Page 6

A distant rumble echoed across the field. Artillery or thunder. It had become genuinely impossible to tell the difference. Alistair's whole body tensed. His officer's instinct urged him to check the direction, the distance, and the likelihood of incoming fire. His eyes searched the sky for a dark speck of a plane and scanned the distant hills for flashes from artillery muzzles. Beside him, against him, pressed against him, Tomasz never looked up. His dark eyes fixed on the path ahead, his massive shoulders did not alter their bearing, his pace did not change.

The corpses were everywhere, distributed throughout the field as if scattered by a careless hand. Alistair, after a time, recognized a ghastly configuration. This was the geography of a battle that swept across this ground, fighting for every inch and leaving its dead where they fell. British, German, and French uniforms lay scattered: brown, gray, and blue. In death, the differences between them seemed to fade away.

The mud-stained fabric, the shapes that were once men, still held the basic form of human bodies, but stopped being human in any real sense. Some were recent enough that decomposition had not yet begun in earnest. Others had been here long enough for the earth to start reclaiming them. It took them back slowly, making their return unmistakable.

Tomasz guided them around a waterlogged body. It was swollen grotesquely, the uniform straining to hold it. The face lay sideways in the mud, and Alistair felt relief. He did not want to see the expression or what last moments had etched themselves into those features. His stomach churned, and he pressed his face against Tomasz's coat. He hoped the fabric might filter the air, keeping the stench of death from settling in his lungs.

A soldier lay sprawled face-down perhaps ten yards from their path, one arm extended as if still reaching for something just beyond his grasp. The uniform was British. Or had been. What was left of it was mud-colored and indistinguishable from the earth surrounding it. The face was turned sideways into the mud. The expression was neutrality itself—neither peace nor agony, but instead the face of someone who had plainly ceased to be. Alistair found himself studying the boots. They were good boots. They had been cared for. Someone polished them once, in a different world, in a time when such things mattered. The mud was claiming them now.

A horse lay nearby on its side, massive even in death. The bloated body was swollen to grotesque proportions, suggesting it had been dead for several days. The smell of it reached Alistair even at a distance. It was sweet and rotten, the stench of animal putrefaction. Flies rose from it in a cloud when Tomasz adjusted his course to give the corpse a wider berth. The gesture was instinctive. There was no strategic advantage in it. Tomasz just decided the horse was something they should avoid, and so he avoided it.

Alistair found himself thinking, with a clarity that felt almost obscene, that the horse had seen a better death than most. It had been out of the trenches. It had seen sky, however gray. It had been moving under its own power until the moment it was not. That was something. That was infinitely better than getting buried alive beneath a beam in the dark.

They continued, but the field seemed endless. How long had they been walking? Hours? The light was failing now. The gray became grayer, the shadows longer and darker. The wind picked up, carrying with it the promise of rain, the cold that suggested a storm was forming. Tomasz's breathing grew deeper and more labored. It was not from weakness. He was carrying a man over rough terrain for an impossibly long distance. Alistair noticed the small tremor in Tomasz's shoulders. It was a slight shake, hinting that even this incredibly strong man had his limits.

The flies grew louder as they approached a section of the field where the bodies were more densely clustered. It was not a mass grave, but a spot where the battle had clearly been intense. Men fell close together, and since then the many deaths started to form a small ecosystem. The buzzing was a living thing, a sound that filled the world. It was impossible to think of anything except the millions of insects engaged in their work of dissolution and consumption.

Alistair thought about his own men. The dependable officers like Wickham, and the constant rotation of younger boys that the war ground up with no pretense or excuse given. They did have names: the Hawthorns and the Cawthorns, the Crawfords, Alfords, and Ashfords. The war had become absurd and senseless, a carousel of death with no meaning. He felt something inside him start to break apart.

The officer's composure, which held strong during the explosion, entrapment, and long ordeal, began to crumble. It occurred gradually, like a dam cracking under too much pressure. Tears filled his eyes. It was the pain, of course, but also exhaustion and grief. He tried to hide them in the blue haze of Tomasz's coat to maintain what little sense he had left of being in control. But the tremble in his body gave him away. It betrayed the strict discipline that defined him, the military bearing, and the refusal to show emotion in front of others. His shoulders shook, not violently, but noticeably, and the realization began to settle in him that Tomasz would know that the officer he was carrying had finally broken.

Instead of saying anything, instead of giving empty words, Tomasz slowed his pace. Just a little. This slight change eased the jostling. And then one massive hand released its supporting grip, briefly, dangerously, and rose to Alistair's head. His palm, callused, scarred, and warm, covered the officer's skull with an almost unbearable tenderness. And with that, Alistair began to cry, unceasingly.

How long had they stood there? Alistair had no idea. The world reduced itself to Tomasz's heartbeat and his body's warmth. His powerful hand, undoubtedly capable of intense brutality, was now being used to hold and to protect. The officer's breakdown was met not with contempt but with patience.

When Tomasz finally resumed walking, the pace was slower than before. His strides shortened slightly, becoming more of a shuffling progress than a true stride. His massive chest heaved with each breath. But his hand stayed where it was, cradling Alistair's head, and the officer's tears continued to fall. Neither of them tried to pretend that something fundamental had not just shifted between them.

