During lunch breaks, the soldiers put us through combat training. We were not going to be molded by war time, either, but it was necessary to start somewhere if we were going to pretend we belonged in this business.
Jay didn't participate. He preferred good, old-fashioned punches.
Interestingly, nobody pressured him, either. He had just enough of that independent air about him, I supposed. The kind of air nobody questioned. I wished I could pull off as much – though, I had nothing against the training. In fact, I welcomed it. It would just be a nice gift to have, to turn on a switch to not be questioned.
When the horses had been traumatized enough for one day, and we left off our exercises so as not to be too sore for battle should it arrive the following day, Toby and I wandered the charred battlefield where the previous atrocities had taken place. Sometimes we took mounts, just to tweak Toby's expertise or get the horses used to the smell of war all around and underfoot in a nice, calm setting.
Having been the first battle in that locale, fiery discharge from the demon horses had burned it and the battle's remains beyond easy recognition. Aside from the acrid smell, I was thankful for that. I did not have any desire to look upon the bodies or tromp through the dried splashes of gore. There were, however, still occasional remnants. Souvenirs.
“Hey, what's that?” Toby asked, jutting his chin in the direction of a musty glint.
“Another weapon?” I suggested. We had collected a fair amount from our excursions already. Curious, I hopped down from Lake's back. She stood and dozed while I stepped away, squatting to nudge the thing into better light. Convinced it wasn't some metal bone from a demon mount that I might not want to touch, I drew the nearly foot-long relic off the ground, propping the melted-leather stump on one hand and the sharp point opposite in the other. “It's a spike,” I said, turning it over in my hands. There was a substance that was either rust or dry blood coating the metal, but I had handled much worse treating every-day horse wounds.
I went to brush some of it off, but recoiled when a burning sensation singed my fingertips. “Ouch,” I hissed, drawing my fingers to my lips. They began to sting as well, though, and all at once a feeling of disquiet went through me.
“What's wrong?” came Toby's voice from atop his mount.
“It's like...some sort of acid,” I said, mastering the red flags going up in my mind so as not to panic.
“You touched it?”
Mind still weighing the possibilities, I looked the treacherous spike over once more. “Yes.” What had I gotten on myself?
I stood, awkwardly putting it in Toby's saddlebag with splayed fingers before brushing them off on my clothes. “Let's get back to camp,” I said. “I don't know what it was, but I can still feel it like little maggots on my skin.”
Eying me worriedly, Toby turned his mount in that direction, waiting until I mounted. “Don't...kiss anybody,” he cautioned, and I gave a wry laugh.
“Party-pooper Toby,” I teased. “Way to ruin my time on enemy lines.”
*
“Just a trace of acidic substance, it would seem,” the medic confirmed, turning my finger over in his grasp. He was a lanky young man with slick black hair and pale, clean skin.
“She got it on her lips, too,” Toby informed him. He was standing in the frame of the tent for moral support, framed by the day's mild sunshine.
“Well,” the other man, Cory, said. “This amount isn't going to bore any holes, but you might want to put water on that same as your finger.”
“Pucker up and dip your face,” Toby said cheerfully.
Smiling appreciatively at the young medic, I hopped down from his makeshift inspection table to head out. Toby shifted to make way for my exit.
“Oh,” Medic Cory said as an afterthought, pulling a quizzical glance briefly back over my shoulder. “And – don't kiss anybody.”
*
I was allowed to keep the spike, after it was cleaned off and met with Medic Cory's approval. I could not say what it was, but I quickly knew what I envisioned it as, and promptly a resulting project was born. Keeping busy kept my mind off of what was coming, and whenever I had a spare moment I put my creativity to good use and worked on crafting that spike into a horn for Char. I found pieces of canvas and saddle-pad foam to use for padding, as well as scale-like scraps of metal as partial, armor-like overlay to cover a greater area of face, and fashioned it to the bridle I had fitted for him.
“What's that?” Toby asked.
“It's Char's helmet,” I replied, not looking up. I had been engrossed in the task for about an hour.
Toby whistled, his breath smelling like smoke. “We'll have to dub him sir Char, in that.”
“Well,” I said, “I dare say some knightly pastimes may be just what morale needs out here.”
“You're a romantic, Wilde,” he told me, but there was a smile on his face as he moved on to see to other things.
I watched him go, briefly, considering his words. A romantic...
Well, he was right, but that didn't begin to describe it. I couldn't think of it, though, because it didn't pay to dwell on the spells that tended to come over me. It only paid to surrender to them when they were needed, and only when they were needed. Anything more just made me a hopeless romantic, in the truest, edgiest form of the term.
Shrugging the notion off, I turned back to my task. It was mature enough to be deemed a suitable prototype, so I rose to try it on its intended.
