“Like, too soft?”
Aevrin didn’t have to think to answer that, but he hesitated anyways. Sorven had just turned eight when their mother passed. In some ways he’d experienced the brunt of it, the biggest loss. In others, they’d protected him as best as they could. And perhaps, Aevrin thought uncomfortably, coddled him a little extra for it. But what did it matter? Sorven had a big heart, and the makings of a great rancher.
“Well… I’m not sure it’s a bad thing,” Aevrin told him.
“So that’s a yes,” Sorven said, with a heavy sigh. His shoulders slumped.
“So what? Why’s it matter?”
“Nevermind. I was just wondering.”
Kazeic was eating in the dragon coop, laying on top of the false door to the cavernous cellar where the dragons stored their hoard. Despite the drake’s recent friendliness, he growled when Aevrin scratched his forehead, possessive of his meal. The gray dragon relaxed as Aevrin rubbed him down with a waxed rag. He saddled Kazeic up, tucking his lunch and water into the saddlebags, along with his knife. A coil of rope hung on a strap off the saddle horn. His familiar, well-worn crossbow was on his back, ready for any manticore that made the mistake of coming after the herd.
Kazeic followed him willingly out to the bright dawn, where Mavek and his father waited. Sorven, broom in hand, sighed heavily and started tidying the aisle.
Outside, Sath Riveker had a hand up to shade his eyes. He wasn’t peering out over their ranch, but towards the road.
“That’s not Boone’s drake,” their father said as Aevrin swung up into the saddle.
“You expecting him?” Mavek asked as Aevrin peered the same direction. A gold dragon barreled on foot down the dirt road from the mountains with a rider on his back, wings folded tight. A pair of bulls followed behind, also carrying riders.
“Naw,” their father said. “But he said he was putting a barricade up last night on that road.”
That way lay the rustler’s ranch, and the mountains where Aevrin had found Cassia in the first place. If the rustlers had dragons a barricade wouldn’t do much, but it would at least stop a cart.
“You think that’s them?” Mavek asked.
“Dunno. Guess the road isn’t closed. Or those bulls just went around. Could just be normal folk,” Sath said. But the road wasn’t used much. There were no towns out that way, just ranchland and wilderness.
“Let’s check ‘em out,” Aevrin suggested, feeling uneasy. Not wanting to push Kazeic too hard first thing in the morning, they loped towards the house, keeping grounded.
He came around the house just as the gold drake passed in front. The other dragon slowed; Aevrin squinted at it, trying to figure out what was wrong. The drake was running oddly, his head too high, the whites of his eyes showing.
He could see now the drake was a juvenile, for one thing. He was staying on the ground not to rest his wings, but because he wasn’t nearly big enough to fly with a rider on his back. Worse, bonded dragons didn’t need bridles, but this one had a sharp bit in his mouth, bloody foam streaming from the corners of his lips. The rider carried a pronged metal crop. From the bright red streaks on the dragon’s haunches it was sharp enough to crack through juvenile scale—not yet fully hardened—and tear through the membranous wings.
“Who–” Aevrin started to growl. Just then the rider raised a crossbow, pointed towards the house. Aevrin stiffened at the sight, a split second before the arrow loosed with ataknoise.
He heard Cassia’s scream, coming from the porch. Blood jumping, Aevrin sent Kazeic barrelling forward. The gold dragon raced away down the road, bulls on his tail.
The rider loaded another arrow as the gold drake threw his head.
“Cassia!” Aevrin bellowed, sliding Kazeic to a stop in front of the porch steps. His hands started fumbling with the straps around his thighs that kept him seated in the air. She crouched behind a rocking chair, hands over her head. The window beside her was broken, glass littering the flood. “Are you hurt?” One strap was free. He rushed to undo the other.
“No,” she called back, her voice wobbly. Relief hit him harder than an arrow.
“Get inside. Lock up. Tell Gramma we need Boone,” he barked. She could reach the sheriff through the spellstone. He tightened the saddle thigh-straps again. Aevrin didn’t want to leave her alone, but he couldn’t let that man get away. “Let’s go,” he told Kazeic.
The dragon spun on his hindquarters and launched straight up into the sky, pushing Aevrin down hard into the saddle. The gray’s wings snapped out, pumped twice to get them higher, then folded. Kazeic dove sharply towards the riders as Aevrin gripped tight.
They were chasing Zey, or his men. Aevrin had no doubt.
If the men were fleeing on foot, taking them out would be easy with Kazeic’s blue-hot dragon fire. The problem was getting the men without hurting the captive dragon. If he could avoid hurting the bulls, too, he would. They had likely been stolen from him or their neighbors.
The young dragon ahead of them was no match for Kazeic’s speed, and soon Kazeic hovered twenty feet above his prey. But as Aevrin heard one of the men below him yell a command, a bull-rider tilted his head back to look up towards Aevrin. The rider swung his crossbow up to point their way.
Aevrin pulled the loaded crossbow from his back and exhaled slowly, letting the world narrow to his target, feeling the rise and fall of Kazeic riding the wind. An arrow whizzed by his head as Kazeic pinned one wing to spiral out of the way. For a moment Aevrin hung horizontally over the open air, his feet jammed hard into the deep stirrups and one hand gripping tight to the saddle pommel.
Kazeic leveled back out. Aevrin’s stomach returned to its usual position in his gut instead of his throat.
