The roar of the Ottoman counterattack rolled along the imperial road and crashed into the forest on either side.
Thousands of voices merged into one enormous sound—prayers, battle cries, whistles and shouted commands—until the trees themselves seemed to tremble beneath it.
Hidden behind a broad trunk, Adolf pressed the painted stock of his M1 carbine firmly into his shoulder. Strips of green and brown cloth hung from his helmet and sleeves, breaking apart the outline of his body. Through drifting smoke, he searched the road with the weapon's iron sights.
Then the Ottoman standard emerged.
The red banner appeared first, torn and blackened at its edges but still raised above the advancing soldiers. Beneath it ran a man clutching the staff with both hands while dozens surged forward around him.
Adolf centred the front sight upon the man's chest, slowly he squeezed the trigger, then the carbine cracked.
The standard-bearer jerked backward and disappeared beneath the men behind him. The Ottoman flag tipped, struck the road and vanished momentarily among boots and bodies.
Adolf almost screamed with delight.
"Ha! I got the little bastard!" he shouted. "Sarge—I got the flag carrier!"
Behind him, Gunther continued firing toward the road. He gave Adolf only a brief thumbs-up, scarcely taking his eyes from the smoke.
Another Ottoman bent toward the fallen banner, and Adolf fired again. The man folded across the flagstaff. Then a third reached for it, and another crack came. The man fell beside the others.
Adolf's grin widened. Each time the flag dropped, another man came forward to raise it, and each time Adolf settled the sight upon him and squeezed. Soon bodies began collecting around the red cloth.
Then bullets whipped through the branches around him.
Leaves snapped apart. Bark burst from the trunk beside his face, and a rifle round passed close enough for him to feel the air strike his cheek.
Adolf dropped sharply behind cover with the rest of the squad. Beside him, Gunther suddenly recoiled and clutched at his chest as though a round had struck him.
The Ottomans were no longer advancing only along the road. Men were spreading into the forest, pushing between the trees with rifles and fixed bayonets, trying to close upon the positions from which the invisible fire was coming.
Around the Moss Men, smoke drifted low beneath the canopy—thin at first, then thick enough to sting the eyes and reduce the sunlight to a sickly yellow haze. By midday, the July heat had settled beneath the branches like a lid. The air felt heavy and reluctant to move, trapping smoke, dust and the smell of blood among the trees.
Gunther sat with his back jammed against a trunk, the radio pack crushed between the bark and his spine.
Bullets snapped past in angry little cracks. One punched through the leaves overhead. Another struck a neighbouring tree and threw splinters across his shoulder.
Somewhere behind him, something was burning. The smoke carried the oily bite of fuel and scorched rubber. Farther out, beyond the nearest trees, the Ottoman voices rose and broke in waves—men screaming, praying, calling for their mothers, calling for Allah, calling for anyone who might still answer them.
Gunther understood almost none of the words, but he understood the sound. It was the sound of human beings coming apart.
His carbine lay across his thighs. His hands shook so badly that the weapon felt unnaturally light, almost like a child's toy.
His ribs still rang from the impact.
The Ottoman bullet had struck the armoured plate beneath his vest and hurled him backward against the tree. It had failed to penetrate, but the blow had driven the breath from his lungs and left a deep, spreading pain across his chest.
First time, he thought. The first time anyone had ever shot him.
Get yourself together.
He pulled an empty magazine from the carbine and reached for another. His fingers slipped, and the fresh magazine dropped against the buckle of his equipment with a soft metallic clatter.
His stomach lurched as though the sound alone might guide a bullet toward him. He snatched it up and tried to insert it. It caught against the magazine well.
"Fuck," Gunther hissed.
There was no anger or bravery in the word—only fear and frustration.
A rifle cracked somewhere to his left, another answered. While farther to the right, beyond the imperial road where another Moss Man team fought its own private nightmare, a machine gun spat a short burst that chewed bark from the trees.
"Calm down, Sarge!" someone yelled through the smoke. "Breathe! Central said—"
A bullet snapped past so close to Gunther's head that he felt it tug at the air beside his ear.
The voice stopped.
A few metres away, Max crouched behind a fallen log. He had known Gunther since childhood, had followed him through school, training and now into this forest. Dirt streaked his face, and his eyes looked far too large beneath the netting of his helmet.
"Gunther!" he shouted. "Sarge! Any word from Central? Do we hold? Do we withdraw? What the hell are we supposed to do?"
Gunther forced the magazine upward again, harder this time, and finally it clicked into place. The small, solid sound felt like a lifeline. He chambered a round, pressed one shoulder against the tree and answered in a voice that sounded steadier than he felt.
"We hold for now. Stay low and keep your sectors covered."
