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my heart drumming an overture to battle. There will be a counter-attack; it is certain. The silence was a trap and our men are exposed. I have hung back disgracefully, but enemy blood upon my bayonet will wash away the shame.
    Something stirs through the smoke, edging this way—I catch the dome of a helmet. The counter has started. I fall to my knees, ready to leap forward. My ankles are like springs, feet sinking into the earth for greater thrust. The man looms before me and I jump into him blade-first.
    Standing now, I take his weight, twist, and pull back my weapon. He gasps, a hand groping my shoulder, then squeezing the joint till it hurts. The first thing I notice is the size of his eyes, whites enlarged like those of a hard-boiled egg.
    Does this mitigate my mistake? The question darts like a swallow through my thoughts. At this moment Charles does not really look like Charles. Like me, he is altered by the war. Will Sarah take this into account when she gets to hear that I have killed her brother?
    â€œSorry,” I find myself whispering.
    Don’t talk, a rasping thought tries to correct me. Don’t say anything that will weave this moment deeper into reality. It hasn’t happened. It hasn’t really happened.
    â€œI was coming to fetch you,” croaks Charles. “I thought you were hurt.”
    His face screws up into a ball of agony, moist eyes still bulging, brow furrows deeper than anything such a young face should allow.
    He dies. I feel the life leave him, as easy as that. The hand that grips my shoulder is merely a hand, and nothing more. The arms, the neck, the head that I now ease to the ground are all part of a carcass like any from a butcher’s shop—spine, limbs, joints all within a sack of skin; I can smell fresh blood and offal. A moment’s panic as the hand will not cease holding, then I stumble back free, gasping for breath.
    Charles lies contorted at the neck and shoulder, eyes gazing off into blue. Gunfire cackles and I spin around, first towards the enemy lines, the rising smoke and the wire-pinioned bodies, then towards our own trenches, where a smaller number of corpses lie strewn over the pockmarked earth. Smoke drifts and circles and I see one of them, the closest to me, move—an arm rising, index finger stretched as though testing the wind. His trouser legs twist upon themselves as though empty. It’s Smith, one of the privates who crossed the wire before me. I recognize him from those sunken cheeks, like those of a consumptive, I heard one of the officers say. I pull my gun and bayonet close to my chest, aware suddenly of the sticky blood on my fingers. Smith’s forefinger hovers, seems to point in my direction, then his arm falls back into his coat. The hint of a smile plays upon his thin lips.
    My heart pounds like sledgehammer against rock. Did Smith see? Turning again, my fingers tremble and I shield the weapon with my body. My head shakes like that of a dog besieged by fleas, and suddenly I’m off, bounding hard towards the enemy lines, a deafening rush in my ears.
    A tumult of gunfire rises to my embrace.

CHAPTER 5
    I t was the scream they all remembered—a mythic, warrior howl from the avenger whose blade dripped with Hunnish blood. I remembered it too once the fog of dreams began to lift. I had screamed when I reached the enemy trenches. All the terror and fury of suicide was in that desperate release. And, immediately after, I was thrown by an irresistible force. There was a sharp pain in my head, a wrench in my ankles, and I was scooped as though by some gravitational force into a well of darkness. I tried to recall—because they were so certain of my heroism—what I could possibly have accomplished in the second between that yell and my descent. But no one helped me with that. Just a careful pat on my shoulder, as if they feared too firm a touch would shatter my bones, and, “There, there old man. You’ve