"No gear again, Miss Wilde?" the Lieutenant inquired, riding up on her own bay mount.
"I'm more connected to her without it," I said. It wasn't bragging; it was a simple truth - it was a fact that a person was closer to a horse and their movement without a saddle between them, except maybe in the case of falling off due to a lack of stability. But I had been stable without a saddle for three years, and found it more comfortable that way.
"Suit yourself."
And just like that we rode out.
I couldn't help glancing about for Jay as we took our leave, the reality of what I was doing settling in. I hadn't said goodbye, and what if I did die out there? He was seeing to his routine somewhere, maybe even still sleeping like a baby in his - my - tent, treating the day like any old day while I was mounted and ready for war, riding out through those huge make-shift gates under the foolish notion that I was about to go be somebody. I wasn't, really, ready for war, but there I went.
The gates slammed behind us like some giant keep doors out of an epic motion picture, and we set out for another long journey. This time, we had even more horses than the first. I couldn't count them, but we had all but emptied the camp of its capable equine stock. I had overheard that the Lieutenant had sent some of the troops for more raids in the East, and also that she had called on some other holding camp to meet us on the field with their horse stock. It became suddenly clear to me how big of an operation it was, how crucial, and I wondered how big Gabriel's armies were. Were they massive? Or was a secret weapon enough that he didn't need great numbers to do so much damage?
We rode through the broken, uprooted territory of the forest, maneuvering over roots and through the trap-like branches of tipped, sideways-growing trees. Sometimes we had to get off and walk the horses, ducking under the great horizontal trunks that protruded from walls of ground. It was a pain, but also a good place for these people to hide their forces within, I had to admit. Nothing like an obstacle course to keep unwanted forces out. I just had to wonder if it was counter-productive as well, if they would find themselves trapped as surely as hidden if enemies ever stumbled upon their nestled encampment.
"Isn't he going to get there first?" I piped up as the landscape occurred to me as an impediment that surely made our progress slow.
"Gabriel is nothing if not thorough, which means he likes to continue to secure things as he goes. He may have seized a territory, but there are many pockets within a given territory that still require subduing. He'll pick them off along the way. Bad for them, good for us. We will probably even get there a few days before he does. You'll get your fire-breather, and have time to run a few drills."
I didn't know if 'a few' would cut it, but it seemed it was the best we could do. Also, I couldn't help but pick up on how sure she sounded, how it was 'you will get' rather than hopefully or 'you might' - and I wondered what manner of force that Northbound soldier was directed to use to bring Toby back with him, how much say in the matter Toby actually got. It sounded like perhaps he didn't get any, and I wondered how forceful things would turn if I showed signs of not complying with the Lieutenant's game plan. Were we only on friendly terms because I had complied thus far?
I tried not to think about it, tried to pretend this was nothing but an act of my free will. Indeed, an act of great will. Glorified will. I am willful and powerful. And the type to march to war because of it. All hail me, the secret weapon made of strong stuff. Willow the Willful. 'Willow' might even sum it up nicely all by itself.
Another fantasy. I shook my head, snuffing it. I could hear Jay's words now: "Your head is too much in the clouds to go to war, Willow. What are you thinking?" It's what he would tell me, given the chance. But I didn't give him the chance.
Once free of the branch-splayed, sun-dappled region of the trees, we bumped our pace up and began to make faster progress of the land. Some places were barren of debris, wilderness that was merely mounded up and cracked open, and we zig-zagged a vertical pattern over those mounds and jumped the horses over those cracks without having to worry about their hooves compensating for rubble. Then there were the towns, shattered like it had been good sport. In pieces and vacant, and eerie as we passed through. The streets were ruptured and houses slid into one another.
As we passed through one, my attention was grabbed by a single shoe sitting atop a misplaced pedestal of rubble. It was a ruby-red pump, adorned with glitter and sequins and glitz and glamor, but it was covered in dust and ash with a cobweb inside, and the heel was broken off. For some reason, it was a tremendously haunting sight, and my eyes lingered, morbidly fascinated, over my shoulder.
What was really frightening was when we came upon a town that lay one hundred feet down in a crater. I had heard of places falling into nothing, sink holes or simply places where the earth split apart and they were dumped in and swallowed up, but I hadn't seen one until then. An uncanny shiver swept over me, and I wondered if any of the people had made it out. Had anyone come to their aid? I looked out over the countryside all around and found that I doubted it, and it was a very depressing thought.
We moved on, trudging toward our destination, leaving behind those vacancies and keeping our eyes open for areas that might not be. Areas that might be occupied by opportunists, or hybrid creatures, or dangers we were not yet acquainted with. I did not know when we crossed over the border that used to exist between states, that was now buried beneath the turmoil of the Shardscape. I simply made myself comfortable atop Lake's back and tried to enjoy the ride. Numerous times, we had to stop because one of the horses acquired a piece of something lodged in a hoof – we were always trying to be keen about picking up on the signs, because if we didn't we could end up with a whole army of horses gone lame very quickly.
After a number of days on the road, suddenly we arrived. And the Lieutenant was right – the upheavals had been less, there, and there lay a decent field of open space.
“It is to take place here?” I asked.
“Here,” Sonya confirmed.
I looked out over the land and tried to imagine it becoming crowded by two opposing forces, the quiet stillness that stretched all around turning to a violent madhouse, lying littered with bodies and soaked in blood after it was all over. A chill went through me, wondering who among us would lie on that ground within the next few days. I ducked my head and averted my gaze, as if unable to look upon the sight, though it hadn't yet come to pass. I could see it almost as if it had. And suddenly, that wide open field looked cramped and confined, a trap in which to die, and it occurred to me there would be no field big enough to make me feel like a certain chance of doom wasn't closing in on me, no battlefield open enough to make me feel like I hadn't suddenly just been cornered.
