Whisper (23 page)

“Do you think – he will?”

“That's something I don't know. But I fear it, before too much longer,” she said, looking at me. “I think we all do.”

*

I was taught battle tactic and advised on various ways to 'get my war face on' and 'be most affective' on the battlefield by the soldiers as we went, but it was such a summarized, rush job that it all just flurried around in my head and I thought they might as well have not bothered. All it would be was distracting out in the action; I would either end up faltering while I argued with myself trying to remember which technique applied to which situation, or apply them all at once in a panic and completely lose any poise my instincts might have produced.

But maybe, I tried to think optimistically, a tidbit lodged in the back of my head would come in handy in a pinch. I tried to believe that it might.

We reached that dreaded battlefield. Again. When would the location of the action shift? What was keeping it here? Did I dare ask somebody to explain the angles that affected that, or was I much better off just going along for the ride?

No pun intended,
I thought with a much too easily-entertained smirk. Maybe Toby was right. Anything that boosted morale ought to be humored and allowed to run its course. Being left grasping for good humor only fried your brain into a grave vegetable, prone to hysterics at the slightest comical relief.

I'd had enough practice at this point that pitching camp was a quick process of going through the motions, and I joined the rest of them for the evening meal without skipping a beat. I was becoming entirely too comfortable in the midst of all this, I told myself, but if that carried over to the battlefield... Too much proficiency could only be a good thing.

Some of the other soldiers took turns entertaining my company while I ate, but in between being graced by friendly company I found myself thinking such things as:

Does the Lieutenant worry about me getting killed?

I was sure she was well-guarded against attachment and feeling in the area of war, and therefore a good amount of the worry that would come with those, but logically she had to realize I
was
the inexperienced whelp everyone else thought I was, I had nearly been killed the last time, and she was gambling with the possibility of my life being snuffed in an instant in any given battle. Was it worth imperiling me so openly if it meant losing the assurance of my secret-weapon contribution behind the lines? Would she be sorry if I went down out here and she had suddenly lost her whisperer to boot? All just for the sake of adding one unit of crude manpower to this battle?

I didn't know what was in her head, and couldn't begin to guess. Then again, I didn't fully know what my prior demonstration on the battlefield had entailed. Perhaps I really had been marvelous, in some way that
was
worth striving to repeat, even all risks considered.

Coming to that conclusion only left me feeling disoriented for being there, however, because I had been out of it when I'd done whatever I'd done, and if I was expected to repeat it... I hadn't the slightest what I was doing. Should I tell someone that it hadn't really been me out there? That I didn't just have that goddess of war in my pocket at the ready? 'Getting my war face on' would be that and only that if a spell didn't choose to humor me when I attempted to summon one.

Fortunately, I couldn't stew over the prospective complication for long, for another soldier came by to check in on me and exchange his share of words. Between the lot of them my mind was kept mostly off of the perils we had come for, and in the back of my mind I realized it was a crucial habit to cultivate lest I go mad dwelling on pressures and risks and past injuries.

Forsaking the company of them all to go into my own tent that night left me experiencing frightful pangs of lonesome restlessness just past the threshold. There, the distractions fell dormant, and while retiring to my tent for the night would have been a cozy pastime in a setting such as Safeguard, it looked nothing but cold and dark and quiet there at war's doorstep. A smothering space that would only hug tight around me the thoughts I tried to shut out, now that the voices in my head were the only ones left to hear. They would only float about the tent all night – trapped, restless whispers. I didn't want to be alone, I realized – but how was I to rectify that? Go knock on the Lieutenant's tent flap and ask if I could double up with her?

You're at war, Alannis. Grow up.

I stared up into the dark of my tent for a long time, though, on edge and uncomfortably on the verge of
needing
someone, or something, or being anywhere but trapped alone in that designated space.

It was a miracle when, by the grace of time itself, the night passed. I must have dozed off at some point, because when I opened my eyes in the morning I didn't remember getting there. I was left frivolously disappointed. What good was the relief of sleep if you didn't get to bask in it a little?

Being awake advanced with unfortunate directness into being up and back in the swing of things, and then entirely too quickly into the announcement that came in the form of,

“Show time.”

–which meant the competition had arrived. Entirely prematurely, if anyone had bothered to consult my unprepared take on it, but nobody stopped to ask me. They just hurried by to get to their posts in a timely manner while I stood by feeling ill-prepared to do this all again on what turned out to be such short notice.

Mechanically, I went to ready Char, my heart beating in my ears. Panic was a dull, lurking companion stirring without permission where it was banished to the recesses of my composure. It was not keen on staying put, I found as my preparations screamed folly and stimulated it, but I had to keep my head in the game.
You'll be able to pull a spell,
I told myself. I may not have been in any position of expertise where they were concerned, but they always managed to rise to the occasion and surround me with their saving grace when I really needed it, didn't they?

Char's nostrils were flared with excitement, his exhalations great breathy statements of power, keyed to challenge anyone who got in his path. As I finished up his buckles he actually pawed the ground with impatience, but when I rode him out onto the battlefield and lined up with the others, he planted himself in a way that was more like coming to rest, and fidgeted no more. He was a rock. I shook my head, once more impressed by his stoic spirit. He was made for this.

