Whisper (16 page)

Whisper to him,
a distant part of me urged, but there was no room to make an attempt between the snarls and the screams. Otherwise, it might have been worth a try.

I was entirely too hysterical, in his grasp, to actually be aware of what he was doing to me. Trying to do to me. Succeeding in doing to me. I was just one big frantic tangle of resistant limbs, fighting it, doing everything I possibly could to deter the moment of being ripped to shreds. He grunted and snarled and wrestled with the unruly force that I proved to be in his arms, struggling for superior purchase, striving to get me in line.

Then a peculiar third participant intervened, striking from the shadows. I heard an additional clatter of rubble, and the next thing I knew the gorilla was lurching, faltering, being beaten by something else. His iron hold slackened, and he turned, distracted, to address the intruder.

Distantly, I was aware of lights coming on in the camp across the field. They were like fireflies, little beacons so far away, but small sparks of hope to my plight. They had heard me. They would come for me.

Not caring what had intervened, I scrambled to get away over the flat of land I had reached, latching onto my brief grant of freedom.

The primate did not take kindly to losing his victims, though, and he charmed his own way out of his assailant's reach and lunged to retake me. His hold closed around my ankle, tripping me.

My chin hit the dirt, and stars cascaded across my vision. Then I was being dragged backwards, flipped over. It was dizzying, disorienting, and my vision still hadn't cleared. I caught a glimpse of those red eyes, the human-like black jaws with fangs, and something larger rising up behind the threat posed against me. But was it rising, or was it rearing? Were those hammers, or hooves?

Whichever they were, they beat down on my assailant, stalling him again. There was a squeal, a snort, as the third creature in the mix fought on my behalf.

I blinked the stars from my eyes, flipped myself over again. A second time, I strove to escape, crawling forward across the ground. And this time, the gorilla turned to defend himself in earnest, and the two creatures began to duke it out behind me. I scrambled through the brush, clumsily trying to get to my feet.

The sound of disturbed rubble ceased, morphing into the swish of brush, and I knew the tussle behind me had made its way onto new ground –
my
ground. I could just as easily get trampled in its path as personally pulled back into its midst.

I tripped the next time all on my own, falling flat on my own fool stomach again. The quarrel rustled dangerously close to my resting place, but I hauled myself crudely out of range, and then the sound of it was veering away in another bearing. I risked a glance over my shoulder, desperate to place them.

I caught a visual of that loping primate body entwined with a larger, four-legged one, and could hear the occasional thump of a hoof-beat in the grasses.

Then someone's hands were hauling me up, spiriting me away. I tore my eyes from the fight, focusing instead on finding my footing. Camouflage flashed at the corner of my vision, beside me, and only moments passed before we ran headlong into the midst of additional silhouettes, armed and staked throughout the brush on their way to rescue me.

I breathed a breathless sigh – more like an exhaling gasp – of relief, delivered back into safe hands.

“Don't shoot,” I gasped at one of them when I saw the bow and arrow in his hands. He let the string go slack, wondering at my command.
There's a horse out there,
I thought. Defending me.

And, gradually, the sounds of a fight died down across the grassy distance. The snarls grew fainter, becoming baritone whimpers, and then there was only the sound of hooves pounding something, repeatedly, before there was no more sound at all.

The armed soldiers glanced amongst themselves, exchanged some sort of signal, and moved forward to investigate while the one towing me took me safely back to camp. He deposited me outside of one of the tents, turning his eyes prudently to our perimeter. It seemed my screams had awakened everyone, I saw as I looked about; they all stood about looking anxious.

Jay strode up, knelt beside me. His hand went to the back of my neck, as if to cradle me, but his eyes addressed the soldier. “What happened?”

“Something attacked her,” the other man replied, and, seeing nothing of his fellow men or any creatures having tracked us back to camp, he looked to me. “What were you doing out there?”

'Sleepwalking' would do nothing to save me any dignity, but I didn't know what else to tell him. “It was a gorilla,” I said instead, answering Jay. I leaned back against the tent – and his hand – and closed my eyes, drawing on my composure. “It was affected like the Demon Mounts,” my mouth kept working. “Altered, and...fearsome.”

“There was something else,” the soldier added, and I opened my eyes.

“It saved me,” I confirmed.

