They picked across pontoons in the fading light, across silent expanses of water, and into the impenetrable darkness of a communication trench. They heard and felt the height of the water and it flickered liquid reflections in movement. It was late by the time they arrived at the line. It was all black but for the sudden flash of matches and the clustered fairy lights of cigarette ends. They fried up bully beef, breaking open iron rations for the first time, and talked of Trafalgar and Transvaal. Over the top, the flares lit entanglements of wire and pickets. The blackness beyond was Goya and Blake and Bruegel.

THE FIRST CRACK of rifle fire came at dawn.

“Jesus!” said Will.

“But it’s just the way it is,” reflected the Welsh corporal, with singsong unconcern. “This is a 1915 sector and we like to nod to the old conventions. We exchange fire at dawn and dusk. Call and reply, see. We observe manners. It’s just the way it’s done.”

The Welshman, whom they’d been put in with, had the vocabulary of veterans and told them that they should be grateful not to have arrived a year earlier. This was a nursery sector, they said, and laughed. “Fritz’s snipers are the very devil, mind.”

“Some schooling,” observed Francis.

It all solidified with the rising light, but the sandbag ramparts seemed to diminish and Harry found himself moving at a crouch.

The snow came in the afternoon. They marveled, briefly, at the crisp, innocent cleanness of it, but the fall began to thaw where it was trampled and left them with wet boots and curses.

“I need volunteers for a working party,” said Lieutenant O’Kane. “We need to get that gap in the wire fixed tonight. Are you with me, Blythe?”

Harry looked up. He couldn’t avoid the lieutenant’s eyes.

“Can I count on you?”

It didn’t seem like it was optional. “Yes, sir.”

“Volunteer?” Francis said with a laugh to O’Kane’s retreating back.

They dirtied their faces with grease and wood ash before they went out and Harry’s fingers smelled like a bonfire. There was something schoolboyish about this action. It felt like breaking the rules of grown-up behavior, and they joked as they smeared their cheeks and widened their eyes to one another. But there was an edge to the jests, a forcefulness to the humor, an overly heightened excitement, and Harry felt his heart beat faster.

“I think I’m going to be sick,” said Bartley as they waited in the sap.

Harry nodded. He tried to steady his breath.

“Keep low. Keep quiet,” said O’Kane. “We get it done and we get back.”