Dragon Racers: The Complete Trilogy, page 67
Jenka turned to respond, but the druid was gone. He had vanished into thin air, leaving Jenka and the squire, who had heard the whole conversation, gawking with wide opened mouths.
“Boy!” King Blanchard bellowed, as he came into the room ahead of a full retinue. Herald was with him, and he rushed over to Jenka with a mixture of anger and concern on his face.
“Make me believe that you had nothing to do with this madness, Jenka De Swasso,” the king went on. “Make me believe it now!”
“That spear was going to hit the Prince, Your Highness,” Jenka said quickly. “And Prince Richard isn’t in any danger. I swear it.”
“Fool,” the squire said in a quick, angry hiss before the king could start in.
“How can you know what danger he is in if you are not involved?” the king reasoned angrily. “Take him to the dungeons, too!”
“Don’t hurt him none!” Herald shouted loudly enough that even the king blanched back from the Ranger’s intensity. “Nor the lass! Any man harms `em afore they be properly judged will feel my wrath!”
“Do as he says,” King Blanchard conceded with a snarl. He then said directly to Herald, “Mind your station, Ranger, lest you go sit with `em. My son, your Prince, has been abducted, and those two have both been meddling with those intelligent dragons, and we both know it. They might have led them here. They could be unwilling conspirators. They could be spelled. You said so yourself. The girl is a mage. I’ll not have the dragons learning from them what we are planning for the trolls.”
The rough, callused hands of the overly-excited Kingsmen yanked and pulled Jenka out of the annex and down the corridor to a switch-backed stairway. Down they went, past landing after landing, and then down some more, until they came to an iron-barred door. Two scruffy, overweight men in filthy Kingsmen’s uniforms sat behind it, wide-eyed and alert. The air was thick with the sickly sweet smell of rot. It was humid and stuffy. Jenka felt as if the walls were already closing in on him.
The guards looked as if they had recently been sleeping. By the sound of Zahrellion’s sobs coming from behind one of the hammered steel doors, it was obvious that they had been awake for a short while at least.
The barred door came open, as one of the dungeon guards cranked on an iron wheel set into the wall. Jenka was pulled into the cell run and shoved with brutal force into a darkened rectangle. He went sprawling face first into a wet sludge of muck and hay. The sound of the steel door slamming shut behind him echoed loudly in his ears. The jangling and rattling of the cell being locked was loud and sent an icy shiver down his back. The silence that followed was deep and potent, only broken by an exceptionally loud wail coming from whatever cell Zah was in. A thin yellow line of light leaked under his cell’s door from the torch ensconced on the wall outside. Other than that, there was nothing.
Chapter Fifteen
Rikky’s pain was quantified by the rough jarring of the covered wagon. He wasn’t the only one riding in the back of the dirty, plank-board vegetable hauler. There were four other injured men from Three Forks Stronghold, every single one of them as teary-eyed as a babe. The tears weren’t from fear or pain. They were from the overpowering aroma of the half-rotted onions that hadn’t been properly cleaned out of the wagon’s bed before it was commandeered by Commander Corda. Rocks and heavier stones pelted the canvas. The wagon raced at breakneck speeds through the troll-infested copses that lay between Three Forks and the open southern trade roads. Only one rock had torn through the thin covering, which seemed miraculous to Rikky. The rock had hit him in the middle of his back. It was painful, but not nearly as much as the constant agony of his missing lower leg.
It was a terrifying ride. The driver kept the horses moving swiftly and had twice called back that the trolls had cleared out, only to begin cursing and praying like a madman when the stones came flying in again. The wounded passengers held on for dear life as the wagon careened and swayed and nearly tipped over. A few times they went airborne for a long, slow moment only to come slamming down as the wagon came back up to greet them. It was a wonder that any of them had survived this far.
The wagon began to slow, which was a relief at first, but then it became a worry.
“What’s wrong?” a Walguard named Jess called out to the driver. Jess had been blinded when a troll’s claw raked his face.
“Muaaaah,” came a half moaned, half gurgled groan.