“What?” Jay wanted to know, trying to make sense of the whole thing.

I recalled the brief glimpses I had gleaned, solidifying the conclusion I had come to out there in the heat of things. “A horse,” I said, a little incredulous now that I had the presence of mind to think about it.

Jay, however, did not seem surprised – at least, not enough that it was worth showing it. It was almost as if he could have expected as much. After everything else he'd seen with me, it was just following the pattern, wasn't it?

The other soldiers returned to camp after awhile, and they all compared notes. They confirmed that it had been a gorilla – 'had been' being the key phrase. It was dead, now – pounded into the ground. There was no sign of the horse.

“There was a horse,” I whispered to Jay, staunch in my position, when his eyes consulted me. And I knew he believed me.

*

We rolled into camp in K.S. Territory after a taxing second-half journey and pitched our lot with the others. That brewing horizon drew my eyes like a magnet, but it was quiet and barren, nothing but a trampled memory paving the way for other battles to come. Soon enough it would flicker with heat-wave marching figures, an impending mirage that would quickly become all too real.

There was no time to lose. When the others went to sit down for evening grub, I pulled Toby away to the corrals, and we got to work on the horses. Nobody intervened to insist on any kind of order – in truth, Toby started up his tricks without anyone taking much notice at all, for they blended right in with the campfires in the background. A task made almost cozy, except the horses didn't think so.

I worked as peacemaker between the pyro-man and the equine, ignoring the growling of my stomach. It was impossible to have an appetite at a time like this, anyway. I couldn't imagine how the others could eat, except that it was probably necessary to feed their strength before battle.

The horses were beginning to respond well to our tutelage. It seemed I was finding the words, in the language of the equines, to communicate the idea of coming to terms with the great beast that was fire. I could not say to any human being what those words were, for they did not translate, but I was beginning to see in my own way the paths that I needed to repave with whispers, the same way wind buries and uncovers streets – whole cities, even – in the deserts of the world. The same way water carves a cave into rock.

Yes, I can hear the ocean.

One trainee, a stony gray mustang-type with a smokey mane and tail, took to the idea of defying flame so well that he practically dared Toby to come closer, only tossing his head in mild aggravation to keep his face out of range as Toby treaded nearer and nearer and blew spurts right up to the animal's throat.

Afterward, the mustang sported singed hair down his neck and chest, an effect that only complimented his already-smokey coat, and thus he was dubbed Char. A fitting name for a warhorse. And this one, looking at him after the session, I could safely say I had found one whom I thought just might have it in him.

The Lieutenant came by, later, and I turned to her with a keen sense of success swelling in my chest, intent on announcing itself. “This one,” I said. “If any of these horses have what it takes, he does. He needs to be at the front of the line, wherever you need the most damage done.”

“We have a special one on our hands?” she asked, interested. She rested her wrists on the top rail, looking in.

I followed her gaze, considering Char. The nearby flames glinted in his eyes – but not in the fiery, wild way that I'd seen in many. In his, it just looked like keen, bold embers.

“There's no fear in him,” I confirmed thoughtfully. “I've seen it before, in some wild ones. The mustangs that have roamed free for so long... They're programmed survivors. Built for hardship. They've killed wolves and crushed wildcats, outrun wildfires...” I turned back to her, a shared sense of sacred pride displayed in my voice. “They've gone against the grain and developed a frightful sense of confidence because of it. I imagine this one has done all that and more. He thinks the world ought to bow to him. Fire seems to be a minor inconvenience he can just as soon stomp into ashes when he's had enough of it getting in his face.”

The lieutenant nodded, looking thoughtfully pleased. “Sounds promising. Let's have him ready to go.”

“There's only one problem,” I said, running my eyes over Char's stance. He was standing patiently, but poised – like a god, who had all the time in the world – in the corner of the pen. “He isn't broken.”

*

“
Well, shouldn't things that aren't broken be the easiest to fix?” was Sonya's response to the obvious conundrum, but I had to tell her it wasn't going to be as easy as that. This was not a horse who was going to submit to just anyone – and certainly not on short notice, under pressure. That defiance was too well established. That independence was too keen. I would do my best, of course, but he wasn't going to be ready. The next round was marching closer, and I could whisper to Char to my heart's content, but I couldn't nail anything into him, not by then.

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.”