Read Online The First Dragoneer by M. R. Mathias - Free Book Online Page B

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
tingling 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 feasting crows.
    Jenka’s face felt warm and slick. He tried
to pull himself free of the clinging emptiness that still 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 gotten 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 starting to work
again. He only wished he could find the strength to respond, or at
least to brush the little 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 - mid-day 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 exertion 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 inspecting 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
attentive concern to pure pleasure after he saw that Jenka was in a
survivable state. Looking around at the carnage the dragon had left
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 debilitating
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