Grey

The world was grey. All other colour had been drained out of it. The sky, the faces of the men, smudged with sweat and mud, even the soil's once fertile brown, now faded to an ashen hue. Even blood was soon turned to a muddy brown and then faded to grey in this place.

Leaning back against the clay and sodden sandbags of the trench's wall, Major Seth pulled a notebook from his breast pocket. After a moment's struggle, his cold-numbed fingers managed to extract the stub of a pencil and he jotted down a few lines. Metre and rhyme were still used among fashionable circles who wanted ordered verses for their ordered world. Here everything was broken. Why should poems be exempt?

He cursed as a raindrop tumbled from the sky and left a splotch on the page. The notebook was returned to his pocket moments before the downpour began.

"Aww hell," muttered the nearby sentry, Private Colm, his rifle leaning against the trench wall.

Grey light darkened into grey-black as dusk settled and Private Neimi finally lowered her rifle and, with characteristic gracelessness, slid down from her perch, landing on the muddy duckboards with a spatter. She cast her feet a forlorn glance before making her way to the sheltered dugout. Seth almost smiled. For all her seeming clumsiness, she was the finest sniper in his company – the finest in any company he'd commanded in fact.

Raindrops trickled down as Seth adjusted his steel helmet and the strap of the rifle slung over his back. He had already chosen the members of the wiring party. They were due to assemble at dusk and head out to repair the barbed wire entanglements in the sea of mud beyond the trench. Last night a party of Imperial Grado soldiers had been caught cutting through – in preparation for a raid no doubt – and the damage had to be repaired.

Captain Garcia was the first to arrive, limping slightly. He shrugged when he noted Seth's gaze, directed towards his left leg. "Footrot starting up, I think," he said with a grimace. "Weren't we supposed to be relieved already, Major?"

"Yes." Seth's brow was furrowed. "Yesterday." Garcia harrumphed. "Have Father Moulder look at your feet as soon as you get back."

"Yes, sir. Assuming they're still attached."

"Naturally."

This was as close to humour as they seemed to come anymore and only an old soldier like Garcia would even attempt it with him, Seth knew. At forty, Garcia was considered a grizzled old veteran by any accounts. Seth himself, only in his mid twenties, was one of the older men in the company.

Trickling down over the lip of the trench and the sodden sandbags against its wall, the rain soon formed rivulets through the rungs of the duckboard ne the floor of the trench. If the downpour continued it would turn into a muddy stream around their boots, soaking their feet with cold. Seth could hardly fathom anymore a time when he had enjoyed the sound of running water.

The other members of the wire team had assembled and were preforming their preparatory equipment check, when someone stumbled through the trench, calling his name.

"Major Seth, they just sent a unit up from the support line," said the private.

Seth nodded. "Captain Garcia, proceed as discussed."

"Yes, Major."

And with that he turned on his heel and sloshed towards the communication trench that connected them here, on the front line, with the support trench located some hundred yards behind them, and another hundred in front of the reserve trench.

What he found when he arrived there, was not to his liking. "What's this? We were expecting to be relieved." A dozen soldiers stood in line, their wet uniforms clinging to their shivering bodies. A dozen was not enough relieve his company.

"Sorry, Major. These are just some extras for your company to replace the wounded," announced a man with Captain's stripes on his collar.

"And when can we be expected to be relieved, Captain..."

"Captain Gilliam, Sir. And I was told not for five more days."

Seth ground his teeth. Two weeks they'd been rotting in the frontline trench, taking sniper fire by day and exchanging raids by night. They were supposed to be relieved. Any more of this and every man and woman in his company would be lamed by footrot without the enemy having to lift a finger.

"Run through the ranks, Captain Gilliam," Seth said finally.

Gilliam straightened and began to recite the names of his group, each standing at attention even as they shivered. Seth listened to the litany of privates, his eyes flitting over each pale face. They were all blank to him, all the same soldiers in their dull uniforms, perhaps the same ones who had died on the field, in the no-man's-land between the trenches, risen up and returned for another tour.