To his left, Adolf had already risen again.
Only a year earlier, the newest man in their team had been selling automobiles. Now he wore the same vegetation-covered uniform as the rest of them, carried the same advanced weapons and possessed the wild, shining eyes of a man who had discovered something inside himself that peacetime had never permitted him to see.
Gunther recognised the look immediately. Adolf had come unmoored.
He was half-standing behind a shattered stump, firing too quickly and laughing as though noise itself made him immortal.
"Come on!" Adolf shouted. "Come and get it!"
His carbine cracked again and again.
Otto's voice answered from farther down the line, sharpened by equal parts fury and terror.
"Christ, they're insane! Don't they have any instinct for survival? They're charging straight at us!"
He fired twice.
"I told you we should have dug more pit traps! I fucking told you!"
The forest answered with Ottoman rifles.
Most were old, loud weapons firing slowly and individually. The shots cracked through the woodland from a dozen directions, striking trees, earth and empty shadows.
But there were so many of them that the separate reports merged into a continuous harsh clatter, like hail beating against a roof.
Through the smoke, dark shapes moved between the trunks.
Gunther caught fragments of them rather than entire men—a grey-green sleeve, the flash of a bayonet, a face appearing for half a heartbeat before vanishing behind a tree.
Near the road, where the cover was thinner, Ottoman soldiers pushed forward behind the bodies of their fallen comrades as though corpses might serve as walls.
They came in broken waves and they died in broken waves. And still more followed, feeding themselves into the same narrow mouth of gunfire as though faith, anger or desperation might somehow make flesh resist bullets.
Gunther leaned from behind the tree and fired three controlled shots.
One shadow dropped. Another staggered and disappeared behind a trunk.
Return fire tore through the leaves above him, and he threw himself back into cover hard enough to jar his wounded ribs. Pain flashed white through his chest.
Then the radio gave a faint, precise beep.
For a moment, Gunther did not move. His heart struck so hard that it hurt. He twisted around, pulled the handset from the radio pack and pressed it against his ear.
Static hissed.
Then came a voice—calm, distant and professional. A voice belonging to a world in which maps, orders and plans still existed.
"All forward units, this is Central. Withdraw to your assigned secondary positions. Reinforcements are en route. Repeat: disengage by bounds, withdraw to secondary positions and hold. Do not allow a breakthrough."
Gunther sat motionless, listening to the static that followed.
Relief passed through him so violently that his vision blurred. It was not happiness. It was something draining away—the release of a breath his body had been holding without his permission.
He replaced the handset and forced himself upright.
"Listen up!" he shouted. "Central confirms reinforcements are coming! We withdraw to the secondary line by bounds, then hold it. We do not let them through!"
"Yes, Sergeant!"
The answers were ragged and uneven, but they came.
To Gunther's right, their machine gunner, Göbels, sat slumped behind a low rock. His jaw was clenched so tightly that the muscles stood out beneath the dirt upon his face.
He was attempting to bind his own hand.
Blood had soaked through the first layer of dressing and darkened his sleeve almost to the elbow.
Gunther crawled toward him, keeping below the rock while bullets snapped through the smoke overhead. Every movement drove pain deeper into his ribs.
"Göbels," he said. "Look at me. Are you still in this?"
Göbels lifted his head.
His face was pale, but he wore the stubborn grin of a man who considered dying an intolerable inconvenience.
His right hand had become a shapeless bundle of blood-darkened cloth. Several fingers were missing.
"Still here, Sarge," he rasped. "It's only a flesh wound."
He looked down at the bandages and winced.
"Well, perhaps slightly more than a flesh wound. Bastards took my ring finger."
His expression twisted into something between amusement and grief.
"My wife is going to be furious. We had matching rings. Now mine is lying somewhere in this fucking forest."
Despite himself, Gunther felt a crooked smile pull at his mouth.
It lasted less than a second.
"After this, we'll look for it."
Göbels glanced at the ruined hand.
"My finger too?"
"The whole damned set."
Göbels coughed out something resembling laughter.
Then he dragged himself behind the light machine gun braced against the rock. With his remaining hand and the mangled grip of the other, he pulled the weapon into position and settled his shoulder behind it.
The gun seemed less like a machine of war in his hands than a familiar industrial tool.
Gunther risked looking around the stone. The forest had become a ruined furnace.
Smoke moved between the trees in uneven sheets. Small fires crept through the dry undergrowth where explosives and burning fuel had ignited it. Heat distorted the air until every distant movement appeared ghostlike.
Through the haze came the Ottoman soldiers.
There were no neat ranks here and no mounted officers directing parade-ground formations. Only men moving between trees, rifles raised, bayonets extended.
They advanced through smoke, roots and bodies because whatever instinct had once told them to stop had already been beaten out of them.
