Whisper (5 page)

“I saw it,”
he confirmed, but he looked none too pleased by the phenomenon. If anything, there was concern on his face, but really even that was an ambitious assumption.

I had been charmed for days, until the incident caught up with me and left me shaken. Jay had watched me carefully, measuring my reaction to the horses that I knew, calculating the experimental nature of reintroducing myself to them. Intrigue easily conquered the scare, and soon I was developing my new gift with the horses.

He did not like to go out of his way to acknowledge it, either because it had manifested in a way that scared him or because he was not inclined to grant me a glorified rung above him in the world of horses – or maybe simply in the same manner that he didn't like to talk about anything – but it was enough for me to know that he
knew
. That we shared my secret heightened our bond.

It was a bond first hatched by dumping manure on one another in the stalls, being there for each other's first fall, competing over who could tame horses fastest and teach their own the most tricks, and riding double together to keep warm during the cold months. The only thing we didn't ever do was go for rolls in the hay. The thought was somehow preposterous.

I wondered, as we joined the raider group, if Jay knew I had more up my sleeve than to settle for a mere one-day piggy-back ride, that I contrived to use that unspoken gift of mine in our favor among them. I also wondered if it was better to clue him into the plan, or if he would only disapprove given the chance.

Pulling my coat tighter in the twilight chill, I lengthened my strides to keep up with the military duo. Unlike Jay, they did nothing to accommodate my shorter frame. They meant business, and we were not going to slow them down. My stomach growled, and I rubbed it sympathetically.

Yet, even with their focused trudging, it took longer to reach their camp than I anticipated. Sonya must have had the eye of a paranoid hawk to catch onto us trailing in her wake. I was impressed; also broached by the notion that I was perhaps grossly out of my element in the modern wilderness.

Squirrels scattered as we tromped on their dens. Even the occasional bird flew out of some odd cubbyhole. Glass crunched like snow beneath the Lieutenant's boots.

When I was beginning to wonder if this camp of theirs even existed, we wound about a dune, crested a lip, and saw it. It was nestled at the bottom of the slope, a neat, ambling collection of horses and their camouflage keepers. In a moment of irony, it occurred to me that, had I not insisted on Fly's incompetence in the ranks of this group, I would have been reunited with him that day. I may even have found a way to steal him back. As it was, I could only hope he was finding his way out there. Maybe he would wander back to the place he knew and end up in Tara's possession again, and all along it was reckless and premature of me to leave in such a hurry.

Jay nudged me in the back, and only then did I realize I had paused to take it all in and never come back out of the line of brooding. I picked up the pace again, and we skittered down the slope and into the midst of the Raiders.

The deep, throaty sounds of horses nickering met us as Jay and I were recognized by some of the animals. I could not help but break into a smile as their fondness touched me, as a small piece of how things had been before the raid disrupted them returned to me. Those animals were my friends. They had been my purpose in life for awhile.

Forgetting that we were under new authority and doubtlessly a new set of rules, I slipped right through the ropes of the closest makeshift pen and greeted the palomino housed there. Sunny, a well-tempered young mare. She put her large head over my shoulder and nuzzled my hands, and I stroked her golden face, taking comfort in the exchange.

In the pens beside her were Duke, a gray appaloosa; Cameo, a small bay; Ghost, a spunky flea-bitten gray; and Lake, an exotic-looking blue roan. They tossed their ear-perked heads and flocked around me the best they could from their separate pens, stretching their necks over the ropes to nuzzle my hair.

“Well,” Sonya observed. “If we stick you out in front, we may get some eager, focused progress out of them, instead of their disoriented acting-up. You may be of more use to us as the carrot on the stick in front of our company, rather than picking up manure behind.”

I smiled slightly, humbly, but secretly hoped the first stones were paved.

“We're ready, Lieutenant!” one of the keepers called over.

“Good,” Sonya decreed. “Collapse these pens.” Including us in her next issuance, she said, “Tara's saddles are stacked and tied on the mules.”

They had taken the gear as well. I bit back my criticism. Perhaps seeing my struggle, Jay spoke up on my behalf before I could say anything condemning;

“She doesn't use a saddle, ma'am. And I'd just as soon not inconvenience your efficiency by untangling one for myself.”

“As you like. But we don't stop if you get tossed.”

She doesn't get tossed,
I fancied him saying next, but he wouldn't go that far.

I chose Lake as my mount, particularly fond of her gait. She had a smooth trot and a nice, rocking canter, and was sturdy for a good run if necessary. Her conformation was a little funny, but she was a good mount, and her markings and coloring made up for any beauty-related shortcomings. Jay mounted Sunny – opting to at least employ the aid of a bridle, where I forewent gear entirely – and the Raiders herded us into formation with the rest of the equine stock and drove us out of the camp.

The raiders all carried knives, I noticed. At their waists, thighs, and often even saddles. Where were the machine guns that the stories of old told about? Had ten years of survival without further production rendered the devices extinct? If equestrian-driven wars were raging, I realized that might very well be the case.

Crowding in, the horses bumped against my legs. “We run a tight-knit operation,” Sonya explained from the edges of the herd, apparently watching me. “One gap, and these flighty guys are liable to split – not to mention all of the opportunist creatures out
there
. We've seen horse thieves, large cats, bears...even the occasional gorilla.”

“Gorilla?”

She nodded. “And the large cats in question aren't merely your everyday mountain kitties. We're talking lions, tigers. Hybrids. Ever visit the zoo as a child?” she asked.