"And Lieutenant Erina." He hoped she was not as green as the last new lieutenant they'd sent up; that one had lasted all of three days. In the dark, beneath the brims of their helmets, they were all the same, and yet something in her features arrested his attention. For a moment he found himself remembering home as it had once been, the green fields of Renais in spring, the scent of lilacs... His eyes focussed on the lieutenant's face and in an instant nostalgia was swept away by horror.

"No," he croaked. "No, it can't be..." He reached out to grab her by the chin and tilt her face up for inspection. Seth found himself staring into an all-too familiar pair of blue eyes. "You didn't..."

"Major?" the lieutenant said, her voice quavering.

And it was certainly her voice. He had known her since she'd been a child; how could he not recognise her? How could she have ever thought he would not recognise her?

In another time he would have groaned, dealt with the situation calmly, with the caution and diplomacy required of such matters, but that stolid, patient man had died in the trenches. He had little time to waste on niceties now. He spun to face Captain Gillian. "Do you have any notion of how serious this is?"

"Sir?"

"You," Seth said, addressing the privates. "Head on in. We'll get you sorted out later." He waited for them to leave and then turned to the Captain. "This is no lieutenant. This is Princess Eirika of Renais."

Captain Gilliam turned to stare at the woman in question. "Are you... certain, Major?"

Seth glowered in her direction. "Quite." How could she have done this? All this while he'd thought her safe in Frelia's walled capital. It was bad enough that Prince Ephraim was serving on the front lines. To have both Renais' heirs in such danger was utter recklessness. "This is all a misunderstanding, Major," the lieutenant stammered.

Yet she could not meet his eyes when he stared at her. His gaze softened as she looked away and, for a moment, he took in the sight of her, dressed head to toe in the dirt coloured uniform of all the Frelian troops, her long hair cut down to nothing, her hands gripping a rifle. It saddened him to think of the cheerful girl she'd been before the war, hands now wrapped around the butt of a rifle.

"I'll call Second Lieutenant Franz, then," Seth announced. "He knows the princess by sight."

She hung her head. "No, there's no need. You're right, Seth, it's me."

The startled expressions on Gilliam's face would have been comical under different circumstances. Seth suppressed a groan. "Eirika, how could you..." He shook his head and turned his attention back to Gilliam. "Captain, please see to the men you brought in. After that I'll need you to escort the princess back to the rear line."

"No! Seth, you can't–"

"We will have words in private, milady," he rounded on her.

Gilliam gave a curt nodded and hurried off to the relief troops. Seth waited for him to be well away before snagging Eirika by the arm and pulling her along some distance away from the narrow communication trench.

"Eirika, this is folly, absolute folly!"

Her eyes came to rest on the hand still gripping her arm. He let go and, taking a step back, tried to remember the man he'd been before the war, to find the calm reserve that had alway tempered his actions in those days.

"I'd hoped to speak with you privately, Seth, when I arrived. Taking on the guise of a Frelian soldier was the only way I could managed to get myself here."

"You should not be here."

"I–"

A flare from the Grado trenches shot into the sky, its light blinding to his night vision. It dropped onto the earth just beyond the back lip of the trench where it lay hissing and fizzing, casting stones and sandbags into sharp relief. Eirika started, the rifle in her hands raised.

"Don't," he said. "They send those to spot men on the lip of the trench or outside of it, but if you don't move, they won't see you."

She nodded, slowly lowering her rifle.

Seth wiggled toes already wet and numb with cold. Gods forbid Renais have a dry autumn. Though to call this muddy season autumn, a word that made him think of the golden hues of foliage before the frosts came, of fields ready for harvest, was a travesty. Renais no longer knew colour or bounty. The land was nothing but snaking trenches and shelled ruins surrounded by endless tracts of broken earth.

He was waiting for the sound of gunfire but nothing came. "Why did you come?" he asked finally.

"I need your help. It's Ephraim. His company has gone missing near Renval. You know the place. You visited there before the war."

"Couldn't you have sent a telegram?" There was more bite to the remark than he'd intended. She looked hurt. It had been some while since they'd last spoken in person. He'd left for the front only weeks after he'd delivered her to Frelia. For all the good that had done!

"No. I had to speak to you in person."

