The Waters of Nayru
Chapter 36: Unexpected Consequences
By, Frank Hunter
Rigo stood before Tydus, who towered, manic in his obsession. "The Chalice needs to go to Zelda, Colonel," he pleaded rationally, fearing though that the Colonel was already beyond reason. "Those were your orders, and that was the bargain!"
"To hell with my orders," Tydus said. "And to hell with the Queen. Her days are numbered now. There will be new law here before long!"
Rigo bared himself. There was only one thing to do, and if it was going to be done, it had to be done fast. The window of opportunity was closing.
He lunged for the Chalice and grabbed onto it. It was still in Tydus's closed fist. Still clenched tight. As Rigo tried to pry it from him, a flicker of fear passed before his eyes, but that transformed immediately into the Colonel's familiar rage, the look Rigo had seen in him as a child on the Stockade rooftop, right after he'd cut his face.
"You whelp!" Tydus growled, and backhanded Rigo across the cheek with a closed fist. Rigo saw stars upon impact and went sprawling across the tent, but scrambled quickly to his feet. No, he decided right off the bat. This wasn't how this would happen. This wouldn't play out the way the Colonel wanted. Rigo wasn't a helpless child anymore. He couldn't simply be thrown around at the whims of another man. He was strong enough to defend himself, and he could end this here.
"I knew it," Tydus spat at him. "All along, I've known it. You are a liar and a thief, just as I've always said. You'd steal the Chalice for yourself and burn Hyrule to the ground. What should I have expected? You filthy, disgusting Gerudo." Tydus reached down to his waist with his empty hand and drew his sword from its scabbard. It was a long sword and the tent was not that large. Rigo had very little space to maneuver here. And, he was, as usual, unarmed.
"It's about time I finally dealt with you," Tydus went on. "And the rest of your so-called people. Desert rats, all of them. They'd use the Chalice against us, given the chance. They want us all dead." His eyes focused on Rigo. "You want us dead. It's what you've wanted all along."
"I wanted," Rigo said, "to end this. This is your last chance to do it peacefully."
Tydus snarled and wasted no time. His sword before him, he lunged at Rigo in the tight, enclosed space.
Grip, came the silent voice of Nabooru in his head. Counter. And just like that, he was back in his prison cell, back in a training session, dealing with a brute and a shiv.
The sword came at him and Rigo sidestepped lightly, grabbed the wrist that held the sword, and used Tydus's momentum against him to drive him forward. As the Colonel faltered, Rigo head butted him square in the nose. He heard the appendage snap and felt the impact let loose a flow of blood across his forehead.
Rigo released the wrist and the Colonel stumbled backward. The hand that held the Chalice came up to his face and wiped the initial red mess away. The impact only seemed to make him angrier. He came again, not so fast this time. He learned quickly from his mistakes. He swung at Rigo with a controlled blade, which the young man ducked and parried away from.
Dodge, Nabooru added.
"Done," Rigo said, as he backed into and knocked over the table with the maps on it. He reached out again to try and catch Tydus's arm in motion, but the Colonel recognized the movement, shifted, and swiped downward with his sword catching Rigo at his elbow. The blade cut cloth and flesh quickly and cleanly, and Rigo felt the sharp pain of its sting. But, Nabooru yelled at him, Press! and he knew better to ignore her.
As Tydus reveled in his successful hit, Rigo pressed unexpectedly, taking advantage of the distraction, sending a well-aimed kick at the man's leg. Tydus reacted quickly, attempting to slash out at Rigo's foot, but Rigo pulled back the feint in time to send a second kick to Tydus's other leg. He connected with Tydus's knee hard, though Rigo didn't hear the crack he'd hoped to from the blow. The Hylian armor must have helped, even at its breaks and weak points then, and the kick must not have landed as solidly as Rigo had hoped. The wound on his arm was hurting, preventing him from thinking, aiming clearly.
Tydus did almost fall despite everything, but was able to hold his feet and back off a few paces, collecting himself. "You loathesome little devil," he growled. He then projected, and shouted at the top of his lungs to be heard outside the tent, "GUARDS!"
Press! Nabooru repeated. Press, press! Shoulder!
It took less than seconds for footsteps to sound outside the tent. Rigo knew he would have time for only one more attempt, so it would have to be good. He rushed in on Tydus, taking the offensive for the first time, and catching Tydus off-guard with it. It's not typically a wise strategy to close the distance on an armed opponent if you are not armed, but the element of surprise did the boy well. Tydus attempted a swipe, but Rigo was already close enough for a body check. He swept the weapon aside and pounded into Tydus with everything he had. As he felt the bigger man driven back, through the canvas of the tent wall and off balance, he took the opportunity to grab the sword hand one last time, clutch it between his forearms, and twist with everything he had. That time he did hear the resounding SNAP! he was hoping for, the indication that he had dislocated Tydus's shoulder, and the Colonel cried out in pain, a sound that Rigo was disturbed to find he enjoyed. But he had bigger things to focus on now.
Out in the twilight of the chasm, the tent collapsed, there was no longer anything concealing Rigo from the army of Hylian soldiers that were loyal to Tydus. He felt their eyes on him immediately as the tent fell behind him, could hear the sound of swords being drawn and shouting for squads to get onto the alert.
