Guardian of Rome (#2 in Gladiator Series)

Chapter 36

Chapter 36

 

 

Thunder cracked the night sky and the torch light flickered in their cradles, casting shadows across their beings.

Krista’s knuckles grew white as she clenched her sword tight, her eyes glued to the last place she had seen her child.

His face was pink, warm with her blood, as his tiny fingers, frail with wrinkles, stretched out towards her, as if sensing the arms holding him did not belong to her.

Krista doubted beyond all hope if her arms shall ever hold him again, the small bundle of life that she and Artorius had created.

A bundle of life that had been snatched from her grasp when he was barely an hour old.

The memory threatened to tear Krista in two as a new pain she had never experienced started to grip her heart.

It was the pain knowing that she, as a mother, will never able to hold her own child, the pain of knowing she shall never watch him grow; she will never witness his first smile or first steps.

But it was also the pain of not knowing what will come of him; she prayed he became something good and strong.

Krista’s attention was broken from the fresh memory of her child as Helga’s voice started to ring in her ears but she was not speaking to Krista.

Helga, with blood in the tips of her white hair, was shouting at Dianna to hurry but Krista was too shocked by her flattened mid-section to understand why.

An hour previous, her abdomen had been extended wide with her child nestled safe and warm inside but now . . . now she no longer had her child or the evidence that she had ever held him inside of her.

Just the liquid that soaked her legs and the blood that followed.

“Dianna, grab that blanket,” Helga shouted, her cheeks red with exertion as she wrapped a blanket around a bundle of soiled rags, shaping them to appear like a child was resting inside.

Krista closed her eyes, trying to fight against the pain the image washed up inside of her.

But she was barely strong enough to remain sat up straight than to keep the pain at bay and crashed through her like a torrent thunderstorm, breaking her apart at the seams.

“The fire,” Helga hurried as Dianna dragged an empty metal cradle towards the centre of the tent and started to fill it with firewood.

“What are you . . .?” Krista frowned at their efforts to burn rags drenched in her blood and fluids when a shape came crashing through the tent, ripping at the fabric.

The object rolled past Krista, barely inches from her flesh, before hitting into the table and chairs fell upon it.

Krista stared through the flickering torch light, trying to discern what it was, when it emitted a small groan and spluttered to life.

As the object uncurled, throwing the chairs and table off his body, Krista spotted Diomed through the darkness.

She breathed a sigh of relief at seeing his familiar face, “Diomed.”

“Krista?” Diomed snapped his head and gazed down at her.

Blood ran freely from cuts on his eyebrow and the corner of his mouth, his skin was ashen with dirt and his breathing was laboured.

“You need to leave,” Diomed looked at Helga and Dianna, frantically trying to fan the fire they had created, “Where are Leonidas and Cato? I told them to-”