Killer

The drums beat a mournful tune in the night air.

Only the crackling of the fire accentuated the deep-toned instruments, which seemed to beat along to his heartbeat.

His hands, tied behind him on the post, sent pulsing pain up his arms, into his shoulders, drawn at the awkward angle they were.

His breath rattled fearfully in and out of his chest, his efforts to calm himself in vain.

He was a soldier; he could handle a little interrogation.

But this wasn't an interrogation.

Twenty people stood around the campfire, each as silent as the grave, their pale eyes and paler skin gleaming eerily in the light of the bonfire.

He could feel its heat from the edge of the camp, over ten yards away, and yet, they stood right next to the rocks of the fire pit, bodies dripping sweat and skin turning red.

The drums beat again, a thudding, one-two beat that kept a steady cadence.

His arms pulsed.

He wasn't the only captured here; there were three other men with him, all that was left of his squadron of twenty, and they were tied to similar posts to his left.

He looked the face of his friends, able to see the blood dribbling down Tafen's face from his temple, and the wide, terrified eyes of them all.

Thump-thump, said the drums.

A tribesman moved.

The first movement in long minutes, and it was to draw a knife from the waistband of his pants.

A long, serrated knife, meant for rough surfaces and soft interiors.

His breathing picked up.

He tried to stop it, tried to keep his terror under wraps, but he knew the traditions of this tribe, of the gory way they left their prisoners.

He didn't want to die.

The drums picked up a beat.

Thump-thump-thump

“I don't want to die,” the soldier on his left whimpered his own thoughts, boots scrambling at the dirt beneath him.

A haunt picked up with the drums, made of a dozen raised voices, low and drawling cold, chanting soft words into the air, mixing with the crackles of the bonfire and the whimpers of the soldier to his left.

The man with the knife looked up, and his pale eyes gazed right at him.

“I don't want to die,” Sam whimpered again, and the tribesman moved forward.

Toward Tafen, at the other end of the line, standing over him, the light of the moon glinting in Tafen's terrified eyes and off the knife in the tribesman's hand as it raised.

The knife came down, but no one was looking.

My name is Roland Takene, he told himself, and squeezed his eyes shut as the screams of his friend split the night air.

My name is Roland Takene, and I am of the desert, I am calvary, I have tamed a beast of the sky and I will not bow.

The screams cut off, there was a laugh, and a different man screamed.

I have tamed a beast of the sky, his lips moved with the words as his third companion began to wail.

I am a warrior.

Sam whimpered to his left. Poor, poor, fresh-faced Sam, still unbroken by war.

Roland turned his head, meeting the young man's now-lifeless eyes.

He hadn't even screamed.

I will not bow.

The knife rose above him.

And Roland looked up, into the face of his killer, and smiled.

“I will not bow to you,” he spat, and the knife fell.