Chapter Two
In the swimming world of liquid darkness where Jenka found himself, he felt like a ny fish caught up in a powerful current. He had no memory of how he had go en to wherever he was, or how long he had been there.
There was a flee ng terror s ll 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 emp ness.
A er some me, 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 so 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 fron er, when a herd was pilfered or a lair was found, the King’s Rangers always went hun ng and tried to find and destroy the creature responsible. Jenka figured that it would be that way un l the en re fron er, the Orich Mountains, and even the Outlands were cleansed of the deadly creatures.
“My people are wary of your kind as well,” Jenka said ma er-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-kni ed 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 me comes, but other dragons, the wild onesss, will feast on your flesh, ssso be wary.”
“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 ngling 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 feas ng crows.
Jenka’s face felt warm and slick. He tried to pull himself free of the clinging emp ness that s ll 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 go en 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 star ng to work again. He only wished he could find the strength to respond, or at least to brush the li le 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 - midday 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 exer on 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 inspec ng 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 a en ve concern to pure pleasure a er he saw that Jenka was in a survivable state. Looking around at the carnage the dragon had le 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 debilita ng 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 a ack. It was only Lemmy trying to get Master Kember’s a en on. 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 me, 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 conversa on 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.
A er Lemmy grunted acknowledgment of his orders and loped off to carry them out, Master Kember stood and be er 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- pped 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 sha s. The decimated remains of a sizable stag lay shredded and strewn amid all the gore, and upon closer examina on, 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 glin ng emerald in the sun. The re red 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 en re kingdom,” the old hunter started. “Killing that troll by yourself is certainly a feat of notability, but surviving the ba le that took place a er 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 a er 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.”