"You could've had me summoned to Frelia."

"I'd have had to explain myself to Innes."

He huffed. Prince Innes, the great tactician, the would-be saviour of Magvel. Seth would have liked to have seen the prince sully his pretty clothes down here with the rest of them for once. "Return to Frelia, Lady Eirika. And tell Prince Innes that we need more heavy guns whether or not it's 'sporting'. The Grado troops have five per battalion to our two."

Eirika drew herself up, shoulders squared, jaw set. Something inside him thawed. He knew that look. He knew it so well. She had had that same air when she'd insisted Ephraim take her to the shooting ranges and teach her to use a hunting rifle and then a pistol and then a short knife. She had said that even a princess should know how to defend herself. "I won't go. You can send me away, but I'll escape and return here."

"That would be exceedingly dangerous."

"Then you'd best let me have my say here and now."

Another flare lit up the trench nearby. Her hands tightened around her rifle but she held steady this time. Seth heaved a sigh and nodded, the movement sending rain dribbling down from his helmet in rivulets. He stuffed his hands under his armpits to try to warm them and let her speak.

"I had word from Ephraim some weeks ago. He said he'd learned of some terrible new weapon being created by the imperial army." For a moment she closed her eyes. "And he said... he said that Lyon was at the head of their research division."

"What sort of weapon?"

"I don't know. Ephraim couldn't say more in his letter, only that he was pursuing the information and that the project was called the Dark Stone. I tried to speak to Innes and King Hayden about it, but they were only interested in defending the Frelian front and brokering agreements with Carcino."

"Even so, you shouldn't have come here." He held her by the shoulders and looked past the brim of her steel helmet to the pale face beneath. "With Ephraim on the field you are the head of state."

"Of what state? There will be nothing left of Renais if Emperor Vigrade isn't defeated."

The attack had caught them off guard for Imperial Grado and its emperor had long been friends of Renais. But Grado's armies had marched to the border and demanded the surrender of the fortresses there. The siege had lasted eleven days until the heavy artillery had arrived and turned the forts to little more than rubble. Renais had built no guns of such calibre, nor would they ever have thought to point them in Grado's direction.

"There will be no chance for restoration if you don't survive," Seth said.

"From what I learned from Ephraim, if Grado uses this Dark Stone, none of us will survive."

For a moment neither spoke. As another flare brightened the night, they stood regarding each other in its glare. "You look different," she said. "Thinner."

"You cut your hair," he returned. A wistful smile touched her lips and then vanished.

"Lice," she said. "I heard there were lice."

He grimaced. "Often."

"You shouldn't have left so suddenly."

He looked away. "You shouldn't be here."

"Neither should you!" she shot back. "You're a general, Seth. Who ever heard of a general having himself demoted just so he could come to the front?"

"At least here I'm of use!" He tried to calm himself, to keep his voice steady, but it was as much a losing battle as any they fought out here in the gutted remains of their homeland. "Prince Innes would take no counsel from me. He wouldn't listen to a word. He's determined to make this war his own and direct the fighting as he sees fit." He balled his chilled hands into fists. "Freeing Renais is not in his plans. All he cares for is keeping Grado from encroaching into Frelian lands and he's willing to waste the lives of Renais soldiers to do so."

"You could have spoken to me about it. Could've–"

The staccato rhythm of gunfire tore into his attention. Pulse thrumming, he tried to hear over his heartbeat, to gauge how close they were. There were shouts, sharp and quick. The sentry called them to arms.

"Dammit," Seth spat, "not now."

Soldiers, men and women all the same in the khaki uniforms, sprang from their positions, dashed to the lip of the trench, rifles in hand, loaded, ready, barrels pointing out to the monstrous darkness.

"A raid," he said. He looked her square in the eye. "Keep your head down. Stay close to me."

She only nodded. The gunfire was closer.

He reached for the rifle on his back and moved forward. Raids were meant to be silent, stealthy affairs, but the wire team must have managed to spot the raiding party and fired the first shots.

