29. Rider

CHAPTER 29

Rider

Sawyer was late. Tyon had run off the trail, huffing, trying to catch his breath, and the boy was nowhere in sight. He should have arrived before Bramwell, but the large novice and his group of friends had arrived minutes ago, Mikel with a smug smile, and Bramwell, Durand, and Ambrose soaking wet. And while Bramwell had fallen off the log bridge before, Durand and Ambrose hadn’t, which made me suspect they’d ambushed Sawyer at the stream.

I’d expected them to attempt something like that and also for the other novices to not help the boy out of the stream, but even if he’d hiked to where the bank was low enough for him to climb out, he should have been back by now… unless he’d just given up and hadn’t bothered trying to hurry back.

Except I knew that wasn’t true. So far, the boy hadn’t given up and I doubted being forced to find a way out of the ravine would stop him.

Which meant something else had gone wrong and if they’d seriously hurt him, I wasn’t going to be able to keep my wolf at bay. I needed everybody I had right now protecting the Gray, even small bodies like Sawyer’s.

And the second I thought that, a shadow dragon’s screech cut through the misty air. Talon and Quill shot me worried looks, obviously realizing like I had that Sawyer had been forced off the trail. And while most of the area around the trail was safe — and should have been safe from shadow dragons since they never came this close to the Tower — Sawyer was particularly short and would have had to go farther up or down stream to find a way out of the ravine.

The creature shrieked again, followed by numerous heavy thuds, and off in the distance the mist undulated and swirled as if something large had disturbed it, the sign that the shadow dragon had found something and was really going after it.

And that it could only be Sawyer Herstind.

Fuck. I’d finally managed to calm myself down from Talon’s attack on Sawyer and now the boy was being chased down by a shadow dragon that shouldn’t have even been around to notice him.

Because of course it had to be after Sawyer. The boy had the worst luck — or the best depending on how you looked at it.

This was not how I wanted my day to go.

“Quill, take the novices who have no experience with daggers and show them the basics. Talon, you’ve got the fae and the experienced humans,” I barked, catching the eyes of Slate, Zorin, and Jalnar, the three closest Guardsmen doing their afternoon training on the other side of the novice’s training area. “You three with me.”

I turned and ran, not waiting for my men. They’d catch up soon enough, and right now, every second counted.

Out of the corner of my eye I saw Hamelin shoot Ambrose a worried look, while Mikel and Durand looked put out, like saving the boy’s ass was giving him special treatment or something when they were the ones who’d put him in danger in the first place.

Fucking idiots.

They hadn’t even been here for a rotation, and they were already getting on my nerves. Why couldn’t they just leave the boy alone and learn their fucking job?

But their job depended on Sawyer learning his job, and they, along with the other Guardsmen feared that Sawyer was too selfish and too weak to watch their backs.

It was like they’d all forgotten that the boy had already killed a hound.

Of course, Mikel and his group probably thought that was an exaggeration. That it was me, Talon, and Quill giving him more special attention, and I couldn’t dispute that without looking like I was favoring Sawyer.

The shadow dragon screeched again, and I barreled down the hill at the trail’s end and into the cover of the trees. The log bridge was just after the halfway point, and with a shadow dragon every second counted. If I went the wrong way, I could be too late.

Goddess damned fucking idiots .

If the boy died, they were going to be on stable duty and laundry duty and the dirtiest, hardest jobs I could find for the rest of their fucking lives. Which I knew wasn’t realistic because I needed them on the wall and securing the land around the Tower, but damn it! It had been years since I’d lost a Guardsman to the sheer stupidity of other Guardsmen, and I sure as hell didn’t want to lose one now.

I raced around the bend, my wolf straining to tear out of my body, eager for a fight and to release the frustration that had been building inside me from the moment Sawyer had come through the ring after dark and painted a target on his pathetically small chest.

What the hell was wrong with this group of novices?

The shadow dragon released a bellowing roar, sending a wave of cold air sweeping out of the scraggly forest and chilling my skin. It rose above me, an enormous monster that even I would have trouble taking down by myself in my wolf form, and shook it’s head as if it had bumped it… or as if it had caught something, a predator shaking its prey into submission.

My stomach bottomed out as it flew away, and I gritted my teeth, pushing to run faster. There might not be a body, but I had to look anyway. If he was alive and injured, I had to get him to the infirmary. If he was dead and left behind, I couldn’t leave him rotting in the Gray. No one deserved that.

From where the shadow dragon had risen out of the trees, it had to have been at the edge of the barrier close to the log bridge.

I cut off the trail, heading to the edge of the barrier to follow it around to the stream, my senses on high alert. Just because the shadow dragon had flown away, didn’t mean it wouldn’t come back, or that smaller opportunistic shadows hoping for scraps off whatever the shadow dragon left behind wouldn’t show up… not that shadow dragons usually left much behind when they attacked a human.

Hell, Sawyer was so small, he probably wasn’t even a satisfying snack.

I rounded a large chunk of rock jutting out from the ground to see the boy lying on his back just inside the barrier protecting the trail. His palms were pressed against his eyes and his chest heaved with desperate breaths. Water and flecks of ice pooled around him, giving evidence to my theory that he’d ended up in the stream, and a hint of blood, that my wolf senses noticed, tinted the pool by his right foot, making my wolf snarl inside me. He’d ripped his pants again, the tear exposing a bleeding gash in his shin and the swelling and purpling of what was going to be a painful bruise.

I purposefully stepped on a dry twig, making it crack, and he shot upright, his eyes wide. He reached for his sword, making me smile inwardly at the instinct. But his sheath was empty, the blade lying a few feet from him, so he quickly switched to grab his dagger before his wild eyes landed on me.