The First Dragoneer (10 page)

Jenka stopped her and shook his head to
clear it. He had lost her words in the feel of her dainty hand on
his bicep, in the warmth of her smile, and in the conviction of her
voice.

“I’m telling you that we have to find a way
to make King Blanchard or Prince Richard understand.” Her voice
showed that she was becoming agitated, if not a little angry.

“Understand what?” Jenka asked stupidly.

She jerked her hand away, let out an
exasperated girlish huff, and clenched her fists at her sides.
“That the dragons want to help us when the trolls start their war!
They’re in the hills gathering and planning as we speak.”

“War?” Jenka didn’t understand. “Is it the
Dragons or the Trolls who are in the hills planning right now?”
Jenka had no idea what she was talking about. He was entranced by
her very existence though, and couldn’t get his mind to focus on
anything other than her beauty.

She stared at him for a few long moments.
“You’re daft,” she finally said. Her eyes were brimming over with
tears of disappointment as she turned and stalked away.

Jenka stood there, slack-jawed, staring at
the darkness until Master Kember came over and started speaking to
him. “Fargin women’ll twist your thinker till it pops.”

“What?” Jenka asked.

“Never mind, boy. What did she say to
you?”

“That the trolls are gonna start a war with
us. That the dragons want to help us prevail, and that King
Blanchard has to know about it so that we don’t keep killing
wyrms.” Jenka couldn’t believe he had retained all of that, but
ever since the beautiful druida had stalked away, Jenka had been
thinking more clearly.

“That’s nonsense,” Master Kember shook his
head with disgust. “Fargin trolls can’t fight with any sort of form
or muster. They end up fighting each other. By the hells, they’ll
stop fighting to feed on the dead while you’re cutting them down.
I’ve seen it. You didn’t tell her we were going to King’s Island,
did you?”

“No, sir,” Jenka answered. “Is the kingdom
seat really going to move to Mainsted when Prince Richard takes the
throne? I mean, I sort of understand the expansion and all, but
where did we come from before the Dogma wrecked on Gull's Reach? No
one ever talks about that much.”

“That’s a good question,” the old hunter
nodded. “There’s an age-old saying about it. It goes like this:
Don’t worry about how you got here. You are here, and if you want
to survive you have to keep doing everything that needs getting
done.”

“What does that mean?” Jenka shrugged.

“It means that only a few historians even
care where we came from, boy. A few dozen people survived a
shipwreck that washed up on Gull's Reach. From that meager
beginning, we populated all three islands and set up the
strongholds on the mainland. Then we built that fargin wall to keep
the wilderness out. Now we are trying to tame the land between the
wall and the mountains so that we can grow more crops and build
more cities and towns. We have achieved everything you know about.
We’re not going back. We’ve been here two hundred twenty some-odd
years. We are going to settle this frontier, and the trolls and
dragons can be damned if they oppose it.” He let out a tired sigh
and changed the subject. “We’ll have to postpone our journey for
one more day. It’ll be dawn by the time we get back to Crag.”

Jenka was only mildly disappointed by the
news of the delay. He was busy pondering Zah’s beauty and what she
had told him. The ride home was wrought with anxiety and
excitement. Several times he started to ask Master Kember a
question but caught himself. The idea that Zah might be right, that
the trolls would defend their homeland, couldn’t be purged from his
mind.

He fell asleep back in his mother's hut as
the sun was just starting to paint the horizon, and he dreamed that
he was flying high in the sky on the back of an emerald-scaled
dragon. They flew across the oceans, over mountains, deserts and
plains, until they found the mother land. It was crowded and noisy,
and a haze of filthy air hung over the people like a cloud. There
were no forests or fields, and the river that turned slowly through
it all was clogged and thick with muck. Even the sea around the
land was black and shimmering with an oily sheen. There were
factories, and shops, and buildings, and so many people that Jenka
couldn’t stand it.

Jenka wasn’t befuddled with Zah’s beauty
when he woke up late the next day. He was contemplative and
distant. He could imagine Crag a hundred years from now, all
crowded and busy, and he wasn’t sure if he liked the idea of it. He
finally forced all the negativity from his mind, like he sometimes
did when he was hunting, and was decidedly the better for it.

