The First Dragoneer (6 page)

“
It cannot be explained,” the elf
sighed. “There will be more of you. There will be five dragoneers
in all. Some are already trying to bond with their wyrms. But they
are far from here, in another land that lies across the sea. It is
a place that your people do not know of. You must call your dragon,
and then go to them. Together the five of you will stand against
the storm.”

The elf glanced up at the sky as if he were
searching for something. The light of dawn was only a few breaths
from breaking the horizon.

“
Don’t let the sun rise and burn his
soul away,” the elf nodded at Bren again. “Do this thing. Call your
dragon. Go find the dragoneers and face the destiny you’ve chanced
upon. It will be a great one, I think.”

The stag pawed the ground and snorted his
agreement. It tilted it’s antlered head slightly and gave Bren a
look that conveyed volumes. Inexplicably, March suddenly knew that
he had to do this. There was no other choice. “How?”

“
Take the Medallion in your hands. Yes,
like that.” March cupped the silvery disc as if it were a precious
egg.

“
Kiss the tear stone,” the elf
instructed. “Now pledge within your soul to fight the coming
Confliction. Only then will your dragon come.”

“
I don’t care about the dragon,” March
mumbled. I’m doing this for Bren.

As soon as he kissed the tear shaped jewel,
and told his heart that he would see this thing through, he felt a
chilling tingle flutter through him. His skin prickled and his mind
began to clear. He had made the right decision, and he knew it. His
blood was turning into liquid fire and his breathing grew
erratic.

“
That is the Dour that makes you feel
that way,” the elf grinned. He patted the stag on the shoulder and
leaned toward its ear. “You were right my friend. This was the
one.”

“
What’s Dour?” March asked. Whatever it
was, it felt fantastic in his veins, as if he were full of
lightning.

“
It will fade. That dragon’s tear is
old, the amber Dour has been leaking from it for a century or more.
See how clear it is? The dragon that let it fall died long, long
ago.” The elf lightly heeled the stag into a turn and looked to be
about to trot away.

“
Wait,” March pleaded. “What about
Bren? What about my family?”

The elf gave a nervous chuckle. “Your dragon
is coming, and you were going to leave anyway. Just go.” The stag
shivered and looked to be growing nervous. “I’ll not want to be
bumbling around when your wyrm gets here. After you’ve gone, I’ll
return and keep the scavengers from badgering your friend. I’ll
make sure he gets where he needs to be.”

As the stag bounded away, March heard the elf
chuckling.

March looked at Bren and dropped his head. He
hoped he hadn’t been a fool. He hoped—

Suddenly, the trees swayed violently. A near
silent blast of air wafted across the camp. Before a thought could
form, another gust came, this one kicking up leaves and sending a
dusty whirl of debris into the thicket. Then the dragon was there,
directly behind March, looming it’s long neck up over the camp as
it pulled in its leathery wings. The connection happened
instantaneously. They bonded, and a single shared consciousness was
born.

The dragon’s name was Balazerahdadicol and he
was the rarest form of pure blooded High Dracus that existed. Since
March’s human tongue couldn’t pronounce the name correctly the
dragon spoke a single word into his mind. “Blaze.” Blaze was a pure
blooded fire drake. March somehow knew this, and other things that
he never imagined one could know. It was overwhelming.

March turned to take his bond-mate in with
his eyes. He found that save for its neck and head, the dragon was
nearly invisible in the pre dawn shadows. What he could see was
nothing more than a sinuous crimson silhouette in the lightening
sky. The dragon was not huge, nor was he small. Substantial was the
word that March decided upon, probably twenty-five paces from tip
to tail. Through the bond they shared, a wealth of knowledge was
opening up and starting to flood into March’s eager mind. Had it
not been, his instinct to flee would have already taken hold.

A pulse of magical energy rippled through the
fabric of the world and March knew in his heart of hearts that
Blaze had just filled Bren’s body with powerful healing Dour. Bren
would wake soon and the elf would watch over him until he could
make it down into the valley. March, however, knew that he had to
go. The land he and Blaze were going to was far far away. It would
take them a full season to fly there, most of the journey over the
sea.

