Whisper (15 page)

There was some murmur that I couldn't make out, probably something meant to calm him down, from one of the soldiers. But it only succeeded in drawing a loud,

“Oh yeah, like hell,” from the still-aggravated Jay.

Another murmur, this one sounding somewhat like a suggestion, followed by an immediate,

“Damn straight, I'm going. Or is hypocrisy what you got out of this?” I could hear the unmistakable sound of his boots as they began to plunk back toward the door, disgusted, and for a moment I was torn between fleeing so I wouldn't be caught and playing it off as if I were just walking up. He was out of that office before I could process a verdict, though, and so I just stood there as he strode out down the aisle. He couldn't miss me, but he made no acknowledgment, said nothing as he passed me up. It couldn't have been his plan that I would hear, but Jay would not be ashamed of his behavior. He was what he was, and had always been such. If he meant what he said, why take it back or try to smooth it over?

But now I was coming up with my own feelings of dismay and responsibility. Jay going to war too? Because of me? I turned on a heel, following him out of the barn. I found him already readying a horse for himself.

“Jay, you don't have to do this.”

He glanced at me, once, just barely. “What are you talking about?”

“This.” I gestured to his task. “You don't have to...
go
.”

Now, he did look at me – full-on, eyes aflame with impatience. “Oh, don't I?” he asked sarcastically. “Well thanks for letting me off the hook. Now that you've relieved me of that obligation, maybe I'll go read a book instead. Thanks for talking some sense into me where the others that shouldn't have bothered failed miserably as well. Mind your own business, Willow.”

“Jay... If you go... That just doubles our chances of one of us getting killed in the fray.”

He blinked at me, eyes still hard. “That's a stupid way to look at it,” he decreed, and turned back to what he was doing.

I didn't have any good arguments, except the same ones he might have turned on me, and with the same desperation, so I let my lips resign themselves to silence on the matter. We would both be going to war, and that was that. I had no choice, and Jay had made one of his famous one-way decisions. I would do well to simply get myself ready.

I went to make sure Lake was prepared, checking her over with a thorough eye. She seemed to be in good form, so I patted her on the neck and went to find Toby. He was in the tack room readying his own gear. Tightening gas cans and binding his torches into a single bundle.

“Ready for another round?” I asked. I half wanted to lean against the door frame, just to achieve a casual illusion leading up to the ordeal ahead, but I couldn't quite bring myself to cheapen it that way.

He shrugged. “Half a dozen more riding lessons under my belt, anyway. That's something. Thanks to you.”

“Well I don't promise that my human tutelage counts for much. I'm strictly horses.”

A little grin perked the corner of his mouth. “Well maybe if you tried whispering to
me
in our next session instead of yelling at me so much, you'd find an additional niche.”

“Ha. You couldn't hear me, underneath the 'whoa, whoa, WHOAA' commentary you like to employ so much.”

He made a noise of agreement, bending back over his knot. “What about you?” he asked. “Are you ready?”

I ducked my head. “More upset about it, this time. Actually knowing what it's like, it's...harder anticipating it. But also...Jay's coming.”

“I thought you two were thick as thieves.”

“He's mad.”

“Ah. And thieves don't get mad at one another?”

“We're – complicated together.”

“Well. I'm no practicing expert on war, but I do hear it's wise to leave your personal life at home. Complicated or otherwise.”

A sad, wry smile touched my lips. “If I had a home, Toby, I might have such a luxury.”

*

When I walked by the tents that night, Toby and Lady Alejandra were hanging out in front of her canvas hut. Toby was smoking something (how appropriate). I nodded and shrugged my coat higher onto my shoulders, walking on by. I was about to duck into my tent when a familiar drawl made me take pause. It was drifting to my ears from the few corrals nestled behind the tents, and I was beginning to learn that wherever that sweet twang was flapping its gums, Jay was likely to be close by.

The opportunist in me hesitated, wanting to eavesdrop. I was curious how Jay was really faring, and wondered if I might gain some alternate insight where talking to someone other than me was concerned.

“Well are you her body-guard?” Cambrie was asking.

“She and I go back a long ways, Cambrie,” Jay replied.

“I mean no disrespect, but there are soldiers better suited to protect her.”

“It's more than that.”

“How long will you be gone?”

“Your guess is as good as mine, if I don't get my head blown off.”

There was a pause, and I pictured her pretty face turning distraught. “That's rough talk, Jay.”

“Well, like you pointed out – I'm no soldier.”

“If you...come back in once piece, I can take a rain-check on helping you with the horses, can't I?”

“Rain-check,” Jay confirmed.

“Please don't get your head blown off, Jay.”

“If 'please' is all it takes, I'll be sure to try that with the guy that points a gun in my face.”

With that, the conversation seemed to be over. I felt a moment of triumph for Jay blowing off Cambrie to go where I was going, but only until I remembered where I was going, and then I'm sure I shared her dismay. After all, my designated job in a combat zone was still only to ready the horses. I wasn't entirely sure Jay knew what he was asking for showing up as a unit of raw manpower needing to be directed. There were too many dangerous positions to be filled for his chances of 'put me where you need me' to be good. If he showed up as an un-designated volunteer, he could quickly land himself a sacrificial first-row seat in the line of fire.

Fourteen –

W
hen we rode out, Jay rode away from the pack. Clearly, he was not trying to cozy up with the soldiers – he wasn't there to boast any entitlement, or to try to prove anything. He didn't
want
to be one of them. But he was going, for other reasons. Jay always had his own reasons.

