Low Man's Lyric (solo)

[Whisper]

This solo takes place between the two points in my character's history (eg where time passage is marked by the asterisks). Kudos to anyone who can name the artist of the song title I've used as a title, Without Googling it first ^_~
They did not go far. On military bred horses, they finished the climb before the sliver of moon, hidden by fibrous clouds, had arced but an inch across the Corone sky. At the steppes, Ben tethered the reins without being told and began watering, but he was forced to hurriedly strip bags from the saddles and scramble after a captain whose destinations were becoming increasingly opaque, and that much more difficult to predict. He slid on an incline, teetering beneath heavy, unbalanced weight, and caught his captain's attention. Josen turned, and without a word, took two mechanical steps and lifted half the burden away, then turned once more and proceeded.

The mesa he'd chosen was long and low, crescent, like the moon, and still held the remnants of last night's fire, when they had numbered a full unit and not just the captain and one. Josen shrugged the supplies from his shoulder and paced to the plateau's edge as Ben stroked a new fire. The sparsity of trees would have made this a problem if they hadn't adjusted days ago to collect any tinder which presented itself as they rode. Tonight, fire didn't matter to the captain, however. There would be a big enough one blazing soon, he knew, and he pictured those flames as he adjusted the sight then placed his eye to the glass once again.

The dwelling was there, still seemingly unoccupied. Only the captain and lieutenant knew of the dismembered body that lie within it, but Josen didn't think of that now. He never could allow himself to retain the images after performing the deeds. It distracted him from what he needed to do. Scanning the dirt path then the wider main byway it veined from, Josen discerned that he still a while, so instead of going back to the fire, he sat where he was, scope in his lap and hands on his knees, a well of endless patience.

Ben had tossed the last stick into the slowly expanding flames. He situated the saddlebags, grabbed two leathery sticks of jerky from one, and pondered his captain's closed back as he chewed. They had been in the eastern region of Radasanthia, near the Comb Mountains, for close to a month now. This would be their second consecutive night over the ruins of Old Eli, a garrison which unwisely had been placed too far south and was now reincarnated in the new, larger and better garrisoned Fort Eli up north. There, they had suffered a hold up which nearly cost them their target. Sitting amid the mess hall, at unease already from the uncharacteristically long break, the unit learned they were being held weeks beyond their conscription. They each blinked, but as their eyes met afterward the decision was unanimous and not one was absent the next morning when the captain called them to leave.

After all, this time it was his son, and not just some indiscriminate kid lost in the hills, that they searched for.

Grunting, missing his comrades, lieutenant Archer bundled his arms with oatcakes and waterskin, then lit one of the torches to take with him. As he started down the incline, his captain's voice followed him. "Leave the pale saddled," it said. He didn't bother to ask why. Both he and the other members of the unit had learned the best way to avoid hearing their captain's increasingly cryptic and disturbing replies was simply not to encourage them. All that mattered was that captain had a plan, and that plans meant there was hope, because in a man such as this, hope could be a very dangerous thing to have broken.

The mounts arrived in his view, one light like the captain, with pale mane ans tan body, the other standard Coronian red. Benjamin attended first to the chestnut, not because of favoritism, but because the stallion had found a minute sized clumping of weeds between rocks to chomp upon and the mare was not letting him have at it alone. Clucking his tongue, Ben pulled her away and attended her first with the oats then several handfuls of water before unsaddling her.

Here with the horses, the air was less heavy and breathable. The sadness was not thick around every gaze and syllable. Noses jostled him and muzzles still lipped at the pockets he had carried dried apples in. There was playfulness, something Benjamin had become starved for but was too heavy hearted to initiate by himself. He was accustomed to being the ringleader, the raucous one, not tending to a semi deranged, grieving father who was also friend and his superior who, sunup or sundown, would not be consoled - or pacified. And who, as well, was awaiting for his return by the fire.

"Wait for me here." It was a silhouette Josen spoke to, but he knew the recent permanent features of Ben's face. The gauntness beneath eyes that were dark but now even darker, and the absence of a grin that had been painted above his chin's cleft since his birth. But these were things that were just pebbles upon his mountain of guilt. He was aware of them, but he could feel them no more than a gnat on the back of his heel, though he wanted to. Perhaps more than anything else, if he could feel, he wanted to feel that for his friend. Ben deserved it, he thought, as he began to move purposefully.

"Captain-"

He stopped.

"Watch out for night stingers."

Josen returned. Night stingers, or moon scorpions, were thicker and tougher than their daytime counterparts, with their needles sometimes tough enough to pierce a soldier's leather. During mating season in summer, the males glowed with iridescent light. The rest of the time they were deadly and silent, and only scampered the mesas at night. But this was not the reason Josen had backpedaled. Unclipping the sighting rod from his belt, he handed it to Ben's chest.

"I will," he said, and then he departed.

word count: 1004

[Whisper]

The sky was dark, the road darker, but Josen hardly gave it a notice. He was accustomed to traveling in the shadows now that had light had forsaken him, as if it were unable to exist in the same space as his atmosphere. He rode idly, a careless hand on the reins, only half listening to the steady clip-clopping of his mount's rhythmic shoes on the valley floor, which was generally free of debris and hard packed. There was too much warring within him to give much more attention to a road he had traveled four times in half as many days.

