Chapter 8

                                    

                                          
                   
                          
Serpent had been reluctant to abandon all of the fresh meat, but Old Man Alder had the drake too well trained to give more than a single snap at Colt's legs. A blow to the nose from Old Man Alder put a stop to that and Colt and Anthony were able to ease themselves onto the drake's back with Orchid's help.
                          
"How you keep managing to lose your shirt?" she asked, settling the pair of them to ride between herself and Old Man Alder.
                          
Colt could barely muster a grunt in response and sank into his own fatigue. An instant later he was being jerked awake as Serpent pulled to a stop in front of the manor. Smoke hung in the air, heavy and thick enough to near about smother the stench of dead drake. Bodies had been pulled from the yards and away from the smoldering house to be lined up in a row along the road leading up to the main gate. The number was depressing, but not near so bad as he'd thought. It didn't make any of them less dead, but at least there were more alive than he'd guessed.
                          
People gathered into two groups. One of folks taking care of the injured, and another set up in a line trading buckets back and forth from the nearby Viper River. It looked like they had the fire well under hand, but the entire front of the upper balcony had burned away, as well as a good portion of the wall and roof. Could be worse, Colt told himself, could've been the whole manor what burned down.
                          
Old Man Alder seemed to be trying to convince himself of the same thing. Colt swore he could hear the landowner's teeth grinding as he surveyed the damage to his home.
                          
"Orchid," Old Man Alder said over his shoulder. "Take these two over to the wounded, see that they're to be treated and then get to work with the bucket brigade."
                          
How they dismounted Serpent, Colt couldn't say, but soon he was laid down on the grass next to a badly burned man. It was hard to tell, but it looked like some of the balcony must've collapsed on him. His face was completely unrecognizable. It looked like he was holding a large splinter in his hand. Light glimmered off a piece of metal that looked like it might have been engraved into the wood and Colt suddenly realized who he was looking at.
                          
Anthony groaned as Orchid helped lay him down beside Colt. Colt couldn't look at him.
                          
"It was his job," Aephyr said, kneeling beside him and stroking his sweat slick brow. "His duty put him danger regularly, his injuries are not your fault."
                          
He should've been there, helping the sheriff's men take back the manor. But if he had, then what about his folk? They'd been moments from disappearing underground when Anthony and he had arrived. He'd saved them, and the sheriff was in a bad way because of it.
                          
"You could not have helped him," Aephyr said firmly. "If you had joined him and his men, you would have been killed by an arrow or buried when the burning balcony collapsed. You could not have prevented this."
                          
Colt finally pulled his gaze away from the sheriff to gaze into Aephyr's eyes. "What do I tell him?"
                          
"Anthony?" Aephyr asked. "You've been honest to the point of foolishness with him so far, I see no reason to break the habit now."
                          
Colt groaned and rolled over, ignoring stabbing pain the movement brought on in his sides. This was going to be the hardest thing he'd done since wrangling the runaway drake calf.
                          
~
                          
When the sheriff passed on, Colt couldn't say. He'd been so quiet up until Colt noticed, that the man could've been dead minutes or hours. At some point in the afternoon he just quit breathing.
                          
The fire was brought under control by everyone who wasn't too injured helping. Colt tried to get up twice to grab a bucket, as much to help out as to leave Anthony to his grief. The first time, Orchid caught him and pushed him back down to the ground. She wasn't around for the second, but Aephyr was having none of it.