Soldiers quickly formed lines, standing on the fire step so that they could shoot over the lip of the trench, sending tiny sparks into the night as they fired. Just ahead, a man shuddered and fell backwards and then another in quick succession. Rifle raised, finger on the trigger, Seth dashed forward as a figure came rolling over the the parapet into the trench. The crest on his helmet gave him away as an Imperial Grado soldier. Seth pulled the trigger. The Imperial soldier fell. Two more came over the trench's lip and were mowed down.

Out of the corner of his eye he saw Eirika take aim and fire.

Another figure dove into the trench, just before a blast shook the earth, sending debris flying in Seth's direction. He threw his arms over his face as earth and stone pattered against his helmet, cracked against his chin. When he looked again, an Imperial was on his feet and lunging at him with a short knife. Too close to shoot, Seth lashed out with the butt of his rifle. It caught the Imperial in the head with a satisfying crack.

Bursts of gunfire continued on the ground above, but there was skirmishing in the trench, men wrestling in the near-dark, cursing, screaming. They could not use their rifles at such close range and had to rely on bayonets or small arms. Though normally he would have rushed forward, he stopped to look frantically for the princess. In the dark, every soldier looked alike.

The earth shuddered from the force of another blast nearby and several flashes nearly blinded him, but he stumbled forward over the corpses in the trench. A few paces away, a slim figure with a crested helmet pulled a pistol and fired at the man in front of her at point blank range, making a ruin of his chest. Seth reached for the knife at his belt and loosed it before the Imperial had time to turn around. It struck home and the Imperial collapsed, the blade lodged to the hilt in her chest.

Eirika. Where was Eirika?

Everywhere were soldiers in muddy uniforms and steel helmets, each much like the other. He spotted a figure with thin shoulders stumbling over a corpse nearby. Eirika. Relief flooded through him when she righted herself and he saw her face. He snagged her arm. "Get back to the reserve trench," he yelled, trying to be heard over the sounds of gunfire and explosions.

"What?" she shouted.

"The reserve trench! Go back!"

"Major Seth!" He spun at the sound of his name only to find Captain Garcia, blood dribbling down the side of his face. "Captain?"

"We've got three men in the east crater. All injured."

Seth swore. "I'll head out there. I'll need two men with me and a rope."

As he made his way eastward the clicking bolts of rifles continued unabated, soldiers lined up on the fire step, shooting at enemies they could hardly see. The rate of fire seemed to slow, however, as he waited for Garcia to return with the rope. He pulled Private Colm and a private whose named escaped him from the line, both young, stout lads. Colm was smaller than some of others, but he was nimble and would be of help navigating the muddy slope of the crater.

Once the soldiers on the eastern stretch were aware of the plan, Seth was ready to make the rescue attempt. Taking a deep breath, he hoisted himself over the parapet and began the belly crawl through the mud. He moved carefully through the wire entanglements and then slunk forward toward the crater. What had once been a shallow gully had been turned into a deep crater by shelling earlier in the season. At the bottom of it, some twenty feet down in the mud, were the remains of the wire team.

Slithering through the bullet-churned mud, Seth made his way to the edge of the crater and paused there. He signalled to the private who followed after him to anchor the rope there. He motioned for Colm to follow him and they slid down into the crater. Seth's boots splashed in the mire at the bottom. He made a quick inspection of his men. One had a broken arm, another had had his foot more or less shot off, and a third, a certain Corporal Phillips, had a chest wound. His breathing had a wet, sucking sound to it.

They tied the rope beneath the first soldier's armpits and Seth scrambled back up the incline to help the private pull up the injured man. The rope rubbed his palms raw and for a moment Seth was grateful for the rain as it cooled the heat of his hands. Colm assisted the injured man and they were able to get him up on level ground. They repeated the process for the second wounded soldier.

"Get them back to the trench and send someone else to help with Phillips."

The sound of sporadic gunfire ticked away the minutes as he waited on the crater's slope. Finally he saw a pair of figures in the mud slithering from the direction of his trench. Just as they drew within a few feet, the staccato call of a machine gun from the Imperial trench cut through the night air. A flare lit up the night and he froze mid-breath, heart hammering as if to match the rhythm of the guns.

Seth jerked back as he felt something slam into his leg. Cursing, he stumbled towards the incline. An explosion to his left. Another, somewhere behind him.