More entrancing was the sensation of numbness. Sometimes liquid, it would coat his insides like ink and add weight to his limbs. Other times it became a black, coiled ball, bouncing around within him, confused of its own presence. And then there was the ticking. The notch of another day gone by without a sign of his son. Seven months, and Josen could feel every single second of them with each and every minute he lived. Sands of time cascaded and collected in the back of his head, where they burned, igniting all other thoughts and leaving only the one.

He would lose him, but he would extract the life, in sick and slow ways, from every breathing body that touched him. The last kill had been fantastic. It had fed, but not satiated, the twisted bloodthirst within him. It had felt good, justified, to twist off fingers before completely severing them, to cause tears, to watch in morbid curiosity as a creature tried to draw air through a hole in its head which was no longer a nose. And it had felt even better because the bastard had lied to him.

The mount lobbed its way through half an old gate, past a series of weathered, half eaten store fronts, and to a section of semi standing homes. He circled one building twice, assuring himself she hadn't returned. Then after tying his mount several invisible meters away, he returned afoot, dropping the fine coil of rope at his feet. After that, he attempted to wait. It proved difficult. If it hadn't been for the uselessness of the glass in the darkness, he wouldn't have been early. He paced; he checked the moon's lean twice and again, sharpened his flint then sharpened his dagger, and then he gave up.

He entered the building. In the arid cusp between spring and summer, the odor was pungent but bearable as he went to work. Striking efficiently, he lit flames first on moth eaten drapes and from there, using dry remnants of fabric, scattered them to the tables, the sills, the beams within reach, the body. He climbed on the roof just to be thorough, but there the smoke stopped him and he retreated, choking, spitting water from both his lips and his eyes as he came back to ground, head spinning. Rolling to the ground, he stayed there. For if he didn't take a moment, he might throw himself into the fire, so burning was the need to be cleansed.

Colors danced, lancing the late midnight sky with jewels of ruby and amber in a hypnotizing way. Black smoke rose up, tickled the bellies of low hanging clouds, and Josen lay on his belly, just watching, and then rose on his feet to watch more, blinking the smoky assault from his eyes. The fire lived and breathed. It grew from a dozen different, licking fingers into one crackling beast. He stood transfixed, and wouldn't have seen her at all if she hadn't screamed first.

"What are you doing!"

He turned his head to see her, enraged on horseback, her screeching louder than the hooves pounding toward him. He was outsized and outpaced, but he was military and she was not. Nor was her mount. Wild eyed, it dumped her to the ground in a single, fire-terrified rear, and left burns across Josen's hand from the reins. The woman bounced up like an spring, tears on an angry loud face, and catapulted. He caught her mid waist, threw her to the ground, gave two swift kicks to key points of her body, then hauled her roughly back up to her feet. She fought still, legs pinwheeling and fingernails scratching. Josen ignored all of this as he hoisted her back to the fence, gave her another dosage of brutal attention, then slipped the noose over her neck and cinched tight. The tug of war that followed ended in a vicious tangle on the ground, her on her belly, he astride and ultimately in control.

He levered the rope somewhat loose. "Give me your hands."

She didn't, of course, and this erupted into yet another test of power and wills, both of which Josen possessed in spades. He broke her down into a choking, sobbing, bruised mass and eventually got his way. He bound her hands and tethered her to the fence post, ignoring the spittle that landed waist-wards and the less offensive stream of colorful, unladylike names she accosted him with. There was no expression, and no words, as he went to collect his horse. The animal, unlike hers had been, had been flame trained. It snorted as he approached and danced on its reins, but calmed when Josen seated himself in the saddle, insinct outdone by training, and trotted obediently back to his victim.

She'd not managed to make sense of his knots, which was good because he'd designed them that way, but she wore new tears and the sobs when she kicked him were rich; there was anguish in the 'bastards' that fell from her lips. All of it bounced harmlessly off his facade as he untrussed her from the fence, slung her over the saddle's horn, then kicked his horse into a gallop. Behind them, the inferno popped and spread its limbs, engulfing half a home in a fire that no one would mourn.

Beyond the smoke was sky, fast evolving to twilight, so Josen rode quickly because he knew that Ben worried. His passenger's comfort, or lack thereof, had little to do with the gaits he chose or his conduct over the reins. Purple streaked across the horizon as he neared the mesa, its short climb, and its campfire. Josen reached the top huffing, lumped his burden gracelessly on the ground and staked her there before regarding his lieutenant, whose arms were crossed below a furrowed brow.

"His wife?"

Josen nodded, confirming more or less what was unnecessary, and strode across the fire.

Ben studied the captive and her disarray of dark hair, her mangled green dress, the fear and resignation in red and blackening eyes. He lifted his gaze to then study the captain, hastily fighting the ties of a bedroll, then without further thought on the matter, went to find a suitable stone to rest his back against for the watch.