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He studied her as precisely as he studied his own men in morning formation. Alistair noted the burn mark on her apron hem, the small tear in the sleeve, the bare, brick-dry ankles above her shoes. She was local, likely the farmer’s daughter. She set her jaw and did not flinch. Behind her strong, weary eyes he saw a spark of compassion, a chance.

The girl's gaze flicked from Alistair's ruined legs to his face, then to Tomasz, then back again. Her breathing, fast and shallow, gradually steadied. She drew herself up, shoulders squared in a motion that seemed older than her body, and with a controlled voice said, "Attendez." Wait. The word was a command, not a plea.

She retreated through the open barn door, boots scuffing in the mud outside. Light shifted as she left, the rectangle of morning widening, drawing in the chill from the yard. For a moment, Alistair lay feverish in his nest of straw and wool, unsure if she would return at all, or if the next to arrive would be a farmer with a pitchfork, or a gendarme, or some local militia eager to win favor by delivering up a pair of vagrants in uniform.

He looked at Tomasz, who was busy dressing himself and gathering their belongings. Even now, Tomasz's profile was indecipherable. Only the tension in his neck betrayed that he braced for violence or flight.

"She won't bring help," Alistair whispered, not sure if it was hope or a curse. His voice surprised him in its steadiness.

Tomasz nodded but said nothing. He stood, stretching to his full, impossible height, and went to the window, a jagged hole in the barn wall. He peered out for several seconds, then turned back and crossed the space in three strides. He knelt beside Alistair, hands hovering over the sling—not touching but close enough that Alistair could feel heat radiating from his skin.

They waited. Time slowed, each heartbeat louder than the distant morning birds. Alistair imagined the girl running to the house, imagined voices rising in argument, imagined a father or an older brother with a hunting rifle arguing that they should turn the men in to the nearest authority. He imagined the cold logic of rural France in wartime: survival was not a theory, it was a daily, unglamorous calculation. But the girl's eyes had not been calculating. They had been something else.

After three minutes, long enough for the barn to begin to feel abandoned again, the girl returned. She entered with her arms full, clutching a bundle wrapped in a blue and white striped towel. Her approach was slower this time, her steps careful, as if she, too, were learning the barn's geography anew. She set it down just inside the door, knees popping with the suddenness of the movement. She pushed it toward them with the toe of her boot, then stepped back, arms folded.

Alistair opened the cloth and saw the contents: some dried apples, a heavy, yeasty loaf of bread and, wrapped in waxed paper, a wedge of cheese, already sweating in the growing warmth of the barn.

Chapter 5 - The Village

The odor came first, a bitter chemical aroma of something still smoldering despite the dampness surrounding them. Alistair's eyes, still heavy with fever, tried to grasp the ruined village before them. Buildings lay in rubble, reduced to stone and twisted metal. Windows smashed, and walls collapsed inward, as if the earth surrendered its duty to hold them up.

Tomasz's stride changed slightly over the past hour. The officer, held close in the sling against the larger man, felt it. It started as a tightness in his shoulders and soon his breathing became a bit shallower. By the time they reached the village's perimeter, the tension manifested into something visible. Tomasz's eyes scanned left and right, never pausing. They jumped from one spot to another, briefly checking for any threats. He did not linger on anything for long.

A faint haze lingered over the village’s bombed-out center, suggesting the burning had ended hours, perhaps days, before. Alistair watched it dissolve into the gray sky. Something cold settled in his chest, below the ache in his legs. The village lay still, like a corpse. No smoke rose from the chimneys. No birds circled the steeple. The stillness had a substance all its own. They threaded their way through it, unwelcome survivors in a place that seemed to belong only to the dead.

A pram lay in the street. It was turned over, one wheel lazily spinning in the air. It seemed as if someone had just walked away from it. This tiny movement stood out in a milieu fallen silent. The fabric beneath the wheel frame was dark, whether from dirt or from something Alistair did not want to contemplate. The buggy was blue or had been blue. The paint was peeling, showing wood beneath, and the metal frame had begun to rust.