"Göbels!" Gunther shouted through the gunfire. "Can you give us suppressive fire?"
"Give me a second—"
The machine gun answered before he could finish.
Göbels leaned into the weapon and sent a series of short, disciplined bursts through the smoke. The gun hammered against his shoulder as bullets tore between the trees, shredding leaves and punching splinters from trunks. Dark figures stumbled or vanished into the haze while others threw themselves behind whatever cover they could find, crouching among roots, bodies and fallen branches as the fire swept across their advance.
The forest answered with screams, scattered rifle shots and the distant shrieking of frightened horses.
Gunther turned toward the three men nearest him.
"You three—incendiaries. Get the bottles out and prepare the wicks. When they close, we burn the approaches."
They moved immediately, pulling dark glass bottles from their packs while one man prepared the ragged wicks. Even beneath the smoke and stink of explosives, Gunther could smell the sharp bite of fuel.
He raised his carbine again and forced himself to breathe.
The fear remained, but it had changed. There was no room now for the shaking uncertainty that had gripped him moments earlier. Central had given them an order, and an order gave shape to everything around him.
Withdraw to the secondary positions. Hold there. Bleed the enemy. Buy time for the reinforcements.
Then, when Central ordered them to move again, they would disappear deeper into the countryside as though the forest itself had swallowed them.
A whistle shrilled somewhere beyond the smoke. Ottoman voices answered.
Another wave was coming.
Through the trees Gunther glimpsed red banners moving above the advancing men, followed by rifles and bayonets weaving between the trunks. They were no longer maintaining anything resembling an orderly formation. They simply surged forward wherever the terrain allowed, driven by anger, desperation and whatever remained of the courage that had carried them through the slaughter upon the road.
Gunther watched them close.
"Wait."
The three men held their bottles ready.
The Ottomans came nearer.
"Wait…"
Now Gunther could make out individual faces between the trees: sweat-streaked, bloodied, mouths open as men shouted prayers and curses while pushing through the smoke.
"Now!"
Three bottles sailed from behind cover.
They turned slowly through the air before striking stone, roots and dry earth. Glass burst, fuel splashed outward. Then all three ignited almost together with a deep, wet whump.
Flames raced across the leaf litter in broad orange sheets, seizing dead grass and low brush before curling around the trunks of the nearest trees. Black smoke boiled upward, thickening rapidly until the woodland beyond became little more than a shifting wall of fire and shadow.
The heat struck almost immediately. And for several precious moments, the burning ground divided the two forces.
"That's it!" Gunther shouted. "Fall back! Now!"
Göbels did not hesitate. He kept the machine gun hammering in controlled bursts, firing through the haze while Gunther and the others broke from their positions.
They moved exactly as they had been trained. One group ran while another fired. Then they changed places.
Gunther sprinted bent low between the trees, boots sliding across ash, dry soil and exposed roots. Ottoman bullets cracked through the branches around him, striking bark with dull punches and slicing leaves apart overhead. Several rounds passed close enough that he heard their ugly little whistles before they vanished into the forest beyond.
"Move!" he shouted. "Keep moving!"
Adolf was the smallest man in the squad and easily the quickest. He shot ahead nearly twenty metres before throwing himself behind another tree. His shoulder struck the trunk hard, but he was already turning as he landed, bringing the carbine to his shoulder and firing back through the smoke.
Two shots, then a third. Each was fast but deliberate, aimed at whatever movement appeared whenever the haze briefly opened.
Gunther and two others ran past him.
"Göbels! Your turn!"
Göbels fired one final burst before wrenching the machine gun from its position and running. The weapon bounced heavily against him as he pushed through the undergrowth, ammunition belts and loose equipment slapping against his kit.
"I'm almost dry!" he shouted. "We need ammunition, Sarge!"
"Not here!" Gunther yelled back. "Get to the next position first!"
Göbels barreled past, breathing hard, the weight of the machine gun making every stride slower than those of the riflemen.
Ahead, Adolf had already changed weapons. He dropped his carbine against its sling, brought up the compact launcher and fired.
Thump. Then again. Thump.
Two dark shapes disappeared into the smoke. A moment later came two compact explosions, followed by shouting and screams.
"Max! Otto! Cover him!"
Their carbines opened together.
Adolf peeled away from the tree and sprinted toward the others while Max and Otto kept firing. Gunther stopped long enough to add several shots of his own until Adolf slid into cover beside him.
"Go!"
Max and Otto immediately broke from their positions and ran.
The process repeated itself.
Fire while the others moved. Move while the others fired. Never leave the entire squad exposed at once.