“Take a look, lad,” Jess encouraged Rikky. “You’re the only one seems well enough to do it. It don’t feel like we’re on the road no more.”
Rikky looked at the other men. One was nearly cut in half, another’s head was wrapped in dark, bloody cloth, and Jess had lost his eyes. The last man might have been dead, as he hadn’t so much as moved since the wild ride had started. Jess had told Rikky earlier that the Goblin King had placed his palm on the man’s head and he had lost all his sense.
Rikky sucked in a deep breath and pulled himself over to the flapping hole the rock had made when it had torn through the canvas and hit him. He had to pull and tear the material to get it open wide enough for his head to poke out and see.
He looked out, and was immediately slapped in the face with brittle, dead limbs. They scared him more than hurt him as they stung then broke away. He had seen enough to know that they were running really close to the trees and that the moon was mostly full and bright in the sky. He chanced another glance, and after wriggling an arm and a shoulder out, he got enough of an advantage to see how much trouble they were in.
“He’s dead, or dying maybe,” Rikky called out. The wagon swayed violently to one side. The horses had their own head and were still half panicked from the trolls. “We en't on the road no more, and we're…we're headed into the thicket. We're… We… We're gonna… Hold on!”
The wagon slung over onto two wheels then came back down hard. Rikky’s body went tearing through the canvas as he was thrown in a hard, twisting tumble out into the undergrowth. There was the loud sound of cracking wood, and one of the horses screamed out horribly. Rikky screamed, too, from the agony of his initial impact, but he passed out completely before he even stopped his long, cartwheeling tumble.
Sometime later, when Rikky opened his eyes, he realized that his missing limb had stopped hurting. The rest of him hurt instead. He felt a few deep scratches and scrapes, but wasn’t bleeding profusely from anywhere. He would probably be as stiff as a statue later. After enduring the other, more potent agony of his missing limb for so long, he decided he wasn’t feeling that bad.
He looked around from a sitting position and realized it was just about dawn. The sun had already begun to pinken the eastern sky, and the moon had passed below the horizon for the night. He could see no sign of the wagon, but he didn’t really expect to in the dark. It was surprising that it wasn’t crashed right there beyond where he had flown out of it. He doubted that it could have gone far in the semi-thick shrubbery, knee high grass, and sparsely-treed terrain.
As the sun came up, he held himself still and listened for the others. He heard crickets and an irritated owl, then happily chirping morning gales and an insistent woodpecker. Something larger huffed as it went along, low in the brush, but he heard no men calling out or otherwise conversing. He thought he heard a horse whinnying, which gave him hope. If he could find one of the two horses he might find a way to get onto it and ride it. Finding a horse with one leg and no crutch was going to be the test.
As the sun came up, Rikky heard a repetitive, moaning call. He called back, but the response was the same moaning as before. It sounded a little like the wagon driver, but Rikky doubted that he had lived. He didn’t think that the driver was alive when he had been thrown. He had seen the man lying with his head twisted at an impossible angle on the wagon box, his arms dangling limply near the spinning spoke wheel. That was just before the wagon had been jarred up onto its side and threw him.
Rikky struggled, crawling his way over to the nearest tree. It took some effort, but he got himself upright and standing on his good leg. Looking around, he could make out the rectangular silhouette of the wagon bed lying on its side, amidst a fairly distant jumble of shrubbery. Off to the right, a horse had its harness lines tangled and was snorting his frustration at not being able to get free. Rikky realized that what he had thought was an irritated owl hooting in the night had actually been the exhausted horse.
After scanning the immediate area as best as he could for anything he might be able to use as a crutch, Rikky realized he would have to crawl all the way to the horse. He knew it would be no easy task, but he set to it with tightly-clenched jaws and a heart full of hopeful determination. The ground was soft, but the shrubs were thick and sometimes thorny. It was an exceptionally bright morning. It was humid and steamy, as if it had rained the previous day. He was sweating and frustrated, and clouds of mosquitoes swarmed around him. He ignored them, knowing that there was nothing he could do about them. When he finally made it over to the frightened animal, the sun had climbed high into the sky, and he had several dozen itching, red welts on his arms and neck.
