Fever Blood

Chapter 96: A Stand of Conscience

Gial rolled his eyes. "For bloody Light's sake, really?" He gave Laidu a look. "I mean, on the surface, it looked bad, as he beat up what seemed like a defenseless woman. But it's not such a terrible thing when that 'innocent' woman turns out to be a prolific serial murderer," he snapped. "Raddas, when you get the chance, show that to Adran or Invidia. They'll know what channels to go through, and how to be diplomatic. I know I won't be, if it was left up to me," Gial said. "Actually, give it to me. You're up next, Raddas. If this is evidence, we don't want it soaked in blood and sweat." Raddas nodded and handed the letter over to Gial. 

"There was another reason," Laidu muttered. 

"Come again?" Gial asked. 

"I had another reason I attacked her." Laidu met their eyes. "I was afraid."

"You were afraid?" Gial asked. "Of a young woman? I mean, I know she tortured people, but look at you!" He pointed to Laidu's arms. "She can't overpower you if she tried, and if you wanted her to!"

"I wasn't afraid of that," Laidu said. "When I saw what she had done... part of me snapped. That was the part that was worried, the constantly fearful part that made me anxious that one day, just one day, I'd snap and turn into a monster, and hurt those I cared about." He sighed, "It's part of the reason I didn't go home. So if it does happen..." 

"No one you really care about would be hurt," Raddas said. "But... what does that make us?" 

"You guys can take care of yourselves. The others can't." Laidu stared at his hands. "She had her humanity. She didn't need to ask if the monstrous part of her would take over and hurt others. She did those actions, did them herself, and something about that made me angry," he said, "but something about that frightened me. Like I was looking into the mirror at what I might have become." 

"Oh," Gial said. "Umm... I mean, apart from the horns, you're not a monster. And if you are, you're the world's worst monster." He looked down. "And Raddas, you're up to fight. Do something to make them think you're a dumb brute. Yell, howl, something. Just make sure thy know you're different. Okay?" 

Raddas nodded. "Let them know I'm different. I can manage that," he said. With that, he hopped down into the throng of people. 

Immediately, the other people moved out of the way, frightened by the look in his eye. It was a look he practiced because he had nothing else to do on the trip up -one couldn't practice knife-throwing in a moving caravan without accidentally hitting someone. This look was balanced on a knife's edge between sanity and a feral madness, the look of a man who was part of nature. He had the ferocity of the wolf, the strength of a bear... and that was about as far as Raddas had figured out for his little mental rhyme. It made a cool catchphrase (He would have added 'roar of a dragon' from some of the stories he had heard, but when he tried to get Laidu to give him a good roar, or at least a spirited snarl, it sounded like his friend was hacking up a lung. It was a disgusting sound). There was nothing else to do on that long wagon trip. He wished he could have walked, to stretch the cramped muscles in his legs, but a prized fighter didn't hurt himself by possibly walking and spraining his ankle. 

So, boredom was inevitable.

Anyways, he shoved his way through the crowd, shouting gibberish so it seemed like he was shouting in a foreign language, and stopped at the fight ring. There, he saw his opponent. 

The other one was big. Really big. He must have weighed three hundred pounds, and he had dozens of scars criss-crossing his ample stomach. Great. Laidu would have a bigger opponent to deal with, that much they had been assured, but Raddas looked like he would be dealing with a behemoth.