Chapter 24 The Ravine
Soren
The lead arrived shortly after sunrise when a hunter from one of the nearby settlements came into camp.
He was middle-aged, nervous, and clearly eager to be useful.
He claimed to have seen armed men moving through the northern woods the previous evening—not villagers or traders, but fighters in a group large enough to matter.
By the time the man finished speaking, Soren was already reaching for his sword belt.
"We move."
The hunter visibly relaxed, as though grateful to have delivered the information and survived the experience.
Garrick did not move, and Soren noticed immediately.
"What?"
The captain folded his arms.
"I don't like it."
The answer only sharpened Soren's irritation.
"Why?"
"Because it's convenient."
The hunter shifted uncomfortably, but Garrick ignored him.
"They attack a patrol, disappear without a trace, and suddenly someone knows exactly where they are."
Soren fastened the last buckle.
"They're moving."
"Or they want us to think they are."
The mark burned beneath his ribs, sending a hot, persistent pulse through his body. Soren clenched his jaw.
Not now.
Garrick continued.
"We should send scouts."
"No."
The answer came too quickly, and even Soren heard it the moment it left his mouth.
The captain's eyes narrowed.
"We don't know how many there are."
"We know enough."
"No. We don't."
The older wolf's voice hardened as silence stretched between them. Several warriors nearby pretended not to listen and failed miserably.
"We wait."
Garrick pointed toward the forest.
"We send two scouts ahead. Three if you want. Then we learn what we're walking into."
Soren looked away toward the trees, toward action, toward something he could finally strike. The pressure beneath his skin twisted again, and everything felt too slow, too distant, and too careful while Vargan kept moving, people kept dying, and Eira remained gone.
"No."
The word landed heavily between them.
Garrick stared at him for a moment before speaking again.
"This is a mistake."
The statement was blunt, public, and dangerous to make in front of an alpha. Several wolves immediately looked away.
Soren felt irritation spike through him with sudden force.
"What exactly are you suggesting?"
"I'm suggesting you're angry."
The answer came without hesitation.
"And angry men make poor decisions."
The camp fell completely silent, and even the wind seemed to pause.
For one terrible heartbeat, Soren wanted to put Garrick in his place—not because he was wrong, but because he was right. The realization only made the anger worse.
"We move."
The words emerged colder than intended. Garrick's expression hardened.
"Soren—"
"We move."
The second interruption was sharper and left no room for argument.
Several warriors immediately began preparing their horses. No one argued, and no one spoke.
Garrick remained exactly where he was, watching him with the same look he had worn in Red Creek and the same look Kael had given him before that. The comparison irritated Soren more than it should have.
Eventually Garrick turned away. He was neither satisfied nor convinced, merely outvoted.
The captain mounted his horse without another word.
That should have felt like victory. Instead, something settled heavily in Soren's stomach, a feeling he ignored as quickly as it appeared.
Three hours later they entered the ravine.
And every instinct in Garrick's body began screaming.
The ravine narrowed gradually, though at first no one paid much attention because the road remained passable and the cliffs on either side were not unusual for this part of the region.
Pine trees clung to the rocks above, while the sky had long since disappeared behind dark stone, leaving only a narrow strip of grey visible overhead.
Soren rode near the front, and Garrick had moved closer sometime during the last mile, offering yet another warning that Soren chose not to acknowledge.
The silence felt wrong, not because of anything visible, but because there were no birds, no distant animal calls, and nothing beyond the steady sound of hooves striking stone.
Garrick noticed it first, as Soren suspected he would.
His hand drifted toward his sword before he spoke.
"Soren."
The captain's voice was low, urgent enough to draw Soren's attention.
Soren turned, but he was already too late.
A horn sounded above them, echoing once and then a second time before chaos erupted throughout the ravine.
The first arrows came from both sides, and a horse screamed as one of the riders behind Soren vanished from the saddle before anyone fully understood what was happening.
The second volley followed immediately, arriving without warning or hesitation as the ravine exploded into motion.
"SHIELDS!"
Garrick's roar echoed against the cliffs while more arrows rained down and more screams filled the air.
The horses panicked, several rearing violently while one slammed directly into the rider beside it.
Stone shattered above them, and when Soren looked up, he immediately realized his mistake.
Huge rocks crashed down the slope, making it clear that the ambush had been prepared not hours ago, but days in advance.
The realization struck him instantly.
This was not a chance encounter or an opportunistic attack; it was a carefully planned trap.
Someone had known they would come, and someone had wanted them here.
Another rider fell, blood splashing across the stones as the formation collapsed around him.
Men struggled to regain control of their terrified horses, but the narrow ravine left nowhere to maneuver and nowhere to escape, exactly as Garrick had warned.
"SOREN!"
The shout cut through the chaos, and Soren turned toward it.
A warrior pointed upward, drawing his attention to more movement among the cliffs.
Archers.