A twisted stove lay in a field beside the remains of a house. Its metal frame was bent and contorted, the oven door hanging open like a silent scream to the sky. The cooking surface scarred from the impact. The whole structure had been crushed or thrown with such force that it was barely recognizable. As Alistair passed by, he wondered what kind of violence could destroy something so thoroughly. Had there been an explosion? Multiple blasts? Ordnance had likely landed nearby, warping the structure into a twisted, abstract shape.

Crows perched on the skeletal rafters of the buildings. They were large birds, slate-colored, their heads cocked at angles that suggested curiosity or hunger or both. Several of them scattered as Tomasz and Alistair passed. The sound of wings came across as rowdy in the relative quiet, the flapping unsettling in a way that silence would not have been.

One crow stayed, however. Its attention fixed on something in the debris below the rafter from which it had been watching. The bird did not move. It calmly waited, sure that Tomasz and Alistair would pass by. The village would soon be empty again, and time would return them to their feeding.

Paper fluttered in the breeze. Pages or fragments of pages. Charred and disintegrating, the text on them had been rendered illegible by fire and exposure. They drifted across the street in small eddies of wind, settling against walls and in the hollows of shell craters. Words that someone had written, which had meant something, were now indecipherable ash waiting to return to the earth.

"What is this place?" Alistair whispered.

Beside him, above him, Tomasz made no response. The silence after the question was not the easy kind they were used to. It was a different quality. It was the silence of refusal. Of knowledge unable to be shared.

They moved deeper into the village. The street, such as it existed, was littered with debris. Fragments of brick. A wooden chair, one leg splintered, lying on its side. A tin cup, dented beyond use. Just one shoe, the partner lost or separated or claimed by someone in the aftermath.

The Earth itself was scarred and pocked. Scattered cobblestones created a surface that demanded attention. It was then that Alistair became aware of the absence. There were no bodies. No corpses lying in the street, no signs of casualties beyond the architectural collapse and the burned structures. The village had been destroyed, certainly, but where were the people? Had they evacuated? Had they been herded away? Or had something else occurred, something that removed them entirely from this place?

The gunshot, when it came, was distant. At first, Alistair thought it was just some distant background noise from the war elsewhere. But Tomasz reacted differently. His body went stiff, and his step halted mid-stride. He stood frozen in the middle of the village street, immobilized by the single shot that echoed off the buildings and faded into the gray sky.

Alistair's heart began to hammer, and, in turn, he could feel the way Tomasz's breathing shifted. It became quicker, shallower, more frequent. The larger man's head turned slightly, assessing the direction from which the sound originated. East. Northeast. Distance impossible to determine. A hundred yards? Fifty? Closer?

The ensuing silence was total, not merely quiet, the utter absence of sound. The birds scattered. The wind stilled. Even the drift of paper seemed to have paused, as if the entire village were holding its breath, waiting to determine what the gunshot signified.

His movements became slower now, more cautious. Each step was placed as if the noise of boot on stone could be softened through precision and intention. His head turned, following the sound of approaching voices. He tried to gauge their distance, number, and direction of movement.

Then came the other sound. Boots. Crunching on debris. More than one person. More than two. Several voices spoke in fast, clipped German. It felt more tense, which only made it worse.

They were exposed. There was no cover nearby, and no place to hide if the German soldiers turned the corner. The street offered nothing. No wall to press against, no doorway to duck into. They were two figures in an empty corridor, visible from every angle. Alistair's stomach dropped with fear, a visceral heave that crawled up his throat.

The boots grew louder. They were coming in their direction, or at least not moving away. The voices continued their rapid German, orders or some type of coordination. Alistair did not have the skill to parse it. His French was serviceable, his Latin adequate, but German was beyond him.

Tomasz’s pace increased. His hesitant, quiet steps became more frequent and deliberate. He was still trying to maintain composure if seen, so he could not break out into a full run, but his strides were long and urgent, and his breath quickened.