You consort with mysteries

From In Pharaoh's Army: Memories of the Lost War by Tobias Wolff. Page 96. At a briefing, Wolff and another lieutenant are standing by a general as reports are received about a patrol in trouble. The general turns to the lieutenant most immediately near him, the other lieutenant, and asks him to go out and help the patrol. The other lieutenant does so and is killed.

Wolff reflects.

In a world where the most consequential things happen by chance, or from unfathomable causes, you don't look to reason for help. You consort with mysteries. You encourage yourself with charms, omens, rites of propitiation. Without your knowledge or permission the bottom-line caveman belief in blood sacrifice, one life buying another, begins to steal into your bones. How could it not? All around you people are killed: soldiers on both sides, farmers, teachers, mothers, fathers, schoolgirls, nurses, your friends - but not you. They have been killed instead of you. This observation is unavoidable. So, in time, in the corollary, implicit in the word instead: in place of. They have been killed in place of you — in your place. You don’t think it out, not at the time, not in those terms, but you can’t help but feel it, and go on feeling it. It’s the close call you have to keep escaping from, the unending doubt that you have a right to your own life. It’s the corruption suffered by everyone who lives on, that henceforth they must wonder at the reason, and probe its justice.