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

by M. R. Mathias

  It could have been hours, but it seemed more like days before somebody came and rattled open the eye-level slot to peer in at him. The scant torchlight filtering around the silhouetted head caused his eyes and head to ache, but when the visitor spoke, the voice was as welcome as any ever had been.

  “Fargin hells!” Herald exclaimed angrily. “You! And you,” he yelled to the dungeon guards. “This man, and the lady over there are to have fresh, clean water every hour, and three warm meals a day.” He held up three fingers and wiggled them at the slovenly men. “I’ll have the food brought to the dungeon gates from the main kitchen, not that bug-infested servant's hole. And if I find out that they aren’t getting the meals I send, I’ll come down here myself and cut you a new arsehole. Now get to fetching some good clean water and waste no time about it!”

  “How long have we been down here?” Jenka had moved closer to the open slot and stood in the shadow, out of the yellow beam of moat-filled light penetrating his darkened box.

  “Two days, lad,” Herald sighed. “And a lot has happened.”

  “Can you have someone look at Zahrellion? She hasn’t stopped moaning since we’ve been down here. I think she was injured by the men who arrested her.”

  “Fargin luggers,” Herald cursed them. “I’ll send the Spell Master down as soon as I can track him down. I’d have come sooner, lad, but the kingdom has gone mad with all of this. The trolls have set upon Three Forks and the folk cowering there are going to have to make an unprotected run for the wall. It’s fargin madness. And here in the dungeon sits the two people that were trying to warn us all about it.”

  “Go check on Zah,” Jenka rasped out the request. “She sounded like she was getting worse, and I’m concerned for her.”

  “Aye, lad, I will,” Herald promised. “But only after I’ve seen you get a drink or two of clean water in you. I’ve done my duty to them druids. It’s my duty to your da and Marwick that I’m trying to do now. If it weren’t for the queen I’d never have gotten down here. She wants you let loose, but His Majesty is as thick-headed as a mountain ram. He thinks you two were tricked by the wyrms and led them here to take the Prince.”

  “The Prince is…”

  “Not so loud, lad,” Herald hushed. “I seen it as plain as day. He wasn’t harmed none. That wyrm was protecting him, and I think that the three of you know more than you’re letting on, but that discussion is for another day.”

  “I can wait,” Jenka moved into the rectangular beam of light, and the sight of him caused Herald to lightly gasp. He was filthy and bruised, and his eyes were as red as blood. Worse, he was dehydrated, and his lips were beginning to crack and bleed. He had been seasick for days just before he was imprisoned, and his body was craving nutrition. “Go, Herald. She may be in bad shape. I’m not going anywhere.”

  “I’ll go check on the druida, Jenka, but if that water isn’t here soon, I’ll start cutting pieces off of this fargin guard they left down here. I’m a First Ranger, and I can distribute the king's justice with impunity.” He said it loud enough for the remaining dungeon guard to plainly hear.

  He turned and strode out of Jenka’s line of sight, and asked the now-nervous guard which cell Zahrellion was in. It was the one across from Jenka, and once the slot was open and Herald was peering in, Jenka felt a wave of relief wash over him. That changed when Herald turned around and looked back at Jenka. Zah’s pitiful moan came from the opening, and Jenka heard it louder than before. It sounded raspy, as if fluid was gurgling in her throat. Herald looked in again, then spun back toward Jenka. The paled look on Herald’s face was horrified.

  The grizzled old Ranger looked more than a little worried by what he had seen. His eyes darted this way and that as he eased back over to Jenka’s slot.

  “What is it, Herald?” Jenka asked worriedly. “Is she all right? She sounds awful.”

  “I can’t answer your question, lad.” Herald looked more confused than anything now, and he spoke in a barely audible whisper. “I heard her, too, Jenka. Her voice came from in there, but she en't in that box. It’s as empty as Solman’s belly was when we found him.”

  “Magic?” Jenka asked, feeling the first bit of hope he had felt in days.

  Herald just nodded, then went back and closed the slot on her door. As if to punctuate the strangeness of the situation, another eerie moan came from the empty cell.