He didn't hear the blast the hit him, only felt the force of it, like a giant hand squeezing the air from his body until his ribs creaked, and he felt himself falling backwards. There was a terrible moment when he could not draw breath and his chest was a wall of fire. And then air came again, sweet even while thick with the metallic scent of blood.

Dazed, he opened his eyes and saw blotchy grey-black and little more. His body was chilled and he felt wet earth beneath his palms. For a few terrifying seconds he feared he'd been buried alive. He breathed deeply of the cold air. The fear passed and with it, his disorientation. He was in the bottom of the crater.

Someone coughed nearby. He felt around for his rifle but could find nothing. There was still the pistol at his hip. Would the water have already soaked through the bullet casings? He tried to right himself but the movement sent pain as sharp as a hot poker shooting up and down his left leg. Sucking in deep breaths of air, he pushed himself into a sitting position. He found there with him not an enemy soldier, but one of his own, heaving up his supper upon discovering himself to be kneeling in the still-warm innards of a comrade. No, herself. It was the princess.

The night's rainfall had drained into the bottom of the crater, covering him to the waist, and he could feel the chill water and mud leeching the heat from his limbs. Seth dragged himself to the drier ground at the edge of the crater and propped himself against the incline, trying to get himself as much out of the sludge as he could. Steeling himself, he reached down to his injured leg, grimacing when he found the source of his discomfort, a hole just above his knee. He brought his hand up in front of his face. What he found on his fingers was redder than mud.

"Dammit."

He turned his attention back to his other problem. The sound of retching had stopped.

"I'm sorry," Eirika said, wiping her mouth with her sleeve once her belly's heaves had ceased.

"It's normal," he replied. "What are you doing here?"

"We were sent off to help you get the other man out."

"I told you to go back to the rear trench," he snapped.

"Is that what you were saying? I couldn't hear you."

"Eirika."

She ignored him and crawled away from the corpse, closer to Seth. Her eyes scanned over him. "You're hurt?"

"My leg."

His eyes turned to the corpse, but he could not recognise him, whoever had accompanied Eirika. The grenade blast had sliced open his belly like a pig for slaughter, and debris from the side of the pit covered his remains from the chest up. Blown up and buried. How very thorough death was sometimes. But better that than the drawn-out deaths between the trenches when no medic could reach you and you lay sprawled in the mud or tangled in barbed wire, or the fevered days of waiting in a medical camp for gangrene to eat you alive.

The rain washed blood from the corpse's open belly, making pink rivulets of it, before it disappeared into the muddy sludge at the bottom of the crater. In the end, even blood, bright as poppies, turned to grey.

Seth glanced up as a new sound caught his attention, a staccato tapping. Eirika's teeth chattering. She was perched on the incline, hugging herself and shivering, her back to the corpse. On the other side of the trench he could see Phillips, but the wet sound of his breathing had stopped. Two corpses then.

Eirika's boots splashed in the muck as she stood and made her way over to him. "Which leg?" she asked.

"The left."

He was more than a little surprised when, without hesitation, she reached for the knife at her belt and cut a slit in his pant leg to inspect the wound. "It's a bullet not shrapnel," she announced. "It went straight through." And before he could speak again she reached for a small canteen in her hip pocket and poured the contents onto the wounds on either side of his leg. He hissed as the liquid burned in the open wound.

"That's not water," he said.

"I didn't drink my rum ration."

"Hoarding rum is against regulations," he noted.

"I'm an officer. I can get away with things."

He huffed but when she offered him what was left of the rum he drank it gladly.

"Sorry," she murmured as she undid several buttons of his tunic and reached into it. Every soldier had first aid dressings sewn into the front of his uniform and Seth watched in utter amazement as she tore these from his tunic and proceeded to bandage the wound in his leg.

"You've done this before."

She paused and looked up to meet his eyes. "I'm blooded, Seth."

His heart began to thud against his ribs. "You saw combat? Where? When?"

"At Border Mulan, three weeks ago. We were on our way here but they diverted our group. They had intelligence suggesting an upcoming assault on the lines there. And they were right."

