The First Dragoneer (7 page)

Master Kember, Jenka’s mentor, once told him
that Crix Crux wasn’t real, that the fabled old ogre just got the
blame when someone went missing. Most of the time, he said, being
killed swiftly by a hungry ogre is a better death for the family to
think about than the truth might be. Someone freezing to death
because they fell asleep at their fire without building it up
didn’t make for good gossip. That, and the ‘Crix Crux tale’ was
good for keeping young boys from wandering too far away from the
villages. Jenka laughed at himself. Crix Crux wasn’t lurking in the
thicket.

At least he hoped not.

At the last bit of daylight, Jenka climbed
down into the gulch. He gutted the stag, dragged the pile of
innards a good way down the gully, then hurried back to the carcass
and used his tinderbox to start his fire.

Darkness slid over him like a tavern-wench's
flattery while he struggled with his small, inadequate belt knife
to cut himself a hunk of meat to roast. He tried not to think about
all the wild and horrifying campfire tales he had heard over the
years. It was no wives' tale that many a man had met his end in the
Orich Mountains. Jenka knew all too well how treacherous and
inhospitable these hills could be; his father had died up here. But
if he ever wanted to be a King’s Ranger he had to master his fear
and learn to deal with the danger. Spending days at a time alone in
the foothills was part of the Forester training he would someday
have to take.

By the time he had his hunk of meat cooked,
he was so scared that he had no appetite, and by the time he
finished forcing the food down his throat, he was fighting to stay
awake. Luckily, he remembered what Master Kember had said about
Crix Crux, because it reminded him to throw some more wood on the
fire before he fell asleep. The added illumination the new fuel
lent the area allowed him to catch a brief glimpse of something
gigantic moving about out in the shadows.

It might have been an overlarge tree-cat,
because its movements were sinuous and silent, but Jenka couldn’t
say for certain. A visceral knot of fear had clenched tight in his
gut. He was far too terrified to think now, and he had to fight the
base instinct he was feeling telling him, quite plainly, to flee.
The slithery thing had amber eyes like windblown embers, and they
danced with the fire's reflection. They hovered at a height close
to his own, yet the thing had been moving hunched over on all four
limbs like a bear or a wolf. Whatever it was, it was huge, and
uncannily quiet. Reaching for his bow, Jenka swore that if it came
any closer he would try to shaft it. He just hoped a mere arrow
would be enough to deter the thing.

Eventually, the beast slid back into the
darkness, leaving Jenka to wonder if he had really seen anything at
all. Needless to say, he wasn’t sleepy anymore. He built the fire
up even higher, and once again wished that Grondy, or Solman, or
any of the other young hunters from Crag were there with him.

Jenka’s mother was Crag’s village
kettle-witch, and she would be worried to death about him by now.
Amelia De Swasso didn’t have much coin, and a lot of people were a
little afraid of her, but she had the respect of the other common
folk. Nearly everyone in Crag had come to her over the years for a
healing salve or a potion of one sort or another. Jenka knew that
she would have Master Kember, Lemmy, and all the other hunters
rousted out of bed before the sun was even in the sky. She might
even send to Kingsmen’s Keep for help from the King’s Rangers. They
wouldn’t dare refuse her. Jenka’s father had been a King’s Ranger,
and when Jenka was very young, his father had died in these hills
saving the Crown Prince. A painted portrait of him hung in the
keep’s main hall alongside paintings of Captain Renny and Harold
Waend. All three had died on that terrible Yule day hunt, saving
Prince Richard from the band of ferocious trolls that had attacked
the group. Because of his father’s sacrifice, everyone that knew
Jenka went out of their way to look out for him. If it got out that
he didn’t come in during the night, it wouldn’t surprise him if
half of the village and a half dozen rangers came looking for
him.

Jenka didn’t let his guard down. He knew in
his heart that the creature was still out there in the dark
somewhere, lurking, waiting for him to fall asleep. He divided most
of his remaining wood up into three even piles, until he felt
certain that he would have fire until well after the sun came up.
He lit one end of a remaining branch and tossed it down to the
other end of the gully. He then took the wood that he hadn’t put in
his three piles and heaped it onto the flaming brand, so that he
and the stag’s carcass had a fire burning on each side of them.

