Battle Cry Read Free

who sentenced him one on one.
    The leader of the free city was a peaceful man but he was also a smart man. He knew that unless he vanquished Barkley personally, the city would never be free of him or his oppression. They could drive him West but he would return; he was always going to be able to find people who would follow him, people who were hungry and desperate enough to do whatever it took to ensure their own survival even if it meant killing somebody else, so he agreed to the challenge.
    Barkley and the leader of the city met at dawn the following morning. They met in the halls of an old Arena, a place where once many years before, great men had met to battle for honor and wealth. They each were armed with a sword. Barkley’s sword had been stolen from a place called the museum, a sacred place where artifacts of the past were held so that future generations could see them. Nobody knew where the leader’s sword had come from; they only knew that it was in every way the match of Barkley’s.
    Barkley was indeed vanquished in that fight. He was sent West with a greatly reduced number of followers. After witnessing their leader being beaten and bloodied by a man half his size and without any of his cruelty; many of those who once followed him decided to stay within the city itself. Many of them stayed merely because they feared going West, feared the great desert. Legends had it that nothing existed on the other side of that sand.
    On this side of the family, the legend of Barkley is well known. Barkley was the great leader who struggled out of nothingness and through the desert and into the city that would become the one we know as Aretula.
    “Wait, do you mean to tell me that Barkley was a gladiator?” Reena asked.
    “I don’t know that he was.” Dax handed her the sword back. “All I know is that once he came here he found the arena and created the gladiators. Ever since he created the city, men have fought and died on the arena stands whether for the amusement of the crowd or because they been sentenced to do so.”
    Reena stared down at the sword, her fingers tracing the intricate filigree and the words carved into the blade itself. Where had this thing come from? If Barkley had stolen his from a museum where had the leader of this city, the city that may not have even ever existed, have gotten this one?
    She had no idea what to do with it as a weapon but she had a fairly good idea of what to do with it right then. She held it over her head, holding it very high and said, “I will ask you again. How many of you are sick of the Governor’s rule? How many of you are willing to fight? There is a war brewing within the city walls and they need our help. With our help they could overthrow the Governor. We could all be free. Will you stand here, and continue to hide like animals in the woods or will you come with me back to the city?”
    It was the first time she would give that speech, but not the last.
    **
    It was the next day when they found another tribe, the tribe belonging to Deal, the boy who had stood with her in the Arena, but his tribe was depressingly small. There were only eight of them in total, and four of them were women and children. The other four were men, if you counted Deal. She had to count him though; she had seen his courage in the arena and she knew she could count on him. He had made his way back into the woods and back to his tribe despite great odds and she knew that he was willing to fight.
    They found a large cave, one that Outlaws used frequently. Nobody had stayed in it for a long period of time because it was too close to several farms nearby. When the soldiers roamed looking for Outlaws or if they were just out and about Culling, the caves were usually the first places they checked.
    The soldiers were aware that the Outlaws used that cave, but they had never caught one in there yet and Reena hoped that luck held. They built a fire and everyone shared what food they had while Dax told