Across the forest, other Moss Men teams were doing the same thing, retreating in staggered bounds toward the prepared secondary line. From a distance the withdrawal might almost have resembled a net being pulled slowly backward—stretching, shifting and tightening without ever quite breaking.
Gunther dropped behind another tree, spun and fired.
Ottoman rifles answered immediately.
The Winchesters were louder than the Moss Men's weapons, their reports cracking violently between the trunks. Most of the fire was hurried and inaccurate, but there were enough rifles that accuracy almost ceased to matter.
A heavy round struck the tree beside Gunther's face and blasted splinters across his cheek. He flinched and pressed himself closer to the trunk.
Through the haze he could see the Ottomans more clearly now.
Many were young—far younger than he had imagined when looking at them from a distance. Some wore proper uniforms, others clothing that barely seemed to fit. Their rifles were old and mismatched. Their spacing was poor, and whatever disciplined formation they had possessed upon the road had long since dissolved.
Yet they kept coming.
Their faces were twisted with fear, fury and belief. Men shouted as they fired, stumbling over roots and corpses, pushing deeper into the forest despite the fire cutting through them.
It was not the sort of courage Gunther admired, it frightened him. A disciplined man might decide that an attack had become impossible. These men seemed increasingly beyond such calculations.
"Ammo check!" Gunther barked.
"Two mags!" Otto shouted back.
"Down to one!" Max yelled.
Adolf squeezed the trigger and got only a dry click. He glanced at the empty carbine, let it fall against its sling, and drew his pistol.
"Sidearm."
Gunther slammed his last fresh magazine into the carbine.
They could not keep this up forever.
"Move!"
They broke from cover again and pushed uphill toward the ridge, toward the concealed trenches and whatever ammunition caches were still waiting there.
Behind them, the forest was becoming a furnace. Flames crawled through the undergrowth and leapt across the dry carpet of leaves, while black smoke boiled beneath the canopy and the heat pressed hard against their backs. The fire would buy them only seconds, but seconds were enough. It forced the Ottomans around burning patches, funnelled them between trees and made even the most determined men hesitate before plunging through flame.
The Moss Men took those seconds and spent every one of them running.
Bullets hissed through the smoke, snapping branches, blasting bark from trunks and shredding leaves overhead. Dirt kicked up around their boots.
"Move! Move!" Gunther roared without breaking stride.
At first, everything went almost perfectly, textbook perfect.
Peel, cover, run.
Adolf was moving along the left flank, quick and half-wild, sprinting from tree to tree with his pistol in hand. He fired whenever a shape appeared through the smoke, then moved again before the return fire could settle upon him. Laughter and panic tangled strangely in his breathing as he reloaded on the move, his hands working almost too quickly.
"Adolf!" Gunther shouted. "Come on! Make for the ridge—we're almost there!"
Adolf glanced uphill, then broke from cover and sprinted hard toward the others.
But then his body jerked violently, once, then again.
"Ah—shit!"
The cry cut through everything.
Adolf staggered another two steps on pure momentum before his legs folded beneath him. He went down hard, rolling onto his side with a grunt as the impact drove the breath from his lungs.
"Adolf!" Otto shouted.
Ottoman fire immediately thickened around him.
"Cover fire!" Gunther roared.
Max and Otto opened up at once, their carbines cracking in rapid succession as they fired into the smoke. Behind them, Göbels swung the machine gun around and poured out what remained of his ammunition, the weapon hammering until the last rounds vanished into the trees.
Gunther did not think, he ran.
Rounds snapped past closely enough to pull at his clothes. One struck the earth beside his boot; another tore through the leaves almost against his face. He threw himself down beside Adolf as bullets chewed into the ground around them.
Adolf lay curled upon his side, gasping.
Gunther rolled him onto his back and seized the drag handle sewn into the rear of his vest, put there for exactly this reason.
"Come on!"
He hauled him backward through the dirt, muscles burning, until they slammed into cover behind the nearest tree. Bullets struck the trunk almost immediately, blasting chunks of bark down across them.
Adolf was shaking. His eyes were wide and glassy. One hand clawed at his right side while the other reached awkwardly behind him, fingers already slick with blood.
"Oh shit," he gasped. "Oh shit, Sarge—my side—my ass—"
"Where?"
"Right side. And…" Adolf swallowed, a hysterical laugh escaping through the panic. "And my ass. Fuck—I can't feel my legs."
Gunther pulled his hand away and looked quickly over the wounds.
"Look at me."
Adolf's eyes found his.
"Wiggle your toes."
Adolf swallowed again and tried. For one horrible heartbeat, nothing happened. Then his boots twitched, barely.
Adolf stared down at them.
"Oh—fuck. They moved. I think they moved."
"They moved," Gunther said immediately. "Good. You're still in this."
