Old Green World by Walter Basho Page B

how we are going to march your troops forward.”
    The next morning, the sisters left with a few soldiers. The troops packed up and set out again, wearier than before they made camp.
    It should have been only a day or two more to get to their destination: Lutetia, the Old City of the Baixans. It took longer. There were fewer attacks from Baixans under thrall, but still four or five a day, with up to twenty in each attack. The enthralled Baixans attacked viciously, breaking limbs and wounding soldiers, but they had lost their ability to surprise. The troops had learned to put a phalanx around the Adepts quickly, to separate the savages from each other, to hold them down and tie them together, to leave them tied in the forest.
    “Do you think they’ll starve?” Aengus asked.
    “I don’t care. I hope so. Why? Are you worried about them?”
    “No, of course not,” Aengus said. “I’m tired of this, though. They’re trying to wear us down.”
    “I don’t know, I think they’re actually doing us a favor. We’re getting better at this, aren’t we? You can feel when they’re coming, can’t you?”
    Aengus paused for a second. “I can. They make sounds well before they get here. A distinctive rustle, back in the woods. I can hear them earlier and earlier.”
    “Exactly. We’ve learned to be on our guard. We’ve learned how to work together. We know how to subdue them and win without using more energy than we have to. We’re learning to be less afraid and more at home with this, aren’t we? It’s not wearing us down, just letting us practice. Warming us up.”
    Aengus gave a little smile to Albert. He looked more relaxed than he had in a while.
    Albert smiled back for a moment, and then said to Aengus, “We’re ready. We’re ready to wipe them off the face of the fucking world.”
    Aengus stared at him in shock, then turned away. “We should stay alert,” he said.
    They had gotten so deeply into the forest that everywhere was just the forest, all around them and forever, as deep as it was going to get. They hacked through brush up to their chests. The canopy above covered them for miles and miles. No one had seen the sun for weeks now.
    During the day, Albert and Aengus didn’t look at each other, didn’t talk. At night, they grabbed and gnawed at each other with desperation. Their tent was like a small burning box where everything they felt and feared each day could burst out. In this container they could only damage each other. Albert clung to Aengus with every nerve, and Aengus to him. They desperately needed to be like everything around them, vast and chaotic, cruel and seething with life.
    They finished. Aengus pushed himself away from Albert. “I don’t want to feel like this anymore.” He broke into sobs. “I want to go home.”
    “I don’t . . . what did I do?” Albert said, and then, as an afterthought, “I’m sorry.”
    “You don’t . . . you’re different now. You used to be tender. You used to need me. Now all you need is to feel like a soldier, and a citizen. And you want to kill. You crave it, when did you start craving it? I miss you. You’re right here, but I miss you. You don’t have to be like this.”
    “You aren’t making any sense. This is me. What do you want? Do you want me to pretend that we’re still farm boys, or in school? I act like a soldier because we’re soldiers. I act like I do because we’re surrounded by thousands of Baixans, who kill us as soon as we drop our guard. Did you manage to notice that? I’m acting how we have to act. We have a mission.”
    “ You have a mission! You do. You want to chop your way through all this. I don’t have a mission. I don’t know what any of this is for. Deep down, I don’t think you do either. I think you just want to become some sort of war hero and impress everyone, so that you can go home and make Thomas love you.”
    Albert just glared at him.
    “Because you love him, and you’re always going to, and . .