He stood on the wooden platform. The crowd milled around the platform, standing in the mud. He hadn’t thought he’d rated such a reception, that the locals would brave the weather to bear witness to his end, but then he supposed he would be flattered - if he’d done what they thought he had.
The man beside him trembled.
“Cease your shaking,” Tristram said. “You’ll jolt us out of our boots.”
“Aren’t you afraid?” the man asked.
“Afraid of what?” Tristram fixed his gaze on the horizon. If he looked hard enough, he could see the spire from the cathedral of his home shire.
“Afraid to die.”
“No.”
The man gaped.
Tristram continued gazing straight ahead as he spoke. “Cowards die many times before their deaths; The valiant never taste of death but once. Of all the wonders that I have yet heard, it seems to me most strange that men should fear; Seeing that death, a necessary end, will come when it will come.”
“You’re really not afraid?”
“It’s a bit difficult to be afraid of the inevitable,” Tristram said.
The man opened his mouth to ask something more, but then the bailiff stepped onto the platform, made a grand show of checking the rope collars around the prisoners’ necks.
“Any last words?” he asked, leering at Tristram. His hand was on the lever.
Tristram said, “Cry ‘Havoc’ and let slip the dogs of war.”
The platform fell out from under his feet, the rope jerked taut.
Enemy troops descended.
(Word count: 250; quotes from Julius Caesar)
1 comment:
Nice! I like the line about how cowards die many times before their deaths and that valiant men die but once.
And I also like how it is strange for people to fear death, that which is inevitable.
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