Fidelis Chapter One Excerpt

If you would like to read the full first portion of chapter one, please download this file, here: fidelisexcerpt (83.8 KiB, 2,397 hits)

Below is an excerpt of the excerpt. Sections have been omitted and are indicated using … The full excerpt is available in the pdf download linked above and at the end.

== Chapter 1 ==

“Hold steady, son,” his father whispered into his ear. Fides could hear the soldiers talking carelessly as they passed by on the road. Hidden in the weeds and grasses, the two of them watched the deadly parade. At last, the men were out of sight.

Fides was fourteen years old. He and his father had been getting close to home when they heard several soldiers up and around the bend. His father pushed him off into the bushes on the side of the road and put his hands on his shoulders, both soothing him and holding him down.

His father waited until even the sound of the diverse foreign talk was heard no more, and then lifted Fides to his feet. “Let’s get home,” he said.

“Couldn’t you kill them?” Fides wondered. His father looked at him, surprised.

“Do you think it is so easy to kill a man?” his father asked him, probing the intent behind the question.

“But don’t you know how to fight?” Fides inquired nervously, worried that he had asked an inappropriate question.

“That’s not what I mean. It’s one thing to have the skill, it’s another to have the will,” his father explained, deciding that Fides’ question was not meant to sound bloodthirsty, but as a question about his own character and the morality of the world. His father explained, “Some men kill because they like it. Those are rotten men, Fides. Whether or not there is ever a right time to kill, I don’t know. But I only… that is…”

“Don’t kill unless you really have no choice, son,” his father continued after a pause. “If you can run, that’s a choice. If you can hide, that’s a choice. I know what men will say if you do that, but I want you to be able to close your eyes and not see what I see when I close my eyes, or see what I see when I look in the mirror. Do you understand?”

Fides nodded. He didn’t know if he agreed, but he nodded. Of all the things his father had told him over the years, he thought he did understand this.

+ + + + +

“Hold steady, son,” Fides whispered into his youngest son’s ear. He put one hand on his son’s shoulder while his other hand clutched the sharpened rod that served as his favorite means of self-defense. He and his son had been walking through the woods to their old shed only to find that others were already there. Five men seemed to have taken up residence in it. Fides had shoved his son to the ground behind some bushes. Thirty years had passed since Fides’ own father had protected him from a lurking threat by throwing him into the brush. Fides was acutely aware of the parallel and had vague recollections of what had been on his mind at the time. He pondered the parallel as the two of them peered through the leaves at the rough-looking interlopers.

As Fides was trying to decide whether he should confront the men, another memory surfaced.

+ + + + +

Away. He was running away. His mother had yelled, “Run!” and he had. His father had been off to war for some time by this point. Fides was only ten or eleven years old. He was overcome with great shame as he ran through the woods, two men not far behind him. He could hear them crashing through the branches. Fides was moving silently as he was very familiar with these woods. He knew that if he could get to the shed he could try to barricade himself inside it.

An eleven-year-old fleeing two grown men is not shameful. That was not why Fides was ashamed. … While there were two men after him now, there were four others clawing at his mother. He had left her. In his fear, he had set aside his father’s charge and was instead rushing headlong through the brush. He was too young to be able to imagine what his mother was enduring, but old enough to know it was terrible. And he had left her to face it alone. The men were catching up.
…
“Think you’re faster than us, boy?” one of the men sneered.

“Made us run! You’re going to pay for that!” the other man gasped, out of breath. Fides found himself pulled to his feet, but only for a moment. The first man slapped him so hard that he fell onto his back and had the wind knocked out of him. He tasted blood and wondered if he was going to die. The man hauled Fides to standing again, but this time took him by the arm and threw him across the clearing. He rolled awkwardly over his arm and yelped in pain. The two men laughed. …

“Come on, finish him. We want to get back and see Mom, right?” one said to the other. Fides didn’t know what that meant, but he knew it couldn’t be good. … He bent his head and waited for the blow.

“Picking on a boy? Is that the new mark of a real man?” a silky voice washed over the clearing. The man paused and decided to delay his execution of Fides, but he didn’t want the boy running off, either. He struck Fides on side of his head, sending him reeling. Fides lay stunned on the ground, struggling to gather his awareness. He struggled to determine the gender of the voice of his savior and concluded it was probably a woman’s voice. …

“Who are you? Where are you? Come out and I’ll show you the mark of a real man!” one of the fiends declared.

“Oh, I believe that. Why slay a boy when you can slay a woman!” the silk voice replied.

“Oh, you won’t get off that easy, my dear,” the other man snarled. The two were patrolling the inside of the clearing, peering into the woods around them in an attempt to find the origin of the voice. Fides was peering, too. …

There was a loud crack. Fides thought he saw a man fly through the air near him. The other man’s mouth opened in shock, but another cracking noise followed on the heels of the first one and the man found himself knocked to the ground.

The first man rolled over, holding his head. He scanned the clearing to try to find his assailant. Seeing no one, he deduced that he must have been struck by a rock. “Are you just going to throw things at us? We’ll find you soon enough and I doubt your aim will be so good with my hands around your neck.”

“Big talker,” the voice said smoothly. … The men seemed nervous.

The first man gathered up his courage, “Yea, that’s right. I’m a big talker. Give me a chance to show you I’m bigger than talk, and you’ll regret it.”

“Or,” countered the voice, “you could let the boy go and simply walk away.” The men snickered in response and maintained their slow patrol of the clearing.

“We’ll find you. It is just a matter of time,” he countered.

Having no luck finding the source of the voice, the man ordered his friend, “You go finish off the boy, and I’ll find the woman,.” His friend turned toward Fides. Fides could vaguely make out the form of the man approaching him. He grimaced in anticipation of the man’s arrival, but his grimace evolved into awe.