At least one of us was.

Yet I couldn't quite forget that it had been his mistake that cost us the last time around. I tried to blink the memory from my vision along with the sweat that was beginning to run into my eyes, but it was lodged there like a piece of glass gleaming in the sun. A perfect mirror shard from the past, casting the reflection of that moment back at me.

As the tension grew on the field, the other horses began to shift and grow antsy. Char would not have been bothered, but the agitation grew until the others began to jostle against him, and then he was forced to participate.

And that's when a peculiar thing happened. The jostling movement beneath me, the tremors of the horses... They registered with dual significance to my senses, bringing to mind the tremors from the earth that always threatened a quake. Just as the memory of Char's error was flickering in my mind, so then did these tremors begin to spark bifold impressions.

Memories of splitting earth, cracking plaster, the ground dipping and diving underfoot like an ocean, people's screams lost in the deafening destruction as they went down underneath the rubble that was generating like vomit. I could remember experiencing their screams as a visual thing – righting myself as I careened and stumbled long enough to catch sight of a woman's gaping mouth, silent and wide and black like a vortex that was swallowing her scream itself. And then some slab of debris overturned upon her, and that transfixing, visual scream cut off in my head. I broke free from my riveted state, stumbling once more, unable to find my sea legs. Each step was jarring – either because the platform posed to receive me was ripped out from underneath me, or because it moved up to punch me in the shins, or meet with my hands and knees, or sometimes even because it slipped out from under me completely and downed me onto my side, or back, or... Who was to say, when you couldn't even tell which way was up?

I remembered falling again and again, getting the wind knocked out of me time after time like it was some sick joke. It would have been ironic had that been what killed me; while others got crushed and buried and torn asunder, I crawled to my death in the open simply because my clumsiness wouldn't let me breathe.

I shook the flashes from my head, like water droplets after an unintended dunk in the ocean.

Yes, I can hear the ocean.

The horses kept jostling, though, and it was impossible not to associate that unsteady motion. My mind flickered again, dosing me with that quake-oriented panic once again. There was nowhere to run in those cases, no fantasy that could suffice when the world itself was exploding. Only God could cheat that reality.

My breath began to come faster, but began to bottle up in my throat. My chest constricted, my muscles going rigid yet quivering in intervals. I began to shake the sweat and visions from my eyes with more agitation, but it was flooding faster than I could bail water out.

The tension was ever heightening on the battlefield as well – I caught as much whenever a moment of clarity speared through my mental turmoil. But I could not pull it into any kind of alignment, could not center myself in it, could not begin to position myself and brace for the onslaught as I should have been doing. When the time came and everything exploded around me, I found myself holding Char back, unable to find my place in it all. Friend and foe went at each other in front of me, and I looked on in a daze, unable to spur myself forward.

And it was just a good thing that I had the sense not to, for I surely would not have survived for a minute in my compromised state.

It was the raucous, barbaric roar of the battle that eventually overrode the sensations of motion and memory and drew me out of my glazed perspective. The battle before me came into focus in chaotic, deafening succession, and my balk was only encouraged by what I saw. I held back, stayed in awe. Never had I been this close without actually being immersed in it. Never had I had the chance to hang back, to watch, to witness, to
listen
at such close, eye-opening quarters.

The sound was unlike anything that could be classified. At a distance, it had sounded like one big distant train wreck, but that was how things were supposed to be relayed over distance, mixed and mashed and merged. But it didn't change up close, except to grow in volume and ferocity. The Demon Horses charged into battle bellowing with such savagery that it sounded otherworldly, like a million tormented, vengeful souls screaming from possessed bodies, at a volume and intensity mortal creatures could never hope to achieve. It sent chills down my body. How could a creature on earth be that charged for this? It was overkill in God's world. It had to be.

I couldn't go out there. Not even having regained my sense. Especially having regained my sense. Char humored me, but shifted, not understanding what we were doing hanging back. And after surveying the turmoil a moment longer, I overturned his expectations and did something that neither of us could be proud of that day.

I turned him away from that battle, and ran for the hills.

Twenty-One –

A
s we ran I fantasized about not stopping until we got all the way back to Safeguard, but it was one of those emotional fantasies anyone might have, of which the flame died down and gave way to practicality as I used my energy up. Once we were beyond range of the battle, we slowed, and I slumped over Char's neck, panting, trying to get a hold of myself.

What had come over me out there? No glorious fantasy to employ this time around, that was for sure. What in the world was the method to this madness? Could I expect to be bolstered by otherworldly glory one time and then inconveniently wracked by ruin the next? At the mercy of the whim of opposite extremes when I was expected to perform?

Had Jay been absolutely right? Was this nothing but folly? Had it only been some fluke the first time that I had no business letting anyone else blow out of proportion?

Char stood patiently beneath me, his breathing growing gradually slower.

“Who am I fooling?” I murmured to him, then changed my tune in a realization of dismay: “Who have I
fooled
?” He didn't reply, of course, but I didn't require an answer. An answer would not get me out of what I'd gotten myself into. How was I to explain my choke to the Lieutenant, after she had just put faith in me? She would be less than impressed. And I couldn't go crying to Jay this time.