Whisper (12 page)

*

When Gabriel's army arrived, there was nothing to be done about it. Somehow, even as the dread of lying in waiting for such settled in when we made camp on the battlefield, I was not prepared to actually see the troops appear on the horizon. A strange panic bottled up in my throat when the curve of the earth began to flicker with the stubble of distant forms. They were here, closing the distance between us, and the notion of hiding occurred to me as the pointless, impossible feat that it was. There was nowhere to hide. I briefly considered running instead, but where would I go all by myself? I did not know the way back, and there were things out there that could pick me off in an instant. And how would I know if our defenses had triumphed or failed?

“I'm guessing you didn't sign up for this either,” Toby surmised as we stood among the temporary safety of the tents and regarded the line of distant figures approaching across the open wilderness.

“I kind of did,” I replied with a hint of irony, bleakly.

He gave some manner of understanding little nod beside me, though I'm not sure where such understanding came from, for it suddenly made no sense to me. It was madness. What had I been thinking?

“Do
you
know how to fight?” he asked next, clearly implying that he knew nothing of the sort.

“I...” ...could pack a punch, if I needed to. But throwing punches had no place in war. Not when there were weapons. The notion was laughable. “I know how to joust,” I offered, but it sounded like a question.

He turned to me then. “You know how to what?”

“Joust. Jay and I did it as kids, with sunflower stems. Sometimes blunted broomsticks, if no one was around to catch us. Jay is my...friend.”

Toby was staring at me.

“What?” I asked defensively, stealing a glance at him.

“You just – you can joust,” he said, as if that was point enough.

“So?”

“So...is that part of why you're here? Somehow I hadn't expected that you were part of the...part of the forces.”

I opened my mouth, but closed it again. Suddenly it sounded silly to tell
him
'don't be silly'. Because jousting fit the bill perfectly. “It was only with sunflowers and the occasional broomstick,” I scoffed unconvincingly, because it was impossible to ignore the potential that jousting might have on the field.

“And what do you think the rest of these people used as kids? Did any of them even grow up jousting? I highly doubt it.”

“They're soldiers.”

“Yeah. They're used to guns. They don't even know how to hold anything else.”

“Well, I doubt
that
. They're capable, even with their bare hands.”

“Suit yourself. But if push comes to shove,
I
would be happier knowing I had embraced my potential as a jouster.”

I couldn't deny the validity of his suggestion. What if it came down to it, and I had no other way to defend myself? “I don't have anything to use,” I denounced once more, but it was more of a lament this time.

“Use one of my torches. I'm sure we can find something around camp to sharpen it with, or some sharp token to tie to it.”

I nodded, but it was numbly. It couldn't really be necessary for me to prepare myself to kill someone, could it? Just like that? I'd gone my whole life without thoughts of killing anyone. How could I just pick up a weapon and ready myself? Ready myself for the committal of aim, the strength to carry out the plunge, the crunch of flesh and bone and the sight of the blood I had procured. The
smell
of it. The resulting spray of it on my own body, that signature that made it official: I had just killed a man. The contract signed in blood that made it impossible to ever go back. The thought terrified me. And if such should come to pass, I was sure it would make me sick, then, as well.

Sonya appeared beside us with a pair of binoculars, holding them up to her eyes. “Yep,” she said matter-of-factly. “That's them, alright.” She turned to me and inclined the binoculars. “Care to put eyes on what we're up against?”

I didn't know that I was keen on any such thing, but with a small swallow and a curious twitch of my fingers I accepted the offer, raising the heavy spectacles to my face. My heart skipped a beat as the ranks of the opposing army were magnified to a state of close-quarters, as the line of steadily churning black legs and steaming chests jumped into perspective as if they were right before me. I almost dropped the binoculars. Despite knowing, I had the urge to ask, “What are those?” Hearing about such things and imagining such things never prepared one for the reality that they actually existed, could actually come to share the same space with you in this life.

Numbly, I handed the binoculars to Toby.

“Let's hope your tutelage had some effect, Miss Wilde,” the Lieutenant said, and then she turned from our midst to ready for battle.

“Come on,” Toby urged. “Let's get some means of self-defense together.”

It might have been silly that it took the urge to spur me, but with Gabriel's forces now visible in the distance and conflict nearing with every step, I found myself distracted and on edge, unable to focus right, not sure what I should do with myself. My mind was fidgety with anticipation, with trepidation, with the disorientation of questioning why I had ever chosen to come. I followed Toby without really being aware of what I was doing, my mind everywhere but perhaps where it very much should be. Fortunately Toby had a better head on his shoulders, or had seen enough death in his time to at least deal with the looming concept better than I could, and he set me into motion where my own limbs failed. He was not partial to being here, but it seemed he could resign himself to it.

The camp buzzed with preparations. Everything was forced into quick order, even though the process seemed like chaos. I tried not to steal glances out across the shrinking strip of landscape between us and our advancing foes, but the weight of their approach was like the elephant in the room. It became a swift obsession, constantly checking the distance they had covered to gauge the arrival of the conflict. An unhealthy obsession, because what I found never put me at ease. It only caused the invisible fist closing around my throat to constrict, making it harder and harder to breathe.