Adolf shook his head weakly. The wild bravado had finally disappeared, leaving only fear behind.
"I don't know, Sarge. I feel weak. Really weak. This might be it."
"No."
Gunther was already slinging his carbine across his chest.
"No chance. I've got you."
He hooked an arm beneath Adolf, hauled him upright and wrestled him across his shoulders into a fireman's carry. Adolf groaned as the movement shifted his wounds. His pack, launcher, pistol and remaining equipment clattered against Gunther's own kit.
"Sorry," Adolf muttered through clenched teeth. "I'm heavy."
"Shut up," Gunther grunted. "You scrawny car-salesman bastard. You could train for ten years and still not be too heavy for me."
He tried to stand.
The combined weight struck him like a wall. Radio pack, rifle, ammunition, armour, Adolf's equipment, and Adolf himself.
For a moment Gunther's knees simply refused.
Then he let out a raw grunt, forced his legs straight and started forward.
"Just a little farther," he breathed. "Come on… come on."
They climbed through roots and thick brush, boots slipping on loose earth and stones. Bullets cracked past them, snapping twigs and whining from rocks. Every step burned through Gunther's legs. Every breath tasted of smoke.
Above them, through heat shimmer and drifting haze, the ridge finally appeared clearly.
A shallow trench cut across its crest. Camouflaged figures moved inside it, while friendly muzzle flashes stabbed downward through the smoke in measured bursts.
They were almost there.
Then something struck Gunther's right thigh. The impact buckled his leg beneath him. Pain flashed white through the muscle, and he dropped onto one knee with a curse, barely managing to keep Adolf across his shoulders.
"Oh shit—Sarge!"
"I'm fine."
Gunther tried to rise, just as a figure burst from the smoke below them.
An Ottoman soldier charged uphill through the brush with his bayonet fixed, uniform filthy and torn, half his face streaked with blood. Fear and fury had twisted together in his expression until they were impossible to separate.
"Allahu Akbar!"
"Sarge! Behind you!" someone shouted from the trench.
Adolf twisted across Gunther's shoulders and dragged his pistol free. His hand shook badly, he fired anyway.
Crack.
The Ottoman jerked as the bullet struck him, but he kept coming. Blood spread across his tunic. He stumbled, regained his footing and drove himself forward another step, bayonet still pointed toward Gunther.
Adolf fired again.
Crack crack, crack.
The soldier finally collapsed into the brush and slid face-first partway down the slope.
Adolf kept the pistol trained upon him for another second before sucking in a ragged breath.
"I've got your back, Sergeant."
Gunther barked a short laugh through clenched teeth.
"Good. I'll carry your sorry ass then in peace."
He forced his wounded leg beneath himself and stood. Then he kept climbing. Each step sent pain burning through his thigh, but the trench was close now—so close it seemed less like earthworks than salvation.
"There!" Adolf rasped. "Trench!"
"I see it."
Gunther stumbled the final few metres. Hands reached over the parapet.
"Take him!"
He twisted and shoved Adolf forward. Several men caught enough of him to break the fall, though he still landed in the trench with an undignified thump.
"Ohh, fuck—my back!"
Gunther almost laughed. Then his leg gave way, and he half climbed, half fell over the lip after him.
For several seconds he remained where he landed, chest heaving against the packed earth as Ottoman bullets snapped overhead and friendly rifles answered from the firing step.
Then he looked around.
The secondary position was already alive with movement.
Other Moss Men were filtering in from different parts of the forest, some supporting wounded comrades between them, others dragging machine guns, ammunition and equipment through the trench. Camouflaged supply boxes were being ripped open almost as quickly as they appeared, dirty hands snatching out fresh magazines and feeding new belts into weapons that had nearly run dry.
Against the rear wall, one man sat grimacing while a comrade bound his bleeding arm. A radioman crouched nearby with a handset pressed against one ear, speaking in short, clipped German through bursts of static. Along the forward edge of the position, several marksmen lay behind prepared firing points, almost unnaturally calm amid the confusion.
One fired.
A muted crack disappeared into the smoke below, and another man settled behind his sights to take the next shot.
They had wounded men, ammunition was running out fast and ground was being lost, but the line was still holding.
"Jesus," Gunther panted as he forced himself upright.
His eyes found the leader of the sniper team farther along the trench.
"What the hell was that? You fired too early. Half the roadside charges missed because of it!"
The sniper leader neither flinched nor apologized. He merely glanced toward Gunther and shrugged.
"They spotted the wire. Trap was compromised."
Gunther stared at him.
"…You're serious."
The man nodded once. "First real combat for all of us. Training only gets you so far."
Gunther let out a hard breath and looked away.
He hated that the man was right.