Char seemed to like the contraption, tossing his head a bit just to get a feel for the foreign weight before wearing it like a crown. I smiled, triumphant, and let him flaunt it self-importantly for a few moments before reaching to remove it for its final touches. “Don't worry, love,” I reassured him as I pulled the harness over his ears. “You'll get to make proper use of it soon enough.” As the leather strap of the headstall folded his ears briefly out of the way during removal, the stimulation seemed to scratch an itch there, and he followed the withdrawing item, rubbing his ear against it as it retreated. I chuckled, pausing and bracing my hand so he could get his fill. “Yeah? You like it?” I asked fondly, encouraged. “'Atta boy. Get those simple pleasures out of your system.” All too soon, small luxuries wouldn't matter, for him. I tried not to go there, but my imagination flickered, wondering what wounds he would sport across his proud body in the coming days. Flashes of red welts, and torn flesh over ribs corrupted my mind before I slammed the door on those conjurings, shutting them out.
I stroked his neck, taking a moment to indulge him while I could. Compassion was useless if not humored now and again, allowed to take its course. “Mean something out there, ay Char?” I murmured privately to him. “Show them what spirit can do.”
He bowed his neck, nuzzling my leg slightly with his lips. His eye shifted to meet mine, though, a sidelong, intelligent glance that sought me out and held me, looked into me as he whuffed breaths against my thigh. It would have been eerie, that glance, if it was not so warm with wisdom. Purposeful and convicting, he connected with me, as if to tell me, You needn't worry, Whisperer.
I didn't need to tell him how to run this race. He knew.
I nodded, humbled, and patted him once more before taking my leave. He knew how to take care of himself. I would do well to focus my attentions where they were most needed.
The camp was an ever-revolving system of drills, and I dodged the arrays of soldiers keeping themselves on their toes as I went about my personal duties. It had seemed a bit of a mad-house at first, trying to stay out of the way when there were always factions of intense, high-strung men with weapons running about, but once I got a feel for their formations I learned quickly that there was method to their madness. Now I was almost an expert at avoiding getting under their feet. Only occasionally was there an awkward moment when I rounded a tent and came face-to-face with a weapon-wielding brute twice my size rounding it from the other side, sliding to a startled stop where I blinked wide-eyed at his drawn weapon, and he shuffle
d his feet in uncertainty at the civilian complication, before we skirted one another and got on with our lives. I'm sure humoring a nerdy horse girl underfoot had never been in his job description. Especially in a war zone, I was an oddball commodity.
Except that – I wasn't, so much, these days. The military and the horse world just hadn't found a way to seamlessly mesh, yet. It was hard to teach a molded dog new tricks, and before the quakes, the military had been made up of a very specially-molded breed of men, their system drilled into them until they lived and breathed that way of things, and nothing but that way of things. And it was highly successful until the system lost its charm in our overturned world and all of the men gratified by their ability to blast a country to pieces with high-tech machines and devices found themselves suddenly needing to rely on lesser, more crude resources.
If they needed to they could run for days on end on their own two feet, maybe, but could they swing up onto the back of a moving animal without assistance and run from danger without getting themselves bucked right off because High-Ho-Silver wasn't partial to their ignorant presence on his esteemed back? Could they instigate flying lead changes over tricky terrain so their demands would not see their mounts crumble under the failure of support at high speeds, keeling over to one side to crush legs beneath rib cages? Could they tame their rowdy behavior so as not to send offensive signals to the animals that had to be their companions? Could they gallop for even ten minutes without bouncing right out of the saddle, or pulling on their mount's sensitive mouths for stability when reins should only ever be used for direction, not anchors, or dismount after a hard ride without their legs falling off from using muscles they never knew existed? Did they even know how to make a horse go? How many times had I seen a new rider instigate the 'hya!' cliché like an idiot and expect their mount to take off?
I had seen it all.
Being generally or even intensely capable and trained in survival was one thing, but effectively handling horses was a whole different story. It was an expertise. The knights of old grew up on horses. Jumping into relying on them would be like throwing a bunch of people who didn't know how to swim in the deep end, and telling them to fend off the sharks while they were at it.
All things considered, though, I had to admit the women and men of our armed forces were making a respectable transition. They were all willing, dedicated souls, and it wasn't so much of a misfitted undertaking now as it was a respectable ambition with a few loose ends and crude ties, merely things to be made smoother. Truly, we had come a long way in ten years. And coming a long way was a paramount alternative to what we might have become under the alien forces that sought to squash us like primitive bugs out of our element.
“Miss Wilde,” a young, masculine voice drew my head over my shoulder as I was trudging back toward the corrals. I turned to find an unnamed Private approaching, a bundle in his arms. His camouflage was black and gray. “Glad I found you. We've been trying to fit you for weapons, with our surplus.”
I glanced at the bundle in his arms, a mix of curiosity and caution registering with his words. “What do you mean?”
“You don't hang out in a war zone without being properly outfitted. If you're to become a regular, then...” He shrugged, squatting to place the bundle on the ground so he could unwrap it. Inside were revealed a few knives of various lengths and varying hilt diameters. “You've been learning to use these in drills with the men, right?”
“If you count the mess I make as using them.”
He grinned, nudging the weapons apart from each other for consideration. “Well, making a mess of your adversary will do the trick, so I'd say you're set.”
I laughed. “That may be twisting it a little bit, but if you say so.”