  Chapter Sixteen

  “I’m right here.”

  Zahrellion's voice came from behind Jenka. He whirled to see a faint, ghostly image of her wavering right there in his cell. Reflexively, he took a step back and gasped. “Actually, I am lying at the foot of the door in my cell. I am projecting my image here,” she corrected herself. Her voice echoed from some indefinite point that didn’t quite correspond with the location of her image’s mouth.

  “Fargin magic creeps my crotch,” Herald said, just as Master Kember had said a dozen times the night they had all been forced to camp around Linux' hissing druid fire.

  “Are you all right?” Jenka asked worriedly. “You sound horrible.” His initial shock had subsided, and his mind was starting to itch curiously.

  “In spirit, I am strong, but my body needs attention, as well as food and water,” Zahrellion’s image answered.

  “Mark my words, lass, the healer and healthy platters are a coming,” Herald reassured nervously. His voice was muffled and reverberated through the heavy steel door. “I’m sorry, but it’s all I can do at the moment. King Blanchard’ll be leaving for the mainland soon with an unprecedented flotilla. Once he’s gone, the queen’ll soon have ya released to more civil detention.”

  “Once my body is healing, all Jenka and I will need is food and water,” she replied confidently. “Prince Richard knows exactly where we ended up, and Crystal warned us that we would have some time on our hands soon. I think we shouldn’t squander it. We won’t be here nearly long enough, I fear.” The last was said with a smirk directed at Jenka.

  “Who is Crystal?” asked Herald, who now had his face pressed against the door so that he could better see into Jenka’s cell. It was struggle for him to keep his head from blocking the light.

  “Crystal is a dragon,” Jenka explained weakly. He was tired of holding back the truth from Herald, so he let it all come out. “She’s a mountain white that has bonded with Zahrellion. My bond-mate is the green called Jade, that saved me from the trolls in the mountains. He hasn’t weaned yet. Prince Richard has bonded with the blue you saw on the tiltyard.”

  “Well, that all be hard to get a hold of, but I’m a still listenin’,” said Herald, in his crude way. “Tell me the whole of it, so I’m not stumbling around like a blind man out here.”

  Jenka told him the truth of what had happened during his first encounter with Jade and the trolls. Zahrellion told him about the midnight rendezvous with Crystal, and the two of them took turns explaining what they knew about the demon called Gravelbone, and the powerful hellborn nightshade that he rode.

  Water came in clean buckets, and plates of meat, bread, and fruit followed. Zah had to break the spell she had cast upon herself and return to her body so that she could eat and drink. Herald had them open her cell door so that he could help her. He was appalled at the infected cuts and bruises on her arms and face, and he threatened that the queen would soon be down to inspect her prisoners. After that, the dungeon guards ran themselves ragged as every healer and potion-maker they could muster came by to attend her. While all this was happening, Jenka drank, ate, and dozed. There was plenty of food available now, and water would only be a shout away. Jenka remembered that he had unfinished business in Kingston, and just before Herald excused himself from the dungeons, Jenka called him over to his cell door.

  “I appreciate you, Herald. Can you get into my things?”

  “I can,” the King's Ranger answered. “What do you need?”

  “There is a bull-scrotum pouch in my shoulder pack with some copper coins and a silver piece in it. Also inside is
a small, scrolled message that I was supposed to deliver to an old Hazeltine here on the island. I promised my mother. Can you take it to her? The street and number is written on the scroll, but I don’t know my way around.”

  “Aye, I will,” Herald spat a wad of phlegm on the floor and cringed. “But I’ll not enjoy that strange sort of company. I’ll place it in her hand, then move along,”

  Jenka actually chuckled at Herald's foolish fear of magic. “Keep the coins for your trouble.”

  “Those coins won’t solve my problems, lad,” Herald grinned. “But I’ll deduct a pint or two so as to get up my nerve to go see the fargin old witch for ya.”

  Later that evening, after most of the castle’s healers and a couple of strange monks came to look in on them, after the guards had settled into their evening slumber, Zah’s ghostly image appeared in Jenka’s cell again, and she patiently gave him his first lesson in the arcane.

