Fear. My temporary reprieve was up - the wave was rising again.
What the hell are you doing here? it asked. Why did you leave home?
… …!
Every hair on my body was standing on end.
Why did you obey him?
…? …! …!
Well, welcome to the Valley of Death, soldier boy! They've got a warm place for you where you're going.
In times like these, fear does not simply niggle at you from the back of your skull or even shout at you from the frontal lobes. It becomes you. It appropriates your nerves for its own ends and takes full charge of your nervous system, moving inwards from your fingertips to the spinal column. Your muscles get frightened before your mind can catch up and realize that it's about to send the body into a trap.
The only remedy that I had at my disposal against natural impulses of self-preservation was a trick I had taught myself a couple of months earlier, after a particularly bloody skirmish left one of my closest comrades without an arm (and within several hours feverish, and within several days dead).
You still have time. Turn around! Turn around before they spot you!
/Calm down, sssh, calm down, lay – lay back down.../
I discovered that the key to conserving both your honor and your sanity lies in self-automatization. A divorce of thought from action is needed. If one simply removes the brain from its command center, fear will have nowhere to turn for exercising control. The muscles may become frightened before the brain, but they cannot execute a roundabout without its sanction. Switch it off, and suddenly your frightened body no longer longs to make a dash for the relative safety of the trees, because it no longer perceives trees or understands safety. All you are left with is a hunk of ice in place of a stomach and slight tremors in the knees and fingers, and that can be overcome if one simply picks up some moving speed.
That little guy looks far more formidable up close than he did from a hundred feet away, eh? Look at that bayonet! It's so long and shiny and poised perfectly to sink into your belly…
/It'll be fine, Sasha, it's just me, and this is going to be over soon, I promise./
The metaphor that has always aided me in rescuing my mind from this pernicious influence was that of a smith of Herculean proportions hammering away at an anvil. Even now as I ride the Cossack's horse towards the group of three Russians armed with sharp bayonets, my useless rifle discarded, I imagine becoming that smith and lifting the enormous hammer above the anvil to bring it downwith all my superhuman might upon a red-hot horseshoe – once, twice, thrice, in rhythm with the blood pounding in my ears. When my arms begin to ache with the weight of the hammer and the resistance of the iron scrap, and as the smoke-veiled silhouettes grow sharper and sharper, I take a deep stomach breath and let my Self slide down my arms and into the hammer.
The fear leaves me along with the sense of Personhood.
/Is he choking?
/No, his airway is clear. I don't even know what's going on anymore. Hold him while I get a towel./
"Zdorovo, rebyata!" I roar to my three hapless horseshoes, barely hearing my own voice over the explosions.
They see the fur-lined Cossack overcoat on my shoulders and lower their weapons all the way to the ground. Points down. The one in a brown cap screams something in reply, waving his arm in the direction of the bombs and bullets.
I rise in time with the beating of my heart and surge downwards. The horseshoe folds under the force of my stroke, headless. The other two barely register the blood pouring by the bucketful out of their mate before my next fall catches the lad, who grabs reflexively the reins of the horse
/Hold his right arm, hold his arm, he might hurt himself/
and I roll off onto my third horseshoe, who tightens his grip around the rifle impotently, his arm broken below the elbow by my knee. The hatred in his eyes could burn up a man, but there are no men here. There is a hammer and now three broken horseshoes, the last one with head lolling to the side at an unnatural angle.
I stand up, trying to calm the tremors in my legs, and collapse against the cannon, retching. It's over. I did it. The cannon is ours. Let Captain Mont St. Jean choke on it.
I hear the whistle of the low-flying mortar and dive, swearing to myself that I will never again…
The world turns red and dissipates in a colossal shower of needle-sharp metal sparks.