Eleven –
The men set up camp in a jiffy, and before I knew it we were a tight-knit little community forged into the face of that battlefield keeping our eyes on the horizon as we prepared for what would appear there.
It seemed I had barely settled in when Toby arrived, but perhaps I never really would have been prepared to receive him, seeing as he was not inclined to be there and I felt instantly guilty. I was not one to hold someone against their will, and it was awkward for me knowing I had been the cause behind the force. I had to wonder if he knew of my responsibility, hoping that detail had been neglected in his briefing. I could almost hear myself cringe as we were introduced, though, and figured he surely knew then.
He had a bit of a red tinge to his hair, and the second thing I found myself thinking, stupidly, was 'please God no, is he Irish too?'
He did not shake my proffered hand – that's when the knowing cringe played out – and I withdrew it, stuffing it in my pocket. “Well anyway,” I said lamely, and then even more lamely, “Thanks for coming.”
“Yeah, well. This is war, right? I guess getting drafted happens to the best of us.”
He didn't mean it – or did, but resented it plainly. There was no friendliness in his voice. Only a distinct des
ire to be elsewhere. But there he was. And older than me, but not by any staggering amount. In his early twenties, it seemed.
I bit my lip, not knowing what to say. There would be no smoothing it over with him, so I figured it would probably be best to get straight down to business.
“Did you bring your...stuff?” I asked, realizing I didn't know what all fire-breathing entailed.
“Of course I brought my stuff. Or did you expect that I'm some kind of dragon?”
I shook my head, but it was halfheartedly, seeing it was pointless to try to get on with him, not wanting to provoke him more so. Dismissing further conversation, I backed off and started toward the horse pens, leaving him to get his act together and follow me when he was ready. After a moment I heard the sound of his boots scuff in turning, and then the slight slap of his saddlebag as he went to his mount and opened the flap.
Letting myself into the pen where a dark bay was being kept, I strode to the middle and waited for Toby there, trying to put on an air of patience when it was obvious war loomed on the horizon. Let him be flippant about being here when that became clear to him, when the gravity of the matter settled in. He would come around.
He appeared momentarily with his fuel can, torches, and a fire extinguisher. As he set this last item on the ground, I regarded it suspiciously.
“What's that for?”
“In case I light something on fire.”
“I thought you were experienced.”
“Experienced doesn't equal stupid. And when you throw live animals into the mix, there's no telling what can happen, sweetheart. Fire and animals don't typically mix, you know.” Clearly, he believed it was some kind of bad joke that we had demanded his expertise here. Some ill-informed, pointless bad joke.
My next question, as he removed his shirt, came as:
“What are you doing?”
“Just be happy I don't ask you to remove yours, kid.”
And that shut me up. Clearly some safety precaution, I decided, since there was no other reason except pure vanity or some stylish quirk to do as much.
“So what do you want me to do?” he asked without looking at me as he set about preparing his act.
“Just...perform, for now,” I said a little distractedly, realizing I hadn't prepared myself to take initiative where his craft was concerned. That was his element, wasn't it? But it was for the horses, and of course he would be ignorant as to whether or not there were certain ways to introduce his craft to them, or if there was some odd quirk I required of him to come across more Demon-horse-like. I forced my eyes away from the lithe muscles in his back where he stooped to get his props in order, trying to focus on a game plan, or at least how we might reach some sort of collaboration.
“You ready?” he asked.
I nodded, then realized he was still stooping and couldn't see me. “Ready when you are,” I spoke, wondering if that was entirely true or if perhaps I ought to stand farther back. Trusting that he would take the proper precautions to not fry me to a crisp on his first breath, I took a breath of my own and readied myself for the session that was to follow. The bay stood flicking his ears curiously behind me, watching Toby with a bit of suspicion. The smell of fuel had already soured the air, and to keep his distance from the threatening scent, the bay was staying a pace or two even from me.
Lighting his torch, Toby straightened from his stupor. I saw his lungs fill with air, hold, and then he tilted his head back at a forty-five degree angle and let a long string of breath spew past his torch. Fire spread over the air, shimmering and explosive and hot. Vaguely, I noticed Toby hold a cloth to his mouth with his free hand following the exhalation, but, caught in the heat wave, I went to a different place – that place of awe, of sensation, of drawn-out experience. I was struck by each little writhing worm of flame as it uncurled and lived out its brief life, of the flame as a whole as it spread through the air like a long incoming wave, rolling, rolling... Until it crashed upon the shore of its climax and used itself up into a cloud of demon-fairy-dust sparks.
The bay was rearing behind me, and I turned, mutely – lifted a hand and placed it on one of the horse's crushing, pawing hooves, urging him gently down. He responded under my touch, reducing his neigh to a nicker, progressively coming down from his uprising. At last his hooves came down to earth with a puff of dust, and the impact brought me out of my dreamlike state. I turned back to Toby as I stroked the bay's muzzle, and the young man was regarding me with some new form of respect, or at least a new-found hint of intrigue.
And so it was that we began work on our mission to immunize the horses, one at a time, against the fear of the fire-breathing creatures that marched our way. It would not protect against the fangs, or the claws, but it would bolster the initiative to get into the fray, and maybe, hopefully, make some kind of difference.
*
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.
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