Courage (3 page)

All he had to do was wake her and she would’ve lived. The moment where he passed on shaking her shoulder played in his mind over and over. Flaming boulder or no, her death was his fault.

Either an eternity or a second later, an authoritative voice rose over the sounds of fire and slaughter. A pair of heavy feet carrying that voice stopped behind Aerigo and put a hand on his shoulder and gave it a shake, doing the very thing he’d passed on doing.

“Sir, you’ve got to--Aerigo!”

Aerigo recognized Rahnjar’s tenor voice but said nothing, couldn’t bring himself to say anything about the fate of his own daughter. All he could do was cry. The feet came around to his side.

“Beloriah’s whiskers! Is that Sandra?”

Aerigo turned away from the hand and clenched his wife tighter, and continued crying.

The Druid spoke in an unsteady voice. “Get up, son. We’ll have to mourn her later. We must flee south.”

The Druid’s hand grasped his shoulders tighter. Aerigo winced; the touch agitated his burns.

“Get up,” Rahnjar said, authority returning to his voice. “Now.”

“No.”

“That’s an order, Aerigo. Get up.”

“Go away,” Aerigo said in a hollow voice. After protecting a nation for a whole century, he’d failed to protect one woman. He didn’t deserve Rahnjar’s willingness to save him.

Suddenly his face was in the grass and his temple throbbed. He sat up, Rahnjar hovering over him with an outstretched fist, his face red.

“Don’t make me lose a son-in-law, in addition to my daughter. Now get on your damned feet and start moving!”

Aerigo could do nothing but stare. Why wasn’t Rahnjar furious with him? Why didn’t he hate him? Why didn’t he just leave him to die with Sandra? Maybe he didn’t want him to, for less than merciful reasons.

“And don’t you dare tell me I allowed my daughter to marry a weakling and a coward, especially one without a drop of noble blood in his veins. It’s the Balvadiers that are attacking us, Aerigo. Now get up or I’ll punch you again!”

Aerigo stared in disbelief. He’d expected--who else could he have expected? The Malkin kept to themselves in the Wildwood. No one lived in the Black Canyon on the other side of the mountains. The place couldn’t support whole towns. To the north lay Balvar. Any other kingdom that wanted to attack Drio had to march through Balvar. But would the Balvadiers even bother to blockade anyone from attacking the Durians? Would they join arms in hopes of taking the land they always coveted?

“I saw their scarlet uniforms and banners,” Rahnjar said unhappily.

Aerigo clenched his wife’s body so hard he snapped her bones. Under his grip, it felt like someone had rolled a bunch of broken sticks into burnt meat. Blood pounded in his ears, the beat pounding slower and harder, and gradually muffling out the rest of the world. With one of those beats, something inside him snapped. Revenge. His rage bubbled over his despair and shock. He stood, and the action felt as if not of his own will, as if his legs had lifted him without waiting to be told to.

More fiery volleys rained on Drio, followed by more explosions and screaming. Men, women and children ran for the southern wheat fields as more people were killed by projectile debris, or direct hits from fireballs.

“I’d been hoping for at least a century of peace, but it’s taken them only thirty years. I can’t help but wonder if someone whispered words of poison in--Aerigo? I’ve never seen your eyes glow like that before.”

Those fools!
Aerigo pictured himself marching up the steps to Balvar’s throne and repeatedly bashing the king’s head against it. They’d warred against him and the Green Province for a hundred years, lost millions of lives, and gained nothing, not one acre of land. Then the king had signed the peace treaty with a grateful smile, so grateful that Aerigo had been foolish enough to believe it. Of
course
a piece of paper wouldn’t protect one nation from another, but he’d let his idealism win out against reason. They had fooled him. They had tricked him into peaceful complacency, and now that mistake had cost Aerigo his wife. They were going to
pay
.

“Take her,” he whispered in a deadly calm voice. The Druid hesitated before taking a step closer and accepting his daughter’s body.

“Are you alright, son?”

