[This situation, Paul decides, is untenable. This memory is too dangerous, this soldier not prepared for it. Paul isn't prepared for it, forced into vulnerability by its constraints. He catches the boy's weight easily, biting the tip of his tongue as it jars his shoulder, and thinks that at least he doesn't have to shed more blood as he reaches for the threads of power to pull them sideways and clear of this false reality until the stag comes to signal its end -
- and they slip from his reach like darting minnows, and it's then the fear comes. He seizes it by the throat as it rises, forces it back down, but now, he's really here, present in the moment, and this moment is going to kill them both if he doesn't stop trying to play with new toys.
Everything clarifies. The biting sting of bomb-smoke in the eyes, the stink of bodies burst and broken, the sounds of a war being fought in a frenzied confusion of crude projectiles.
He pulls the boy down with him and more drags than guides him to the closest cover, the bombshell crater. He sets him against the edge closest to where the shots are being fired from, as protected as possible, and pulls a rifle (he lost his, somewhere in the blast) from a dead man's hand. It's a primitive weapon, but not difficult to understand, and he leans his back against the dirt next to the boy and checks it for damage. His voice is clipped and direct:]
Where's your fallback position? And don't you dare pass out on me.
[The head injury has to have something to do with it, Paul theorizes, and finds the bullets in his soldier's kit. The rifle is still loaded, unfired, but if he needs more he won't be left wanting. If he lets the boy fall unconscious he can't predict what will happen. (He's so small, his body so light.)]
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- and they slip from his reach like darting minnows, and it's then the fear comes. He seizes it by the throat as it rises, forces it back down, but now, he's really here, present in the moment, and this moment is going to kill them both if he doesn't stop trying to play with new toys.
Everything clarifies. The biting sting of bomb-smoke in the eyes, the stink of bodies burst and broken, the sounds of a war being fought in a frenzied confusion of crude projectiles.
He pulls the boy down with him and more drags than guides him to the closest cover, the bombshell crater. He sets him against the edge closest to where the shots are being fired from, as protected as possible, and pulls a rifle (he lost his, somewhere in the blast) from a dead man's hand. It's a primitive weapon, but not difficult to understand, and he leans his back against the dirt next to the boy and checks it for damage. His voice is clipped and direct:]
Where's your fallback position? And don't you dare pass out on me.
[The head injury has to have something to do with it, Paul theorizes, and finds the bullets in his soldier's kit. The rifle is still loaded, unfired, but if he needs more he won't be left wanting. If he lets the boy fall unconscious he can't predict what will happen. (He's so small, his body so light.)]