Editing Character:Cairo (section)

=Cairo=

His mother despaired all through his childhood over destroyed kitchens and broken village girl hearts, because although effortlessly graceful, as handsome as any scion of imperial blood and quite the clever boy, Cairo was painfully shy, and completely useless in the kitchen.  Every time she was sick, she would have to pay a neighbour to cook, Cairo was simply incapable of doing anything right in the kitchen, and two sets of cooking pots was two more sets than a single mother on a small plot of land could afford. 

Raised as he was, alone by his mother, in a small farming community in the Hundred Kingdoms there was never much hope for him to become anyone or much of anything as he toiled in the small fields that kept them alive and apprenticed with the town smith and builder when time and season allowed it to earn enough for new pots, and the little luxuries that make life on the thin line between survival and not making it bearable.

At 18, still an apprentice, and his masters by this time happily living off his brilliant craftsmanship, war came to his home.  The village of Kurun became the base camp for the defending army and everything he could do was in demand.  Shoeing horses, repairing arms and armour, planning earthworks – at first he was underfoot, the machinery of war and logistics complete unknowns to him, but as the invading horde approached he became the hub around which everything revolved, the tiny engineer corps looked on in awe as he tirelessly worked day and night, creating and creatively destroying as needed to turn his home into a place for an army to die.  At some point during that final week of preparations, exhaustion seeping into his weary and cold limbs, his patience finally wearing thin from the endless demands on his time he heard a soft whisper while resting on a cold rock.  

“Can you go on?”

Seeing no one around he didn’t answer.

“Can you go on?”

That it was a small white mouse whispering.  His mind obviously gone, he simply answered: “I don’t know”.

“Please, show me.” The mouse whispered a bit sadly.

Slowly collecting himself up off the cold ground.  Marshalling the small reserves he had left he picked up his shovel and tools, gathered the small mouse up and put it in his belt pouch and fed it a bit of hard cheese, and went back to work.  Slowly, and agonizingly he made it through the last day of preparations, never losing his temper, never slowing down and always needing to do one last little thing.  The mouse forgotten, he collapsed at the crest of the earthworks and never saw the approaching army.  It was two days later, during a lull in the fighting he woke up.  Slowly sitting up, he gagged at the stench of burned and rotting flesh from bloody charnel house that was the fields south of the village.  The entire southern approach from one end of the valley to the other was red, the river running through the valley was clear and blue above the site of the battle, and deep red and brown below it. And out there, 500 yards away from the final line of earthworks was the shattered remains of a horde, still there, still hungry.

A tired look around the place he’d fallen asleep showed him dead bodies not 10 yards away in a semi-circle around his position.  He looked at the soldiers around him, exhausted, wounded and few.  Straining, he tried to see if he could see the rest of the defenders.  Nothing. The only ones left were this small group of soldiers around him, to tired, to wounded, and too stubborn to leave.  The village looked dead and abandoned, and the refugees and surviving remnants of the army were streaming north.

“Can you do it?”  

A look to the south and 500 yards away was the chief, exhorting his own troops to a final attack.  

“How can I do that?”

“Pick up a bow”

Moments later a soldier, with an arrow through his shoulder hands him a bow.  Holding it lightly, and never having used anything stronger than a hunting bow to kill birds he nocks and arrow.

“It’s 500 yards, he’s right at the marker we set up.”

“Can you do it?”

“It’s 500 yards, can anyone do it?”

“If you could, would you do it?”

“To save these people, yes.”

“Shoot.”

Pulling back, strength flows into his arms, the war bow creaks under the strain.  A brief look at the leader and the arrow jumps from the string, bursting into brilliant white flame in flight and burrowing itself in the back of barbarian’s head, instantly turning him into a pyre.  Cairo is simply staring, shocked, but as a second barbarian steps up to take the spot of the first he simply fires again, the fur clad warrior goes down screaming.  The remainder of the horde look towards the earthworks, eyes going wide with terror, and flee.  The soldiers simply stare in awe, dumbstruck as they see the horde flee and the young man they were protecting shining like a beacon as twilight finally falls over the village.

“Farewell young man.  Be wise.”

The white mouse scampers off Cairo’s shoulder, and as it passes the first line of earthworks hundreds of mice join the first one and flood South, across the bloodied fields and towards the retreating horde.

Kurun returned to normal, but Cairo never could.  One day, following an undefined call and some disturbing dreams he set out West and South.  Earning his keep as an engineer in any of the brush conflicts he encountered, or when there is no war around everyone needs a master craftsman for a well, a new house or a new addition to a palace.  And after five years of working his way south and west, the glass spires of Chiaroscuro loomed on the horizon, teasing him with their marvel.  

“Now how do I build one of those….”