  Eagerly, Jenka drank it all in.

  Rikky and the blinded Walguard named Jess were in serious trouble. The trolls had surrounded the wagon they were huddled against, and were closing in. High overhead, a large, black dragon circled. The horse that Rikky had worked so hard to tether had long since run off. Even if they could find a way to call it back, both of them would never be able to mount it before the trolls got them. There weren’t any weapons at hand, and there were three dead bodies' worth of scent to draw the hungry trolls closer. It didn’t look good. Rikky almost wished that he was as blind as Jess so that he didn’t have to watch the beasts coming to feast on his flesh again.

  A flap of the wagon’s canvas that Rikky had torn earlier fluttered in the breeze and grazed his head, causing him to spin around reflexively. He thought the trolls were on them from behind. Through the opening, he happened to see his long, wooden peg leg, lying just out of his reach inside the wagon with the dead men.

  “I need you to reach back, Jess, through the hole in the canvas here,” Rikky instructed quickly. The trolls were yards away now and a hurled rock thumped the wagon frame with a resounding crack that startled both of them. “That’s it…no, the other way. You feel the shaft of my peg? It’s made from a hardened spear shaft, you’ll know the feel. Yes, there…now just give it a yank.” He glanced about them nervously and knew it was too late. One of the coarse-haired, green-skinned beasts was bearing down on them.

  The troll hunkered low and lumbered in at them, swinging a raking claw at Jess. Rikky pushed his new friend out of the way. The seasoned Walguard swung Rikky’s crude peg leg hard on his way over and caught the troll squarely on the side of its snarling, doggish head. It wasn’t much of a blow. It was a lucky shot, though, because it caused the lanky creature to stumble over them and into the torn canvas. Instead of continuing to attack them, the beast began feeding on the dead men piled in the tilted wagon bed.

  The sound of ripping flesh and snarling delight sickened Rikky, but he held down his gorge. Two more trolls eased nearer, drawn by the sounds of their pack mate's feeding, yet wary of the two men. Several others were waiting cautiously in the thickets. Worse than that, the sleek, black-scaled dragon above was now swooping down to get its fill.

  “Lay over flat,” Rikky screamed at Jess, but it was too late. The dragon dropped out of the sky, coming toward them at breakneck speed. One of the trolls had to dive out of the way as the dragon, claws extended, threw out its wings to stall and hover right above the living humans. Its hind claw closed on Jess, and Rikky had no choice but to roll away. He grabbed his peg leg as he went, and fought back his terror-filled tears. Inside, he felt a bit cowardly for not dying right there with the blinded man. He expected the dragon to lift back up and fly away so that it could enjoy its human morsel elsewhere, but it never happened.

  A roar as loud as any Rikky had ever heard resounded from somewhere beyond his vision. Suddenly, the black dragon was torn from the sky. The other dragon passed with such speed and momentum that all Rikky saw was a blur of shining carillon.

  Jess was jerked over roughly, and his shoulder was torn wide open, but he was alive. The trolls scattered, save for the one feeding inside the wagon bed. Rikky was in a daze of disbelief. It only worsened when he saw the shining blue dragon had a rider on its back wearing gleaming plate mail armor.

  The huge, sapphire dragon threw the black mudge from its claws like it was so much fodder, then banked a sharp turn to blast a few of the fleeing trolls with its crackling, yellow breath. Rikky watched the black as it crashed awkwardly into the rough terrain and went for a bone-snapping tumble. His eyes found the blue as it came thumping down cautiously near them.

  “Move away from the wagon!” the well-armored dragon rider called out.

  “He’s blind and wounded, man!” Rikky yelled. “And I’ve only one leg. There’s a troll in there, too.”

  The huge blue dragon loomed its head down over Rikky and Jess, who was lying as still as a man could lie. Rikky might have thought him dead if his ruined eye sockets weren’t rolling and twitching with his fear. The dragon pushed the wagon over onto its busted wheels, and then poked its head into the canvas like a snake investigating a rat hole. The dragon jerked quickly back, and a slosh of hot, thick, black blood splashed down on Rikky’s filthy shirt front.