Rigo, taking advantage of Tydus's broken arm, wrapped his own arm under the limb and held fast, turning quickly and stepping up behind the Colonel. The pain in the man's shoulder kept him from retaliating. Rigo was able to wrest the sword from the man's limp wrist, taking it in hand, and wrapping that hand around the man's neck, pressing the blade to his throat. He now had a hostage.
"Stay back!" he shouted to the army. "Anyone gets close, and I'll cut him open!"
The army murmured, but held their distance, unwilling, it seemed, to gamble their commander's life. Rigo knew their numbers were only in the realm of 500, which had seemed a relatively small force for an army when leaving Castle Town. But now, surrounded by those 500 armed men, it seemed an impossibly large number of enemies to deal with.
A gurgling chuckle came from Tydus's throat. "You're gonna kill me, Rigo?"
"Shut up," Rigo said, and flexed his muscle, tightening his grip on the dislocated arm. This resulted in a new shout of pain from Tydus, and an immediate reaction from his troops.
"Stay back!" Rigo repeated. Caught up in the rush of everything, he didn't know what his next move should be, but felt it was best to get out from the middle of this army. The only thing he could see nearby was the narrow, makeshift bridge over the river, and there were guards between him and it.
He began dragging Tydus in that direction. "Move!" he yelled at the soldiers as he drew nearer. They hesitated to obey him, so he squeezed Tydus's arm again, eliciting the same reaction of pain, which got them moving a little faster. They cleared a path and Rigo saw the escape route open to him.
As the retreat began in earnest though, he glanced down at Tydus's other hand and noticed for the first time that it was empty. The Chalice was gone. Rigo stopped long enough to scan the ground around him, but it wasn't anywhere in sight. The Colonel must have dropped it when Rigo had plowed into him, lost it in the mess of the collapsed tent somewhere. He bit his lip. There was no time, no way to go looking for it now. These guards would only take so long to come up with a way to kill him and retrieve their commander. Every second spent here, Rigo was living on borrowed time. He growled a curse, but could do nothing more.
He made for the bridge, pulling Tydus along with him as his feet found solid planks of wood. "Keep off the bridge!" he yelled back at the army. "Anyone sets a foot on it, he's dead!"
He backed up across the chasm, slowly, one step at a time, and though the Hylian army congregated on the other side, they listened to him for the time being and kept to the shore. Below, the waters of Lake Hylia tumbled over rocks and rapids making the fall both foreboding and dangerous. Rigo kept his grip tight on Tydus, prepared for the man to try something here, waiting to let go and let him stumble and fall over in his effort. But to his credit, he didn't.
Rigo reached the opposite shore and stepped back onto the loose desert ground. Across the chasm, the Hylians were anxiously attempting to come to some decision about what to do. Several archers had lined up in front of the rest, aiming at Rigo, poised to fire but holding back in fear of hitting his hostage. That was particularly dangerous, but still Rigo felt that this had to be the moment of truth. He couldn't very well haul Tydus back across the desert. He just hoped the oncoming darkness would help.
"You'd better kill me," Tydus said. "Or I'll be after you the moment I've done with your rats' nest."
Rigo considered it. How easy it would be to just press the sword into flesh and end this now. But how would that stop the archers from opening up on him when it was over? Down Tydus would go, and there would be nothing keeping the Hylian forces from bearing down on him. They would be leaderless and angry, and with a mind for nothing for vengeance even if he got away for the moment. At least with Tydus in place, the army would be kept focused. Rigo's death wasn't the Colonel's greatest ambition. If he remained in charge, the Hylians would keep to their quest for the Waters. Without him, they'd only come after Rigo.
No. The man needed to survive, or at least appear to. Rigo just needed one last good distraction to get out of this mess.
He pulled Tydus close, squeezing his shoulder one last time to disorient him in pain. "Come get me then," he challenged. The instant it was said, he released his grip on the Hylian commander, shoved him forward, and planted a heel straight into the man's back. With a forceful kick he knocked Tydus over, and watched the man tumble forward, over the edge of the ravine.
He'd hoped for a genuine fall, something that would mandate a full-scale search-and-rescue down below with the move, but even as Rigo twisted away to run, in that split second, he saw Tydus's good hand shoot back and catch on to the ledge. Rigo grimaced. Tydus was a survivor. He wasn't going to go down that easily. But, as with the Chalice, there was nothing he could do for it now. If he wanted to stay alive, he had to move.
He put his back to the bridge and ran, full speed, back out of the chasm toward the desert proper. It was a few seconds before the archers coped from what had happened, and though he was almost out of range and the darkness was setting in, arrows began whizzing by him dangerously close. Only one struck him, straight into the small of his back, but thanks to the leather armor gifted to him by Zelda before his journey, it did no damage, simply lodging there in his cloak.
As he turned first one corner and then another, he heard the voice of Tydus call out the word "Wait!" from behind him, but it was not intended for him nor would he have listened if it had been. Rigo guessed the Colonel would want to make sure the Chalice was secure before scattering his army in a search. He just kept on running without looking back.
Into the dark and into the sands he went, and as night fell and he finally began to slow, only then did he realize that he had cut himself off entirely from the Gerudo pueblo and his people, whom he knew Tydus intended to attack. He had left them to fend for themselves and had taken away their source of hope and inspiration. And, in doing so, he had created a monster.
He cursed under his breath. It was an entirely underwhelming and ineffective way to deal with the situation at hand, but he didn't care in the slightest. Pureet had trusted him to make the right choice with the Chalice, and this is what he had done instead. He didn't think he could have possibly gone any more wrong.