Göbels dropped into the trench beside Adolf a moment later, panting heavily, his face streaked with soot and sweat. He glanced toward the sniper leader.
"Mortars?"
"Twelve rounds each. They're dry. Already pulling back."
Gunther looked sharply toward him.
"So we're on our own?"
"For now. We hold. They stall. Central moves us when the pressure drops."
Gunther nodded and lifted himself just high enough to peer over the parapet. Beyond it, flames crawled between the trees while movement flickered through smoke farther down the slope.
"Alright," he said. "Then we hold."
A groan came from behind him.
"Sarge."
Gunther turned.
Adolf lay where they had put him, pale and breathing shallowly, one hand hovering uncertainly near his wounded side.
"You got a bandage or something?"
"Oh—shit. Right."
Gunther dropped beside him and pulled open his medical pouch.
"A tourniquet isn't going to do much for your ass," he muttered, reaching for the dressings, "but we can patch the holes."
Adolf managed a weak laugh.
"Yeah. I'd like to see my kids."
Gunther stopped.
"Kids?"
"Well… not yet." Adolf swallowed. "Sonja. Sonja Wallenberg. You know her. The redhead you saw with me at the amusement park. Copper hair."
His eyes had gone slightly glassy, but a faint grin remained.
"I'm pretty sure she's pregnant."
Gunther blinked at him.
"Wait. You married into the Wallenbergs? I thought the brunette was your wife."
"Nah. Secretary. Back when I sold cars."
Adolf winced as Gunther pressed the dressing into place, then added with strained confidence,
"Maybe I'll make her my second wife."
Gunther stared at him for half a second before letting out an incredulous laugh.
"You are unbelievable. You get a rich Swedish redhead pregnant, keep another woman waiting at home, then come all the way to Bulgaria and get yourself shot in the ass."
Adolf gave him a tired grin.
"Worth it."
Around them, rifles continued cracking from the trench while the marksmen maintained their slow, deliberate rhythm. The worst pressure below had eased. The Ottomans were still advancing, but no longer with the same blind momentum. Fire and concentrated defensive shooting had forced them to spread out, seek cover and think before rushing forward.
Gunther tightened Adolf's dressing, drawing a sharp breath through the wounded man's teeth, then gave him a firm slap on the shoulder.
"You're not dying today."
Adolf looked at him.
"I'll see to that." Gunther leaned closer, his expression turning into a rough grin. "And when this is over, if you marry those women under the New Dawn, I'm your best man. I want to see car salesman Adolf Hitler become family man Adolf Hitler. Little Hitlers running everywhere. I want to see the whole damned spectacle."
A shaky laugh escaped Adolf.
"Deal."
His eyelids drooped for a moment.
"And… keep the wounds quiet if you can."
"What?"
"I don't want to explain this to my women." Adolf grimaced. "I'd never hear the end of it."
Gunther shook his head, still smiling, and finished securing the dressing before turning his attention to his own thigh. The wound burned viciously, but it was manageable. He bound it quickly, tested the leg and decided it would carry him.
For now, that was enough.
Max, Otto and Göbels had already returned to the firing line. They shot through drifting smoke and shimmering heat whenever Ottoman figures exposed themselves below. The attackers had begun forming a rough line of their own where the terrain permitted, crouching behind trees, stones and fallen bodies rather than throwing themselves endlessly into open fire.
Even the bravest men learned caution when the forest itself seemed determined to kill them.
For the first time since the withdrawal began, Gunther had a moment to breathe.
He lowered himself against the trench wall, chest still heaving. His hands trembled now that they had nothing urgent to do. Beside him, Adolf drifted in and out of exhausted consciousness, but his breathing remained steady.
Alive.
That was what mattered.
Gunther pulled a half-empty ammunition box toward him and began replenishing his magazines. The work was simple enough to occupy his hands without requiring thought.
Thumb. Press. Click.
Another round.
Thumb. Press. Click.
Slowly, the trembling began to ease.
Then his eyes settled upon the carbine lying across his knees, and the men he had killed returned to him.
Not targets.
Not shapes moving through smoke.
Men.
He remembered faces appearing between the trees for fractions of a second before his sights settled upon them. Bodies folding into the dirt. Blood spreading into soil that cared nothing for which uniform a man wore. Men screaming in voices they probably had never heard coming from themselves.
Gunther swallowed.
What the fuck?
The whole thing was insane.
Only a few years earlier, the strangest thing he had ever witnessed had been in America: Karl throwing himself from a cliff in Oskar's ridiculous flying suit, followed eventually by the Wright brothers attempting their own imitation and falling to their deaths when their homemade contraptions failed.
At the time, Gunther had thought nothing in his life could possibly become stranger.
He had been wrong.
