Page 65 of Shadow Warrior
Carlo made a sound of disgust in the back of his throat.
“Don’t let your team down before the trial has even started,” Henrich said.
A murmur of dissent rippled over the cadets. Every face showed signs of annoyance and disgruntlement. Henrich was taking the piss. He’d used us cadets as mules the past term and run us ragged. We’d gone through attacks, both fomorian and magical, and now he was shoving more tests on us? Like continuing with the fucking trial wasn’t enough. Like bringing it forward by a month wasn’t enough. If I didn’t know better, I’d think this obstacle course was for the knights’ entertainment. Hunt the cadets for sport and then party, because, yeah, their celebration kicked off tonight and ran through the whole day tomorrow.
I’d passed through the kitchens on the way out and seen the mountains of food that were being prepared.
Were we just a way for them to build an appetite?
No.
There had to be more.
The knights served a valuable purpose. They protected the human world from an awful threat, and with the fomorian threat growing, Henrich had to know how important it was for us to be on alert.
A horn went off, and then hounds exploded out of the tree line to our right, ridden by knights garbed in black.
For a moment, no one moved, and then Brady tugged my hand, and we were off.
* * *
We were halfwaythrough the course. Hounds at our heels, knights whooping as they lashed out with whips designed to shock and incapacitate. Brady, Carlo, and I ran neck and neck across the field—an open stretch of land littered with deliberately placed fences and naturally formed rocks. The lush tree line loomed up ahead. More obstacles would be hidden inside, no doubt.
A bellow behind me was followed by a triumphant cry. Another cadet down.
Shit.
Lloyd was ahead of us, and Devon and Aidan were a few paces behind last I’d checked. We’d gravitated toward each other, running together. We were a team naturally, not just on paper.
The tree line was getting closer, and the scent of earth and mud hit my nostrils.
I knew that unmistakable smell. “Bog up ahead.”
Fuck, we needed to slow down to avoid the boggy ground. If we barreled straight in, we risked running straight into the mud, but then that was what the knights were expecting.
“Hard right.” I waved an arm at the cadets to our left. “This way.”
Some listened and turned with me, while others continued straight ahead, either too caught up in the moment to adjust their trajectory or simply not wanting to heed my warning.
Lloyd adjusted his trajectory. No question. He must have smelled the bog too. We ran as one, moving away from the smell, which told me the bog was now on our far left. Good.
The tree line swallowed us, and then gloom descended over us. The aroma of nature closed in, and bracken crunched under our boots as we ran through the forest, leaping over fallen logs and ducking to avoid branches.
And then there was silence.
Wait? Where were the hounds? Where were the knights? The distant cry of cadets who hadn’t listened to my warning about the bog drifted through the trees toward me.
From there, the knights would be able to pick them off one by one.
SayingI told you sohelped no one right now.
Our pace slowed as the forest thickened around us. A thin mist hovered above the ground.
“We must be on the cusp of sector three,” Brady said.
The fortress was the first and last line of defense, and part of the land touched on sector three as it curled around the back of the fortress. If we’d come this far, then the course was almost over. But the way forward was a tangle of angry branches and vines.
I pulled my sword from its holster, ready to hack at the thickest vines, to cut a way through. Lloyd was already at it. Carlo came abreast of me to my left and started hacking away. Brady did the same to my right.