"But, Eirika... Border Mulan was... We were told there was near-continuous shelling and heavy artillery fire, that the attack lasted two days."

"Three."

"And that the fighting was..."

"Bad."

"The early casualty reports were–"

"Bad."

She held his gaze as she spoke and he knew it was the truth. He clenched his fists until his knuckles ached. All the times he had imagined her safe in Castle Frelia, that he had entertained himself during the dreary hours by picturing her walking its heated hallways, sipping afternoon tea in its sunny parlours, curling up beneath heaps of soft blankets at night... when really she'd been...

The thought of her crawling on her belly across a field of mud and corpses, made bile rise up his throat.

"How could you do this?" he said finally. "Prince Ephraim was always the reckless one."

"It wasn't how I'd planned it," she whispered.

For some minutes they listened to the pattering rain and the rivulets of water cascading into the crater. "You should get back to the trench," he said.

"Don't be ridiculous. I'm not leaving you here."

"It isn't a request."

She jutted her chin out. "I don't take orders from you, Seth."

"Eirika–"

"It's slick, but the rope is still anchored. You can make it up. I'll help you." Soaked to the bone, the cold seemed to sap his will to argue just as quickly as his heat. "We'll wait until the fighting slows. If I hasn't by the first lightening of the sky we'll go then."

"All right."

The sound of gunfire seemed more distant now and the rain's cold less biting.

"Seth? Seth?"

When he closed his eyes he was happy to see a warm blackness wash away the chill grey.

#

Seth dreamed he was awake. He was on a stretcher being carried out of the trenches. Eirika was holding his hand, her long hair falling around her shoulders as she smiled down at him. He was being sent home, away from the mud and the rats and the dead men. But why was it so cold? Was it winter yet? Didn't he have boots on? Why were his feet so cold?

Seth's eyes sprang open and were met with the sight of ash coloured mud. Glancing down at his sodden boots, he did his best to wiggle his half-frozen toes. Eirika was next to him, pressed against his side, her attention on something in her hands.

"Oh," she said, shifting to look at him. "You passed out for a little bit there."

"Is that... my notebook?"

She ducked her head so he could not see her face beneath her steel helmet. "I– well– yes."

His brows creased. "You were reading my notebook?"

"I saw it in your pocket. I thought it was your latest letter. And then... and then I just got curious. I only saw a little – when there was light from a flare."

He shifted, uneasy that she had read those broken verses. They were not poems, not really. Just lines... about what was out here. "I didn't mean for anyone to read that."

"I wish you'd been this honest in your letters. They read like military dispatches."

"I didn't want to worry you."

"How could you stand this? For a year!" She shivered and wrapped her arms around herself. Her clothes were soaked through and caked with mud. Even her face was grey with it. "Back in Frelia I was told that conditions on the front were–" A dry laugh escaped her throat. "The exact phrase was 'less than ideal.' But they never told me how it was– is."

In his mind's eye he saw her as she'd been before the war, tall and lovely, well-spoken, and quick witted, perhaps a mite too idealistic for her own good, but charming. Utterly, hopelessly charming. "I didn't want you to know about... this," he said, motioning around them as if to encompass all the war – the trenches, the mud, the corpses, the misery. All of it.

She looked up at him beneath the brim of her helmet. "And when you and Ephraim came back to me, we'd have been strangers."

He remained silent, listening to the staccato rhythm of the guns above.

"You shouldn't have left like you did," she said finally.

"I told you," he replied, his voice gruff, "Innes wouldn't take counsel and I'm sure he was glad to be rid of me."

"But, Seth, you barely spoke to me. Most soldiers rush off to marry their sweethearts before heading to the front. You acted as if we were barely more than acquaintances! You were courting me before the war broke out!"

For a moment he was struck with the absurdity of the situation. They were pinned in a muddy hole in the dead of night in the rain with two dead men while some hundred yards away Grado soldiers were shooting at them and throwing grenades. Could there be a less likely place to discuss marriage? He almost laughed.

"Is that funny?" she snapped. "I assumed your intentions were honourable, that you hoped to marry me."

