She is terrified. The men, the screams, the explosions and those smells.
God, those smells and noises. The bleeding out your last ounce of blood and breathing in your last ounce of breath. They brought her here, she is strong. Strong for a mare, yeah, yes, indeed, she'll make a good mount.
In battle, it dose not matter how fast you go or smooth you ride, its all about one thing only.
How many bullets you can take.
They aren't expecting to bring you home.
And she's going crazy, she's out of her mind. Let me run! Let me run, please! She screams to the men that still clasp the reins with iron gloves. She rears against their hold, making her head snap and neck bend at a painful angle as her body goes to flee but her head cannot follow. They will never understand, the turmoil, the popping, roasting, spitting pus of anxiety and pure fear that slurps at her bowels. The men can hide behind the sheltering mounds, but she towers, she looks across and sees them lining her up.
The other horses, they were trained for this. She is the last, they are all dead, out there, in the field.
She can never look at open fields the same again, she can never look at men the same again, she can never live the same again.
She is a carriage horse, all her short life hitched to a wagon, all her life feeling like with every step she is dragging the weight of the world with her. Today, among many first, was the first time she felt a man sit upon her back.
Her eyes had rolled, there is a thing, there is a something towering over her and she can just see this monster in the corner of her vision. The whites of her eyes had flashed as they rolled in fear then, later they had been squeezed tight in terror.
She bucked every man that flounced up to her within a heart beat, and they were still struggling with her now.
She is the last because she has not been ridden into death's face yet. And that is the only reason why. Coward.
Yet. And she is in the middle of swearing and vowing to the great gods and pitiful people that she will never step foot out there, she will never let a man sit upon her back and pat her exposed, weak neck. Her jugular all but left to mercy, her blind spot all but perfectly sat upon.
Yet. She violently struggles about, he comes, somehow having avoided her thrashing limbs. She does not have the sense to watch or contemplate him. After all, she is loosing her mind right now.
He does not stop to stroke her like all riders do, no, she dose not even notice him change from at her side to on her saddle.
She knows what he wants, he wants what all the others wanted, to go out there.
And something in her, something snaps, something throes its demonic head up and roars.
Fine, she will take him, and it will be the best damn entrance he ever made. She swirls and charges. Her eyes set on the big black stallion sitting calm on the hilltop far beyond. There is a barricade of spiked posts and, she was a cautious horse, she would never have entertain the idea of risking gutting herself. No horse would, it was an impossible height and width.
But she is not a cautious horse, has she not learned? She is demonic! This is not about the man upon her back! It was never about him!
She leaps and clears it as if soaring is just one of her many small talents.
A horse has never done that before. But of course, she is strong, is she not? She is strong, unusually strong. She is charging into war, not for the man, no, the man never told her anything, he could have wanted to go in the opposite direction for all she cared.
The only sensation feeding into her now, is her hooves pounding, not bothering to avoid the bodies, she churns over them with little care. Her eyes are set beyond, her mind is too far above her body, her ears only hear one sound, and that is of the cannons striking close but missing her speeding form.
They sound like raindrops did against her visors back at home.
The man, he leans on the rains, tearing her sensitive mouth apart as he hides behind her neck. She takes all of his bullets.
Let it rain.
It is raining her blood.
He is gone.
The ground comes, her body is out of control, and in the grass, she waits to die.
She watches him run on.
He has forgotten her already, her body has not even stopped rolling.
She watches the sky, the clouds, the eagle.
She had forgotten him too.
One brave American, lies broken amongst the dead.
Is she America? Does she classify? Dose she want to be?
One brave hero, lies forgotten. And in the middle of night, when everyone has gone, she stands.
And she walks on.