Their surroundings began to change. Ahead of them, the field was giving way to different terrain. Haggard remnants of what had once been an orchard began to emerge from the devastation. These trees once bore fruit, but now they were simply collateral damage. Their trunks were split and splintered. And beyond the orchard, visible through the growing darkness, the stone walls of what might once have been a farmhouse. A structure. A shelter. A destination that was, impossibly, becoming tangible. Tomasz moved steadily while carrying Alistair. Alistair gripped his neck tightly. For the first time, he let himself believe they might survive.

***

THE COTTAGE ROSE UP before them like it came from a storybook. Stone, mostly intact despite the obvious violence it survived. One corner of the structure collapsed inward, but the basic architecture was sound. The roof was partially gone, rafters exposed to the cloud-laden sky. The door stood ajar, waiting. Tomasz approached it with the deliberation of a man assessing a position, weighing shelter against risk. After a moment, he shifted Alistair’s weight, steadied himself, and ducked sideways through the opening.

Inside, dust floated in the last remnants of murky daylight, stirred by the intrusion. The ambiance was one of disuse and abandonment, but beneath it lingered the ghost of its former peaceful habitation. A chair overturned. A table scarred by use. A bowl and spoon left where someone had once paused, then never returned.

Tomasz carried Alistair through the room and set him down on a stained mattress beside the stone hearth. Ash and old char coated its basin, but the chimney above was still intact despite the broken roof. Alistair’s fingers slipped from Tomasz’s neck. Once settled, he stretched his broken legs and leaned back against the wall. Then, his stomach tightened — a hollow ache he had not noticed until now.

Somewhere outside, a chicken clucked.

Tomasz stilled. His head tilted slightly, and he stepped back out into the yard. When he returned, the bird hung limp in his hand, feathers dulled with mud. He set it aside and went to work without ceremony. He added some wood he had gathered to the hearth and coaxed the fire to life inside the stone basin. Heat took hold quickly, contained, purposeful.

Tomasz cleaned the chicken near the doorway, then skewered it on a length of green wood. He set the spit beside the embers rather than over the flame, turning it when the skin tightened and split. Grease hissed then settled. The satisfying smell of cooking food filled the room.

Tomasz tore the meat into pieces, and they ate in silence. The fire crackled beside them. As warmth filled the cottage, its mood changed. Shadows retreated. The cold loosened its grip. What had been a shell became shelter.

Alistair heard him moving through the space. He heard him searching. A thin sound suggested a trickle of water coming from somewhere, a partially blocked pipe or a crack in the stone. Then Tomasz reappeared, carrying the bowl. The chipped ceramic was worn and stained with age, but it held water. Clean water, or clean enough.

He knelt beside Alistair with a gentleness that seemed impossible for a man of his size. His enormous frame folded like a hinge, the muscles in his thighs and calves extending and contracting with the movement. He dipped the edge of a cloth—torn from something, Alistair did not know what—into the water and brought it to the officer's face. The water was cold. When Tomasz pressed the cloth against Alistair's cheek, the sensation was almost electric.

He began to clean. Methodically. Carefully. The cloth moved across Alistair's face, wiping away the accumulated mud, the dried blood, the salt residue of tears that dried in the cold. Each stroke was gentle. None of the brusqueness of military efficiency. This was a man engaged in the work of restoring dignity through cleanliness.

When he finished with Alistair's face, Tomasz wrung out the cloth and returned to the water. He washed his own massive hands that were stained with blood and dirt and the accumulated filth of the day's journey. He dipped his fingers into the water, gently clearing the dirt from beneath his nails. His dark eyes focused on the task, as if it were vital for his hands to be clean. When he finished, he set the bowl aside and stood.

That was when he unbuttoned his coat and shrugged the heavy fabric from his shoulders. Beneath it was his tunic and then a cotton undershirt, soaked through with sweat, clinging to the massive frame with the adherence of a second skin. For a moment he just stood there, the tunic held in his hands. Then he set it aside and reached for the buttons of the chemise, opening it, and then pulling it off over his head.

The removal of the garment revealed what Alistair had intuited but not seen: the vast and undeniable reality of the man who was carrying him. Tomasz had a huge chest, covered in fine hair. He looked like someone who spent years on a farm, in mining, or doing other tough jobs that shaped and tuned his body into an instrument of pure strength. But the strength was not unmarked. Scars crisscrossed his torso. Some old, pale lines suggested injuries from long ago, others more recent, some still healing. A mark across his left ribs that looked as though a bullet grazed him, leaving a burn that was slowly fading. A splotch of skin under his ribcage was blossoming in purple and red, where the sling had been drawn taut against his abdomen. Tomasz pressed on the spot with his thumb and exhaled. Carrying Alistair was taking a toll on his body, leaving visible marks.

He moved back to the fire and crouched beside it, adding more wood. His back and shoulder muscles shifted under his skin with each move. He was not putting on a show; it was just the way his body was built. Alistair found himself unable to look away. The bruise beneath his ribcage had deepened since the sling came off. Alistair could see it from here, the dark bloom of it spreading under the skin. Tomasz did not look at it. He added another piece of wood to the fire and watched to make sure it caught.