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Frozen Souls

Fate is Not a Straight Line

By Morgan BergerPublished 3 years ago Updated 3 years ago 4 min read
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Frozen Souls
Photo by Adam Chang on Unsplash

There were three things Tristan wished he had considered before pledging himself to this quest.

Firstly, he wished he had remembered how much of a pain it was to travel in the wintertime. For a knight with his ranking and title, he was able to afford a decent pair of winter boots and snow shoes, but while the network of wood and rawhide bindings of the snow shoes were holding together quite nicely, the same could not be said of the boots whose fur linings were crusted into small spikes of ice.

Tristan wanted nothing more than to find an outskirt tavern, sit down by a roaring fire, and discard the falsely-advertised mini ice boxes. But it was a futile wish, he knew, as removing the boots came at the risk of taking one or more of his frozen toes with them.

The second thing Tristan sorely regretted was not asking which group of bandits had kidnapped the princess.

It would have been a blow to his pride and an insult to the court had he let that piece of information affect his decision to rise to the king’s call for his daughter’s rescue, but the Boarshead Bandits were not known for being violent to their hostages. They were, however, known for making their residence in the northern provinces, apparently undeterred by winter weather…something Tristan was far from claiming for himself.

The final unexplored angle for which Tristan cursed his shortsightedness was something at which most other knights would laugh heartily for merely mentioning, and that was this: did the princess even want to be rescued?

Because as Tristan crested the top of the snow-blanketed hill, the last layers of orange and purple in the horizon fading into indigo, a ruckus from below caught his attention and challenged his motivation to complete his quest.

The Boarshead Bandits were encamped in the valley, their tents circled around a large, frozen pond. Their members were clad in enviously thick leathers and furs, and the light of a bonfire over which a cauldron was hung cast shadows across the glass of the pond.

And in the center of that pond, dancing to the beat of bearskin war drums, face and neck streaked with the bright paint of the band, unshackled and free and smiling widely, was the princess he had been sent to save.

Tristan’s mouth hung open for all of a second before an arctic wind all but stabbed his tongue with icy tendrils of air and reminded him that it was very much winter and he was very much in need of warmth and shelter for the night.

He trudged his way through the deep but fluffy snow to a cluster of leafless trees to collect the fallen branches a recent storm had felled. They stood out against the white of the snow, a mercy he appreciated as the light evanesced.

A fire would be his first necessity, then he could make camp and pitch his tent once he found somewhere far enough away from the bandits.

But even as he leaned down to gather timber, his eyes strayed to the spectacle below, more specifically to the lost and dancing princess.

Maybe he was half frozen, and his brain was beginning to numb with his toes. Maybe he was disillusioned with the rigid life of a knight. Maybe he knew the bandits frequently recruited qualified aspirants. Maybe he had seen the burdened eyes of the princess in passing too many times and longed to see her happy for once.

From the looks of things, she was; at least for now.

The people were congregating around the fire, passing out plates or bowls of what had to be a better meal than the nuts and dried strips of meat that awaited him in his pack.

He watched as they all took seats on logs that had been set in a circle—all but the princess who stood in the center, firelight flickering up her frame and making her look like a goddess of war instead of the demure princess she was thought to be in the king’s court.

She lifted her arm to the sky, and then a loud cry rose from the crowd. They cheered and clapped and Tristan felt the odd feeling of exclusion poke at his gut. Or was that just hunger?

He finally found the courage to tear his gaze from the frozen pond below and start plodding to the other side of the hill. He would eat and sleep, and if he survived the night, he would come to a decision in the morning.

He could return empty-handed and face the censure of the kingdom, perhaps even lose his title.

He could willingly abandon his title and live a life of freedom and unrestraint with the bandits and what was looking to be their new leader.

He could not bring himself to try to take the princess back.

Not in this weather.

—————-

“What made you want to join us all those years ago? You were a titled knight. What was so appealing about the life of a bandit? What could tempt you?”

Tristan looked up from his bowl of stew to the princess-turned-chieftain and let the corner of his mouth quirk up.

“Freedom,” he replied. “It was a night much like this; it was midwinter, though not snowing as it is now, and I saw an ‘ill-fated’ princess dancing beneath a star-studded sky across a frozen pond.”

Fantasy
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