“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 beau ful 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 figh ng each other. By the hells, they’ll stop figh ng to feed on the dead while you’re cu ng 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 ques on,” 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 ge ng 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 ci es 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 se le this fron er, and the trolls and dragons can be damned if they oppose it.” He let out a red sigh and changed the subject. “We’ll have to postpone our journey for one more day. It’ll be dawn by the me 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 mes he started to ask Master Kember a ques on 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 star ng 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, un l 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 contempla ve 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 nega vity from his mind, like he some mes did when he was hun ng, and was decidedly the be er for it.
Beyond being as red as he could remember, he was also beside himself with a giddy, childish glee. He was about to go on a grand adventure, and a er 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 be er, when he learned that beau ful Zahrellion and another of the Druids of Dou were going to be traveling to King’s Island with their group. A er hearing that news, Jenka spent the rest of the evening floa ng around as if he were on a cloud.
Master Kember was none too pleased about the unwanted addi ons 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 s ll a King’s Ranger at heart.
Jenka said goodbye to his mother early in the morning, and promised to deliver a wri en message to her former employer on King’s Island.
Visi ng a true Witch of Hazel ne 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. A er 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 ba le 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 ghtly. Not even the inclement weather could dampen their spirits though, especially Jenka’s. He had been assigned the pleasant duty of personal a endant to Zah and her older male companion for the journey.
“Star ng a journey is always such a thrilling feeling,” Master Kember said op mis cally to his three students and the two young, uniformed Foresters. Jenka, Solman, and Rikky all cringed, expec ng one of Master Kember’s windy proclama ons. 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.
Chapter Four
By midday, the late spring sun had burned the clouds away, and though the lightly ru ed road was so under the horses' hooves, there hadn’t been enough precipita on to make it muddy. Birds flu ered about and called out merrily from the thinning copses of tangle oak and pine trees that do ed the roadway, and a light breeze kept the travelers from ge ng 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, ta oo-faced druida said to the two young uniformed Foresters. When they didn’t respond, she con nued. “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 ta oos 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.
“Mor n 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 li le thick headed too.
“They call me S ck,” 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 S ck because he’s thin like a s ck,” Mor n explained for those who didn’t get it.
Jenka, Solman and Rikky all introduced themselves, and soon a light conversa on about the quali es of different types of field ra ons ensued.
Mor n 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 be er 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 ea n’ neither of ‘em tonight,” Herald, the King’s Ranger, chimed in robustly. “Tonight we’ll be pullin’ pork ll 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 unques oned law of the fron er.
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 me.
Behind them, the mountains rose up, sharp and in mida ng, but ahead of
them the world was alive and full of the promise of spring. Mul -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 mes, 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 o en sold pigs in Crag, and some mes stopped to purchase a liniment or a salve from Jenka’s mother.
Once, Swinerd had go en into an argument with one of the King’s Rangers and a brawl had ensued. Jenka remembered how excited the en re village had go en 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 led roof were rows of pens, each full of squealing piglets and loud, grun ng 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 spli ng 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 in mida ng-looking man.
