The First Dragoneer (8 page)

“Do you have a name?” Jenka asked with a
shiver at the thought of being eaten. “Mine is Jenka De
Swasso.”

“My name is impossible for you to sssay, but
you can call me Jade. It isss the color the sunlight makesss when
it reflectsss from my scal…”

A savage roar echoed through the night from
a great distance away and caused the young green dragon to look up
and give a call of its own.

“That isss my mamra calling,” Jade
explained. “If I don’t go, ssshe will come looking. I must leave
you, my friend, for both our sakesss.” The dragon stepped away from
Jenka and poised to leap into the air. Before he went, Jade gave
Jenka a curious look. Yellow, jaundiced eyes flashed first to
amber, then into cherry-red embers. Jenka felt the dragon’s gaze
tingling over his skin. Then he quickly sank back into the peaceful
and painless current of liquid darkness from which he had just
come.

*** * ***

“Jenka! Jenkaaaa! Where are you?” a familiar
a voice called over the angry chirping and indignant cawing of
several feasting crows.

Jenka’s face felt warm and slick. He tried
to pull himself free of the clinging emptiness that still gripped
his mind, but he couldn’t quite get loose of its grasp. He felt
something small and hairy crawling across his chest and a pair of
fat, black flies kept buzzing around his nose. The air smelled
coppery and sweet.

“Jenka! Jen … ” The voice was closer now,
and it suddenly stopped in a sharp, gasping intake of breath. “By
the Gods, man! Look at this!” The man paused a moment, then started
calling out with a more vigorous urgency. “Over here! He’s here,
Lemmy, he’s alive! It looks like he’s killed a half a dozen trolls.
Hurry man! Hurry it along!”

The excited voice belonged to Master Kember.
He was a former King’s Ranger who had taken a crippling injury to
his thigh in a fall several years ago. He was now the village
Crag’s Head Huntsman, and the unofficial mentor and Lesson Master
to Jenka and a few of Crag’s other miscreant boys.

Marwick Kember had known Jenka’s father
well. He’d been there when the trolls had gotten hold of him. Jenka
thought that maybe Master Kember had pledged an oath to his father
to watch over Jenka, or to protect him, or something of the sort,
because Master Kember did both efficiently.

Jenka was glad he could register who was
yelling for Lemmy. It meant that his mind was starting to work
again. He only wished he could find the strength to respond, or at
least to brush the little crawly thing from his chest. He hoped it
wasn’t a scorpion, or a blood ant.

He tried to open his eyes and was rewarded
with a searing pain that flashed from his eyeballs deep into his
brain. It was bright outside - mid-day he guessed. He squinted and
saw Master Kember back-sliding himself gingerly down into the
gully. A fit of coughing overtook Jenka then, reminding him of the
heavy stones that had smashed into his head and ribs. He rolled to
his side and vomited. All of the exertion caused his head to pound
with powerful surges of more sickening pain.

“Don’t try to think, lad,” Master Kember
said as he knelt next to Jenka and went about inspecting his
wounds. “Lay it back. Your head's been bashed in, and your arm bone
looks bent.” The look on the old huntsman’s face graduated from
attentive concern to pure pleasure after he saw that Jenka was in a
survivable state. Looking around at the carnage the dragon had left
behind, the old hunter shook his head in wonder. “How, by all the
Gods of devils and men, did you survive what happened here?” Then
he looked directly into Jenka’s bloodshot eyes. “What did happen
here, Jenk?”

“It’s a long story, sir,” Jenka managed
before another bout of heaving overtook him. When the debilitating
fit subsided he said, “I think my cage is cracked.”

A heavy clod of dirt came thumping down near
the two of them, causing Jenka to reflexively curl up into a fetal
ball. It wasn’t another troll attack. It was only Lemmy trying to
get Master Kember’s attention. Lemmy was nine or ten years older
than Jenka, and he was a mute. All of the women in Crag seemed to
marvel over his wheat-golden hair and his easy manner. Though he
seemed like a dunce a lot of the time, Jenka knew that he was as
smart and able as they come.

“Lem, go find Solman and Rikky, and point
them our way,” Master Kember ordered. “I’ll throw some green on
them coals over there and make a smoker to mark the way. Then you
take a steed and you ride back to Crag and figure a way to explain
to Lady De Swasso that her young dragon is alive and well enough
for wear. Let her know that we’ll have him home by dark fall.”