Blaze leaned down and created a step with his
fore claw. March hurried to his bedroll, grabbed the pack, his bow,
and a quiver of arrows. Then, after saying a silent goodbye to his
friend, he climbed onto the wyrm. He left the sword and the gold
for his friend. He wished he could stay and explain what he was
doing, where he was going, but he wasn’t even sure about those
things himself.

Blaze took an awkward lurching step. Then a
few neck yanking, exhilarating wing strokes later, they were above
the forest and flying.

The first of the dragoneers had bonded and
the wheels of destiny had been set into motion. The saga of the
dragoneers had begun.

Thus ends the prequel novella:

The First Dragoneer
by M.R. Mathias

Enjoy the following free preview of
“
The Royal Dragoneers
” It is
available in ebook and paperback formats. To find out how to get
your copy or to see the map of the land where
March
and Blaze
are
headed, then please visit:
http://www.mrmathias.com/Dragoneers.html

The Royal Dragoneers
By M. R. Mathias Copyright 2010

Jenka De Swasso peeked through the thick
leathery undergrowth he was hiding in. The forested hills were lush
and alive with late spring growth. The birds and other small
creatures were busy making their symphony of life. It was a welcome
cacophony, for Jenka was on the hunt, and it masked the noisy sound
of his breathing.

Jenka was trying to see which way his prey
was going to move. The ancient stag, once a beautiful and majestic
creature, was now past its prime. One of its long, multi-forked
antlers was broken into a sharp nub near the base. The other antler
was heavy and looked to be weighing the weary creature’s head over
to one side. All around its grayish-brown furred neck were scars
from the numerous battles it had fought over the years defending
its harem from the younger bucks. A fresh gash, a dark trail of
blood-matted fur leaking away from it, decorated the stag’s
shoulder area. Since there were no does moving about, Jenka figured
this old king of the forest had lost his most recent battle, and
his harem as well.

Jenka was sixteen years old, and he moved
through the shadowy glades - between the towering pine trees and
the ancient tangle limbed oaks - with the speed and dexterity of
well-fit youth. He was dressed in rough spun and leather, brown and
green, and when he stopped still he blended into the forest like a
bark-skinned lizard on a tree trunk. His face was well-sooted and
the shoulder-length mop of dirty-blond hair on his head looked more
like a tumbleweed than anything else.

Like any good hunter who aspired to be a
King’s Ranger, he was determined to get close to his prey, to get a
good angle, and to make sure that his arrow went deep into the
stag’s vitals. A creature as undoubtedly experienced in surviving
as this one could probably travel for a day or more with any lesser
wound. Jenka knew that if he didn’t make the right shot the
creature would bolt away and not slow down. If that happened it
would end up getting dragged down by trolls or wolves long before
he could catch up to it.

Jenka shivered with a mixture of excitement
and sadness. If he could kill the animal, then he and his mother
could eat good meat for the rest of the spring. He could also get a
handful of well-needed coins for a shoulder haunch from the cooks
at Kingsmen’s Keep. It was a better death for the noble creature
than to be stalked and shredded by hungry predators anyway, at
least that was what Jenka told himself as he drew back on his bow
to take aim.

The stag stopped in a small canopied glade
carpeted in lush, green turf. The area was well illuminated;
several slanting rays of dust-filled sunlight had managed to
penetrate the leaves and branches overhead. The stag wearily bent
its head down, pulled a mouthful of grass from the ground, and
chewed. A pair of tiny, lemon-yellow butterflies fluttered away
from the intrusion, their wings flashing like sparks as they
flitted through one of the golden shafts of light.

Jenka had the stag perfectly sighted in. He
was about to loose one of his hard-earned, steel-tipped arrows when
the old animal looked up at him. Their eyes met, and for a fleeting
moment Jenka could feel the raw indignity the creature felt over
having lost its herd to a younger male. The stag beckoned him, as
if it wanted to meet its end, right there, right then. Jenka took a
deep breath, resolved himself, and obliged the animal.

