Page 3 of No Man’s Territory

His eyes fell shut. He did not turn away from the sight before him; his body simply gave up the effort of keeping them open. He waited for the end with a calm resignation, knowing resistance would only drain what little energy he had left. He was going to die here, alone in a trench that did not exist on any map, surrounded by men who themselves were beyond witnessing.

The world would just as soon forget everyone. His death would be one more insignificant loss among millions. In accepting this, he found a strange sense of peace. The struggle was over, and he let go. He lay there, surrounded by the darkness, the mud, and the crushing weight, he waited.

***

THE FOOTSTEPS CAME out of nowhere. Alistair was no longer capable of discerning direction or distance with any certainty. His consciousness shrank to a narrow strip of reality. The sound of crunching debris approached, feeling more like a final mirage than a rescue, the mind's last farewell before shutting down. He tried to focus, to decide whether the sound was real or whether he had finally crossed the threshold into the territory of the actually dead.

Boots appeared. First, they were all he saw: enormous boots, outsized against the rubble, approaching with what seemed like purpose. The light was still gray, still dim, but sufficient to reveal leather worn and mud-caked, and above the boots, a lower leg of colossal proportions.

Alistair's eyes traced upward, following the line of the figure as it saturated his narrow field of vision. There was something not quite human about the scale of it. The man—if it was a man—seemed to occupy space in a way other men did not. His dimensions were not right. Or the world had become exceedingly small, and this was a normal figure in an environment that had been shrunk to accommodate only the dying.

He wore a pale blue overcoat. The face resolved gradually, like a photograph developing in solution. Auburn beard, thick and unkempt. An old scar ran along his jaw, under his red stubble. Very dark, almost black eyes, regarding him with an expression Alistair was unable to classify, something close to clinical assessment, as if the figure were examining a mechanical problem that required solving.

"Ne bouge pas," the large man said. His accent was strange. His voice was a deep baritone. The words were French but mangled by another tongue underneath it. It took a second for Alistair to clear his mind enough to understand. Do not move, as if he had anywhere to go.

The massive man went to check another fallen soldier, just a few feet away. He nudged him with his boot, but the limp body stayed still, no movement or sound. His activity was economical. There was no wasted energy, no hesitation. His massive hands—as large as a man’s head—checked for signs of life, nonetheless. They moved with surprising gentleness, as if he feared damaging something else with them. He then grabbed the bloated corpse by the ankles and dragged it out of the way.

The big man turned his attention back to the massive log, raised an eyebrow and rubbed his chin twice. "Je peux," the man muttered. I can. As if reassuring someone. As if there was still doubt that a human being of his size was unable to carry out anything.

Alistair's voice, when it finally came, was almost unrecognizable. It sounded like a man who had been screaming for hours, days, or even years.

He rasped, "I'm Lieutenant Alistair Harrow, an officer. I—" The sentence broke off into a fit of coughing, and what he spat out was a mix of blood, phlegm, and the bitter taste of his own decay.

The man did not pause, did not acknowledge Alistair had spoken. He simply continued his work. His dark eyes fixed on the beam pinning Alistair to the earth.

"Calme-toi," the man said quietly. Calm yourself. It was a command, delivered with the certainty of a man accustomed to being obeyed, regardless of rank or circumstance.

Alistair's protests faded away. He realized that his authority, the very thing that defined him, was useless now. It set him apart from the others in the trench and gave him a sense of importance. But in this situation, it meant nothing. Worse, it was irrelevant. He was not an officer trapped under debris. He was just something to be moved. The person moving him followed a logic that had no ties to the hierarchies Alistair had always taken for granted.

The man placed himself at one end of the beam. He crouched down, his massive thighs tensing as he grasped the wood. For a moment, nothing changed. Then, with a surprisingly effortless motion, he lifted. The beam dislodged. It did not jerk or strain as Alistair's body had anticipated. Instead, it moved smoothly, gently. The weight that seemed impossible to budge, the weight that felt utterly immovable and permanent, turned out to be a manageable burden for someone with enough strength. He took three steps to the side. The beam swung away from Alistair’s body and the giant lowered it onto the debris.

The pressure on Alistair's chest released. In its place came a sensation so complete and overwhelming that it erased everything else: pain. Both legs proclaimed their existence with a fiery screaming sensation. He gasped, opened his mouth to scream, and the man pressed his hand to Alistair's chest gently but with an absolute firmness communicating that this too was necessary.

"Pas seul," the man said. Not alone. Or perhaps: You are not alone. The distinction seemed important, though Alistair had difficulty articulating why.

The man—what was his name? Alistair should ask his name—straightened. He looked down at Alistair, and their eyes finally met for a moment.

“M—Merci?” Alistair managed to whimper, still unsure which language was useful in this situation, if any.

Without another word, the man bent down and grasped Alistair's torso with his enormous hands, so big they practically encircled his entire waistline, and hoisted the officer’s entire body like it weighed no more than a pillow. The pain of being moved was unbearable. It was the kind of agony that would normally cause someone to pass out, yet Alistair stayed conscious. He felt himself being lifted, his lower body dangling limply as the man slung him over his sturdy shoulder.

The man stood. The motion was smooth despite Alistair's body mass and despite its awkward distribution. Alistair's head hung down the man's back, his vision inverted and confused, blood rushing toward his brain. He saw the ruins of the trench from this new perspective. He caught sight of the bodies left behind.

And then they were moving. The man's stride was steady and careful. He avoided the deep shell holes and stayed on the remaining high ground. His footsteps were loud in the relative quiet of the morning. Behind them, the trench, the place where Alistair had almost died, the place where the men still lay, still waited, receded into the distance.

***

TIME BECAME THE RHYTHM of footsteps. Bounce and sway. Boots thudded against the ground, matching his deep, steady breaths. They moved through a space that was once pleasant, even idyllic, but now felt like a monument to death and devastation.

Alistair’s world contracted to the view over Tomasz’s shoulder: the scarred back of his neck, the slow roll of muscle beneath his shirt, and beyond him, the wreckage of battle drifting past. His vision swam. Consciousness and delirium traded places with each step. The pain in his lower body was constant now, almost bearable in its consistency. What was unbearable was the evidence passing below him, his field of vision speaking in a language of ruin.

A twisted piece of artillery, frozen mid-explosion, its barrel bent like a broken finger. A tree, or what was left of a tree, the trunk splintered vertically as if the earth tried to shatter it from the inside out. A shell hole, its crater filled with water the color of rust. The water was completely still. Alistair understood without being told; the stillness indicated the presence of corpses.

One soldier lay face-down, an arm reaching out as if trying to grab something just out of reach. Another sat upright at the crater’s edge. He seemed to rest comfortably, but a dark stain near his abdomen revealed the truth. Blood seeped through his uniform into a puddle on the grass next to his corpse.

Then he recognized one. The body was partially buried, the mud reclaiming it gradually. But the uniform was visible, the boots distinctive. The placement of the body faced away from the trench, where he must have fallen mid-stride, no doubt running for his life.

"Wickham," Alistair whispered, and the name came out as barely more than air.