Aerigo was too absorbed with what was stirring within himself to answer. Some sort of... power... had woken in the core of his being, something very powerful that wanted out. It felt just as furious as him. Or maybe it was responding to his mounting rage, feeding it into full-blown wrath. He turned north, towards the fires, and the cowardly army that deserved to die. He felt the power tug him in that direction, like when standing in a receding wave as it tried to pull him out to sea.

As he started moving, he noticed the air around him was swirling. It felt thicker and hotter--not with smoke and fire, but with energy. Raw furious energy. His hands tingled, his limbs throbbed in time with his heartbeat, and his eyes burned as they glowed. This energy was trying to break free of its prison. It had to be a prison to a power so potent, such a small, hidden space for it to exist in. It pushed at his subconscious barriers with force of magma pushing to break free of a planet’s crust. Aerigo stopped walking and waited for the energy to free itself, but somehow it couldn’t. He shut his eyes, reached into his core, and punched a hole in the crust of a prison and the energy erupted forth.

Every drop of his blood, every single bone in his body, every muscle, tendon and organ filled with the whooshing sensation of a bird skyrocketing. The force of the power pushed his bare feel into the ground as it surged skyward. The energy’s release felt freeing and he lost awareness of where his body stood. He opened his eyes and found himself from high above everything. A tornado of transparent white energy funneled out of his body, which looked no bigger than a mouse. He took in Drio as it burned, the minuscule people and livestock running in every direction, and a vast scarlet army spread out on the plain north of the village, enjoying themselves as they catapulted more fireballs. The raging energy willed him towards the army.

Before he threw himself upon the Balvadiers, he needed fists to kill them with and a face for the country to fear, if he could control himself enough to leave survivors. Maybe he wouldn’t need to leave survivors. He could wipe out the entire army, leaving Balvar’s king with nothing but his throne to hide behind, and then he could crush the king and his throne. But that could be taken care of later.

Aerigo forced the energy into a crude human shape. It energy resisted his will and tried to snake in other directions, but he wasn’t in the mood for disobedience. He molded crude arms, fists and a torso, and put more effort into replicating his face. Those who survived were going to remember who decimated them. Tracing the shape of the monstrous energy with his mind’s eye, he nodded in approval. The tail end of the energy picked up his physical body and carried it along like a tornado lifting off the ground. The power carved a destructive path, blowing through Drio and towards the Balvadiers.

Aerigo halted before the fire hurlers and raised a giant fist, and at the same time four of the war machines loosed a fiery volley. The flaming boulders exploded on impact with the energy and Aerigo felt them burn his physical body, making him pause. This newfound power hadn’t made him invincible.

It pushed against its form, causing it to bubble and deform. This breach killed his mounting fear, and instead he used the pain to fuel his rage. He pulled the power back into the shape he wanted, then turned his attention on the Balvadiers.

Another volley arced towards Aerigo. He caught a boulder in each fist and squeezed, filling the air with a loud sizzle, as if someone had just splashed oil onto a heated pan. The stone cracked. His corporeal hands seared with the pain of melting and blistering skin, but he didn’t care. He opened his giant fists, loosing the crushed rock on the front ranks.

The soldiers broke and fled like the cowards they were, trampling one another. The sight brought a smile to his astral face and a need for more destruction. Nearby archer and cavalry units fled and got tangled in the units behind them. Within seconds the whole army began rolling in a unified direction:
away
from the giant.

Aerigo bombarded the nearest soldiers with strike after strike, knocking bodies on comrades and the point of spears hundreds of yards away. It was as if Aerigo were punching a scarlet sand dune and each spray was dozens of bodies. The Balvadiers’ cries, death wails, and their blood fueled Aerigo’s destructive hunger all the more.

His mind’s eye drew his attention to the nearest mountain. Three projectiles, three six-foot arrows were headed straight for him. Two of the massive arrows were knocked off their trajectory by the swirling air and fell out of sight. The third one buried itself deep in the astral giant’s side.

