66 I Am Not Voice. Voice Is Sanity

It was a nightmare built of ice and silence, a peculiar ringing silence in his ears as he strained toward the ford.

The one bandit whose gun blew up instead of firing, leaving him writhing in scarlet splotch in the middle of the field of white, much darker than the wool fringes on the elephant’s jackets, squawling in the centre of the red mark.  The dark clot of bandits whose guns had fired or misfired, he couldn’t count them at this distance, setting plug bayonets even as the Cylak bore down on them, the deer only slipping a little on the ice at the ford.  It was frozen solid enough to carry them, perhaps all the way to the bottom.

Some bandits fleeing as their ambush failed and it turned into a stand-up fight.  Ahrimaz could see the tiny figure on Didara’s back apparently kneeling but he hurled his ammunition in a sling whipping around his head.  The iti-igi, always good at hurling rocks, ran through Ahrimaz’s head.  That had happened in the other world, according to both elephants, before Diadara had died.

Nightmare pounding, the Cylak he’d brought, Pel pulling his carbine in the brutal spray of ice shards his doe kicked up as they poured past him.  Yustiç -- the mare -- The horses could only go so fast on ice… no no no, Gods do you punish me to see Diadara take her fatal wound?  Instead of saving her? No, no no  It was a thunder of no and his blood pounding in his head and then, Ologbon… it must be him if it was Diadara… running out of rocks, dumping the basket next to him, full of glittering shards, making her even harder to see as she trumpeted and spun.

Bandit after bandit was hurled into the frozen ground as the elephants joined the fray.  Each step killed another man, their leggings soaked dark.

Yustiç stopped, plunging and rearing, refusing to go any further, Ahrimaz jammed his bootheels viciously into her sides and she went down and rolled.  He managed to fling himself clear and the other horses of the Guard all around, bucked and balked and some threw their riders and ran back down the road.  Elephants.  These horses had never seen elephants before.

His slick-soled boots skidded on the icy road and his greatcoat billowed around him and he saw… he saw in the middle of the battle… a bandit roll out from under an elephant foot about to smash him into slush, rose to one knee, jabbed up under Jagunjagun’s armpit with the broken bayonette.  “NO!”

Jagunjagun spun, the man flew against Didara and she snatched him up with her trunk and flung him into a boulder at the edge of the ford.

The hideous, glorious, longed-for sounds of fighting and men dying. Screams and gunshots and deer bellowing suddenly rushed into Ahrimaz’s head as he finally, finally got to the fight.  To find it over.  His head was full of the taste of blood and he grinned from ear to ear.

“welcome, rummmummmalos,” he could feel his words rumbling through his feet as the last of the Cylak escort came back from trying to chase stragglers, giving up as a deer went through the ice, and into mud below.  “You do your Queen proud.”

“thank you.  Who are you who know us?”  Diadara spoke, swaying and distressed.

“Ah-rummmm-aaaaz.” He gave his name the best roll he could.  All around he could hear the Captain, and Pel, cleaning up the blood and shit stinking mess.  “Are you injured? Do you need assistance?  We should get our injured back to shelter.  There is a village not far.”

“I…am Didara the curious and this is jagunjagun and our iti-igi ologbon. I am uninjured—“

“I am hurt, I think,” Jagunjagun said.  ‘that iti-igi hurt me.”

“Ahrimaz, we’ve mostly got thing together, we can take the injured back to Champ,” Pel stood next to Ahrimaz gazing up at the bloody, distressed, now quiet elephants above, like mountains rocking.  “We need to get out of this cold.”

Ahrimaz nodded.  “Pel, yes, I…” He reached out a hand, almost blindly to snatch at Etienne’s sleeve and drag him toward JagunJagun.  “Surgeon.  He is injured.  See to him first.”  Then all his words stopped.  He shuddered at the taste of blood in his mouth, frozen on the edges of his scarf where the mare, Yustiç, had slammed her head into his face.  His mind splintered into a thousand pieces, like the chips of glass and he watched through the thousand faceted eyes of a fly as he caught and calmed Yustiç, petted Heylia and Teh and Sure who all three helped round up the Horse Guard’s fleeing mounts.

I cannot speak. I must not speak. If I speak this shattering will carry through my whole body and I will fall apart like an ice statue. I hear them… Ologbon can speak our tongue. I am swimming in all the blood I ever spilled, rubbed my face into, bathed in, washing my pain away with other people’s screams. I am not whole and I was shattered by what the Monster my Father made me do, over and over and over again until I needed pain to function.  I am blood. I AM shit. I AM the battlefield. I am not Voice. Voice is sanity.