Free The Brotherhood: Blood by Kody Boye Page B

him to make out any noticeable expression on the man’s face, Odin felt as though the guard must have frowned, for his face took on a strange disillusion that seemed completely opposite to what his facial appearance should have seemed in the current frame of light.
    They have to let me in, he thought. This is the outer wall. It’s not as if I could do any further damage here.
    Being that Ornala had been separated into two districts in order to provide added security, it was highly unlikely that he would be refused access, especially if his intentions were to enroll in the military.
    “We’re opening the gate!” the guard called down. “Are you armed?”
    Odin reached down to grasp the sword at his side. “Yes!” he called back.
    “Know that you will be watched.”
    The castle’s impressive gates began to move. Shifting, groaning, creaking, squeaking in the sweltering heat of the humid afternoon as gears inside its structure began to force the gate apart—the part in the wooden structure first began as a brief memory of a sliver of earth and then eventually fanned out as it began to open. The gears within two visible outposts turning, the men before them likely grunting and groaning, Odin watched as directly before him the gates opened and revealed to him Ornala’s Outer District—which, by all respects, was just as beautiful as the castle that lay in the distance.
    With a simple kick of his foot, Odin gestured Gainea forward and into the housing district—where, before his eyes, he saw a vision of common life that seemed all too reminiscent of Felnon.
    This is it, he thought. My new home.
    The fact that it seemed so blatantly obvious was enough to make him smile, for it was within that moment in looking at the houses, so crafted and built in the finest of the long-gone Ornalan wood, that he felt his heart catch fire. A strangled cry of pleasure rising in his throat, a series of palpitations in his head, he turned his eyes to look at the world around him and smiled when he caught a series of children running by a teenager and his dog, who, with all the grace in the world, vaulted himself over a pair of men who were carrying what looked like mortar or something similar for crafting houses.
    “Hey!” the men called. “Get back here!”
    The children directly behind the teenager ducked and made their way through the gap between the two men—laughing, giggling and waving their hands.
    Unable to resist the urge to smile, Odin barely heard the guard as he descended the stairs behind him and stepped forward to greet him with a simple nod and a handshake.
    “If you’re looking to enlist within the Ornalan military,” the guard said, turning his head and raising his hand to point to the east, “then your best start would be at the recruitment office.”
    “I want to see the king,” Odin said.
    Red-faced, the guard let out a burst of laughter that dropped Odin’s heart within his chest. “You want to speak with the king?” he asked, still laughing while leaning forward to brace his hands against his knees. “I’m enlisted by the king and I barely ever see him.”
    “I need to see him,” Odin said. “Sir, you don’t understand—”
    “All I know is that if you want to meet the king, you better get in line. You’ll be waiting months, if not years.”
    “But—”
    “Go to the recruitment office, young man, and apply for military service there. You may have to wait for your father to arrive before you can be legally signed off and into the king’s service, but it’s worth a shot to try now while the day is still young.”
    “Why?” Odin frowned.
    “The office will be swarmed come time for nightfall.”
    Odin sighed.
    With one last look at the man behind him, he dismounted, then began to lead his horse by the reins toward the recruitment office and the stables that lay before them.
     
    “I’m sorry,” the enlistment officer said, bowing his head to the finely-written, completed forms before him,