Behind The Wooden Door (5 page)

“Aissur!” I yelled.

He looked back at me.

“Be careful,” I told him.

He smiled. “You too, Princess.”

I watched until he disappeared into the forest before I ascended the tree. When I reached the top, I wished I had stayed on the ground. From where I sat, I could see the terrible carnage of the battle. It was almost like I was in the heavens watching as the men died. I couldn’t tell which side the fallen soldiers were on.

Spears, arrows, and blood rained above the soldiers. My only thought was to close my eyes and pray for this to end, but I couldn’t look away. I searched the crowd for Hawk and Tommy, but I couldn’t find them. Everyone on the battlefield looked exactly the same. Same metal encased bodies. Same dark red blood.

Then I saw Tristan. His unarmored body fought through the crowd of soldiers. He fluently sliced down his enemies. A spear flew through the air toward him, but he dodged it, and the tip rammed into the soldier behind him.

Blood spurted out of the back of the soldier’s head. Everything around me turned white. My surroundings became fuzzy. But I knew I couldn’t let my sickness overcome me. I could not show any sign to where I was.

I had never seen so much bloodshed and death. How many were to die for my people’s freedom? For my freedom.

Anger surged through me. My father should have been out there fighting with the soldiers. This was his kingdom that these men were dying for. But did he care? No! He was more than likely sitting on his throne with no sadness at all for the dead and injured lying on the field.

The butterfly of shadows landed on my arm as if watching hundreds of men die wasn’t bad enough. The fluttering creature had to remind me that death stalked me.

I shooed the insect away and watched on as death itself claimed more of the soldiers’ lives. This war would not end soon enough.

“Lanie!”

Tristan’s voice tore me from my half-dream state as it floated through the air and up to the top of the tree where I sat.

“What the hell is she doing in a tree?”

Hawk was with him.

I made my way down to where they stood. Their skin was bloodstained. Tristan staggered from exhaustion as he made his way closer to me.

“You okay?” he asked.

Before I could answer, Hawk pushed his way between Tristan and me.

“Let me get this straight. Tommy, Cormac, Branton, and I were out risking our necks fighting a war while you were playing tree house with the princess?”

“I wasn’t playing tree house!” Tristan yelled. “I was helping her spoiled ass sneak onto Artair’s land. How the hell was I supposed to know his men were going to attack?”

I stood frozen and watched as the two soldiers argued about Tristan not doing his job. I glanced around the forest and hoped their yells would not alert the enemy to where we were. The two of them could not take on an entire regiment on their own, no matter how great they were at fighting.

“So much for Tommy getting the leftovers of Artair’s soldiers! He had to go in where I was meant to so I could fill in for you!” Hawk snapped.

Hawk looked over at me and said, “And what the hell were you doing trying to get on Artair’s land?”

“Hey! Leave her out of this! It’s over and done with. I got here as soon as I could. We won this battle. That’s all that matters,” Tristan yelled.

“Remember who won it for you next time you two decide going up a tree,” Hawk said. He walked back toward the castle, and I was left alone with Tristan.

Without looking at me, Tristan reached up and untied the strip of black fabric from the tree branch. He clenched his eyes shut and inhaled sharply through clenched teeth.

“Are you hurt?” I asked.

He kept his eyes on the ground and shook his head.

“I took a small blow to the shoulder near the end of the battle, but it’s nothing that won’t heal,” he replied.

If you would have been wearing armor like the other men, you wouldn’t have been injured,
I thought to myself.

I took the black cloth from his hand.

“Sit down. It needs to be wrapped.”

He looked over at me, but his eyes never met mine. It seemed as if he w
ere ashamed of getting wounded.

“It’s fine. As I said before it’s only a small wound, and if I go into camp with my shoulder wrapped, Rueben will act like a fool,” he said.

He snatched the cloth back and began to walk away.

“Who is Rueben?” I asked.

“A soldier,” he replied.

“Obviously. Is he one of your men?”

Tristan stopped walking and heaved a sigh. “None of the soldiers are ‘my men’. They are fighting for your father; he is the one paying them, not me. So Princess, they would be considered his men. I thought I clarified that the night I arrived.”

A well-rehearsed speech. He had probably said it to every king he and his men had fought for.

“They would listen to you before my father any day. You know that and so do I. So Aissur, they are your men. Now sit down and let me wrap your shoulder. There is no need for you to leave a trail of blood all the way back to the castle.”

To my surprise, he complied and laid his head back against the rough bark of the tree behind him. I sat down beside him and pulled his shirt down past his right shoulder. Both his shirt and arm were soaked from the stream of blood that steadily poured out of his skin.

“I thought you said it was a small wound?” I asked.

A cold sweat broke out on my forehead. My stomach felt like it was trying to crawl up my body and out of me.

“If it isn’t fatal, it’s small.”

He handed me the cloth with a smirk. My fingers shook as I slowly wound it around his shoulder. My hands changed from white to red every time the cloth came back around.

“Is your brother alright?” I asked.

Tristan glared at me. “What’s it matter to you?” he snapped.

I froze. Cloth still in hand. What had I done to anger him this time? 

“I was just asking,” I replied and began to wrap his shoulder again.

“He’s fine,” he said shortly and changed the subject. “As for your other question, Rueben is one of our soldiers. It’s chaos out there when you’re fighting. You can’t even imagine it. He was panicking, I think. He was fighting very close to where I was and must have thought I was someone on Artair’s side.”

