Harry could hear the bandolier of barbed wire around his chest chattering. All the processes in his body seemed to be running too fast. His nerves didn’t feel right. He wiped his sweating palms on his tunic and took a clutch of snow in each hand. It ached coldly but concentrating on that sensation took some of the rest of it away.

“Silently, now.”

He held his breath as he climbed over the top. His limbs felt clumsy. As he looked up, he braced for the returning crack of rifle fire, but there was just glittering blue-white and silence beyond. He followed Bartley’s boots, sliding out on his belly. He tried to crawl in small, low movements, but the wire bandolier around his chest wanted to snag on everything and his rifle felt like an anvil.

“You see it?” Corporal Gibbs whispered at Harry’s side. He could smell whiskey on Gibbs’s breath.

“Yes.” The snow had settled on the tangle of wire out ahead and made it more material, but there was such a lot of ground to cross to reach it.

He could hear Gibbs’s labored breathing and the creak of their bodies over the snow. It seemed to highlight every movement, heighten every sound, and fell away under Harry’s hands. A cavity opened up beneath him and for a moment he expected to plunge down.

“Fuck’s sake!” said Bartley.

Harry clung on. He put his cheek to the snow and lay still as he got his breath back. The rifle in his hand seemed to be the only solid and sure thing in the world.

That was when he saw the face. A movement. Eyes glinting. Just out beyond the wire. The man’s exhales hung around him like a halo, betraying life. They stared at one another and time stretched. Harry saw him bite his lip and somehow he knew that he would run. He would let him run. He would let him go. But then Gibbs shouted and it all changed. Suddenly everyone was screaming and the gun in Bartley’s hand was going off. When Harry looked again the glinting eyes were gone.

HARRY WATCHED MORNING roll in through a frame of barbed wire. Mist wreathed the in-between, giving an air of antique times, of ancient campaigning. It might well have rolled back and shown Charlemagne in camp. The wire’s gilded brambles dripped caught light. The trenches steamed. Blue smoke began to rise from the enemy line, washing through the white sky like watercolor. Harry stretched in the raw, numbing cold, yawned, and beat life back into his limbs. He hugged his aching fingers in his armpits. His throat was raw from how he’d retched.

Francis stood at his shoulder. “Their dugouts have rugs and curtains, I heard, electric light and hot running water.” He sniffed. “I can smell the bastards’ sausages and sauerkraut. Why didn’t you bring me a sausage back last night?”