Guardian of Rome (#2 in Gladiator Series)

Chapter 28

Chapter 28

Krista watched helplessly as a new day dawned without Artorius by her side.

They had been apart before but this time it was different.

They had been forced apart; Artorius and Frieda were now in the hands of their enemy.

Krista did not know this ‘Argus’ very well and she feared what he might do to them.

But the one thing she did know was that Argus was a gladiator that had lost all honour; he was betraying his own kind by siding with Pompeia.

Resting in a tree, twenty feet off the ground, Krista ran a whetstone over her blade, feeling safer with every stroke that sharpened her sword.

The repetitive movement was soothing to her mind despite the warm pain that radiated out from her palm.

Trying her best to ignore it, Krista slid the whetstone back up her blade when her hand slipped and the whetstone tumbled out of her grasp, falling through the air before hitting the ground below her.

In a fit of rage, Krista curled her fingers around the hilt of her sword and hurled it at the ground, following the path of the whetstone.

Her heart was beating fast as she lifted her wounded hand and glared at it as if the hand alone had been the cause for Artorius being captured.

When in truth, Krista knew it had been her inability to kill Argus.

Krista had never met a man like Argus; taller than the tallest horse with the strength of half a dozen men.

Uncurling the bandage from around her palm, Krista gazed stubbornly at the flesh wound.

Memories of the fight flared through her mind as she stared at the horizontal cut on her left palm that had begun to clot over and tighten the skin.

Krista went at Argus with everything she had and yet it did not have an effect.

She remembered how she flew down onto his back and he simply picked her up as if she weighed nothing more than a leaf.

He threw her through the air like a discarded animal he no longer wanted.

And then he slinked away into the darkness with Artorius and Frieda to an unknown location.

Nobody knew where they had set up camp or even in what direction they had fled.

The entire spectacle seemed hopeless when Krista realised that she was wrong.

Artorius and Frieda were not the first people for Argus to capture.

Wrapping the bandage back around her hand, Krista swung her legs over the side of the branch and jumped from the tree.

Landing solidly on the ground, Krista collected her sword and rushed back to camp.

* * *

Diomed didn’t rest.

In the back of his mind he realised that the sun was rising over the horizon behind him, bathing his back in warmth, but he kept his eyes glued to the ground.

After trailing a dozen tracks from the battlefield that ended nowhere, Diomed was forced to retrace his own steps and return to the beginning.

He did this a few times before he found a promising lead.