  The rider patted the dragon on the back. The wyrm used its sinuous neck to sling the troll it had just crunched away to the side. “Get in the cart. We’ll carry the whole thing to Midwal,” the rider called down.

  “Get in the cart?” Rikky asked back incredulously. “Are you mad?”

  “Yes. Get in, and I’ll have Royal carry you over to Midwal.” If the rider had looked any less spectacular, Rikky might not have believed what he was hearing. Less than two minutes ago, he was about to be eaten by trolls a second time. But now, a dragon and its rider wanted to save him.

  Remembering what he had overheard Jenka and Zah speaking about, Rikky decided that this was no mudged dragon. It was a deep sapphire blue, and its scales sparkled cleanly in the evening sun. Besides that, the rider’s armor sported the kingdom’s falcon on its breast. This was a kingdom man, Rikky was certain.

  “Who are you?” Rikky asked, as he crawled over to Jess. “Can you tell me that?”

  Prince Richard lifted his visor and gave Rikky a sympathetic grimace. “I’m the prince of the realm, Rikky, and Jenka De Swasso will be glad to know that you made it behind the wall to safety. He told my father about you, and then Commander Corda told us of your fate.” Prince Richard forced a grin. “My father is stubborn, though, and I had to come on my own and hope that he brings the kingdom's might after me.”

  Rikky didn’t say a word. He was stupefied by the fact that this man, his prince, knew exactly who he was. It was almost too much to believe.

  “You are Rikky Camile, aren’t you?”

  “I am,” Rikky finally said. He added a quick, “Milord,” and hoped that he had spoken correctly.

  “I’ll take you to Midwal if you’ll get in the wagon,” Prince Richard urged. “Royal won’t drop you, and we will fly smoothly. I am trying to get to Crag to help your families, and the King’s Rangers who are holed up in the Keep, so I must hurry. I need you to spread the word that this dragon and I are not the enemy. We are going to try and get the people of the foothills to safety. Now get in.”

  “Let’s do as he says, lad,” Jess groaned. His shoulder was bleeding profusely, and he obviously needed the services of a stitcher and maybe a cleansing, too.

  “Help me up, then,” Rikky said. “I’ll point the way if you help me over.”

  A few moments later, the ruined wagon cart lurched into the air in a manner that was anything but smooth. The dragon pushed his huge, leathery wings down, causing both Rikky and Jess to be forced into the floor of the bloody cart, then the dragon raised its wings and the cart dropped slightly out from under them. This happened a few dozen times, and Jess was heaving because of it, but eventually the dragon began to ride the wind, and the movement of the wagon became eerily calm.

&nbs
p; It didn’t take long for the Great Wall to come into view on the southern horizon. Rikky peered over the cart side through the now-tattered canvas. He marveled at the snaking structure as they drew nearer. Off to the far right, the glittering western horizon swallowed the coppery sun, and below them the world spread out in a sea of shadowy green, lightly-forested terrain. Rikky decided that, from this vantage, no one could possibly conceive that the world below had gone crazy with war. He had a million questions he wanted to ask Prince Richard about Crag and about Jenka, Herald and the druids, but the wind whipped his unkempt hair wildly, and he could hardly hear himself when he tried to shout.

  Jess grabbed at Rikky’s good ankle and squeezed. Rikky looked down and noticed that the blinded man was paling dramatically. The old Walguard was bleeding out, and they were still a good distance away from the wall. Without even thinking about it, Rikky eased down and started moving his hand just over the wound as he had seen Master Vahlda do a dozen times or more. He spoke the strange words he had heard and then went into the humming rhythm that the Spell Master had used on the other wounded men. To his utter disbelief the same soft yellow glow began to emanate from his palm. Magic tingled through him and caused his hair to stand on end. The event didn’t last long, but he held his concentration long enough for the makeshift magical healing to stanch the flow of blood from the gash. He collapsed, just as Master Vahlda often did. He didn’t wake up, not even when Royal had to drop the wagon a dozen feet to the ground beyond the wall. Startled by the dragon, the Walguard were firing up at him and panicking like mad men.