They had walked in the gardens arm in arm, on the estate that had belonged to her family for centuries. Everything had been in bloom, a world of colour and birdsong. She'd looked like a nymph amidst all the greenery, vibrant and innocent, as he'd leaned close to brush his lips over hers. It seemed like another life, like a dream.

"Of course I did," he said.

"But then why did you–"

"I didn't want you to wait."

"What?"

He tried to wiggle his toes again. They'd gone numb. The wound in his leg burned like hellfire, though. "I didn't want you to have to wait for me. I wanted you to be free to go on with your life."

She stared at him. She stared the way she had when he'd reported that Imperial Grado had launched an attack on them, as if there were some mistake, some other explanation, as if she'd misheard. "Free?" she repeated.

"This war could go on for years."

"And how can any of us go on with our lives when things are like this?"

He stuffed his hands under his arms trying to restore some warmth to his digits. If he lived to see another winter in the trenches he thought he'd probably regret it. He didn't look at her when she spoke again.

"You and Ephraim and Tana are the most important people to me in all the world. All I'm asking of you now is that you get better and that you help me find Ephraim and the Dark Stone. The rest is... The rest can wait."

It occurred to him that they might both be killed in their attempt to return to the trench. Or that his wound might turn to gangrene and leave him to burn away with fever in a medical trench. Perhaps nothing they said tonight would ever matter. Even so, he reached out and draped an arm around her shoulders. "We need to go," he said. But he squeezed her close even as he spoke.

#

Seth scraped his hands raw using the rope to pull himself up the muddy slope. His breath came in ragged heaves and white spots danced in his vision. "Start moving," he told Eirika. "I'll be right behind you."

Belly-down in the mud, she glanced over at him. "You were always a terrible liar, Seth." And then she grabbed his arm, put it around her neck, and crawled forward, tugging him along.

"And you were always stubborn," he replied.

"Stop wasting your breath. I don't need you passing out again."

And so they crawled inch by inch through the mud, past bodies that no longer moved, and the rats that scrabbled over them. Eirika's breath caught when a spray of bullets churned the mud not two feet away from them, but they kept inching forward until they reached the barbed wire entanglements. They moved through too quickly and he felt the bite of the metal cut through his sleeve. He heard Eirika curse and saw her bite her lip, wincing. But they kept crawling.

He called out the night's password so the sentries would know them. Guns were lowered, hands reached out over the trench to pull them over, pull them in. His vision blurred again to white spots, but he drew in deep breaths to cling to consciousness.

"Major! We'd thought we might've seen the last you."

Seth's lips twitched. "Sorry to disappoint, Garcia. You won't get that promotion just yet."

"He needs a stretcher," Eirika said.

Garcia peered at her, tilting his head to try to see her face beneath the rim of her helmet. "Lieutenant Erina was sent with special orders for me," Seth explained.

"With respect, Major, I don't think you'll be carrying out any orders for a few months."

"Maybe not," he replied. "The lieutenant will come with me," Seth added. "Take care of things here, Captain."

"Yes, sir. Good luck, Major."

The rain had tapered off into drizzle, but the trench was flooded with muddy water, calf deep. A pair of medics, as soaked and muddy as everyone else, finally arrived and eased Seth onto a stretcher to be carried to a medical camp behind the lines. From there they would see.

Eirika kept pace as they sloshed through the trenches. When the medics paused to manoeuvre around a tight corner, Seth found her looking down at him. He smiled.

The world was grey. But her eyes were blue.

The End

A/N: This may well be the strangest fanfic I've yet written. But I've always been fascinated by World War I and wanted to write something about it. I hope I've not made a travesty out a deeply tragic period in western history. Also if any WWI afficionados happen to read this I apologise for whatever inaccuracies remain as I am by no means an expert.

On a sidenote, the lack of a demonym (i.e. Frelia-Frelian) for Renais and Grado is really irksome. A person from Grado is what? A Gradoan? A Gradon? A Gradolese? So I went with "Imperial" for Imperial Grado though I realize that in WWI literature "Imperial" refers to the British.

Originally I had meant to make this a oneshot, but I might well write more pieces so I'm going to mark this as "unfinished" for now.