Luckily, the wooden crossbar of the wagon harness was attached to the leather lines that the horse had dragged and tangled. The horse was glad to see Rikky. It visibly calmed when he started talking to it. It didn’t have a regular riding bridle, but Master Kember had trained all of his boys in horsemanship. Rikky wouldn’t need any saddlery. Rikky’s problem was going to be getting up on the damn thing with only one leg. He decided not to attempt it yet. Instead, he went about cutting the tangled lines while leaving the horse hobbled enough so that it could graze and wander a bit but not get away.
He found that the harness bar was as tall as he was. It would have made for a poor staff had it not had a big, swiveled, iron eye-ring cinched into it at about elbow level. Rikky could get his whole hand in the ring up to his thumb and could hang his weight on it as he hop-stepped along. He carried the horse’s line with him as he went. The animal cooperated and lazily moved along with him, grazing and snorting when he stopped to grimace away the pain or get his wind back. Once, one of the injured men howled out from inside, or beyond, the toppled wagon. His desperate voice startled the horse. It made to bolt, and would have yanked Rikky to the ground and dragged him had he not shouted out a sharp command and yanked hard on the line he had rigged to the animal.
His makeshift walking stick felt like it was made of solid iron. It was an awkward and somewhat painful process for him to move along, but he finally got to the wagon. It was on its side, and there was no one to be seen around it.
It was Jess who had been howling out for help. He was the only one who had survived the crash. He was as glad as the horse had been to hear Rikky coming, because he knew that without help he would never be able to make it to safety.
“Is that you, lad?” he asked as Rikky peered into the wagon.
“It is,” replied Rikky. He started to ask Jess a question about how far they were from the Great Wall, but he was cut off when the horse tried to bolt away again. He had tied the lines to the wagon, and the wooden frame jerked hard as the horse’s weight pulled the line tight. Luckily, it hadn’t been able to gain much momentum and the leather strapping held.
Jess said, “Trolls!” just as one of the greenish-skinned beasts howled out loudly to its pack mates.
“Come on,” Rikky urged. “We can outrun them if we get on the horse.” He leaned his torso into the wagon and grabbed Jess’ outstretched hand. Just as Jess stumbled out of the tilted bed the first rock came flying in and hit the wagon with a hard crack. This time, when the horse bolted, it snapped the line, leaving Rikky and Jess standing there helplessly.
First one troll, then another, showed themselves. Beyond them, more of the beasts grunted and howled. They had come for the easy meal the wagonload of dead and half-dead men would provide.
Rikky’s instinct to run after the horse was quickly averted when his left foot didn’t take that first step for him. He fell forward, dragging Jess down with him. It was a good thing, for that’s when the rocks started flying at them in abundance.
Jenka couldn’t stand being inside the dismal little stone cell. All he could hear were Zahrellion’s sobs, and the fainter, more terrifying calls of someone who had been put down there long ago and forgotten. Worse still, was the feeling of ineptitude, the humiliating realization that he was completely and utterly powerless to help Zah, or the people of the frontier, or anybody, including himself. He couldn’t even get himself some water to sip, but it wasn’t for lack of trying. His throat was raw, and his voice nearly gone from yelling for it. He felt like less than a man. His dignity had long since left him, and now his pride was starting to slip from his grasp. He was about to start begging for the water when Zah let out another long sob filled with fear and confusion. It was just enough to keep Jenka from crossing that line. The indecency of it all gave him back some resolve. It was enough to stay his thirst for the moment, but there was no way to tell how long that would last.
It could have been hours, but it seemed more like days before somebody came and rattled open the eye-level slot to peer in at him. The scant torchlight filtering around the silhouetted head caused his eyes and head to ache, but when the visitor spoke, the voice was as welcome as any ever had been.
“Fargin hells!” Herald exclaimed angrily. “You! And you,” he yelled to the dungeon guards. “This man, and the lady over there are to have fresh, clean water every hour, and three warm meals a day.” He held up three fingers and wiggled them at the slovenly men. “I’ll have the food brought to the dungeon gates from the main kitchen, not that bug-infested servant's hole. And if I find out that they aren’t getting the meals I send, I’ll come down here myself and cut you a new arsehole. Now get to fetching some good clean water and waste no time about it!”