You're going to have to do it,
I told myself as the reason for our presence there drew close to its realization.
You're going to have to go to that other place.
The one where the hooves of wild horses thrummed with my heartbeat, where riding on the back of one of the elegant creatures made me a queen, a heroine – whatever I needed to be. The place where everything became a romantic conjuring of the paradise of imagination.

I closed my eyes in a brief, dismayed hesitation, not wanting to go there. It was bad enough that I was conditioning false confidence into the horses – must I resign myself to the same naïve delusion? Must I depend on my fantasies in this life? If I was going to die, I suppose it didn't much matter, but there was still a part of me that felt it was not honorable to be reduced to that. A part of me that wished I had what it took to disband childish things and stand for something real.

But
that
was a fantasy, if ever there was one.
Me –
standing for something admirable in this life, fighting alongside the stragglers of my country driven by nothing but a sense of willful honor and pure courage.
That
was never going to be me.

There was nothing for it but to do what I had to to get by. It was the best I could hope for.

Clad in additional protective garments that could only be described as makeshift armor, the Lieutenant found us as she was pulling on a pair of traction-rich leather gloves. “You would do well to get yourselves on a pair of mounts as this unfolds,” she advised. “If Gabriel's forces prevail or get through, your best chance will be to run for the hills.”

“What hills?” I asked, and I wasn't sure if it was in jest or challenge, but it made a relevant point either way.

The Lieutenant made only an expression of wry, grave agreement, and then she was leaving us to our fates behind the lines.

“I assume you know how to ride?” I asked Toby, not looking at him.

“Enough to cling to a handful of mane as my lifeline,” he confirmed, and it was just another case of the best we could do.

*

When our military forces dispersed onto the battlefield and gathered in formation to meet Gabriel's army, Toby and I were mounted and on edge in the vacant camp. I clutched a sharpened wooden spear in one hand, and it felt like some clumsy post that wasn't meant to be carried. Toby looked more used to his, but he hadn't turned his into a spear. His remained a respective torch, something he knew how to handle very well. And if he could perform like any of the fire-breathers I had heard stories of, he could prove a decently fearsome opponent should he light the thing on fire and take to swinging it around like a martial artist. Such would make
me
think twice, if I were the one poised to close in on him.

“Maybe we should ride double,” I suggested lamely, sounding a little bit ill.

“What?” he asked, noticing my attention on his steady hold and my own lack of confidence in my weapon-bearing stance. “Don't be ridiculous. You can probably use the
horse
as a weapon simply by sending a wave of telepathy that tells him to strike the brutes in the head with a hoof.”

“Her,” I corrected him without thinking.

“Exactly,” he said. “I can't even tell if they're male or female. I can hardly tell my right rein from my left. You have a distinct advantage where horse-driven matters are concerned.”

“All the more reason for you to want to ride double. I'll man the horse, you can man the weapon. Together we might form an acceptable unit.”

“Seriously?”

“Seriously, we might? Or seriously, am I serious about doing it?”

“The latter.”

I hadn't realized it until that moment, either, but when I opened my mouth to answer I found that I
was
serious. “I would at least feel better not...dying by myself,” I admitted. “It would feel better if there was someone”–I paused, unsure how to put it, but really there was a simple truth to it–“right behind me. So I could feel like someone has my back.” Normally, I might not make such a confession, or request, but facing my possible demise, the social rules I had constructed for myself didn't seem altogether very relevant. I would much rather betray them and arm myself with the last comfort available to me.

He looked at me a moment, blinked. “Well, if you think it's worth a shot, I'm not opposed to it. You could be on to something there.”

I smiled a little – a twitch of relief. “Alright.”

“Your horse or mine?”

Biting my lip in thought, I gauged the two horses' attributes. “Yours is bigger,” came my conclusion, and he nodded, shifting, as if to make room for me.

Giving Lake a pat, I slid off her back, whispering a sweet nothing into her ear before going to join Toby on his big chestnut. She dozed, soothed, and I was relieved that she was now free to flee into the 'hills' should the worst come to pass.

“Scoot back,” I prompted, and when he glanced at the reins in his hands, I added, “He'll be fine.” Laying a hand on the chestnut's neck, I stilled his urge to fidget, and the only motion that stirred across his body as Toby dropped the reins was the ripple of a muscle in his neck. Toby scooted backward onto the gelding's rump, and I loosened the girth of the saddle and pulled it off, laying it to rest on the ground. Then I bent my knee so the sweep of my leg would not catch Toby where he sat, and I swung up onto the gelding's tall back. He was nearly seventeen hands tall.

“Scoot in,” I urged when I was comfortable, and Toby rearranged himself so our combined weight was centered on an acceptable part of the horse's back. From there, I leaned forward to unfasten the throat latch and nose band of his bridle, and, pushing the reins over his head, I relieved him of the harness. Having to deal with reins would only get in the way. Then I moved him to where my spear was leaning against one of the vacant tents, and retrieved the weapon for good measure.

“Shall we keep an eye on events?” I proposed, and Toby replied over my shoulder, sounding closer than I expected somehow,

“Let's go.”

We moved from among the tents, out into the first fringes of the expanse where the battle was to take place. It was impossible to see anything past the tails of the formation, but I decided it was a comforting sight when the alternative was a restless line of Demon Horses chomping at the bit to advance.