Jenka heard the words “young dragon” and
most of the previous night’s terror came flooding back into his
brain; the stag he had killed, the trolls, and Jade. How he knew
the dragon was called Jade he couldn’t quite work out, because the
conversation they’d had seemed more like a wishful fever-dream than
any sort of reality, but the memory of those magical, amber eyes
was vivid enough.

After Lemmy grunted acknowledgment of his
orders and loped off to carry them out, Master Kember stood and
better took in the scene around him. Here was a troll torn
completely in two, both halves ripped open where savage claws had
gripped it. Down the gully was another troll that had no head, and
only one arm. Lying half-scorched in an exhausted fire was a troll
that had been ripped open from shoulder to groin, and right beside
that one another with one of Jenka’s expertly fletched arrows
buried deep in its back. Master Kember knew the Fletcher’s work
because he purchased the steel-tipped arrows himself down in Three
Forks every fall. He awarded them to his young hunters when they
achieved the goals he set for them. Jenka had earned quite a few of
the good shafts. The decimated remains of a sizable stag lay
shredded and strewn amid all the gore, and upon closer examination,
Master Kember found another of Jenka’s arrows. He walked around,
shooing the noisy crows, and studied the scene a bit longer. Then
he stopped altogether and cocked his head. He saw something
glinting emerald in the sun. The retired ranger paced across the
gulch, stooped and pulled the object from one of the troll’s clawed
hands. Looking closely at what he had found, he let out a long, low
whistle.

“You, my young pupil, might be the luckiest
boy in the entire kingdom,” the old hunter started. “Killing that
troll by yourself is certainly a feat of notability, but surviving
the battle that took place after is simply amazing. Did you see it?
Did you see the dragon that finished them?”

Jenka started to say yes, that he had even
talked to the creature, but common sense bade him do otherwise. He
didn’t want everyone to think he had lost his mind, and he
certainly didn’t want a bunch of the King’s Rangers up here trying
to hunt Jade down and kill him. “I’m not sure what happened after I
was hit in the head,” he replied flatly. “I thought I was done
for.”

“You should be troll scat right this very
minute, boy,” Master Kember scolded. “What were you thinking,
following that old stag all the way up into these hills? You should
of ran back to Crag and found me or Lem.”

“It was too late in the day,” Jenka groaned
as he slowly sat up and brushed the irritating bug out from under
his shirt front. “I didn’t want the tree-cats to have it. It just …
” He leaned to the side and went into another bout of coughing.
After he spit out a mouthful of mucus and blood, Master Kember
grimaced.

“Lay it back down, Jenk. Be still.” The
older man moved in to hover over Jenka and began feeling roughly
along his sides. “Looks like you did crack your cage. Maybe a rib’s
poked a hole in your gizzard. You’re gonna be a long while healing
from this, but by the Gods, boy, after killing a troll
single-handedly, and surviving a dragon attack, you’ll make
Forester this year for certain. You’ll be a King’s Ranger before
you know it!”

Before you could become a King’s Ranger you
had to be a Forester for two full years. Outside of performing a
“rare feat of notability,” -- one that was worthy enough to find
the king’s ear -- the only way to make Forester was to place in the
archery competition or to kill the stag in the hunt at the annual
Solstice Day festival on King’s Island.

Jenka tried to smile. He had been training
for both events most of his life, he had just never had the coin to
get himself ship’s passage across to King’s Island. This year he
had finally saved enough, but now he probably wouldn’t need it.
This was definitely a “rare feat of notability” and since it
involved a dragon, the king would most likely hear about it. Since
Master Kember had helped save Prince Richard from the trolls the
day Jenka’s father died, the king would listen to anything Master
Kember had to say.

Jenka decided right then and there that if
he was going to keep a good part of what really happened here to
himself, then he might as well lightly embellish the rest of the
story to protect Jade. “I think I got the dragon in the brow,” he
wheezed. “The trolls tried to scavenge my kill. I tried to stop
them, but the dragon came tearing through. It was as dark as the
forest itself and fast as lightning, but I think I got lucky and
got it in the eye. Tell the Rangers to look for a black-scaled wyrm
with only one eye.”