“How long have we been down here?” Jenka had moved closer to the open slot and stood in the shadow, out of the yellow beam of moat-filled light penetrating his darkened box.
“Two days, lad,” Herald sighed. “And a lot has happened.”
“Can you have someone look at Zahrellion? She hasn’t stopped moaning since we’ve been down here. I think she was injured by the men who arrested her.”
“Fargin luggers,” Herald cursed them. “I’ll send the Spell Master down as soon as I can track him down. I’d have come sooner, lad, but the kingdom has gone mad with all of this. The trolls have set upon Three Forks and the folk cowering there are going to have to make an unprotected run for the wall. It’s fargin madness. And here in the dungeon sits the two people that were trying to warn us all about it.”
“Go check on Zah,” Jenka rasped out the request. “She sounded like she was getting worse, and I’m concerned for her.”
“Aye, lad, I will,” Herald promised. “But only after I’ve seen you get a drink or two of clean water in you. I’ve done my duty to them druids. It’s my duty to your da and Marwick that I’m trying to do now. If it weren’t for the queen I’d never have gotten down here. She wants you let loose, but His Majesty is as thick-headed as a mountain ram. He thinks you two were tricked by the wyrms and led them here to take the Prince.”
“The Prince is…”
“Not so loud, lad,” Herald hushed. “I seen it as plain as day. He wasn’t harmed none. That wyrm was protecting him, and I think that the three of you know more than you’re letting on, but that discussion is for another day.”
“I can wait,” Jenka moved into the rectangular beam of light, and the sight of him caused Herald to lightly gasp. He was filthy and bruised, and his eyes were as red as blood. Worse, he was dehydrated, and his lips were beginning to crack and bleed. He had been seasick for days just before he was imprisoned, and his body was craving nutrition. “Go, Herald. She may be in bad shape. I’m not going anywhere.”
“I’ll go check on the druida, Jenka, but if that water isn’t here soon, I’ll start cutting pieces off of this fargin guard they left down here. I’m a First Ranger, and I can distribute the king's justice with impunity.” He said it loud enough for the remaining dungeon guard to plainly hear.
He turned and strode out of Jenka’s line of sight, and asked the now-nervous guard which cell Zahrellion was in. It was the one across from Jenka, and once the slot was open and Herald was peering in, Jenka felt a wave of relief wash over him. That changed when Herald turned around and looked back at Jenka. Zah’s pitiful moan came from the opening, and Jenka heard it louder than before. It sounded raspy, as if fluid was gurgling in her throat. Herald looked in again, then spun back toward Jenka. The paled look on Herald’s face was horrified.
The grizzled old Ranger looked more than a little worried by what he had seen. His eyes darted this way and that as he eased back over to Jenka’s slot.
“What is it, Herald?” Jenka asked worriedly. “Is she all right? She sounds awful.”
“I can’t answer your question, lad.” Herald looked more confused than anything now, and he spoke in a barely audible whisper. “I heard her, too, Jenka. Her voice came from in there, but she en't in that box. It’s as empty as Solman’s belly was when we found him.”
“Magic?” Jenka asked, feeling the first bit of hope he had felt in days.
Herald just nodded, then went back and closed the slot on her door. As if to punctuate the strangeness of the situation, another eerie moan came from the empty cell.
Chapter Sixteen
“I’m right here.”
Zahrellion's voice came from behind Jenka. He whirled to see a faint, ghostly image of her wavering right there in his cell. Reflexively, he took a step back and gasped. “Actually, I am lying at the foot of the door in my cell. I am projecting my image here,” she corrected herself. Her voice echoed from some indefinite point that didn’t quite correspond with the location of her image’s mouth.
“Fargin magic creeps my crotch,” Herald said, just as Master Kember had said a dozen times the night they had all been forced to camp around Linux' hissing druid fire.
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