Today he had killed men with the same repetitive ease with which he once stuffed meatballs into his mouth at a restaurant while trying to beat some idiotic eating record. Aim, squeeze, move to the next. Again and again until the action threatened to become ordinary.
That realization disturbed him more than the blood.
Not that killing had happened.
That his mind was already learning how to live with it.
How the hell had he reached this point?
The answer came at once.
A train, a crowded third-class carriage, years ago—wooden benches, coal smoke, rattling windows and ordinary people packed together against the cold. Gunther had been there with two other soldiers when a little girl named Lotte began choking on a piece of hard bread.
At first, everyone tried to help.
That was the problem.
Gunther had rushed forward and done the only things he could think of: shaking her, turning her upside down, hoping the bread would simply fall free. When that failed, her terrified mother tried reaching into the girl's mouth with her fingers.
None of them knew what they were doing.
The child was turning purple.
Then Oskar moved.
"STOP, YOU FOOLS!"
He took Lotte from her mother, laid her properly across his thigh and struck between her shoulder blades with controlled force.
Once, twice, again. Then the bread had come free.
Lotte screamed. And because she screamed, everyone knew she was alive.
Gunther still remembered the relief that swept through the carriage—and how quickly it vanished when Oskar stood.
The prince looked at the soldiers. Then at Gunther. His face hardened.
"A little girl almost died—on a train full of grown men—and not ONE of you knew what to do."
Then that enormous hand closed around Gunther's coat.
A moment later his boots were hanging above the floor.
For perhaps the first time in his life, Gunther had been genuinely certain another man could kill him without effort.
Oskar was furious—not because Gunther had refused to help, but because he had tried and been completely useless.
Then Karl intervened.
He scrambled between them, pleading with Oskar to understand the obvious truth: none of them had ever been taught. Not the soldiers, not the mothers, not even Karl himself. They knew how to march, drill and fire rifles, but nobody had shown them how to save a choking child.
That stopped Oskar.
His anger drained away almost as quickly as it had come.
He lowered Gunther back to the floor, looked around the frightened carriage and finally understood that the problem was larger than any one man.
Then, instead of walking away, he stayed.
That was what Gunther remembered most.
A prince could have cursed their stupidity and returned to his seat. Oskar did the opposite. He apologized, pulled Gunther back onto his feet and turned the carriage into a classroom.
"I see," he had said. "Then I suppose I have to teach all of you."
And he did.
He taught them how to clear an airway, control bleeding, position an unconscious person and keep someone alive until proper help arrived. Gunther became one of his unwilling demonstration subjects, terrified at first, then increasingly fascinated as Oskar explained things none of them had ever been taught.
By the time the train reached its destination, Gunther no longer saw him merely as a prince.
Oskar had terrified him, saved a child in front of him, realized his own anger had been misplaced—and then taken responsibility for making sure the same ignorance would not kill someone next time.
That night changed Gunther's life.
He had once seriously considered leaving Germany for America. Instead he stayed, trained harder and eventually entered the Eternal Guard. He guarded Oskar's family, travelled across America with Karl and watched Germany transform around the man he had first met by accident in third class.
And now here he was.
Years later, sitting in a muddy trench in Thrace with soot across his face, blood drying upon his clothes and ammunition between his fingers while Ottoman soldiers gathered somewhere beyond the smoke.
All because one little girl had choked on a piece of bread.
Gunther looked down at the carbine across his knees.
Strangely, even now, he did not regret where that train had carried him.
Not for a second.
His thoughts drifted back several months, to Potsdam and the Eternal Guard training grounds before any of them had crossed into Bulgaria.
It had been early spring then. Winter had not entirely released Germany from its grip, and the morning carried a cold dampness that clung to uniforms and turned every breath faintly white. The grass covering the broad training field was still flattened and colourless in places, while the trees surrounding the grounds had only just begun showing the first hesitant signs of green.
All six hundred Eternal Guards had been assembled there.
They stood in three great formations across the field, two hundred men to each company, dressed in their dark uniforms rather than the camouflage they would later wear in Thrace. Equipment had been laid aside for the address, rifles slung neatly upon shoulders while six hundred men faced the temporary wooden platform erected at the far end of the grounds.
Their three company captains stood before them in the front rank, one representing each two-hundred-man company. Behind the stage had been mounted an enormous military map of southeastern Europe, large enough for even the men in the rear ranks to make out Bulgaria, Constantinople, the narrow corridor of eastern Thrace and the roads leading toward Adrianople.
Oskar stood alone at the centre of the platform.
Even without ceremony, he dominated it.
There had been no brass band, no ornamental guard and no collection of ministers waiting to applaud. Karl stood off to one side with several senior officers and staff, but otherwise the field belonged to Oskar and the six hundred men he had summoned.