The arrow flew swift and true and struck the
stag right behind its foreleg. Jenka squinted as the animal went
bounding away. He saw that only the arrow’s fletching was
protruding from the stag’s hide. It was a kill shot, and he knew
it. The arrow itself would grind and shift inside the stag’s guts
as it fled through the forest, bringing death that much
swifter.

The hunter’s rush came surging into Jenka’s
blood then, and after marking the first crimson splashes of spilled
life and the general direction that the stag had fled, he had to
sit down and work to get his shaky breathing back under
control.

Hopefully the animal would fall close; he
would have to call for help as it was. It would take four grown men
to haul the meat back to Crag after it had been quartered. Not for
the first time today, Jenka wished his friend Grondy were there to
help him. Normally Jenka and Grondy hunted as a team, but Grondy
had recently been bitten by a rat while working in his Pap’s barn.
His hand was swollen to the size of a gourd melon. Jenka would have
to track this kill himself, then run back to Crag and round up some
help before the sun set and the scavengers came out to feed.

The first step was finding where the stag
went down. Jenka took a few deep breaths and tried to drown his
excitement in the reality that there was still a lot of work left
to do this day.

Groaning, he got back to his feet and set
out to follow the blood trail. It wasn’t hard to see; the splashes
were large and frothy. Even the tinier drops were a bright scarlet
that stood out starkly against the forest’s myriad shades of brown
and green. That the stag had been able to keep moving after losing
so much blood amazed Jenka. It amazed him even more that the stag
had fled upward into the deeper foothills instead of down towards
the thicker growth around the valley stream. If the stag went too
far into the hills, Jenka might have to give it up. Little gray
goblins and bands of feral, rock-hurling trolls had been ranging
down from the higher reaches of the Orich Mountains as of late, and
Jenka wanted no part of that. An ogre had been seen just three days
ago by a well-respected woodsman from Kingsmen’s Keep. There were
also wolves and big tree-cats that hunted the area, but they were
growing scarce as the troll sightings increased.

Jenka was an aspiring King’s Ranger and knew
he was already far enough up into the hills to warrant paying a
little more attention. Heaving from exertion, he was none too
pleased when he finally found the stag’s broken body. It was lying
at the bottom of a shallow, but steep, ravine; the creature had
apparently staggered right over the edge and fallen into a heap at
the bottom of the rain-washed gully.

Jenka had wasted far more precious daylight
than he had wanted tracking the hearty animal. Now he had a choice:
hurry back to Crag for help, or stand guard over his kill for the
night. Jenka was torn.

Had he the energy left in him to run all the
way back to the village he probably would have, but he was
exhausted from the long, uphill trek. If he left immediately and
had the luck of the Gods on his side, the help he gathered still
wouldn’t make it back before full dark, not even if they returned
by horseback. If he started looking now, however, Jenka was certain
that he could round up enough deadfall to keep a fire blazing
through the night. That would keep the chill of the higher
elevation off of him, as well as keep the predators away. He wasn’t
all that keen on spending the night way up here in the hills, but
he wasn’t about to let the vermin have the meat of the once proud
and mighty animal he had worked so hard to kill. Diligently, he
went about rounding up sticks and branches and tossed them into a
pile down by the stag’s carcass.

While he searched for firewood, he let his
mind wander. After pondering the shape of Delia the baker’s
daughter’s breasts, and weighing that curiosity against the size of
her father’s well-muscled arms, he decided that he should worry
about something else for the moment. That was when his mind
wondered to the subject of ogres. More specifically, he thought
about terrible old Crix Crux. Now he was glancing up every few
heartbeats, scanning the area for the mythical, flesh-eating
creature. Crix Crux was an ogre who was supposedly bold enough to
venture down close to the villages built in the lower foothills
around Kingsmen’s Keep. He was responsible for the disappearance of
at least six people that Jenka knew of, and probably dozens more
from the other towns built along the base of the mountains.