Fides could see the man approaching him, but then it seemed as though the air between them began to quiver. … There appeared to be a woman in the clearing… with a sword?

The men chortled greedily, but the lady only coaxed them into attacking.

Fides heard the sound of the struggle, but his vision could not be trusted. The woman was evading every blow. The men were angry. It seemed to Fides that the shadows of the shed were ill-defined. He struggled to make sense of what he was seeing. She really did seem to have a sword! She plunged it into the soil and was engaged in hand-to-hand combat. There was a loud snap. One of the men now had a broken arm. He howled in pain and rage and fell to the ground, writhing. The other man had turned around in time to see his friend fall to the ground but did not see the cause. Fides could see that this one had his knife out.

“Shall we have a battle of blades, then?” Fides heard her ask the man softly. She had her sword in her hand, now. The man was determined not to be intimidated by a woman, though. He mustered up whatever contempt he had left in his body and lunged at her. From Fides’ perspective, she did not appear to move at all. It was as though the man simply threw himself onto her blade. He made a final noise, gave a last gasp, and fell to the ground, dead.

The other man was still in agony but stood up, furious. He reached for her, but only briefly. He met a slashing blow and he, too, fell to the ground, finished. The woman looked down on the men with sadness. Fides sat up again and gazed at her. Finally, their eyes met, but only briefly. The blood ran down into his eyes, and he became dizzy. He was sure he was delirious. She began talking to him, her words wafting through the fog that was Fides’ consciousness.

“Go home, Fides,” she said soothingly. Fides suddenly remembered that his mother was still in danger. At the same time, he realized he’d be no match for the men who remained and was in no condition to fight his best, besides.

The woman felt his fear. “All is well at home. Go home, Fides,” she said, and then she was gone. Or was she? Fides could hear a melody on the wind. Despite his corrupted vision, he was suddenly certain she was still present.

“Are you an angel?” Fides asked, testing his suspicion that she was still near.

Indeed, she was still present somewhere, perhaps in the brush just outside of the clearing. She laughed, “Not at all! Pray that you never see an angel! Terrible! Terrible to behold!” Fides heard her voice all around him.

“Then what are you?” Fides cried into the air. Despite his cloudy observation of the event, he thought she had been terrible to behold. She reeked of nobility.

But the woman only smiled and laughed again, “I am human, just like you.”

“You may be human, ma’am, but if you are, then I must not be,” Fides said slowly, trying to look at her through his pain.

“I can see how you would think that,” she agreed. “Realize that there is more to Man than the eye can see.”

“I don’t think there is anything more of me to see. I don’t think there is more than a cowardly little boy,” Fides moaned, thinking again of his flight from danger.

“Sometimes we must defer judgment to those who are in a better position to know. You are certainly more than a disgraceful little boy. You can put your faith in that,” she encouraged him.

“Are you magical?” Fides persisted. Fides thought he must be out of his mind. The woman chuckled again. Despite the opportunity to make fun of him, her chuckle was completely good-natured.

“Your race always treats as magic what it does not at first understand. When it finally understands a matter, it heaps contempt on it as though it were something always self-evident to intelligent, sophisticated people. Yet, the wondrous does not cease to be wondrous just because one knows what made it wondrous or magical in the first place,” she explained to him patiently. She continued, “Your race then takes it to the other extreme, reducing the wondrous to the banal, thus failing at the end to understand in the slightest the very thing it understood—at least in part—at the beginning.”

Fides contemplated these words. She talked to him as though he could understand what she was saying. Though he could not understand her, her thinking he could encouraged him. There was a change on the wind. Though he could not see much of anything, he could tell that she was preparing for a final departure. Fides struggled to find words that might prompt her to linger. He very much liked her, even though he would be hard put to explain why.

“What… what is your name?” he stammered at last.

She laughed again. It wasn’t a mocking laugh. It was innocently mirthful. “My name cannot be translated into your tongue. Maybe someday you will know the language by which it is understood, and you will know me. Peace, boy. Go home, Fides.” Fides felt her hands on his face, stroking his hair. She wiped the blood from his eyes, and his sight and awareness sharpened briefly. She was beautiful. She drew even closer to him. Her eyes were unnaturally bright, and she looked deep into his eyes; he thought she was examining his soul.

“It is bright in there,” she said. Fides felt her warm breath on his cheek and ear, but then the dizziness overcame him again. He collapsed. The breeze lost its song, and Fides was sure he was alone. He slept, and the ringing in his ears was gone when he awoke.

Hours later, Fides managed to get home. He found his mother bruised and shaking, but nonetheless safe. The bodies of four men were scattered in the yard outside the front door. His mother said nothing about what had happened, and she didn’t ask him how he had escaped danger. Fides considered the possibility that perhaps his mother had been helped just like he had been helped. Over the years he would reason that this was almost certainly what had happened, but she never talked about it, so he never asked. …

+ + + + +

These memories flowed back to him with startling clarity as Fides was trying to decide whether he should confront the men at the very same shed where he had had his mysterious encounter with the woman. Interestingly, though he remembered well how disoriented he was at the time, today he seemed to recall other details from that event decades earlier that had seemed murky before.

His father’s counsel to avoid violence if it was at all a choice percolated into the forefront, too. While not a violent man, more than once Fides had been forced to defend himself. He was strong, agile, and perfectly able to hold his own. Five men, though? He’d have to protect his son, too. Not realistic. Did he have a choice? Yes, he did. “Let’s get home,” Fides finally whispered to his son.

If you would like to read the full first portion of chapter one, please download this file, here: