Perhaps there are no atheists in foxholes, but I am not convinced that there is God there either. Some of the others prayed when the bombers dropped those barrels of death on us. I ran my fingers over my Arete instead, that faithful poet whose every verse was now burned into my soul. The book was battered and dirty, pages threatening to fall out as I read them every night like my holy text, my reminder of what it was to feel.

We pushed them from the valley over the course of a month, bleeding them dry even as we dripped our own blood into the rich earth beneath our feet. Lysandros died to a sniper shot, Hekabe to a bouncing mine. Mnason and I seemed invincible, as if our lack of care formed a shield around us. We stood together often when the planning commenced and he would hold out his bag of chewing tobacco to me for a few pinches. His sardonic commentary couldn’t make me laugh, but it felt truer than bright optimism from the newest recruits. 

It was dangerous to smoke, particularly at night. The enemy had night vision and a single flame could light up a whole position. We had to be so careful, so much more careful than the enemy. Any slip and they would rip us to shreds like a tiger. Fighting for your home, though—that is a fight that does not die, not even as tired as we were.

A beautiful sunlit day broke across the mountains all around us, the world aglow with bright light and azure skies. We had taken a patrol’s worth of prisoners in the night, just a little more clever than they were. They knelt under guard, flour bags over their heads, while a conference was called by everyone else. Each had already been interrogated off on their own, as I had suggested.

“They will be a problem. We can’t spare people to guard them, not for long.” Mnason spat into the dirt, a wad of fresh chew in his cheek. “I frankly don’t see the point of sending them back to the villages where they can be a problem.” 

Ioudas sighed, swirling the reddish liquid in his tin can. In Zelen, coffee was unattainable, but zelaïs was very popular: a common root that brewed into a peppery tea. It was pleasant enough with honey, though no substitute for the coffee we all missed. Zosime said the flowering herb was the source of the valley’s name.

“So what is your suggestion, Mnason?” Lydia’s voice had lost its luster since Hekabe died, the younger sister left to soldier on without her idol. It had been a week, maybe less. Time is different in that world, twisted until meaningless. A month was an eternity and the blink of an eye at the same time, depending on what watch you had and whether you were close to the ‘hot zones’ at the passes. 

“We should shoot them.” The four words were clipped and precise, as blunt as ever. Nothing soft ever came out of Mnason’s mouth. “Or, maybe let them run into their own mines for once.”

Ioudas shook his head. “Grandmother wouldn’t like that.” 

Mnason crossed his arms, leaning back on his heels for a moment. “So don’t tell her.” 

“We are supposed to be better than them!” Acantha snapped, her outrage towering above her tiny frame. She was seventeen, but looked a good three years younger, and glared at Mnason with a wolf’s flashing eyes.

“It’d be that many mines that we don’t have to step on,” Lydia said quietly. “Maybe…”

She didn’t have to finish for those of us who had been there, those of us who had seen it too. Her thoughts were with Hekabe, pieces strewn over bloody ground. We hushed, but the new arrivals didn’t know the way we knew.

I sorted through the enemy’s captured packs like a rat, hoping for some desperate scrap of food. It was harder and harder to come by sustenance the further afield we went. With the influx of refugees, the food supply dwindled back home and most of the militias resorted to taking food from the enemy to fight off famine. I slept the sleep of the damned every night on my feet, never quite drifting off entirely, dreaming of Sostrate’s bread as hunger gnawed at my stomach.

We had just enough food to feel forever hungry. That made us the fortunate ones. Others lost the hunger and wasted away until they were too weak to continue. The enemy made short work of them.

“Karsa, your opinion?” Mnason’s question intruded into my single-minded fixation so rudely.

I pulled out several ration packages from one bag, the triumph of a jackal as it claims its corpse meal on my face. “They have done us all the good they can do us, Mnason. Let them go.”

He stared at me as if I’d grown a second head. “So they can go back to shooting at us?”

“We have no bullets to spare. We have no rations to spare. What difference does it make if they live instead of die?” I cut open a package with the small folding pocket knife I’d taken from Lysandros’s body. In my past life, I would have likely turned my nose up at some bean stew full of colorless vegetables. Now, the very vision of it filled my mouth with saliva. My stomach knotted and growled. I thought of how easy it would be just to gulp it down, craving that feeling of fullness as much as the heavenly taste of anything at all. 

Then I turned, ignoring Mnason. “Lydia,” I said gently, holding out the package to her. She only ate when I coaxed her into it. Her spirit withered from grief and the body followed, but I was not going to let her die. “Hekabe would want you to eat.” 

Her eyes met mine, haunted by visions of death and fire. “I’m not hungry anymore, Karsa.”

“You need to eat.” I moved to sit next to her while the others argued still over the fates of the men. Hunger left me sluggish and easily cold. I wore my field jacket all day and all night, shivering in it when the sun went down. I wrapped an arm around Lydia and pushed the package carefully into her hands, then fished my spoon out of my pocket and handed it to her. “I want you to eat this, all of it.” 