I rode with Toby instead, giving him pointers on his riding as we went. He wasn't a natural, but was coordinated enough, as a fire-torch-wielder, that he could manage without looking like a complete idiot. That was more than could be said about some people. He may bounce around a bit, but he didn't lose control of his mount while he did so.

When I was not engaged like so with active tasks, I could not keep myself from dipping into that other spaced-out world. Reality could not hold me. It had become oil on the water of that other depth, a rainbow prism shimmering on a surface that I was sinking away from. I could see it there, far above me, but it was muted and so very distant.

Then something would shake me out of it, and like water spilling away after a submersion I would stumble through the shallows, and blink around me, wondering what shore I had washed up on. The waves would sway around me for a moment, until I realized that sea-like motion was actually my horse rocking beneath me. Disoriented, I would try to swim out of it, dizzy for a few moments before the land came into focus. Then I would catch my breath, remembering to breathe here where there was air.

“Don't worry,” Toby said, apparently seeing some ill or grim look on my face. “We survived once – how hard can once more be?” He smiled reassuringly. “It'll blow over just the same.”

Just the same... That was all good and well for us, if he was right, but he didn't fully understand. 'Just the same' meant that
how
many more horses would die? I was only glad I
didn't
know the number.

Because that would be the number of soul mates that I lost every time.

*

When there was no protective arena to find myself curled up in, the sleepwalking was not always such a good thing. My eyelids fluttered open to a disorienting landscape, dark and breeze-swept and marked by rubble. I blinked, but was not quite awake enough yet to shiver in the cold.

We had not camped in the rubble. We had passed some, not long before pitching our tents, but a stretch of wilderness lay between us and it. Usually, I did not walk so far without awakening, without becoming aware of my surroundings, my destination, my intentions.

Something stirred in the rubble. My bleary eyes darted to it, uselessly in the dark, and I wondered just what fantasy had prompted my feet to come back here. Surely there was nothing here worth seeing. Swallowing, I convinced myself to turn back without further ado. It would be fruitless to follow through with any intrigue; and by 'fruitless', I meant – I didn't like the sound of that thing shuffling in the rubble.

Finding my balance, I turned atop the pile of debris that I had alighted on in my sleep.

But the thing shifted again, and, provided with further evidence of its substance, I found I was not overly keen on turning my back on it after a second warning. Faltering, I faced the direction of the noise again, torn between getting the heck out of there and exposing my back, and remaining in its stirring presence.

I had not made up my mind when a shadow moved. My focus jerked toward it, trying to track its movement. There were so many shapes and shadows, though, and I swiftly lost the grasping visual I had gleaned.

Something rattled, like gravel dislodged to rain through the cracks of debris, and then plinked down the side of some pile.

I backed up a step, as it became increasingly clear to me that I was not alone out here. My eyes were in no hurry to adjust to the dark.

Another sound bounced off the quiet. Closer? It began to pick its way across the rubble with more consistency, sounding a bit like a dog digging through garbage. One of the hybrid cats, perhaps? Scavenging for scraps or some dead body buried in the wreckage?

A moment later I could hear its breaths. Definitely coming closer.

Coming dangerously close.

I stole a glance over my shoulder, trying to pinpoint some sign of camp. Just how far was it? If I tried to make a break for it, would I only end up being overtaken in a scant few strides, downed out here in the wilderness where no one would soon trace me?

When I turned back to the ruins underfoot, all intelligent deliberation fled the scene, however. The noise had paused – but it was because the culprit stood before me, staring me in the face. Hot breaths and glaring red eyes.

The rest of its body blended mostly with the night, making conclusions beyond
'Dear God...'
scarce in my mind. Dumb theories skittered through the thought that I could compose, until I at least recognized the family that this creature belonged to. It was a
primate
. Only after I recalled Sonya's words about gorillas did I realize that was the creature that stood before me.

My throat went abruptly dry. The creature huffed its vile breath in my face, glaring with its fiery eyes – eyes like those the Demon Mounts saw the world through. Out of the corner of my vision, I could make out the contours of the beast's bulging muscles beneath its grungy coat of fur. This thing could grab me with its capable hands and deliver any kind of fate it saw fit with those brutal, dominant arms. Did it have an appetite for human flesh? I was fairly certain a mere bout of temper would do. No appetite required, here. Looking into those eyes, I felt as thought I had twanged his angry nerves simply by coming to exist in his line of sight. The line of sight that was his kingdom.

I dragged in a shallow, painstaking breath, willing myself to melt into nothing. But it seemed breathing was an offense equal to any other, and suddenly the creature snarled in my face, beating a fist once against his chest before I scattered at one sign of those hands coming off the ground.

He was after me like a shot, roaring in my wake, enraged at my nerve to pick up my feet and run. I scrambled over the rubble, my life in my throat, knowing I would never make it across that stretch of wilderness but unable to cancel the endeavor now.

I was all too aware of him bounding on my heels, and as I careened over the debris he sent each piece of it crashing and sliding behind me. I had just launched myself from the last pile, aiming for that sweet, flat ground, when a crushing fist closed around my arm, seizing me mid-leap. I screamed as he wrenched me around, opened his roaring black jaws in my face. My suspended legs kicked at him, my feet clawing at his chest. I wrenched and writhed and fought to free myself, my shrieks ringing out across the dark.