Harry felt a stone push against his rib cage. His fingers pulled back from the shock of something sharp.

“Where’s that barrage?” asked Pembridge.

It started before the end of his question. Suddenly the valley below was all alight. Harry felt the earth beneath him quake as the light leapt. Like white paint thrown at a black canvas, it splattered and stretched. Smoke billowed into the sky and the valley below was full of a flickering phosphorescence that looked almost supernatural. It was completely contrary to instinct, it was an anathema, it was absurd, to crawl toward this rending light, but, to left and to right, they were scuttling, creeping, running forward. His fast breath and startled eyes told him that this was madness, but Harry’s feet were on the slope of the hill and now dashing down.

The barrage boomed across again, beyond their wire now. The sky seemed to churn with it. The star shells stretched, white trajectories sliding back into the black. It looked like it was burning beyond. The canal was now lost in smoke. He could see the posts and the wire silhouetted against the white.

The ordered silence was forgotten now as they stumbled down the slope. Harry couldn’t see the men around him, but he could hear their ragged breath, their oaths and prayers. There was a roar rising from their feet and from their mouths. He staggered in the soft, unseen earth, but they were pushing on as one and plunging toward the enemy wire.

The barrage came down again. Louder now. Throwing him off his feet. The earth kicked up under him and white light ripped across. It looked like the sky was tearing ahead. Fragments screeched through the air. He could feel the heat of it, the searing wind on his face, the smell of hot metal. Particles of earth flew up, seeming to fluoresce as they fell.

“It’s gone forward too fast,” said a voice that was almost a yelp in the black. When Harry looked back, all that he could see was an echo of the shape of a starburst, like the bright light had burnt itself onto his retina. His eyes ached.

It looked like a fairy thing ahead, the glitter and intricacy of it, like some web spun from mischief to catch mortals. It looked like that only for an instant. They were plunging toward the wire. It slid into focus now, the pickets and the web in between, all too real and thick and intact. The sky lit again and Harry looked forward into the belts of wire. He heard the blood pump through his head with a roaring beat. He felt his body accelerate, his rhythms run awry, as if his body were betraying him. He was suddenly vulnerable within himself and he gasped, full of fear as he fell.