Beyond being as tired as he could remember,
he was also beside himself with a giddy, childish glee. He was
about to go on a grand adventure, and after being invited with the
King’s Rangers last night, he felt he would make Forester this year
for sure. He had just decided that things couldn’t possibly get any
better, when he learned that beautiful Zahrellion and another of
the Druids of Dou were going to be traveling to King’s Island with
their group. After hearing that news, Jenka spent the rest of the
evening floating around as if he were on a cloud.

Master Kember was none too pleased about the
unwanted additions to his group, but he kept his opinions mostly to
himself. Captain Brody had asked him, and ordered the King’s Ranger
named Herald, to escort the druids as a personal favor. He also
asked that Master Kember help them gain King Blanchard’s ear.
Master Kember didn’t like it. He didn’t like it at all, but he was
willing to do it for the captain. Crippled or not, he was still a
King’s Ranger at heart.

Jenka said goodbye to his mother early in
the morning, and promised to deliver a written message to her
former employer on King’s Island. Visiting a true Witch of
Hazeltine wasn’t one of the things Jenka had planned to do, but he
loved his mother and couldn’t possibly consider refusing her simple
request. After those tears were dried, he went and found Solman and
Rikky at the stables. They both had their long hair chopped at the
shoulders like Jenka’s, and they were doing what they could to help
the two Foresters get the horses ready.

As the sun was coming up and losing its
battle to light the sky, the group of nine travelers gathered
outside the stable in a light, dreary drizzle. They all had their
hoods pulled up high on their heads and their cloaks fastened
tightly. Not even the inclement weather could dampen their spirits
though, especially Jenka’s. He had been assigned the pleasant duty
of personal attendant to Zah and her older male companion for the
journey.

“Starting a journey is always such a
thrilling feeling,” Master Kember said optimistically to his three
students and the two young, uniformed Foresters. Jenka, Solman, and
Rikky all cringed, expecting one of Master Kember’s windy
proclamations. They were saved from a lengthy discourse on the
beginning of journeys by the grizzled old King’s Ranger, Herald. He
harrumphed loudly over Master Kember’s voice, spat a wad of brown
phlegm from a slit in his dark tangle-shrub of a beard and snorted,
“It’s just the possibility that we might not ever make it back home
that makes it thrilling, Marwick. Now let’s get this cavalcade
moving before the buzzards fly down and eat us where we sit.”

With that, they started out of Crag moving
south toward Three Forks.

By midday, the late spring sun had burned
the clouds away, and though the lightly rutted road was soft under
the horses' hooves, there hadn’t been enough precipitation to make
it muddy. Birds fluttered about and called out merrily from the
thinning copses of tangle oak and pine trees that dotted the
roadway, and a light breeze kept the travelers from getting too
warm. The chink and jingle of the tack and the occasional whinny of
one of the well-mannered horses provided a constant and steady
rhythm to their passing.

“I’m Zahrellion, but you can call me Zah.”
The white-haired, tattoo-faced druida said to the two young
uniformed Foresters. When they didn’t respond, she continued. “This
is Linux.” She indicated her fellow druid. “What are your
names?”

Linux was tall and thin, with a cleanly
shaven head and a dark, well-trimmed beard that came to a sharp
point a few finger-widths below his chin. The tattoos that marked
his pale face were very nearly the same as Zah’s, save the triangle
on his forehead wasn’t silvery. It was a darker color, like deep
stained mahogany.

“Mortin Wheatly from Copperton, ma’am,” the
bigger of the two Foresters eventually replied. He had
short-cropped, carrot-red hair and looked like he had never missed
a meal in his life. He was thick necked, thick armed, and looked as
if he might be a little thick headed too.

“They call me Stick,” the other Forester
said quickly, then heeled his horse away from the two druids. He
was dark skinned and had short, straight hair as black as pitch
that looked like a helmet on his head.

“They call him Stick because he’s thin like
a stick,” Mortin explained for those who didn’t get it.

Jenka, Solman and Rikky all introduced
themselves, and soon a light conversation about the qualities of
different types of field rations ensued. Mortin and Rikky both
swore that dried venison was the best because you could boil it
into a pot of greens and water to make a warm stew, as well as
munch it dry when you were on the move. Zah agreed that dried meat
was a good choice, but claimed that sea biscuits were better
because they would keep for months and could be made with special
herbs that revitalized a person’s body faster. Her argument made
even more sense when she threw in the fact that ship captains had
been using sea biscuits, not jerked venison, as the crew’s main
staple for as long as anyone could remember.

