Page 203 of Salt Between the Wolves

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.