The Shard and the Shields
(For the June/July SoulCaliblr prompt "Paths not Taken". A little late, but the things I do to keep my fics short...)
1590
The bedroom door slowly creaked open and Pyrrha stirred, groggily pushing her rag doll aside. In the bed next to hers, her little brother Patroklos had just taken his thumb out of his mouth. His blond, curly head shifted with a disgruntled whine. As the soft footsteps crept closer, Pyrrha turned and hid under her blanket. She wondered if her mother or aunt Cassandra had finally returned, just as they had promised. Her curiosity immediately won out. Pyrrha lifted her blanket and froze at the strange figure staring down at her.
It was a young woman in tattered, crudely stitched green clothes. Her hair had a strange blue shine—Pyrrha wondered if she was in fact dreaming. After all, a purple streak ran across the woman’s face, below her left eye, and her lips were painted a bright green.
“What’s your name?” Pyrrha asked with as much politeness as she could muster for her three years.
The woman in green gave an unfriendly smirk and beckoned. From a pouch tied at her hip, she drew a shard of fiery red metal. It glowed like a cinder from their father’s forge, yet it did not seem to burn the woman’s gauntlet.
Patroklos climbed onto Pyrrah’s bed; his big green-gray eyes were fixed on the shard. Just as he reached for it, Pyrrha, too, wanted to hold the strange thing for herself and slapped his hand.
“Mine!” Patroklos pouted. In an instant, the siblings forgot their unease and tried to shove each other away as though they had been fighting over a single toy.
“Come on,” the strange woman hissed in a high, girlish voice as she hastily pocketed the shard.
Pyrrha suddenly found herself being lifted from the bed. “Let go!” she cried.
Patroklos wailed in fright. At the sound of running feet from the hall, the woman whipped her head around and froze. Pyrrha wriggled out of her grasp and bounced back onto the bed. She grabbed Patroklos’ hand and pulled him to his feet.
“Father! Father!” Pyrrha cried. But as soon as she began to climb down to the floor, her brother’s hand was torn from her grip.
Then Rothion swung the door open, brandishing a smithing hammer. “Leave my children alone,” he said between clenched teeth.
With a short, scornful laugh, the woman ran to the window, forced it open, and climbed out of the house. Patroklos’ cries faded as Rothion gave chase and his shouting grew desperate. Soon Pyrrha realized that only she was left crying.
Before long, an exhausted Rothion returned alone with his head bowed. He knelt to the floor and embraced Pyrrha.
“I’m so sorry, I couldn’t catch up to her,” Rothion whispered, holding her so close that she could feel tears rolling off his cheek. “Uncle Lucius has gotten the neighbors to help. Wait and see, glykiá mou.”
Never before had Pyrrha believed her father could tremble. And Mother and Aunt Cassandra had never before felt so far away.
-
1605
Fifteen years passed and still Pyrrha waited. She prayed along with her father for their safe return. She had dreamed of the day her mother would bring Patroklos home in her arms. She had liked to imagine Aunt Cassandra embracing her and Patroklos together, then tousling their hair as she once did. Pyrrha envisioned all manner of ways things would become well again—things that kept her mind busy while she helped her father in the smithy.
Some nights, she would remember when Rothion took her to search for them. Days of wandering from city to city, the warmth of the Mediterranean fading as they went north toward the mountains. Upon leaving Buda, they stumbled into the path of an Ottoman troop. By blind luck, one of the officers was Greek by birth and could still speak the language; he brusquely told Rothion to go no further, for there was no guarantee that the Holy Roman Empire’s forces would believe him to be only a blacksmith. So she and Rothion returned to Athens, defeated.
For worrying the rest of the family sick, Uncle Lucius had insisted that Pyrrha stayed with him and her grandfather in the bakery. She could never bring herself to tell them how it had hurt to be reminded how much she was starting to look like her mother. When her father said as much, he had almost always shown a look of tenderness. After all their talk of how carefully Sophitia used to knead, she began to long for the sweltering heat of the smithy.
But Rothion’s work had already changed. He was making more common tools than weapons. Old shields collected dust on the wall, except for a small, round blue one that had been the object of Pyrrha’s silent adoration since its completion. With a rag she buffed the golden curled horn-like embossments until they shone. Though it was not made with metals from the gods themselves, Pyrrha had hoped that Hephaestus heard her father’s prayers as he worked on it.
Her daily care for the shield also let her ignore the customers that overstayed their welcome—the ones that hinted, in varying degrees of subtlety, of their sons or nephews in search of a bride.
“Really now, Rothion, you aren’t getting any younger yourself.” Markos the carpenter stood with his new box of nails in the crook of his arm. “You ought to think about her future.”
Rothion impatiently tapped his foot. “I’m not making any promises until she’s ready. Just take the nails and go.”
“Oh, stubborn as usual. You’ll leave her an old maid if you keep this up.” Markos then left in a huff.