It was my turn to nod.

“You can bet they're not operational anymore. All those animals – they're loose now. And they're hungry.”

I hadn't thought about it before, but of course it was true. “Any zebras?” I asked, and she smiled.

“We have a few of our own, actually,” she confirmed. “They may be small, but they're fierce little buggers. We have some ex-jockeys we're training to ride them. Perfect fit.”

I smiled, imagining.

“It's a bit of a circus, but we use what we can.”

“Got room for any more freaks?” I hazarded, seeing an opportunity.

“And what freakish ability do you claim to have on the market?”

“I can whisper to horses.”

She considered me, seeing that I was serious, then shook her head. “What was I just saying about opportunist creatures? And here we are with more of them in our midst than I thought. If you're a horse whisperer, why would Tara let you go so swiftly?”

“I left.”

“And your friend?”

“Jay. He left as well. He...does magic tricks. Makes things disappear.” I might have snickered as I said it, making over Fly's disappearance to Jay's advantage, if guilt had not accompanied the confession. For indeed, it was only a confession in a jester's clothing.

Since I couldn't be that serious about our circus-worthy qualities, Sonya divined that there was more beneath my words. “What does he make disappear?”

I should never have opened my mouth. “Oh, anything. But any self-respecting magician would get upset if their secrets were revealed, so...” I wouldn't look at her after that, afraid she would see right through me and read my thoughts. I couldn't say what they would do if they learned of Jay's treachery, but I didn't imagine sabotaging government procedures was ever a very favorable crime.

The breathtaking country sky was now an ashen tapestry that hung over the land like a smothering cowl. In my younger days it had been spectacular, always a canvas for the most ambitious of painters, alive and fresh and teeming with bird life. It was that vast, free explosion all around, that made every adventure breathless, limitless. But there was no more galloping into the sunset after the earth was pitched into a dipping and diving disarray, after the volcano activity that spewed ash into the heavens, after the impromptu bomb explosions had blown all kinds of matter sky-high. Galloping at all rather hurt the lungs, in many areas.

We trod over windows and shingles and toppled chimney bricks, paintings and bird cages and all manner of things that should never have been underfoot. One of those things was the graffiti. In our time of fallen walls, all the graffiti now lay underfoot – and the quakes had the uncanny tendency to turn the toppled statement blocks belly-up and showcase phrases like '
&*$#
The World
' for all to see like some bad joke.

As we traveled I wondered what towns these places used to be, and how many bodies were trapped and buried there. But we moved through them and moved on, because the dead were dead and the ruins ruined, and reflecting on tragedy created a fog that was not appropriate for blazing our way across the Shardscape.

I became aware of the danger before the rest of the procession; I couldn't help it – I felt it through my legs, in Lake's telltale body language. Her muscles grew taut, and her prance picked up ever so slightly. I watched her ears, ideal radars for danger, and scanned the ruptured earth to the east looking for the source of her distress.

“Lieutenant...” I spoke, and then she began to feel it, too. She held up a hand, halting the procession, and everyone grew rigid surveying the wreckage.

One gravelly warning was all that we had before creatures reminiscent of Sonya's recent tales launched from nooks in the debris and rushed the procession, cat-like blurs ripping across the ground with a deadly silence – the kind that I imagined often made quick work of prey and left no evidence. But the company had encountered as much before, and they had weapons drawn and mounts staked tight in an instant. Man and beast collided, and steel went to work warding off tooth and nail.

“Calm the horses!” Sonya's voice rang out, for the ones that were loose in the middle were not trained for this, and their ranks were pushing outward, panicking, wanting to flee in the face of the attack. The men herding the group pressed tighter inward, but crowding the animals' space did nothing to soothe them. Bodies pressed in against my legs, and horses held their heads high vying for space, jostling against one another. Lake reared slightly, erupting beneath me as someone's haunches backed into her. I sent a series of soothing clicks toward her ears, but the distress of the others was too much.

Casting about for an alternative that didn't exist, I resigned myself to it and slipped from Lake's back, down into the teeming midst of the herd, and began to hum.

Five –

W
hen it was over, they found me wandering among the herd, my eyes all but closed, running my hands over the horses' coats. A soft hum still murmured on my lips, barely a ghost of a spell.

“
Alannis
,” Sonya's voice cracked my trance, sounding as if it were not the first attempt. My eyes fluttered open, and I blinked, disoriented, my hand resting on a chestnut's soft side. The animal was breathing quietly, its eyes cracking languidly at the lieutenant's bark. “That'll do,” Sonya dismissed my efforts.

I left off, issuing a final pat for good measure, as much to cover my awkward recovery as anything. Where had I gone, that I had lost myself so?

A cold breeze stirred through the ranks of the horses, gently lifting their manes and tousling their tails. I shivered, my coat seemingly incompatible with the draft.

Under the gazes of the witness-curious raiders, I remounted and tried to temper the self-consciousness that I suddenly felt as I settled back into my designated position. As we moved off, the horses stepped wide around the bodies of the slain cats, and I caught a glimpse of them. Like cheetahs and lions bred together, lanky and spotted with cheetah faces, but duller in color and sporting mane-like ruffs and tufts on the tips of their tails.
Hybrids.

We set out across the countryside once more, and the rhythm and feel of a horse beneath me, warm and steady and strong, lulled away my discomfort and eased me swiftly back into myself. The only remaining sign of the episode displayed itself in the way Jay would not look at me, and the suppressed dismay that I felt at him taking this part of me the way that he was.