Aerigo’s corporeal body seared with fresh pain. He clutched at his ribs and the giant mimicked his actions. Even though there was nothing sticking out of his side, no gaping wound, no blood, each breath hurt. Why? Why did it hurt so much? Nothing had hit his actual body. How was this supposed to make sense? As his confusion compounded, his power fought against its maintained shape. Aerigo submitted to his rage, fixed his form, then lashed out at the mountainside. Dirt, trees, and a half a dozen bodies flew out in a spray of debris. He turned back to the fleeing army and began seizing giant fistfuls of soldiers, horses, and war machines. He pelted the cowards with their own army over and over, each blow not seeming like enough. The Balvadiers hadn’t suffered enough, even though he was running out of targets.

Aerigo began to feel exhausted, but he needed to keep the assault up a little longer so he could kill the rest. They were getting farther away. He thinned and lengthened his arms, his corporeal fingers like claws, and raked and pounded the fleeing army. The ground rumbled a deep, earthy moan with every strike, and patches of wild grass caught fire where his energy touched. He clawed his way after them, but moved too slow. And then he realized it had shrunk quite a bit. The nearest Balvadiers looked the size of rats. Aerigo willed the power to expand, but he couldn’t sustain the distance he wanted as it reached out. He pulled the power closer to him and, furious at his mounting impotence, let out a howl. His howl originated in his corporeal throat, then projected up and out through energy, amplifying like a sound horn. His howl sounded like hundreds of hollow voices crying out. He retreated to Drio, lashing at anything that moved.

The village was burning. Durians were scrambling to put out fires, but there just wasn’t enough of them. Somewhere among it all was his own burning home, and past that, his dead wife. He lashed out at the nearest home and demolished it with one blow, then began crushing anything that burned.

Soon, he saw movement to his left. He raised a fist, swung, then froze when the terror-filled scream of an elderly woman reached his ears. Mere feet beneath his astral fist cowered a woman clutching a bundled child. Those two didn’t deserve his revenge. The sight sent a wave of horror through his chest. He recoiled, his chest now devoid of rage.

His power carried him backwards, away from Drio. Without his rage, he was no longer blind to the nature and consequences of his actions. Nausea rose in his physical throat. He had no right to be there anymore. He had just killed thousands of people and destroyed so much. How much of Drio’s ruin was his fault?

As the power drew him beyond the temple, an overwhelming exhaustion seized him. His astral body evaporated with a loud hiss, and the swirling wind cooled and calmed. Trees, grass and thatch roofs stilled, but homes continued burning. The power set his feet on the ground. Aerigo dropped to his hands and knees, then fell face-first onto the grass, unconscious.

* * *

Maharaja, who’d watched the amazing and frightening power from the modest safety of the Wildwood, crossed the river and knelt beside Aerigo’s steaming body. The king cautiously touched a shoulder and recoiled. The Aigis’ skin felt like it was on fire. He noticed the smell of burning grass and blackened blades outlining Aerigo’s body. Maharaja took his staff in both clawed hands and used the butt to flip Aerigo onto his back, then examined the end of his staff, which was emitting a tendril of smoke. He sniffed in contempt. “What other strange powers do you possess, Aerigo?”

The king whispered a spell to the feathers hanging from the top of his staff, passed them slowly over the length of Aerigo’s body, and continued whispering. The steaming stopped. He cautiously touched a shoulder once again, then squeezed it. Maharaja scooped Aerigo up and whisked him into the Wildwood.

* * *

As the hospital doors parted of their own accord, Aerigo felt like he’d stumbled into a dream. The ceiling lights threw his vision into a haze of bright colors, causing objects to blur into one another. The clean air intoxicated his mind with its wondrous purity. Air couldn’t possibly smell or taste this nice on Kismet. Everything moved with surreal grace. Even his stride felt like the gentle curve of a Ferris wheel. Had he passed out without realizing it? The question came and went like an echo.

Sounds blended into one another, all sounds he recognized but couldn’t name. He almost stumbled into what he had a hunch was a brown desk. He stopped before it and tried to make his eyes focus. All he could make out was its tall rectangular shape, with some green square on it and two pale objects atop the green thing. Hands. Those were hands. And they were attached to a person. Aerigo gazed at the person behind the desk and focused on the lady’s moving lips. Those lips looked like blurry purple rose petals waving in a breeze. The longer he stared at them, the crisper they became. Once the woman’s mouth came into focus, Aerigo finally discerned her voice from the rest of the noises.