure piss, were it not fizzing and bubbling in the glass vial it was delivered in. After Mortin drank it down, though, his tongue began to cooperate with his jumbled mind.

  “I snaw the kling!” Mortin shouted, before he sobbed into Zah’s shoulder. “My Swaww Da king!” He howled again through his tears, with his face buried in her shoulder like some terrified infant. It was hard seeing the once strapping young man reduced to such a dismal state of mind.

  “Yes, Mortin,” Herald spoke soothingly in the now relatively cleared-out gathering hall. “We were all going to see the king. And the Solstice Festival, remember?”

  “Nawww thad king!” he wailed out.

  “This is pointless, sirs,” the black-robed, dark-haired mage said sympathetically. His official name and title was Spell Master Vahlda. He looked to be nearing the age where gray starts to form in a man’s beard, but there was no beard on his face to give proof to it. “Unless the druids know of other civilized means, I think we have extracted all we can from this man without becoming torturers.”

  “Did he just say, 'Not that king?’” Jenka asked the group, ignoring the Spell Master. Before anyone could answer, Jenka eased up beside Mortin and put a friendly arm around his thick shoulders. “What king did you see?”

  “Gawlin king!” Mortin looked up at Jenka and moaned into the suddenly silent room. “Gawlin king and his big blah dwaga.”

  “The Goblin King and his big black dragon?” Jenka repeated.

  “Yeh,” Mortin leaned away from Zah then. He put his forehead on the table and wrapped his arms around the exposed areas of his face, as if he were trying to hide it.

  Jenka looked up to se
e a whole bunch of blank stares looking back at him.

  “It’s obvious that he is delirious,” Commander Corda said, albeit with little conviction. “The trolls would never have a king.” The commander was a mountain of a man, very fit, and looked like he could easily wield every foot of the long, two-handed sword that stuck up over his shoulder. His beard and mustache were short and well-trimmed, and his dark, thinning hair hung to his shoulders. He wore well-worn crossing leather shoulder armor over a traditional green Kingsman’s tunic.

  “He said Goblin King, not Troll King,” Linux interjected. “The trolls are cousins to the orcs and the goblins, and all of our lore cites an incident in the early years of the mainland expansion regarding just such a being. I can’t recall the event’s specifics, but I believe it involved the initial battle for Tohold, what the kingdom now calls Mainsted Port.”

  “That’s correct,” the Spell Master put in, remembering the tedious lessons he had on the subject. “Several tribes of trolls rose up, behind a supposedly mighty leader, and attacked the first settlers there at Tohold repeatedly. They called the leader of those attacks the Goblin King because he was bigger and more fearsome than the other trolls, and he wore a spiked ivory crown, but that’s just the embellishing of a story about some battle with violent, blood-lusting trolls. I doubt that the being described in that incident was anything other than an exceptionally fierce troll, or maybe an orc who got a hold of a bird's nest and put it on its head.”

  “What happened? How did the battle go?” Zah asked. Her eyes were alight with both curiosity and concern.

  “Well, of course the trolls were beaten back, but after Captain Fashant toasted the victory at a celebratory feast, an old Hazeltine Witch supposedly stood up and spouted a portent, saying that in a hundred years the Goblin King would return, only this time he would command a dark horde, and with it he would exact his revenge on the trespassers who had so easily overwhelmed his kin the first time around.”

  “Has it been a hundred years?” Herald asked, half amazed that he was doing so.

  “By the hells! I don’t know, Ranger,” the Spell Master conceded. “You’re not buying into this shit are you? If there is a troll king out there, it’s probably some exceptionally clever bastard trying to stir up the fire.”

  “Goblin King or not, the trolls are bringing war, sir,” Zah said boldly, meeting the Spell Master's gaze. Then she cut her eyes up to the Stronghold’s Commander. “There’s nothing you can do to stop it. All you can do is prepare the people for it by calling them in to safety. Anything less would be irresponsible.”

  “Irresponsible?” Commander Corda ground his jaws and turned a deep shade of crimson, trying to restrain the contempt he felt at being spoken to in such a way by a mere girl. An earthworm of a vein seemed to be crawling down his forehead. “Irresponsible would be abandoning all those herds of cattle and sheep, all of those villages and towns that were built by the ancestors of the very people who won’t want to leave them behind. Not to mention all those fields full of spring crops, and all of the other resources that the frontier provides! Do you think those uppity sons-of-bitches on the islands give a pixie's pecker-head how many men have to die to bring them furs and wheat? They take twelve shiploads of lumber and cut wood a month, and still want more. I don’t think you understand Uh…” he hesitated awkwardly. “Um…Milady”

  Zah’s words evoked a memory of the dream Jenka had after Jade had spoken to him. The vision of the filthy, densely overpopulated city, and the haze-filled air, came to his mind. Three Forks wasn’t even close to as bad as the city in his dream, but what of Port? Or Kingston, the kingdom’s seat, or the original settlement out on Gull's Reach? Jenka had heard one of the people in town say that the whole of Gull's Reach was nothing but buildings and roads, that Landing Monument and the surrounding Salvation Forest was the last little bit of wilderness left on the island, and that barely more than a park. Mainsted was rumored to be just as overly populated.

  “There will be no one left to harvest the crops if you do nothing. You just don’t understand what is coming,” Zah said in a more peaceable tone. “But what about Kingsmen’s Keep? Will you leave those men to be surrounded and starved out by the goblinkin?”