Being that he was in a somewhat narrow gully
surrounded by earthy ravine and fire, Jenka felt reasonably sure
that he would survive the night. He sat to rest from his exertion
and his exhausted body come crashing down from the rush of
adrenaline he had been riding. He was just starting to relax when a
sleek, scaly beast came lurching down out of the darkened sky.

It was a dragon, Jenka realized, and he
turned and bolted. He ran as fast as he could go down the gully
into the darkness. He managed to grab up his bow as he went, but
the primal urge to be away from the thing kept him from even
considering using the weapon. He ran, and ran, and ran. Only after
he stumbled over a tangle of exposed roots and went sprawling into
some leafy undergrowth did his mad flight come to an end.

While he lay there heaving in breath, he
considered what had just happened. He couldn’t believe he had just
seen a dragon, but he had. It was a small dragon, maybe fifteen
paces from nose to tail, but he was certain of what it was. Master
Kember had taken him and a few of the other boys out with the
King’s Rangers one afternoon to look at the carcass of a dragon
that had crashed into a rocky prominence during a storm. It was
considered an honor to be invited on such a trek, and Jenka had
gone eagerly. The dark, reddish-gray scaled dragon had stretched
forty paces from tail to nose, and had a horned head the size of a
barrel keg. Its teeth were the size of dagger blades and twice as
sharp, and its fist-sized nostril holes were charred at the edges
from where it breathed its noxious fumes. Master Kember had guessed
its age at about five years, which made Jenka think that the dragon
he had just seen was probably little more than a yearling. He
decided that if he could master his fear, he might be able to sneak
back and kill it. If he did, he could claim the long-standing
bounty that King Blanchard paid for dragon heads, as well as bring
himself to notice so that he could begin his Forester
apprenticeship sooner.

Jenka crawled to his feet and hesitantly
looked around. It was dark, but the trees up here in the hills
weren’t nearly as dense as they were in the lower forest. Enough
starlight filtered through the open canopy for him to see. He
started back the way he came, and when he neared the hungry young
dragon, he dropped to his knees and crawled as quietly as he could
manage, until he could plainly see the scaly thing feeding in the
firelight.

It was amazing. Its scales glittered lime,
emerald, and turquoise in the wavering light as it ripped huge
chunks of bloody meat from Jenka’s kill. Its long, snaking tail
whisked around like a cat's as it raised its horned head high to
chug down the morsel it had torn from the carcass.

Jenka decided that he couldn’t kill it with
his bow and arrow. He probably couldn’t even wound the thing.
Further consideration on the matter was rendered pointless when a
heavy, head-sized chunk of stone suddenly crashed into the young
dragon’s side. It screeched out horribly and flung its head and
body around just in time to claw a gash across the chest of a
filthy, green-skinned, pink-mouthed troll as leapt down from the
gully’s edge into the firelight.

The troll fell into the smaller of Jenka’s
fires, sending a cloud of sparks swirling up into the air. Another
troll bellowed from the darkness, and from another direction a
second rock came flying in.

The dragon leapt upward and brought its
leathery wings thumping down hard. It surged a few feet up, and
then pumped its wings again. It was trying to get clear of a troll
that was leaping up to grab at its hind legs. The dragon wasn’t
fast enough to get away.

Like a wriggling anchor weight, the troll
began trying to pull the dragon out of the air. As hard as the
young wyrm flapped its wings, it could do little more than lift the
clinging troll a few feet from the ground.

Jenka wasn’t sure why he did what he did
next, but it was done. He loosed the arrow he had intended for the
dragon at the dangling troll. The shaft struck true, and when the
troll clutched at its back, it let go of the dragon and fell into a
writhing heap. The dragon flapped madly up into the night, leaving
Jenka dumbfounded and looking frightfully at not two, but three
big, angry trolls.