Something didn’t seem right about what Tristan had just said. How could he be mistaken for the enemy? He was the only one who
didn’t
look like the others on the field. Something in Tristan’s voice said he didn’t believe that’s what had happened either.

I jumped up from where I sat and looked at Tristan in alarm.

“Are you in great agony!?” I asked.

He looked at me like I had gone mad.

“No? Lanie, I told you, this is nothing,” he said and motioned to his shoulder.

“Are you positive? Do you not remember what Cornelia said? She said you’d die in great agony for the greater good. You came here to fight for something good. And now you’ve been injured–”

“I’m not going to die!” he yelled over me. “I came here to kill people. That’s what I do, and that’s what I am good at. I am a blood. Lusting. Killer.”

He pushed himself off the ground with his uninjured arm and trekked back toward the castle.

“You’re lying to me, Aissur. I don’t believe your sociopathic façade. You’re more than just a killer,” I said as I followed him.

His stare was as sharp as the blade that had cut him, and it felt just as dangerous.

“Then what am I?” he asked.

I took a deep breath and stared into his eyes. “You tell me.”

He shook his head slowly and laughed. “I guess we’ll learn in time.”

CHAPTER 7

I tried my best to avoid the puddles of blood as I walked through the soldiers’ camp. It had been three days since I had seen Tristan, but it was three days too many. I had paced around my room, walked past the camp repeatedly, and almost gotten the courage to come see him. To check on his shoulder only, of course. We needed him to win this war.

I made my way toward my father’s best friend’s daughter, Scarlett Dyn. She bent over a wounded man and wrapped a white cloth around his forehead. Blood splattered her yellow hair and pastel dress, but she didn’t seem to notice. Her only concern was to try to save the men that lied around her.

“Do you need help?” I asked her.

She nodded her tearstained face and pointed to a bottle of clear liquid.

“Hand me that,” she said.

I grabbed the half empty bottle off the ground and placed it in her outstretched hand. She thanked me and turned her attention to the next soldier. Her voice sounded dreamlike when she apologized for the burning he would soon feel.

The man closed his eyes tightly and gritted his teeth as she poured the liquid into the deep wound in his right leg.

“A damn waste of perfectly good alcohol.”

The man who spoke was not one who I remembered seeing before. His dark hair fell past his unclothed shoulders. His chest was fully wrapped in white, but the bandage did not stop the blood from seeping through.

“The wounds have to be cleaned to keep from getting infected, Arcadian,” Scarlett said. She stood up and pointed to a tent close by. “If you do not rest, the bleeding will continue.”

The man smiled and winked at me before he returned to the shelter of his tent.

“I knew this would be terrible, but I never imagined this,” she said as she waved her arms around at the men. “More and more men keep dying. Men that I was sure would survive their wounds.”

She buried her face in her hands and suppressed a sob.

“You can’t imagine how many bodies have been put in the river. So many of these men have lost their friends and brothers, and I know there’s nothing I can do to help them,” she said more to herself than to me.

Who were the men floating down the river? Had they known that the battle three days ago would be their last? Did they have waiting wives and children back home, or was the black wings of death the only thing that awaited them?

“You shouldn’t be here, Princess.”

Tommy’s voice was hoarse. Its normal angelic sound seemed to have died on the field with so many of his friends. Dark bags circled his bloodshot eyes.

“How are you?” I asked.

The ghost of a smile flickered around his mouth. He shrugged his shoulders and said, “Better than the majority of the men here.”

Every word Tommy said sounded forced. It was like it pained him to speak.

“How’s your brother’s shoulder?” I questioned.

He raised his eyebrows and asked, “What do you mean? What’s wrong with his shoulder?”

Tommy didn’t know, and I had just given Tristan away. It’d been three days since the battle. How did Tommy not know his own brother had been injured?

“Nothing,” I said quickly.

If Tommy didn’t know, it was because Tristan didn’t want him to. I would let Tristan tell his own story. I tried to walk away from Tommy, but he grabbed my arm to stop me.

“What’s wrong with Tristan?” he asked.

Tristan stepped out of one of the black tents.

“Tommy, did you say my–” He stopped midsentence.

At the sight of him, my stomach churned.

“Never mind,” he said. Without a single word to me, he went back into his tent.

I wanted answers, and I would get them. I ripped my arm from Tommy’s grasp and pushed past him and walked to the tent. But before I had time to enter, Hawk pushed open the flap. He looked down on me with the same predatory look he gave when I had first met him.

“Tristan’s not in the mood to play tree house right now. He has a job to do so you might want let him do it,” Hawk said.

“I just need to talk to him,” I told him.

I tried to step around him, but he barred the doorway.

“I can’t let you do that. He’s busy,” Hawk said.

Something inside of me knew Hawk was lying. Tristan sent Hawk out to scare me away. But I wouldn’t leave. Not willingly.

“Move aside, Hawk,” I demanded.

He stepped closer to me, his face merely inches from mine. I could see the different specks of blue in his eyes and smell the alcohol on his breath.

“This isn’t your war, and you’re not my leader. I don’t take orders from your father, and I’m definitely not taking them from you. If Tristan wanted anything at all to do with you, I’d let you go through. But he’s about as sick of your spoiled ass as I am. So turn around and go back to your castle and command someone who will actually listen,” Hawk said.

My blood was like fire beneath my skin. All the wounded men on the ground watched Hawk and me as if we were in the middle of a jousting tournament. They wanted to know who would take the hardest hit. I would not let it be me. I wasn’t going to back down.

“Move aside, Hawk. Now!”

Hawk laughed. He opened his mouth to say something but stopped. Something behind me caught his attention.