  “You’re barking up the wrong tree uh…Lady, uh…Mistress, uh…Sister Zahrellion,” Commander Corda sighed at his inability to find the proper title for the druida, and she didn’t bother to help him. He ended up waving the formality off. “It's Duke Watlin’s decision to send out that many troops, not mine. I’m the commander of Three Forks Stronghold, nothing else. I don’t have real authority over the King’s Rangers or the Walguard. Just a bunch of half-trained Kingsmen who are mostly little more than rotten, spoiled, second and third sons from the island’s more notable families. The Duke is in Port. Or maybe Midwal, I’m not certain which. One thing is certain though: if he’s on the mainland at all, the Duke is somewhere safe behind the wall.

  "If what you say is true, there is no way he will be able to stay ignorant of the situation long. Midwal and Farwal will be reporting similar occurrences, if this is happening like you say.” He reached back with his right hand and fondled the leather-wrapped hilt of his huge sword, as he contemplated something. “Herald, what is it that you would have me do beyond what has already been done? I’ve sent out nearly two hundred men to investigate and to try and drive back the trolls, and a good number of my personal attachment is out searching for Master Kember and those bandits that killed that boy you told me about. I don’t know what more you want from me. I cannot leave Three Forks unprotected.”

  “I would ask that you send a few more of your smaller, stealthier brigades out to the foothill villages, and at least make the attempt to escort the people back to Outwal or Midwal.”

  “You mean you don’t think the Stronghold here will stand? Are you serious?”

  “If what them druids say be true, then I’m not so sure, Commander,” Herald answered sincerely. “If what that mussed-up Forester over there is mumbling has merit, then maybe that Great Wall will be put to the test, too. A fargin dragon that could crumble this Stronghold like it was a clod of dirt swooped on us just north of the lake, Commander. That don’t happen regularly, even up in the peaks. They’ve lost the fear of us.”

  “Coming from anybody else, that would sound ludicrous,” the commander sat heavily across from where Zah and Mortin were sitting. “Coming from you, makes it just plain frightening to hear.”

  “If you send someone to Crag, have them see about my mother and Lemmy,” Jenka said, showing that he had a concern in this. And that he had no proper respect for authority.

  He got a hard stare from both Herald and Commander Corda for speaking out of turn, but he didn’t let it change the resolve he was holding firmly in his expression.

  “You already have orders, Herald,” the commander stated, matter-of-factly. “I can send three veteran brigades north past the lake. That’s it. That’s one for Crag, and one for Kingsmen’s Keep, and one for Copperton.”

  “Don’t send no one to the Keep,” Herald said flatly. “Them fargin Rangers could hold that place for a century if they had to. There be tunnels underneath it, and caverns full of stores. It’s the foothill settlements that need men: Crag, Copperton, and Seacut. Weston is surely done for, being that the trolls are coming down out of the Orichs right on top of `em.” He shook his head at the sickening idea of the little farming and herding village overrun by rampaging bands of trolls. “When your men leave Seacut, they can take the coast road south and pass through Bayton. The men coming back from Crag can pass through Dell.”

  Commander Corda finally gave in. “I’ll probably lose this post for doing it, but you’ve convinced me, Herald. I’m putting down that you demanded this action in my report too. That way we can sit in the dungeons together.”

  “Come, Jenka,” Zah whispered. She took his hand in hers and led them out of the gathering hall as discreetly as possible. Once they were clear of the closing door, she s
poke urgently. “If Mortin really saw a Goblin King riding a big black, then we have to do something.” Her lavender eyes looked distant and afraid, yet they were alive with self-confidence. “Can you call Jade?” she asked. The only thing stranger than the question was the fact that she looked completely serious as she asked it.

  “Jade isn’t even his real name,” said Jenka. “He’s barely a yearling. How would I call him?”

  “I’ll have to call Crystal, then,” Zah looked around absently for the answer to a question that had formed in her head. “We’ll have to leave Three Forks proper,” she said to Jenka. “You can go ready two horses at the stable. We will be out of the city by sunset, and we can be back before midnight. Linux will cover for us with Herald and the commander.”

  “Herald isn’t our enemy,” Jenka stated, a bit of unease creeping into his demeanor. “And who is Crystal?”

  “You’ll see.” She smiled a brilliant smile at him, and when her eyes met his, they twinkled scarlet. A tingling of static rippled over Jenka’s skin, and after that he had no desire to do anything other than go ready the horses for his and the lovely druida’s evening trot.

  Master Kember and Ricky saw the Goblin King.

  They watched him from afar and stayed as still as stone, so as not to draw his attention. Notice was the last thing they wanted from him, or from the fearsome-looking, black-skinned wyrm that he rode. The horned-headed troll-beast was bigger than a normal troll. He wore a large, orange-red-colored tortoise shell over his chest, and another over his back as armor. There were shoulder-caps made of smaller, similarly-colored shells, and there were what appeared to be human thigh bones dangling around his waist. The bones were held together with wire and chain, and they formed a protective skirt. His body was thick and muscular like an ogre, and covered in dark, coarsely-bristled hide. He was still tall and lithe like a troll, and his otherwise-trollish head was horned, regally, with glossy, ivory antlers that strongly resembled flames, giving the appearance of wearing a great, thorny crown. The malformed thing exuded power and radiated hatred. It was an awesome creature to look upon, and both Rikky and Master Kember were trembling down to the marrow of their bones.