“We en't eatin’ neither of ‘em tonight,”
Herald, the King’s Ranger, chimed in robustly. “Tonight we’ll be
pullin’ pork till the stars come out. That’s the only reason I like
making this fargin trek.” He was a big, gruff, unkempt man of a
sizable girth. He didn’t look like much, but there was no mistaking
the ease at which he sat the saddle. And if you happened to make
out the embroidered emblem on the breast of his filthy tunic, you’d
know to beware, because the star of the King’s Rangers was the
unquestioned law of the frontier.

The hills smoothed out a bit as the day wore
on, and the slow, rolling plains spread away ahead of them like
plush, green waves frozen in time. Behind them, the mountains rose
up, sharp and intimidating, but ahead of them the world was alive
and full of the promise of spring. Multi-colored clusters of
shrubbery and wildflowers sustained a plethora of busy insect life.
This kept the scenery along the way from becoming mundane. As the
sun sank low in the sky, they saw a thin trail of chimney smoke in
the near distance. Herald repeated several times, for the sake of
those who didn’t know yet, that the smoke was from a lodging house
and pig farm owned by a barrel keg of a bastard named Swinerd.

Jenka recognized the name and quickly put
the big, scruffy man’s face to it. Swinerd and his three sons often
sold pigs in Crag, and sometimes stopped to purchase a liniment or
a salve from Jenka’s mother. Once, Swinerd had gotten into an
argument with one of the King’s Rangers and a brawl had ensued.
Jenka remembered how excited the entire village had gotten over the
conflict. Wagers had been made, and old Pete had opened a keg of
stout for those who had the coin to buy a drink. Swinerd had
pounded the poor ranger half to death, and Jenka didn’t remember
seeing either man back in Crag since.

As they neared the formidable and
well-constructed looking log building, the smell of swine refuse,
pungent and ripe, filled their nostrils to the point of gagging.
The lodge was off the main road a short way, and beyond it was an
even bigger, open-sided building. Under that gray tiled roof were
rows of pens, each full of squealing piglets and loud, grunting
sows. A young man, probably one of Swinerd’s sons, looked up from
his labors and saw the group approaching. He immediately took off
running. A moment later, big old Swinerd was stalking across the
turf from the lodge, trying to hold his big splitting axe high with
one hand while fastening his cloak around his neck with the other.
He couldn’t quite manage it, and that only seemed to further
agitate the intimidating-looking man.

The cloak was discarded after about ten
paces. Swinerd’s fierce scowl showed that he was no longer
concerned with the garment. One of the sons was coming out behind
his father and scooped it up as he came.

“You fat dirty bastard,” Swinerd snarled and
started charging. Herald cursed and then spurred his horse ahead
while drawing his sleek long sword. He raised the blade up high and
heeled his steed into a full charge at the other man. The two
Foresters looked at Master Kember for instruction, but the old
hunter was intently watching the two men and ignored them.

It was odd to look upon; two grizzled men
charging at each other, one in drab gray and green ranger’s garb,
riding a well-trained horse. The other clad in rough spun and
animal hides, running on his booted feet.

“Why in the world are they … ” Rikky started
to ask, but his voice stopped flat when the two men simultaneously
let out very similar, primal roars.

Jenka could do little else but watch,
slack-jawed and confused, as the scene unfolded before his eyes. He
wondered why Linux or Master Kember wasn’t doing anything other
than watching, and decided that if they weren’t worried, then he
shouldn’t be either.

Swinerd swung his axe and sent Herald’s
sword flying away in a twirling glimmer of polished steel. But big
old Herald leapt from his horse like some obese tree-cat and
tackled Swinerd by the collar. They went tumbling into a tangle of
arms and legs that looked like it would have been fatal for a
lesser man. The two men ended up lying in a cloud of dust, side by
side, head to foot. After a short, but tense silence they began
laughing hysterically like two rambunctious young boys. Realization
hit Jenka then: Herald and Swinerd were brothers.