Page 14 of Black Wing and Shadows
“Yes, you fucking can!” He snapped back.
“You can do this. We can do this,” I told her.
But I knew her grip was slipping from my hand. I tried to pull her up, but it felt as if she hung there, as if she had given up.
“I am losing her.” I glanced at Asher. His eyes filled with sorrow, as if he felt he was losing her too. We couldn’t lean forward much on the narrow path without risking a fall. Finger by finger, she slipped from my grasp.Within seconds, she fell and disappeared from sight. Her scream echoed loudly enough to make my ears vibrate.
“Damn it,” Callum roared at the front of the line.
Tears sorrowfully fell down my cheeks. We weren’t close, but she was a part of our squad, and it was my hand that dropped her.
“We have to keep moving, yes that fucking sucked, but we can’t stop.”
We continued marching forward. I pressed my back and the heels of my feet as close to the wall as they could get. We continued moving through this pass. The pass widened up where we could walk regularly, thank the gods for that. We came upon the first cave, thank the gods for that too.
We stuck with our original plan and traveled to the last of the caves, continuing along the narrow, winding pathway. As we passed by the sixth cave, we saw the fifth squad busy preparing their mats for sleep. We nodded to them and moved towards the twelfth cave. We wouldn't know our place in line tomorrow because squads could leave at any time. Inside our cave, we found a large wooden crate and an open space illuminated by several flickering candles mounted to the wall.
On the large crate, there was a lock with a three-dial combination. Next to it was a rolled-up paper with a ribbon beside it. Selene moved over and opened it.
“I am a three-digit number, my hundreds digit is eight less than my tens digit, my tens digit is five more than my one’s digit. Figure me out and food awaits.” She read to us.
“It is entirely too late to be doing riddles…” I said.
“Zero-eight-three or one-ninety-four,” Ophelia said quietly. She had barely spoken since Nadine fell.
“Not zero-eight-three.” Callum continued to turn the dials on the lock, twisting the last dial in and then a click. He opened the crate. “One-ninety-four, beautiful job Ophelia.”
He threw a sack to each of us, leaving one remaining sack. The one for Nadine. We all looked at it with sadness, knowing she probably wasn’t alive anymore. We all sat down and quietly ate. In our sack, there was a peanutbutter sandwich, an apple, an orange, a granola bar, some plain crackers, and a can of juice.
“Hey squad, I don’t know about everyone else, but I am going to save my apple and crackers for tomorrow. Who knows what meals we will get tomorrow?” I said.
“Do you actually think they won’t feed us in the morning?” Ophelia looked at me with concern.
“I am not sure, given that our departure time from the cave is our choice, I am guessing probably not,” I said.
“I was going to suggest the same, actually. My brother warned me that I should ration out my food,” Beau added.
“This is really going to suck. We have to remember by the end. We can't get snappy on each other. We will be tired, sore, and hungry by the end of this,” Asher stated.
“We are a strong team, we proved, we can work well with each other during the courses. We have to stick together,” Callum said, like the leader he’d been. “My guess is it’s near two in the morning, we should leave before sunrise, is everyone good with that?”
We all nodded in agreement. Everyone took their rolled mat out of their ruck and laid it on the ground, crawling into it for the few hours we would get.
Before I realized it, Callum was waking all of us. I was uncertain whether I had dreamed. I still felt extremely exhausted. We all rose swiftly, rolling our mats and securing them to our packs. As before, we fell into the same order behind Callum and began climbing the rugged cliff. I could hear sounds from below. I wondered if we were now in the lead or if someone was ahead of us.
Within a few minutes, Callum was yelling “land mine” at us again. Damn, I guessed it would be like this the entire way up and down. Every so often, we dodged land mines or crawled under traps. We reached a point where we had to crawl up a wall to get onto the higher path. Luckily, the base of that path had a wider, circular area, which allowed us to help each other.
Once we climbed the steep, winding path, Callum advanced past us, taking the lead with confident strides. I fell behind him, my calves burning fiercely like they were on fire. Every step sent sharp aches through my knees, and our journey ahead seemed endless. My shoulders pulsated painfully from the weight of the heavy rucksack, each movement reminding me of the brutal climb.
BOOM!
I startled so bad, I almost lost my balance. It came from beneath us and shook the mountain. The screams coming from below didn’t sound good. We were all frozen in place.
“Let’s take a moment to gather ourselves for the loss of another cadet, and afterwards we carry on.”
After about a minute, we moved forward and continued up the rugged mountain pass. We reached a long corridor where the entire wall was lined with dangerous traps, forcing us to crawl a considerable distance. Just as we were about to stand and walk, we approached another wall to climb. This one was steeper than the previous, with fewer sturdy stepping stones to use.
My height worked against me, but it never stopped me before. Beau and Asher pushed ahead, offering hands to help the three of us climb. That was when it hit me again—we’d lost someone. One of ours wasn’t with us.
