Page 24 of The Unknown Birds

The sergeant major smacked both Tom and Stewart up the back of the head as they passed by. “Keep your pretty heads down if you’d like to take them with you when you leave,” he warned.

“Remember how you’ve come. Especially you runners,” Captain Davies said, patting Ashley on the back.

It smelled worse than a sewer, and gazing up at the dark, starless sky, Ash felt like a rat trapped in that sewer. “What if it rains?” she wondered aloud to TomTom. Could the trench fill so completely they’d be forced to swim along the surface to be picked off by snipers or else drown?

“If it rains they call a truce, and we all go into No Man’s Land for tea,” Lieutenant Napier remarked so earnestly that for a moment she believed him.

Sergeant Major Chapman stifled a snort and said, “Gum boots are distributed as needed. There’s no such thing as bad weather, only bloody proper footwear.”

Ash had brought a dozen pairs of socks, but what was the point of dry feet when the rest of her body would be soaked to the skin?

Though it seemed like wandering through a maze, Ash knew from her maps the trenches made a zigzag sort of grid, never running straight for more than a few meters before turning sharply back and then back again.

They made their way slowly and quietly down the communication trench dubbed Bell Avenue, passing signposts when they transected the reserve and support trenches as they continued on towards the very front.

Every so often another red-banded runner would shove his way past, coming or going, hardly sparing the Surreys a glance, so intent was each upon his mission.

Rook, for his part, seemed to withdraw more deeply into himself as they turned down the forward line. Like many men, Blake and Cooper teased and jostled each other as they walked, trying to release their fizzing nerves. Not Rook. His posture grew stooped, eyes roving, searching for any hidden danger without a pause.

They finally halted in a section of trench with a handwritten placard dubbing it the incongruously cheerful Cherrydale Lane. Captain Davies nodded for Rook to take first watch, and the sniper stepped up onto a ledge just high enough to let a man peek over the top, stretching himself up the sloping side, head down, using a sort of mirrored periscope to peer out into the darkness.

“Get comfortable, lads,” Davies told them, his jaw set and head swiveling like Rook’s.

“Make way,” someone shouted, and Ash pressed herself to the side as heavy footsteps thundered down the wooden walkway. “I’ve a message for Captain Davies—make way,” the man panted.

“I’m Davies.”

The runner held out his note and then collapsed, face down in the mud.

“Ho!” Cooper shouted, jumping back.

Ash stepped forward to help the runner to his feet—then paused when she realized his coat was soaked with blood from half a dozen bullet holes, and she threw up right there in the trench.

Captain Davies seemed momentarily frozen, staring between the battered paper in his hand and the wounded runner on the ground. “Find a stretcher bearer,” he told TomTom, who set off at a run, back up the line the way they’d come.

Skimming the note, Davies whispered, “God damn bloody hell.”

“Sir?” Lieutenant Napier asked.

“Orders. But there’s a bloody bullet hole right through the god-damned date and time. Runners!” he bellowed.

Ash wiped her mouth on her sleeve and stepped up alongside Cooper and Blake, though she was having trouble taking her eyes off the man at the captain’s feet who she was pretty certain must be dead.

“It’s too important. I shall send all three of you,” Davies told them. “Go to Captain Owens of the West Kents. They’re in”—He referred back to the note—“St. George’s Street Trench. Take separate paths. Tell him his runner was killed and we need to clarify the orders. Date and time, you understand?”

“Yes, sir,” they replied.

“Go. Now. Quickly, but carefully. Be on your guard. Whomever did this is likely still out there.”

Blake and Cooper clasped hands for a moment, then Blake turned right and Cooper went left, while Ash just stood there, finding it hard to breathe. She didn’t know what to do or where to go.

“All right, Ashley?” Davies asked.

“Yes, sir,” she lied, staring down at her own sick.

“Better out than in,” he said, patting her back and turning down the trench.

She glanced in the direction Blake had gone and found Rook watching her, offering a grim nod, and somehow, that was the encouragement she needed to get moving.