Tears spilled down her cheeks like a spring rain, slowly at first but then growing. “I don’t want to.” 

I kissed her temple and soothed at the tears, brushing them away as they fell. Acantha was our medic, but she was new to the lines. She didn’t know how to care for Lydia or even understood her. They all looked to me for cues in such things, because Mnason’s heart was hard and I was old enough to be their guardian sister. “Please, Lydia. Eat for me. Eat for Hekabe. She loves you and wants you to live.” 

She ate slowly at first, but quickly ravenous hunger took over. Once there was so little the spoon could not reach it, she tipped the bag back and drank the last drops. 

I cannot explain to you the way I felt, not truly. There was compassion and love, but also a simmering envy. My body wanted that food, needed that food. I leaned my head against hers once she was done, knowing the tears would get worse before they got better. 

“What about you, Karsa?” Lydia asked quietly. 

“I ate yesterday,” I lied, watching the others carefully divy up the remaining rations. They would supplement the meager supplies we had from home. I gave Lydia a tight squeeze. “I’m going to go talk to Mnason and Acantha about the soldiers.” 

Lydia’s tearstained face followed mine as I stood up. “Did they put the mines on the field?” 

I shrugged. There was no way of knowing, not really. I knew she wanted them to die. “Rest, Lydia. I’ll be right back.” 

The argument stopped when I approached. Mnason was chewing ferociously on his wad of tobacco, a sign he was not pleased with Acantha. There were others on his side. “Someone has to make a decision,” he ground out. “I have been on the front longer than anyone.” 

I ejected the magazine from my rifle and emptied it. There were eight rounds and eight prisoners. Slowly, one by one, I picked up the cartridges and reloaded the weapon. Then I looked up at the others. “I will take care of it.” 

Mnason uncrossed his arms. “I knew someone would see sense.”

Acantha paled. “Karsa, you cannot let this war turn you into…into them!” 

“You are too young for this, Acantha,” I said quietly. “It’s not your fault. Fall back to our main position and take Lydia with you. She needs someone to take care of her right now.” 

“Do you want help?” Mnason asked.

I shook my head. “I know how to use a shovel. Make sure the left flank is secure. I will catch up.” 

He frowned. “I don’t like this. If anything goes wrong…”

This time, my words were biting steel. “Go. I will catch up.”

Slowly, everyone filtered out of this section of the trench, heading off to the left where active fighting was happening. I looked at the row of eight men in front of me, heads covered by empty flour bags. They were bound in a way that they would never get loose without help. The fear and terrible awe of killing had worn off for me. It was just what I did, frequently without ever thinking about it. 

I pulled my battered Arete out of my pocket, leaning back against the wall of the trench. We didn’t have enough concrete to build proper emplacements, so we used the natural world as our walls and trenches: boulders, outcroppings, rivers, anything that could protect us. Our line was flexible too, with so many positions built that we could flow between them, hitting flanks and armor in ways they didn’t expect. 

The tattered book in my hands, I flipped to a passage I had read many times. “Peace is like water. It courses to all places, wearing away all resistance with the passage of time. Remember that you have water within you, coursing through your veins, beating through your heart. In the stillness, let it flow from you and all around will bloom.” 

I closed the book carefully, as if I had just said a prayer, and slid it into my back pocket. Then I picked up my rifle, starving and exhausted. I felt the stillness, the calm in those words. The magazine clicked back into my weapon with an ominous finality. Would I do as Mnason wished, or as Arete pleaded?

Just as I wanted to eat what I had given to Lydia, I wanted to kill these men for all the misery and harm they had inflicted on my people. Acantha’s little argument that their execution would make us no better than them felt hollow to me. We were already so drenched in blood; did it even matter? How many horrible things had I already done to balance those cosmic scales?

I raised the rifle to my shoulder and took aim through iron sights. I shot and moved, shot and moved, until the magazine was empty. 

Then I stepped forward to the first man, still cowering on his knees in front of me, and flipped out Lysandros’s knife. It took me a moment to saw through his bindings. The moment he was free, he froze like a deer, still blinded by the sack over his head. I ripped the cloth away, bringing us face to face. 

He looked so very young and afraid and confused, blue eyes suddenly conflicted. 

I handed him the knife. “Cut free your friends,” I said in their language, the one my people had been forced to speak for generations. “Run.” 

Then I backed away, rifle again at my shoulder. I watched as he freed his friends, expecting them to charge me. There would be hell to pay, either from them or Mnason. 

Instead, the soldier I had freed stopped and looked at me. He saw me starving and weary, with a fire burning in my eyes that could not be quenched. I saw him too with sudden clarity: just as tired, wishing he could just get away, maybe even go home. Then he did something I had not accounted for. 

He touched fingertips to his forehead, then his heart, and then extended that hand towards me. It was not just gratitude: it was the gesture only my people used. 

Then they fled, and I watched them go with my unloaded rifle shouldered. Mnason would rage at me, but that I could endure. To become nothing more than a hollow shell filled with cyanide? That I thought I could not live with.