Page 2 of No Man's Land

The captain didn’t answer, seemingly absorbed in examining the wound on the man’s arm. He reached out a gloved hand to lift the arm, making a face at the stench but, nonetheless, studying it closely.

Josef averted his gaze. He’d become hardened to horrific injuries, but whether it was the stink or the black putrefaction, something about that wound made him shy away. Instead, he studied the captain. Beneath his forage cap, Josef saw a glint of dark hair in the sunlight, his square jaw and straight nose rather perfectly drawn, and strong thighs stretching his trousers tight where he crouched. Not that Josef had time for men of the captain’s sort—no more than they’d have time for a socialist troublemaker like himself—but he couldn’t helpnoticing.Even when his mind should be on other things.

Guiltily, he turned his attention back to the wounded man. Poor sod appeared insentient now, but nonetheless, Josef brushed his fingers over the boy’s forehead again and into his hair, the way his mum had done when he was a lad and sick inbed. Josef wanted him to know he wasn’t alone. “He asked me not to leave him,” he explained to the captain. “I’d rather stay until...Well.”

“He spoke to you?”

Surprised by the sharp tone of query in the captain’s voice, Josef looked up. “He did, yes, sir.”

“What did he say?”

“Umm...nothing much.” Disturbed by the intensity of the captain’s gaze, he looked back at the boy’s face. He had become very still now, but his chest still rose and fell with a tenacious hold on life. One thing he’d learned here was that men clung on until the last knockings. You wouldn’t credit how long a man could keep breathing with his guts spilling out.

The boy moaned, and Josef bit his lip against another twist of pity. God, but this was unbearable. Usually, he poured his feelings through the lens of his camera, letting his photographs capture the pain so he didn’t have to feel it, but this boy’s chill skin was under his fingers, and there was no ignoring that.

“Tell me,” the captain pressed. “Tell me everything he said.”

The note of command in that cool aristocratic accent felt like the touch of a hot iron to a raw nerve. “Why?” Josef snapped. “What does it matter to you?”

Silence.

When Josef glanced up, he found the captain regarding him with a single, cocked eyebrow. Clearly, he wasn’t used to having his orders challenged. But Josef wasn’t a soldier, and he wasn’t particularly fond of following orders.

“I should like to know,” the captain said after a moment. He set the man’s wounded arm down over his chest. “But if you have some reason for keeping it secret, then I shan’t pry. You and he were...friends?”

There was a slight emphasis on ‘friends’ that put Josef on guard. “No,” he said quickly. “I never saw him before today. Don’t even know his name.”

“No?” The captain looked doubtful. “Then you’re always so tender with your patients?”

Josef looked down at his hand, still stroking the lad’s hair. “Who’d do less? He’s just a boy.” The captain didn’t reply, and after a moment, Josef said, “He was rambling. Delirious, I suppose. He asked me not to leave him and said...it was something like ‘they come for the dead’. He was afraid, I think, of being taken away prematurely as...as a...”

As a corpse. Poor bastard.

When he glanced at the captain, to see if he’d understood, the man’s mouth was pressed into a tight line. The sun had disappeared behind the bank of steely cloud, and the cold light turned the captain’s colour to ash. “Hellfire,” he spat with vehemence. “Hellfire and bloody damnation.”

Josef was astonished by the outburst, but before he could respond, the boy gave a thin, pitiable cry, convulsed badly, and fell still, blood erupting from between his lips. His strange blue eyes were half open but unseeing, and Josef stopped the movement of his hand, letting it rest on the boy’s fine hair.

The captain felt for a pulse and let out a breath. “He’s gone,” he said softly, and swept a hand over the boy’s eyes, closing them. “That’s a mercy, at least.”

“Ha!” Angry tears pricked Josef’s eyes and thickened his throat. “A mercy, you call it?”

“I do, yes.” The captain rose fluidly to his feet, and Josef looked up at him, squinting against the cloudy sky. “There are worse things than death.”

Josef pushed himself to his feet and found himself not quite eye to eye with the captain, who was rather tall. “Like what? Dishonour? Cowardice?”

He was sick of hearing that bullshit from people who should know better.

“I meant suffering, of course.” A pause. “Your kindness to him was a mercy, too.”

Josef glared, then looked away, scratching a hand through his tangled curls. Stupid, to take out his fury on this man; he didn’t even know him. His anger drained away in a rush, leaving only the hollow exhaustion that lay beneath. “I wish...” He sighed and shook his head, unable to find the right words. He wished what? That this bloody war would end? God, he wished it had never started, but what use were wishes? If he wanted things to change, he’d better go out and change them.

“I wish too,” the captain said, surprising him again. “But here we are.”

Josef turned back around, and the captain smiled tightly. “Winchester,” he said and offered his hand to shake. “RAMC.”

Surprised, it took Josef a moment before he took the captain’s proffered hand. “Shepel. Red Cross.”

“Well.” Winchester held Josef’s eye. “Take some advice, Shepel, and stick with your pals when you’re out after dark. Can’t be too careful.”

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