With a relieved sigh, Pyrrha hugged the shield to her side and went to Rothion. “Uh, Father, how old were you and Mother when you married?”
With a far-off look in his eyes, he answered, “Twenty-one, the both of us.” In the fading light of the forge’s fire, small wrinkles at the corners of his eyes showed. The muscles of his arms had never been immediately noticeable, but they had thinned as Rothion’s melancholia slowed his work. Yet, from the day a crippled old man limped into the smithy and gave him iron ingots, he worked on the blue shield with zeal he had not felt since he made Sophitia’s shield.
“Father, do you still think she’s alive? And Patroklos? And Aunt Cassandra too?” Pyrrha asked.
He frowned and gently placed his soot-stained hand on her shoulder. “The gods know, Pyrrha.”
Her heart sank. “I’d always hoped that the gods would give us a sign that they’re out there somewhere.”
“Pyrrha, glykiá, I’ve waited as long as you have for any such sign. I’m in no shape to travel, and the very thought of you going alone…” He paused in thought as his blue eyes fell on the shield. “Could you hold out that shield for a moment?”
“Like this?” She crouched as though dodging a blow and raised the shield at arm’s length.
He cracked a small smile. “Very good. Now wait here.” He quickly went toward the back of the smithy and retrieved what seemed to be a short sword covered in cloth.
Pyrrha’s heart pounded as he unwrapped it, revealing a flaring blade. “Is that… Mother’s sword?”
“A replica, just like your shield.”
“You made these for me?”
“I’d never dreamed I could make anything like these again. Oh, if your mother could see you now…”
Pyrrha gazed at her reflection on the blade’s edge, green eyes wide in awe. She wondered if this was how her mother felt when she first held a sword. “It’s perfect,” she said. “But Mother’s skills were granted by the gods themselves. Where do I start?”
“Even she tested her weapons before setting off into the world.”
With a nod, Pyrrha decided that this was as good a sign as any.
-
In a Bavarian town, Patroklos stood panting as the armored soldier crashed lifelessly onto the flagstones. The screaming crowd dispersed as flames engulfed rows of buildings. The scaffold collapsed in a heap of charred wood and embers, brought down by the stake where he would have met his end. Patroklos sheathed his sword, turned windward and ran. He weaved through a tangle of side-streets until his lungs felt as though they would burst.
After stopping in a dark alley to catch his breath, a chorus of ravens croaked from the rooftops. He looked up to see their beaks pointed at the smoke-blurred sky. Then behind him came Tira giggling maliciously. She walked in almost nonchalantly, with her ring-blade resting on her shoulder.
“Well done, Patroklos,” she said, grinning. “You’re putting the Graf to shame!”
“It wasn’t supposed to happen,” Patroklos said, clutching the shield to his chest with shaking hands. “Not like that…”
“Oh, you poor boy. You were just protecting yourself from those horrible people who wanted you burned alive. Did you think I’d leave you with them?”
Patroklos shook his head. “No. But it’s the same everywhere I go now… Tell me this isn’t what my mother’s sword was meant for.”
Tira gently held his chin. “You’re putting it to better use than she ever did.”
“That can’t be true! She was never one of them—”
Her nails suddenly dug into skin. “You wouldn’t be here if she didn’t defend Soul Edge! Of all the times for you to be ungrateful—”
The ravens fluttered away in a cacophony of panic. Tira then grabbed Patroklos by the arm and pulled him scrambling into the shadows. Horses’ hooves thundered past as imperial soldiers rode through the street. “Fan out, men!” the captain ordered. “Search every stinking stable if you have to. That Malfested couldn’t have gone far!”
“See that?” Tira hissed. “They’ll only hunt you like an animal. But I don’t need to tell you what to do if they try to catch you, do I?”
“I’m not ungrateful,” Patroklos spat. “I’m sick of running. I’m sick of these damned Malfested hunts.”
He sheathed his sword and watched the last soldier disappear behind a tavern on the opposite side of the street. He stepped out of the alley with his hand resting on his sword, for the Malfested hunts had taught him well to be alert. He was not sickly pale like Tira or at all monstrous. With his curly blond hair, green eyes, and still boyish face, it had been no wonder his captors had considered him an especially tricky Malfested.
Tira followed him at a distance, and Patroklos dreaded what that meant. If the soldiers came, she would disappear again and, if he survived, only then would she praise him. Then they would move on and start again elsewhere. The more he heard about Graf Dumas from Tira, the more he felt like slashing at the man himself, if only for his own vengeance.
“There he is!” shouted a soldier, “The escaped Malfested!”
There were only three. Three young and foolhardy recruits, by their raucous shouting. Patroklos drew his sword and lunged at the nearest one, and felt his opponent’s sword narrowly miss him. The soldier had little time to turn around before Patroklos’ blade rent his sword arm.
From the shadows, Tira watched him tear through them with grim satisfaction as the holy sword was profaned once again.
