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trumpet, but the warrior is aware that it could be a recording, a set of artificially generated waves transmitted through a megaphone. Simulacra are easier to utilize than the real thing on the battlefield, the captain had told him once, during one of his more lucid periods. The word simulacra had an ominous bite to it. The captain had gone missing for three days now. It happened in the middle of the night, in the midst of this latest foray, flash bombs piercing the sky on all sides of them, their forces in disarray, members of platoons finding themselves in the midst of squads that hailed from three provinces away, no one giving a damn about orders or structure or rank, cooperation reduced to essentials -- places to shit, places to sleep, food to eat. The warrior  |
approved of this. Everyone must attain his own merit. The captain had had enough. You fools! he whispered that night, his face scratched and bleeding from some fall he had taken. They can see you! They're coming from below! He pressed his face to the ground, hard, so hard that the stones cut him, fresh rivulets of blood running down his cheeks. Hypersensitive in his madness, like animals who can divine the coming of natural catastrophes, he stated that the enemy were in the very soil. When the warrior laid a hand on his shoulder, he rolled away, hands to his face, perhaps imagining he was on fire, and then he was up on his feet and running at full speed, over the ridge and down towards the valley floor, towards enemy lines, his hands flat and  |
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