“That’s my boy, Jenk.” Master Kember praised
proudly as he used a kerchief and water from a canteen to wipe some
of the gore from Jenka’s face. “I bet you did get it in the eye. I
bet that’s why it fled, isn’t it?”

“I don’t know,” Jenka coughed some more. “My
head hurts, and I can’t remember everything that happened. It’s all
jumbled up in my mind.”

“Just rest, boy. Don’t try to talk, or even
think right now,” Master Kember spoke soothingly. He saw that the
wound on the side of Jenka’s face was already healing, but he paid
the unnatural phenomenon no mind. “We’ll get some hands to haul you
up out of this ditch, and a travois to drag you home so that your
witchy mother can fill you full of her herbs and her horrible
tasting potions and whatnot.”

While they waited for help, Master Kember
went over the scene again. He saw that something heavy had stepped
on and smashed Jenka’s long bow. He decided that maybe he would
take the boy down to Three Forks and help him pick out a new bow.
He figured Jenka was growing and needed a heavier draw now anyway.
He then decided that as soon as Jenka healed a little bit he would
take him all the way to King’s Island. There he would get an
audience with King Blanchard and tell him firsthand of what
happened here so that the gossipmongers didn’t get the tale
stretched out too far. A knot began to form in his gut telling him
it might not be the right thing to do, that he had some heavy
decision making to do soon. Jenka’s father probably hadn’t wanted
his son to be a mere King’s Ranger. It was a short-lived profession
for most, but a well-paid one. Either way, it had always been
Jenka’s dream, and Master Kember was sure that Jenka’s father would
have wanted him to be happy. He would think on the matter, and he
and Jenka could talk about it later.

“Master Kember!” a distant voice shouted.
Jenka figured it was Solman and probably Rikky too. Grondy wouldn’t
be with them because of his hand. Jenka knew Grondy would have
tried to come look for him with the others, but his ma would have
corralled him in the farm house, and then thumped him good for the
effort. Jenka started to chuckle because he was certain that he was
right. Grondy was probably locked in his room this very moment,
rubbing the knots on his head and wondering if Jenka was all
right.

Jenka was surprised that it didn’t hurt when
he laughed. He poked at his scalp where he had felt hot blood
pulsing out of him the night before and was further surprised to
feel nearly healed scar tissue where a fresh raw scab should be.
His fingertips were healing too. A vague memory of Jade’s eyes
flashing crimson and the tingling of his skin under that intense
gaze made him wonder. Had Jade magicked him? His mother might
know.

Master Kember heaped an armful of green,
leafy foliage onto the ashy remains of Jenka’s larger fire. Nothing
happened at first, but slowly smoke started rising up and branches
began to pop and crackle in the heat. Soon a billowing pillar of
smoke was roiling up and out of the gulch, only to be sheared off
by the wind when it rose above the treetops.

“Spotted!” Rikky’s distant voice called out
proudly. Of the small group of hunters that Master Kember looked
over, he was the youngest. At thirteen summers old Rikky was
probably going to end up being the best of them all.

Jenka and Grondy were born the same year and
were the next youngest. Solman was the oldest student, but Lemmy
was the oldest of the group save for Master Kember himself. Lemmy
was more of an assistant than a pupil, though. He earned a wage,
and he tracked as well as anyone in the whole frontier. Every once
in a while, the King’s Rangers would come over from the keep and
ask Master Kember or Lemmy to help them with something or another.
Unlike the village folk, the King’s Rangers favored Lemmy for some
reason. They treated him with the utmost respect, which had always
piqued Jenka’s curiosity. The King’s Rangers had more or less
accepted Lemmy as one of their own, which, in the past, had
sometimes made Jenka a little jealous. Even though his father’s
picture hung in the keep's main hall, the Rangers were never
partial like that to Jenka. They made sure that he and his mother
were well fed, but they treated Jenka like any other village boy.
He would have asked Lemmy about it, but it embarrassed him watching
Lemmy struggle to convey a message without being able to speak.

Things got bad for Jenka for a while. Solman
and Rikky were anything but gentle when they half hauled, half
dragged him up out of the gully. The long, bumpy ride on the
travois was even worse. Though he shouldn’t have felt as confident
about it as he did, he decided that he probably could have just
ridden one of the horses, but the idea that his friends -- and his
mentor -- might shun him for having been magicked by a dragon
caused him to keep his returning strength and vigor to himself.