Trojan Slave (Book 1)

Chapter 15

Chapter 15

Five long months since the campaign had started. Hundreds of men dead and even more injured. Five months of pain and exhaustion, terror and frustrated waiting. Both from the men who fought and those who waited behind for their men to come home.

Elpis had found they were the strangest five months of her life so far. No matter what she had gone through before, nothing compared to this; it was not what she had expected from living in a war camp. Well, she could never have said what she would have expected of one, but it would not have been this.

There had been one hundred and sixty-three men on board the Nike when it had landed on the shores of Troy. Highly trained men. Men who lived by the sword, and some of those had now fallen to it. It was slightly more than you would find on an average bireme but after seeing some of the men from other ships and hearing them speak. She knew that Androc had more archers among his group than the normal four aboard most of the other ships. When she had plucked up the courage to ask him one day why this was, he had replied that archers were an important part of war, both on the field and on the ship.

She could understand that and had seen the effectiveness of the Trojan arrows in slaying the men she tried so hard to save. Of those hundred and sixty-three men who had landed on these shores, thirty-four had now left for the journey to the afterlife, their payment for the boatman paid for by Androc himself. None of these men ever doubted that they were a part of a family and they would be cared for in the end.

The battles were not what she had expected either. They did not fight every day. It seemed more to fall into a pattern. They would fight, collect the injured and bring them back to her, the smaller injuries being tended by those capable on the opposite side of the fire. It would usually be the day after that the able were then sent back out to the field to try and find their dead. Sometimes the fighting would then resume the next day. Sometimes there was a reprieve. Elpis was unsure on how the men knew when they needed to prepare for battle, but they always seemed to prepare on exactly the same day as everyone else in camp.

She could only presume there was a signal she was not privy too, and yet she knew if they were called to arms at any other point they would be ready within minutes. But she had somehow become a part of this extended family. She felt every death with them and had created friendships she had not known would exist months before.

She had not gotten used to the death, or the pain or the blood, although it revisited her each night. Yet the men made it so hard to focus on the death, especially when they found pleasure in the simplest of things, laughing often and very rarely falling into dark moods. They would allow their fellow warriors time alone, but would not let them linger in those times, pulling them into daily training sessions and games.

Elpis could not stop the hits, which were harder each time another body was brought back to camp, the worst of the injuries she had to tend to. Looking down at the face of someone who, the day before, had helped her in camp or complimented her on her cooking. It could be the one she had seen sitting in silence staring out to sea that had taken the wine skin from her without a word, but she saw what her care meant to him through his gaze, only for the end to be his life's blood to seeping through her fingers. Each death was another notch on her soul, which led to her heart crying tears she no longer shed physically. No matter how long the fighting now lasted for she was irrevocably changed. She would never again be that girl who was found in the Temple.

The most surprising of all over the last months was how she had found herself opening up to Theod. He had not let her sleep on the pile of furs and blankets she had had for those first days, since her first time in the role as healer after the battle when he had taken care of her. He had not said a word. Instead as she had been about to drop off into sleep, Theod silently took her through the partition cloth onto his side. He had caught her every time she had tried to go back to 'her' side.

For around a week, they went through this ritual before Elpis decided she might get more sleep if she just gave in. As she usually retired before him, she had curled up and fallen asleep in Theod's sleeping area and woken up within his arms. It was comforting to know another human being was there for her in the depths of the night when the dreams of death and blood came upon her. What disconcerted Elpis the most was how important it had become to her, and the thought that one day Theod may not walk off the battle field was terrifying. Her body was starting to betray her in his presence. Over the last few months as she had started to see the man behind the warrior, the Theod who left a mess in his wake in his private quarters and was intensely sweet when he looked after her, she had found herself liking that man. Her body had begun to heat in places she did not understand when he looked at her in a certain way.

At first she had tried to spend as much time away from him as possible, and yet she was sure Androc would find any excuse to happen upon her while he was talking with Theod. She was even surer that he made up excuses to leave after such instances. Even Theod had laughed about it. Nonetheless, she was his slave. Any feelings she had, even if reciprocated, could mean nothing.

If something happened to him on the battle-field, she would be lost. But she knew also, that if they both managed to get out of this alive, he would eventually find a woman to settle down and start a family with, Elpis watching from the side-lines with these feelings eating away at her insides. Yet she knew she could no longer go on without him.

Looking out over the high swell of the sea, the sky darkening around her, the storm electric in the air. Elpis knew that it portrayed the feelings within her perfectly. Watching as the wave's crashed against the shore-line, from her vantage on the cliff top, she knew it would become the biggest storm to have hit them this year. Whilst the dangers were clear, there was something freeing in a storm that she had never managed to feel anywhere else. Being caught in one made you feel as if you were the only person in existence, as the world around you turned into a dark, wet, exhilaratingly private place where anything was possible.

There was no way that she was going to miss this one, but she knew she would have to make her way to camp soon or Theod would come to find her, he would be worried that she would become lost in the coming storm, which had had all the men in the camp below scuttling around as they tried to tie down anything and everything they could.

Theod watched as she sat silently on the cliff, too close to the edge for his liking, but the look of pure peace in her expression made him pause. It was something he had never seen before. She had had quiet moments and moments where she could not find enough time to fulfil all of the tasks she had set herself. Yet right here, after five months of knowing her, this was the first time he thought he was seeing the real Elpis. He had heard her speak to him of her life before her slavery, of the pain as she had relived the night she had been taken, of a forlorn joy as she spoke of her family. If what he had felt before had built gradually, those feelings now slammed home as he saw her in her true form.

Theod had followed her up here after he had seen the coming swell of the storm, and knowing the men had not let her go without a guard, he would trust her safety to no one but himself. After dismissing Galenos, he had waited and watched her since. She radiated a peace that he was drawn too; she could not know what she did to him. Nevertheless, he had found himself fighting harder, faster, and dirtier since knowing her, making sure he came back to her as whole as possible. He never wanted to put her in the position where he was the one she could not save, especially after seeing what it had done to her over the months. And he could not live knowing that was because of him.

Since giving her no choice but to sleep in the same makeshift bed with him, he had found the nightmares had diminished. She had a power over him, and he thought if she ever knew exactly what she could do to him, she would never judge or misuse that power.

He could hold back no longer. Moving on silent feet, more from training than need with the sound of the crashing waves beneath, he came behind her and sat, legs spread to accommodate her in between them. His arms came around her as she jumped slightly, turning towards him to make sure it was in fact him. His racing heart calmed in the midst of the storm.

They sat there quietly, the silence amplified by the sound of the storm. It was a silence that washed them with everything unsaid but not at all uncomfortable. When the rain finally reached them, they still sat there with the deluge cocooning them in their private world. They were soaked through to the skin in moments, and yet it was still a perfect time that could not be stolen. No matter the pain and death before them, this, this they could keep close.