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 swi 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 shi inside the stag’s guts as it fled through the forest, bringing death that much swi er.

The hunter’s rush came surging into Jenka’s blood then, and a er marking the first crimson splashes of spilled life and the general direc on 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 a er it had been quartered. Not for the first me today, Jenka wished his friend Grondy were there to help him. Normally Jenka and Grondy hunted as a team, but Grondy had recently been bi en 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 s ll a lot of work le 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 nier 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 a er 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. Li le 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 sigh ngs increased.

Jenka was an aspiring King’s Ranger and knew he was already far enough up into the hills to warrant paying a li le more a en on. Heaving from exer on, he was none too pleased when he finally found the stag’s broken body. It was lying at the bo om of a shallow, but steep, ravine; the creature had apparently staggered right over the edge and fallen into a heap at the bo om 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 le 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 le immediately and had the luck of the Gods on his side, the help he gathered s ll 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 eleva on 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 s cks and branches and tossed them into a pile down by the stag’s carcass.

While he searched for firewood, he let his mind wander. A er 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-ea ng 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.

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 me, he said, being killed swi ly by a hungry ogre is a be er 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 gu ed the stag, dragged the pile of innards a good way down the gully,

then hurried back to the carcass and used his nderbox to start his fire.

Darkness slid over him like a tavern-wench's fla ery 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 me alone in the foothills was part of the Forester training he would someday have to take.

By the me he had his hunk of meat cooked, he was so scared that he had no appe te, and by the me he finished forcing the food down his throat, he was figh ng 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 illumina on the new fuel lent the area allowed him to catch a brief glimpse of something gigan c 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 ght in his gut. He was far too terrified to think now, and he had to fight the base ins nct 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 reflec on. 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 sha 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 ke le-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 li le 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 po on 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 pain ngs 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 a acked 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 s ll out there in the dark somewhere, lurking, wai ng for him to fall asleep. He divided most of his remaining wood up into three even piles, un l he felt certain that he would have fire un l well a er 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 exer on and his exhausted body come crashing down from the rush of adrenaline he had been riding. He was just star ng 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 a er 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 fi een 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 a ernoon 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 li le 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 no ce so that he could begin his Forester appren ceship 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, un l he could plainly see the scaly thing feeding in the firelight.

It was amazing. Its scales gli ered 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 considera on on the ma er 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 me 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 direc on 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 li le more than li 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 sha 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 frigh ully 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, ro en teeth. Jenka whirled around to go back, but found another of the yellow-eyed trolls wai ng for him. He started a mad, scrabbling climb up the side of the gulch, but found li le 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 silhoue ed 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. A er they had him.

A fist-sized rock slammed into his chest, knocking all of the wind from his lungs. Other stones followed, and the primi ve troll beasts soon went into a frenzied ritual of howling and savage figh ng over feeding posi on. 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 le of his body.

A er that was nothing but blackness.