There were at least twenty of them, perhaps more, far more than they had faced at Red Creek and far more than anyone had expected.
The mark burned fiercely, and a sudden lance of pain shot through his chest.
His vision blurred for a single heartbeat, but that brief moment was enough.
Something struck him with tremendous force, and the impact nearly tore him from the saddle.
Pain exploded through his shoulder.
Soren looked down and saw an arrow protruding from beneath his collarbone.
For a moment he simply stared at it, surprised not by the pain itself, but by the fact that it had happened at all.
Another arrow struck the horse beneath him, and the animal screamed before collapsing.
A heartbeat later, the ground slammed into Soren.
Stone, mud, pain, and shouting voices blended together until the world fractured into noise.
Someone grabbed his arm and dragged him toward cover.
It was Garrick, of course.
The captain shoved him behind a fallen boulder while blood already soaked through the fabric surrounding the arrow wound.
For the first time since Eira disappeared, fear crossed Garrick's face openly, and it was not fear of the enemy but fear for him.
"You can't stay here."
Another arrow shattered against the stone nearby, but Garrick ignored it completely.
"We need to pull back."
The words landed harder than the arrow itself.
Retreat.
Soren stared past him at the ravine, the dead, the wounded, and the trap he had led them into with his own decisions.
The realization settled inside his chest like lead.
This was not Vargan's fault, nor fate, nor simple bad luck.
It was his decision.
His responsibility.
And somewhere beneath the pain, the rage, and the burning mark, another truth finally began to emerge.
Garrick had been right.
The retreat lasted nearly an hour, which gave the enemy plenty of time to harass them without ever truly threatening to destroy them.
Whoever had planned the ambush understood exactly what they were doing, choosing neither to pursue aggressively nor to press for a decisive victory.
Instead, they simply watched Ironfang bleed away, arrow by arrow and step by step, until the survivors finally reached the shelter of the thicker forest. Only then did the attacks stop.
The silence that followed felt wrong, and after so much noise it seemed almost unnatural.
The remaining riders gathered in a small clearing beneath the trees while rainwater dripped steadily from the branches overhead. The wounded were lowered from their horses, while the dead remained where they had fallen, at least for the moment.
Few people spoke, and none of them felt any real need to.
Soren sat against the trunk of a pine while one of the healers cut away the fabric around the arrow wound in his shoulder. The shaft had already been removed, but the pain remained sharp, persistent, and almost comforting compared to everything else.
When the healer finished binding the wound, he said, "You were lucky."
Soren let out a short laugh that carried no humor whatsoever, because luck had very little to do with what had happened that day.
The healer wisely chose not to continue the conversation.
Across the clearing, Garrick stood speaking quietly with several warriors as he took stock of the situation and counted their losses. The sight made something twist unpleasantly inside Soren's chest, because Garrick should not have been the one doing that. Soren should have been.
The thought arrived uninvited and, for once, refused to leave. For the first time all day, he did not immediately push it away.
The mark burned with a slow pulse beneath his ribs, like a second heartbeat hidden inside his body.
He closed his eyes briefly as exhaustion pressed against him from every direction. When he opened them again, Garrick was approaching.
The captain stopped a few feet away, and for once he looked older than usual—older, tired, and weighed down by the day. There was blood on his sleeve, and not all of it belonged to him.
Soren already knew the answer before he asked, because it was written plainly across Garrick's face.
"How many?"
The captain did not respond immediately, and that hesitation told him almost everything he needed to know.
Soren looked away toward the rain and the dark trees beyond the clearing, searching for anywhere else to focus his attention.
"How many?"
This time Garrick answered.
"Eight dead."
The words struck him like a blade between the ribs, not because of the number itself but because of what it represented: eight wolves, eight families, eight names, and eight men who had trusted him enough to follow.
The silence stretched between them while no one nearby moved or spoke, and even the forest seemed to hold its breath.
Eventually Garrick continued.
"Thirteen wounded."
After a brief pause, he added, "Three seriously."
Soren stared into the rain as the numbers settled over him. At first they felt unreal and distant, but that illusion quickly faded.
The young warrior from Red Creek flashed through his mind, followed by the carved wolf, the blood on the stones, the warning, the argument, and the ravine. Every step along that path had led directly to this moment.
A movement near the edge of the clearing drew his attention.
Several younger wolves stood together beneath the trees, watching. They were not staring openly, nor were they being disrespectful, but they were watching all the same in the way soldiers watch a commander after a defeat.
The realization settled heavily in his stomach.
They knew. Perhaps not everything, but enough to understand that this had not happened because the enemy was stronger. It had happened because the enemy had been smarter, and because their alpha had stopped listening.
Garrick followed his gaze, and neither man spoke because neither needed to.
The truth already stood between them, cold, heavy, and impossible to ignore.
And Soren found himself wondering whether the wolves watching him still believed he knew what he was doing, and that question frightened him far more than the arrow ever could.