Paige pulled up beside me. “Let’s go, my lady,” she said quietly.
I followed her back to where Avery and the rest of our group were gathering. My knight might not be my biggest fan, but she wasn’t heartless. Silently, I thanked her for dragging me away before I said something I’d regret.
Adjusting my reins I listened to Avery detail our strategy.
We would be taking a slightly different route into the valley while Ian and Ryder’s group took the main one. An Alchemy mage in each party had two potions on hand to give off a bright flare: red once the mission was complete, blue if they ran into trouble and needed backup. It wasn’t as effective as lightning but it would serve our purpose given the close proximity while helping keep Ian’s and my magic in reserve.
Assuming everything went to plan.
****
This time I was not going to be reckless—by word or by deed. It was a vow I had sworn my first night of service, and one I intended to keep. One that I was repeating over and over as I inched along in line with the twenty-five others of Knight Avery’s lead. We skirted along a narrow trail of pine and stone, squeezing uncomfortably between the walls of two towering crags while the clip-clop of the horses hooves echoed our progress. The path got to be so tight that only one could pass at a time, and it took us the good part of an hour just to pass the worst of it.
I was beginning to wonder how the other party was faring when there was a heavy rumbling and then an earth-shattering thud. The ground quaked. My horse whinnied, then reared, and I just barely held on as the air filled with panicked cries behind me.
In the seconds that followed, I managed to calm my mare just long enough to dismount as Paige did the same. The two of us had enough sense not to stay mounted during an attack in such limited quarters.
I turned, one hand raised for casting as the other slid my sword from its hilt. Then I gasped. I heard the knights and soldiers behind me do the same.
An enormous boulder easily fifteen feet tall and as wide as the gap had fallen not five feet behind us, cutting us off from the rest of our group and the trail we had taken. There was the loud clash of metal on metal and shouting coming from the other side. I couldn’t see—the obstacle was far too high—but I had ears. It didn’t take much to ascertain that the scouts’ count had been wrong.
The bandits and the rest of our men were on the other side.
And from the sound of it, ours were losing. They had the Alchemy flasks but were undoubtedly too occupied to use them. And even if they weren’t, our location was shielded by two rocky walls with no end in sight. I doubted the others would be able to see us, let alone get here in time.
The fifteen of us listened to the fighting in a panic. Paige bellowed a string of curses and several soldiers were trying uselessly to move the boulder standing between us and the rest of our party.
I looked up instead and saw the tall ledge where the bandits had got the drop on us. It was high enough that no one had ever bothered to watch the ledge.
We were fools. The bandits had probably had a rotation of sentries posted at this entrance of the valley hiding, waiting for just this sort of opportunity. Bandits who built that sort of permanent camp undoubtedly employed various techniques to protect it: starting with the giant boulder that was keeping us out as they massacred the rest of our men.
“Ryiah, do something!”
I turned and saw Avery watching me with desperate blue eyes. The knight was frantic and the expressions of the soldiers and knights nearest were equally disturbed. Or helpless.
“We need you to stop them,” she whispered.
“I…” My pulse was racing. Here was my opportunity to prove myself and I had nothing. The rock was too heavy to lift, too dense to cast through, too smooth with no holds to climb. I could levitate but it wouldn’t help much—the others needed reinforcements, not one girl floating and trying to balance her casting at the same time. “Should I cast lightning to warn the others? Maybe Killian—”
“He’ll come too late.”
“Aren’t you supposed to be powerful?” a man sneered. “You are a second-rank mage, aren’t you? Save them!”
“I don’t know what I can—”
“They are dying, princess!” another snapped.
“I’m not a—”
“Use your magic!”
“I don’t know what to do.” My voice quavered as I stared down fifteen sets of angry stares. Worse, I could hear the screams from across the way, echoing along the mountain passage. Bloodcurdling cries and shrieks. They are dying because you can’t think of a way to save them.
“You are useless!” The same man who called me “princess” spat on me.