I worked on this some more. Let me know what you think.

“Final Victory”

I raise my heavy fist, the tattered crimson cloth clutched tight in my bloody and bandaged fingers. Cheers fill the air to bursting and carry the men to heaven on the greatest and simplest high: victory. It drowns even the throbbing ache spreading through my body. I grin. Even as I fall, I hold the flag above me; it doesn’t waver when I land. Rocks cut and bruise my back, but I barely notice; my earlier wounds are far worse, and I have the flag.

I sigh, still on the ground and still clutching the bloody cloth like the last thread connecting my heart to this world. I will never let it go. Then men’s cheering falters, and they rush to me thinking: He can’t die now! The war just ended; it is too soon. They still need a hero.

But I am no hero. I am a soldier. I did my job: I killed the king. I fought only one man, not a war, whatever they tell their grandchildren. I marched with them, beside them, somewhere in the middle, lost in a sea of spears and helmets. But when the king stood before me, my freedom in his greedy and bejeweled hands, I rushed him.

A very few others realized what happened and ran beside me, to protect me. They fought his guards as I slaughtered our king. “For King and Country”: I annihilated both in one blow.

I laugh and choke on blood I can’t spit while lying on my back. Someone shouts for a healer, cradling my head, and a man in white surges through the crowd. He tells me to relax, so he can stop the bleeding; but I can’t lose hold of the flag, of my freedom. “Bury me with it.” But he assures me I won’t die.

He comes then, striding arrogantly through the crowd, safe in his stolen rank. I could never reach far enough to pull him down; I could never tell them he was a spy. He stares down his nose at me, and I can see the burning in his eyes, the hatred and lust for power. I laugh again because he knows, in the end, I won. He lost.

Fast as shrieking lightning, his dart strikes my neck. For a moment, everyone freezes, halted in celebration by a horror they can’t quite understand. When they pull their swords again to strike, he is already on his way, already out of reach again. His poison seeps into my blood, spreading throughout my body, but I only feel a deep and heavy peace.

I die a free man.