Gunther could still remember how quiet they had become when the prince stepped forward.
Six hundred men, many of whom Gunther had heard laughing, swearing and shouting across those same training grounds, had fallen almost completely silent.
Oskar did not speak like a general trying to excite troops before a parade. He did not pace dramatically across the platform or hammer one fist into his palm. His voice remained measured, forcing the gathered men to listen rather than merely react.
Prince Oskar's words still echoed inside Gunther's skull now, clear enough that he could almost feel that cold spring air again.
"This is not a mere campaign," the prince had said. "Not just a mission to protect civilians. This is the beginning of a new age."
Then Oskar had looked across them, as one man looking upon other men and asking whether they were prepared to carry a burden that might break ordinary backs.
"My Eternal Guard—my warriors—hear me. A new age is coming. An age of freedom. Not brought forth only through the actions of a few, but by us all. And when it comes—when our mission is done—everyone, all the world, will know the heroes who brought it forth. The six hundred Eternal Guard who stood before hundreds of thousands… and gave their all to make a better world."
Gunther remembered the silence that followed.
Oskar turned toward the enormous map behind him and placed one finger upon Adrianople. Thrace stretched around it in roads, rivers and railways, the narrow land between Constantinople and Bulgaria through which any Ottoman advance would have to pass.
The prince tapped the city once, then again.
They were not being sent merely to watch or protect civilians. If necessary, they would hold, fight and stand against numbers that would have sounded absurd coming from anyone else.
And Oskar had not ordered them to accept that burden.
He had asked.
Gunther remembered the three captains standing before their companies, with six hundred Eternal Guards behind them beneath the pale spring sky. For several seconds nobody moved.
Then the answer came.
Six hundred voices erupted across the training ground. Fists hammered against chests and vows rolled through the ranks until the surrounding buildings seemed to answer them.
It was more than patriotism or military duty. Something deeper moved through those men—and perhaps something more dangerous.
The Eternal Guard had been trained differently from ordinary soldiers. They did not fight merely for pay, medals or survival. They fought like a blade fought: to be used.
Months of training had made movement instinctive. Cover, move, fire. One man ran while another protected him. Ground was abandoned only when the next position was ready. If burning a field bought time, they burned it. If Central decided a man's life could buy the mission another minute, he went.
Sacrifice was not spoken of mournfully.
It was treated like expenditure.
If your life bought the mission, then your life was spent.
Simple. Clean. Holy.
Yet none of them openly called Oskar divine, because Oskar would never permit it. He demanded no kneeling, claimed no celestial title and never proclaimed himself the Son of anything.
Like Christ, he didn't say it.
He simply walked among the poor, lifted the dying and demanded mercy where others accepted cruelty, competence where others tolerated helplessness, and improvement where generations had shrugged and called suffering inevitable.
Oskar treated misery as something offensive—something mankind could fight.
That was what affected the Eternal Guard so deeply.
This is what we have been waiting for.
When six hundred voices shouted, "one nation, one people—under one God," they were not thinking only of a distant God behind stained glass while men froze, starved and choked upon scraps of bread.
They meant the God of Man.
Not merely a voice beyond the clouds, but a presence in the world—a man capable of laying his hands upon history and forcing it to move.
Oskar never proclaimed such a thing. He never encouraged it or gave the belief a name.
He didn't need to.
Gunther had felt it that morning, and he knew many of the others had as well: faith, loyalty and purpose settling together until separating one from another became almost impossible.
Months later, wounded in a trench beneath the burning forests of Thrace, that spring morning seemed impossibly distant.
The clean training field was gone. The three ordered companies were scattered across forests, marshes and roads. Their immaculate uniforms had disappeared beneath camouflage, soot, mud and blood.
But the six hundred were still here.
More Eternal Guards emerged from the smoke and poured into the secondary position. Some carried wounded comrades; others brought ammunition, machine guns and radios. Fresh magazines passed forward, new belts went into weapons and marksmen settled behind the parapet while radiomen exchanged clipped messages with Central.
The defensive line steadied.
So did Gunther.
His fear remained. His wounded leg burned and his hands still trembled, while somewhere beyond the smoke thousands of Ottomans prepared for another attack.
But beneath the fear returned the same certainty he had felt at Potsdam.
A vow already made.
Gunther forced himself upright, checked his carbine and drove the magazine firmly home.
Down the slope, Ottoman whistles began sounding again.
Another assault was coming.
Gunther did not pray to survive. That was no longer entirely in his hands.
He prayed that whatever blood they spent here would purchase some part of the future Oskar had promised them.
Then he climbed onto the firing step, raised his carbine toward the smoke and roared until his voice cracked.
"For God and Fatherland!"