Winter, gasping, swore reflexively in German.
Freddie saw it all happen slowly, as though the world had gone sticky. Saw, in the sudden flare of a shell light, the man’s Canadian uniform, his eyes wide with fear. Saw him snatch up his bayonet and thrust it down in a panic at Winter’s heaving body.
Freddie tackled the man just as the bayonet went down. And then they were both falling in the water, and the man was thrashing. He’d dropped his rifle and pulled a knife, stabbing wildly. His mouth was open on a scream, although Freddie couldn’t hear it. The knife gleamed wet with water dark as blood and Freddie’s mind filled with mindless fury. He got himself uppermost and held the other man down.
The body went slack. A moment passed, his mind cleared, and he realized what he’d done and flung himself away, choking. Thethunder of the guns seemed to rise and fall with the blood pounding in his ears. He turned away and vomited bile; there was nothing in his stomach. Winter’s hand closed on his arm. “Are you—” Winter’s voice was strangely hesitant. His hand and his face were dark with blood and water, his chest heaving. “Are you all right?”
Freddie didn’t say anything for a few shocked minutes. It wasn’t real. It couldn’t be real. If he didn’t say anything, then he’d wake up and realize it wasn’t real.
Eventually, his mind started working again. He’d killed someone. A Canuck, one of his own countrymen. Killed him dead in traitorous defense of the enemy. How was that possible? He looked at Winter as though the answer would be written on his enemy’s face, then jerked out of Winter’s grip, shuddering. It had happened so fast. Winter took Freddie by the shoulders, dragged him round to face him. “Iven? Iven, look at me.”
Freddie didn’t answer. His teeth chattered. His mind rebelled with every particle of itself.
“Stop thinking, Iven,” said Winter. His fingers dug into Freddie’s upper arms. “It was instinct. Men do that. It’s war, Iven.”
“I didn’t mean to—and he— I’m…” He trailed off, tried again, but there were no words for it. He was hardly human. Finally he just bit down on his own hand, to stave off the scream.
Winter forced his hand down, still searching his eyes. “Iven?” For the first time there was fear in his voice.
Freddie’s mind spun in circles. Hecouldn’tbe sane. A sane man wouldn’t be in this hole, under this sky. He wished he could crawl into the foul earth and never come out. But he’d promised to keep Winter alive. That thought alone gave Freddie the impetus to drag the scraps of himself together, enabled him to choke out, “I’m all right.”
Winter was silent. But he let Freddie go, turned away, reached for the dead man, pulled off his half-submerged pack with jerky movements, using his good arm. Freddie sat still, dazed, as Winter dug through the soaking pack and came out with a canteen, sloshing, half-full. Iron rations, the emergency ones. Chocolate wrapped inwax. A gas mask.
Winter was handing him the chocolate when Freddie crumpled suddenly onto the slimy, sloping earth of the shell hole, gagging. Winter caught him, braced him up with a bony arm, put the dead man’s canteen to his lips. Freddie, head swimming, tasted water mixed with rum. Thought,I killed a man to save my enemy.Found himself drinking, tried not to vomit it back up.
A shell lit the night again. For a split second, Winter’s face had color instead of just ridges and shadows. His eyes were a clear and startling blue. Freddie stared at that face as though there were answers there, a reason for all this. His mind was utterly unmoored.
Winter said, watching him carefully, “We’re behind your lines. I am your prisoner, Iven.”
“Yes?” Freddie tried to think. His mouth tasted of rum and earth and blood. Despite the danger, all he wanted was sleep. Oblivion. But Winter. “They’d—we’d— I don’t know if we’d take a prisoner out here. It’s too close to your lines. They might shoot you. We’ll have to go back. Back toward the—” It would have been a support trench, if there were such things as trenches in that part of the line. But there weren’t. Just wet strings of shell holes.
Winter said nothing.
“Unless—unless you want to go back to your side?” Freddie straightened his back, as much as he could, squatting half-submerged in a shell hole. “I wouldn’t stop you.” The thought of Winter leaving him alone terrified him.
Winter shook his matted head. “No. I am still your prisoner, Iven.”
“I won’t let you die,” Freddie said. It was a vow he’d written in another man’s blood, and now it was all he had left in the world.
LONDON, ENGLAND, UNITED KINGDOM
March 1918
Laura, Pim, and Mary disembarkedin Liverpool, turned their backs on the submarine-haunted Atlantic, and boarded a train to London. As soon as they wheezed to a halt at Euston, Mary charged off again, to see to her “bedsheets and potpourri,” as she called her donated supplies. Laura and Pim found themselves standing on the platform, temporarily abandoned.
Pim looked about with muted pleasure, taking in the mix of uniforms, the glass and the ironwork overhead. Laura wished she could see the station through Pim’s eyes. London felt like limbo to her, the glittering center of the modern world become merely the war’s antechamber. She was hoping that Mary would be quick, and that the hotel was not too far.
A train with blacked-out windows pulled up to the station, and people in uniforms began gathering on the platform, obviously waiting, exchanging the occasional low-voiced word. “Oh, it must be wounded soldiers,” said Pim. “The poor dears. Although I thought—I thought a hospital train would be bigger. Shouldn’t it be bigger?”
“Not exactly wounded. It’s the mad ones,” said Laura, after ahesitation. She inhaled cigarette smoke. “We might go and wait in the ticket office.”
Pim didn’t move. “Mad—soldiers? Because of the war?”
“Yes. Pim, the men won’t want to be seen like that. We should—”
It was too late—the door to the train gaped wide. Next moment, the men were being walked or carried out. The first one was wearing a straightjacket. He thrashed. The second was weeping, gray-faced. He stumbled off on his own feet, leaning on an orderly’s shoulder. The third couldn’t work his limbs at all; he shook like a fallen bird. The fourth was biting his fingers, his eyes like holes burned into his colorless skin. The fifth was talking, softly—quite rational in tone—except his face was covered in bandages and what he was saying was nonsense.
“The dead ones,” muttered the soldier. “At night, you know, you see them. In the dark. They come back in the dark. One of them smiled. He told me I’d never go home.” His voice rose suddenly, wheezing. “But I knew that, didn’t I? I knew it I knew it I—”
