No one wanted a war here. In any case, war was surely an impossibility, especially in Orcières, hidden away at the furthest edge of the causse and several days’ journey from the nearest border. But that Friday even the calmest of spirits were troubled. The villagers wondered what was lying in wait for them up there, what predator had sent those deer running down the hill in terrified droves. Every summer they were newly surprised by the piercing cries of fighting bucks locking antlers and circling their rivals, but the barking had usually stopped in the time it took to roll and smoke a cigarette. The terrible sound persisted this time, until everyone in the village felt swirls of fear coil around their hearts and linger on their lips, like the stale end of a cigarette.

No one knew it yet, but on this late July night they were poised on the brink of war. In the little hamlet tucked away amid the hills, it was unthinkable that in just a few hours the sound of alarm bells ringing across the countryside would bring the summer swiftly and abruptly to an end. In a few days’ time, the war would start to devour their men by the trainload, and by its end, four terrible years later, it would have destroyed four empires and fifteen million lives. But in the early hours of this summer Saturday, what the villagers were most afraid of was the wave of terrified sound that descended on them from the hills. Groups of deer hurled themselves down into the valley in their dozens before disappearing westwards beneath the moon, which was hidden behind a shroud.