He turned to run, and actually made it about
ten strides back down the gully before one of the eight-foot-tall
trolls appeared from the darkness to block his way. It laid its
doggish ears back and gave a feral snarl full of jagged, rotten
teeth. Jenka whirled around to go back, but found another of the
yellow-eyed trolls waiting for him. He started a mad, scrabbling
climb up the side of the gulch, but found little purchase there in
the rocky, rain-scoured earth. He clawed and pulled with such
terror and urgency that the ends of his fingers tore open and some
of his fingernails ripped loose, but he couldn’t get away. He was
cornered.

More of the huge, well-muscled trolls were
leaping down into the gully now. Their filthy, musky-scented bodies
were silhouetted by the dancing flames of the fire and they threw
long, menacing shadows before them as they came. Not knowing what
else to do, and as scared as he had ever been in his life, Jenka
put his back against the gully wall and turned to face the grizzly
death that was closing in on him.

He saw that his bow was lying back where he
had dropped it. His knife wasn’t at his hip either. Beyond the
flames, he saw the shredded remains of the stag’s carcass. The
dragon had torn half the meat away in only a few seconds. The
trolls would have the rest of it, he figured. After they had
him.

A fist-sized rock slammed into his chest,
knocking all of the wind from his lungs. Other stones followed, and
the primitive troll beasts soon went into a frenzied ritual of
howling and savage fighting over feeding position. Luckily for
Jenka, a well-thrown chunk of stone bashed into the side of his
head and spared him from having to see himself being torn to
pieces. All he could think of as he slipped into unconsciousness
was that he would finally get to see his father, and he hoped his
mother would never have to gaze upon what the trolls left of his
body.

After that was nothing but blackness.

In the swimming world of liquid darkness
where Jenka found himself, he felt like a tiny fish caught up in a
powerful current. He had no memory of how he had gotten to wherever
he was, or how long he had been there. There was a fleeting terror
still lingering in the back of his mind, but he had no inkling of
what the source of his fear might be. All he knew was he was
tumbling helplessly through a vast, serene emptiness.

After some time, he opened his eyes and was
shocked back into reality by the blood-dripping, horn-headed visage
looming down over him. Slick, iron-hard scales sparkled like
emeralds as they reflected in the fire’s dancing light.

Like some curious, amber-eyed child, the
young, green-scaled dragon leaned over Jenka’s prone body, locked
gazes with him, and then spoke.

“Thank you,” it hissed in an unnaturally
soft and slithery voice. “The trellkin almost had usss. They almost
had usss, but we have besssted them.”

Jenka’s temples pounded and the world spun
crazily with his effort to accept what was happening. His eyes
closed for a moment, but he didn’t let the dark current pull him
back under just yet. “How are you speaking to me?” He asked the
dragon. He didn’t remember much of what happened, but here he was,
somehow speaking to a wyrm that had ribbons of torn and bloody
troll flesh dangling from its pink, finger-long teeth. It was
incredible.

“I just am.” The dragon responded, more into
Jenka’s mind than audibly. “I’m not supposssed to go near your
sort. My mamra says that, though you are small and tasssty, you are
a dangerous lot. She says that you like to kill our kind. But I
wasss drawn to you. You saved me from the trellkin, ssso I saved
you in turn. That makes us friendssss, doesss it not?”

“Friends then,” Jenka agreed, thinking with
perfect clarity that such a friendship could never be. King
Blanchard hated dragons. Everyone in the kingdom hated them. The
wyrms had been completely eradicated from the islands. Now, out
here in the mainland frontier, when a herd was pilfered or a lair
was found, the King’s Rangers always went hunting and tried to find
and destroy the creature responsible. Jenka figured that it would
be that way until the entire frontier, the Orich Mountains, and
even the Outlands were cleansed of the deadly creatures.

“My people are wary of your kind as well,”
Jenka said matter-of-factly. His head and side hurt terribly and it
was anguishing to speak. “Make your lair deep in the mountains
where men cannot go, and don’t ever get caught by the King’s
Rangers, because they will try their best to kill you.”

The dragon nodded his understanding with
closely-knitted brow plates, and then snorted out two curling
tendrils of acrid smoke from its nostrils. “Nor should you ever
wander too far into the peaks. I have a feeling that we will sssee
each other again. Thisss happening was no coincidence. I will be
pleased when that time comes, but other dragons, the wild onesss,
will feast on your flesh, ssso be wary.”