Telari's Arc

Chapter 5 of 11

Telari knelt over a dead soldier and started searching its pockets. She wanted to know who had sent them. But when she looked up, Katt swayed on his feet. The cut on his arm was not shallow. Blood ran to his fingers and dripped on the dirt. His face had gone grey under his beard. "Sit," she said. "Now." Katt was the biggest man she knew. He had mended her arrows all winter and never once complained. He tried to wave her off. "It's nothing. We still have a camp to search." "You'll fall over first." She pushed against his chest. He was too heavy to move, but he sat anyway, slow, like a tree coming down. The search would have to wait. Telari could not press deeper into these woods with him bleeding out beside her. She tore a strip from the dead leader's cloak. She poured water from her skin over the wound to clear the dirt. Katt's jaw tightened. He did not make a sound. The white lion padded close and sniffed the blood. Leia lay down nearby, watching the dark trees. Telari wrapped the cloth tight around Katt's arm and knotted it hard. The bleeding slowed, then stopped. "You held that thing still so I could shoot," she said. "It could have torn your arm off." "It didn't," he said. She tied the second knot and looked up. His eyes were already on her. Grey eyes, steady, the small scar on his cheek folded like a dimple. For a moment neither of them looked away. Something moved between them that was more than two allies who fought well together. She had come into these woods alone, months back, with only her bow. She was not alone now. Katt broke the quiet first. "Good hands," he said. "Better than the healer in town." Telari felt her face warm. She stood and pulled him up by his good arm. "Can you walk?" He tested his weight and nodded. "I can search a camp." "You can rest," she said. "I'll search. You keep watch." They did not press deeper into the hostile woods that night. Katt could ride, but not fight. Telari looked at the torches burning low across the camp and made her choice. "We're not finishing this now. We go back to my tower. You heal. Then we come back for answers." She whistled the lions to her side and helped Katt toward the tree line. Her watchtower stood far off above the pines, its ladder waiting, its snug quarters warm. It was hours away. She would get him there. With the fight ended and Katt bound but weak, the camp's secret stayed buried under torchlight. Telari left it there. She would not learn who sent the pale creatures tonight. But she had learned something else, walking her wounded friend home under the dark trees, and it changed how she'd fight beside him from now on.