Francis was there, then. His face flared into light as he put a match to a cigarette. The match arced away and Francis’s hands were gripping Harry’s. He felt his brother’s pulse and pulled against his hands, kicking, fighting, heaving, frantic. Then the red glare of the cigarette was gone and Harry was falling again. He felt the cold pushing up and panic surging through his body.

“Francis!”

Other hands were at his armpits then, pulling his pack and his greatcoat away. He felt hot breath against his cheek and caught glints of half-familiar faces. He screamed as they pulled. He felt like the sockets of his arms were going to spring loose and his bones were going to tear apart. The mud let him go. He clung to Bartley, found himself blinking into his up-close eyes. He wanted to say thank you but couldn’t seem to quite make words. The line ahead went on and they were pulled with it. He looked back to see his greatcoat sinking into the mud.

“Leave it,” Bartley said.

Harry remembered how he had once spent an afternoon watching a butterfly slowly shrug off its cocoon, struggling free of its constriction to stretch its wings. Moving on through the darkness and the thigh-high mire, he wished for a set of wings. He thought of Francis’s hands pulling away from his own. Had he imagined it? He could hear his own teeth chattering.

“The guide is a spy,” Fearnley’s voice was proposing behind. “He’s one of theirs. He’s led us into a bog to finish us off.”

“Bastard is just lost,” said Pembridge. “He’s got no more clue than we have.”

Harry looked back. All that he could make out now was occasional glimmers of reflection and a swaying line of cigarettes. Was one of those red lights Francis? Was he still behind?

“We’re all lost,” said Bartley.

They went on with just the noise of their legs in the mud and the patter of the rain. The moonlight seemed to heighten the texture of everything. The flooded ditch ahead shivered.

“What’s that?”

There were voices ahead, notes of hilarity and fast foreign words. He looked up to see the silhouettes of men standing up on the top of the parapet. Pembridge stopped. He turned back toward Harry. He could see Pembridge’s breath and the question in his eye.

“Boche?”

“French.”

The poilus were standing up on top of the trenches that they were meant to be holding. Harry could see the shapes of them. They were walking about apparently without any concern for the facing enemy and offering their hands then to the men who had come to relieve them. He could see the men in front clambering up.

“Are they mad?”

“Perhaps we are.”