Rebel by Geraint Jones

Author:Geraint Jones
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Canelo
Published: 2021-12-15T00:00:00+00:00

* * *

I watched with disgust as Ziva fled the battlefield. I thought about chasing him down and putting a blade between his shoulders, but that would do nothing to hold back the Romans who were gaining the upper hand at the barricade.

‘Coward!’ I roared, and then I turned to the fight, and resigned myself to selling my life dearly with the men that Ziva had abandoned. If they were panicked by his betrayal then they showed no sign of it. Rather, they fought with all the rage and fury of an iron tempest.

I drove my sword at one Roman. Beat another back with my shield. More came in their place. They smelled loot. They smelled victory.

They would not be held back.

I cut, parried, thrust. There was a second of space, and I stepped back to assess our position.

It was an awful one. A second was all it took to see that we were losing: my gamble to let the Romans into the town to trap them had failed. The flames in the gutter had burned out. The Romans would not be caught. Instead they would win, they would kill, and I would lose my family.

No. No.

‘Clear a way!’ I heard a man shouting. ‘Clear a way!’

The drum of hoofbeats came from behind me. I turned, and the breath caught in my throat.

‘For Pannonia!’ Ziva shouted as he charged towards the barricade. ‘For King Pinnes!’

Our eyes met only for a second, but it was enough.

He knew.

I knew.

What Ziva had done in the past he had done for Pannonia, and now he would show everyone that truth.

There was no sword in his hand. Instead Ziva gripped a blazing torch, and it left a fiery trail in the air as his horse cleared the barricade in a leap, and clattered into the Roman troops. I heard it whinny in pain as blades slashed towards its flesh, and Ziva cried out as he took his own wounds.

But he would not be stopped.

‘For Pannonia! For King Pinnes!’

His men were roaring. Cheering. With a surge they gave up their defences, and instead threw themselves across the barricade at their Roman foe. It was a death sentence that they embraced. An end for heroes.

‘For Pannonia!’

Ziva came free of the Roman ranks and spurred ahead.

He bled but he would not stop.

I shuddered as a javelin thumped into the man who had been my mortal enemy. Ziva gripped the shaft with his free hand, tore it from his flesh, and raged in agony as he faltered in the saddle.

He was only yards away from the collapsed building, but it may as well have been an ocean.

His horse stumbled.

Ziva fell.

‘No…’ My eyes were wet with dreadful tears. My throat was parched. My heart was a drum.

All around me men were fighting, killing, dying.

But my eyes were fixed on the death of their leader.

Their hero.

Our hero.

‘For Pannonia!’ A final cry. A pledge to his people.

And then I saw Ziva touch the torch to himself. I saw the flames take the man, and engulf him.

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