He proceeded to fit me with the knife I was most comfortable with, and then outfitted me with the coinciding sheath that would band around my thigh.
“It shouldn't get in your way riding, but it'll probably feel a little funny at first,” he advised me, wrapping up what was leftover of his wares. “Just make sure it gets in someone else's way if they come at you.”
“I...will be sure to do that,” I said, for his sake. But in truth I couldn't say if I had what it took to take initiative such as that, or even if I would remember to consult my means of defense at all. Faced with a brute trying to swipe my head off, fear might puncture the knowledge of resources clean out of my system. Reflex might have me scrambling out of reach and running for the hills before even considering that I was presenting my vulnerable back.
Satisfied with his end of the task, the Private clutched his bundle and walked back toward his station of duty. I looked down at the sheath in my grasp, experimentally drawing the knife out to inspect it, my cold new companion. I imagined the skin it might tear, the blood it might procure, the eyes it might pierce... And just as swiftly I shucked it back in its sheath, realizing I would do well to simply strap it on to fulfill the obligation, and then forget that it existed.
*
I had just reached the corrals when Jay intercepted me. He slid between me and the round pen gate, and this time I found myself pricked by a small, unforeseen amount of vexation. Could I not just get to the horses that required my attention without the entire army stopping me for one reason or another?
“You need to eat, Willow,” Jay told me. He was instantly anchored and showed no inclination of moving.
“Don't be ridiculous,” I said. “We're in a war zone – I have every right not to have an appetite right now. You don't know what I saw last time, Jay.”
“If you can't stomach it here, you shouldn't be here. So if you want to stay, don't keep giving me reasons to haul you out of this joint with my own two hands.”
“The Lieutenant wants me here, Jay. You can't haul anyone out of here without defying military command. Don't flatter yourself.”
He made a small, dismissive expression. “Let her court-martial me.”
I frowned at him. “I'm not hungry. Now please get out of my way. Some of us have more important things to do than stand around arguing.”
He moved not a single muscle, so I diverted to alternative measures. There was no need to stand on ceremony and use the gate. I could just duck through the railing. Shifting, I aimed to dodge around him. He was just as quick, though, and slipped expertly between me and my targeted point of entry again. I cheated back the other way, but he matched my footwork. This time, he was so closely pinned between me and the fence that I could see the fiber-like texture of his gray eyes. I looked into them a moment, captured by those many-faceted windows to his guarded soul, before breaking away and dashing down the fence line.
I as good as dove through the bars, not about to waste the opening I had gained, but no sooner had my head cleared the gap than my body jerked to a halt, obstructed by a pair of arms lashing about my waist. Jay hauled me backward, and I lashed my arms around the bars in turn, refusing to be so rudely mastered. We struggled like that, him intent on disengaging me from the fence, me insisting on being as slippery as possible. His efforts remained perfectly silent, while little grunts and shrieks escaped from me. Only the occasional unintended sound issued from him when one of my flailing limbs jabbed him in the gut, or groin, or some other tender spot that he left unprotected.
He worked me around, somehow, so that I was braced against the bar on my back, still half-through the portal, though, so that my head and shoulders were actually inside the pen. The only way to get fully inside the corral now would be to back-bend in, and the only practical way to extract myself to limbo out. Neither was paramount in the convenience department. He had the upper hand, and doubtlessly had me right where he wanted me.
That made me struggle harder, but my muscles didn't work as well from this angle, and the way Jay was maneuvering his own mass through the frame above me to fulfill the leverage of high ground, manhandling me face to face, a small, keen part of me could not help but surmise: This is getting awkward, Alannis. He was very nearly on top of
me, awkward angle notwithstanding – jostling against me, our legs a tangling mess of friction.
It was this friction that worked my knife out of its sheath, in the middle of the skirmish, and all at once there was a loose blade in the mix. Jay seemed to take note of the additional, intruding factor right at the same time I realized this new development was cause for very real alarm. All at once he left off, extracting himself, jerking back through the bars as if stung and taking two purposeful strides back. Some look of guarded horror flashed across his face like clouds over the sun, and my knife clattered through the bars to the ground. I was left bent backward through the bars as if using the bottom rung for support for sit-ups, my abs tightly clenched and panting.
“What...” Jay began, but didn't finish the thought.
My first thought, instinctively, was that he had been injured. Stabbed or sliced in the tussle. Equal horror flashed through me, but then he was just looking at me as if he didn't know me, and I realized he was merely surprised at the weapon. He had jerked back as soon as he realized, not wanting to hurt me.
I mastered my breathing, swallowing before speaking. “They wanted to equip me,” I said. “It's what we've been learning to use, in training.”
He looked no happier for the explanation, but at least he could see that neither of us had been injured. A little guiltily, I pulled myself free of the bars, standing on the outside. No need to rub it in his face and carry on with the goal that started the tussle when he was recovering from slight shock.
“You'd get one, too, if you bothered to join us,” I told him, as if that was what bothered him about the presence of the weapon on my person.
His jaw clenched, and he averted his eyes, looking everywhere but me as unknown thoughts swirled about his head.
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