Free Web NovelIn the intervals between artillery fire, the world was as quiet as a giant grave that had just been filled.
Considering the layers upon layers of things buried deep beneath this mire, this metaphor was perhaps not just rhetoric, but the most blatant realism.
The air was filled with a suffocating mixture of scents: the earthy smell of damp soil, the pungent residue of sulfur, the sweet fragrance of rotting organic matter, and the rusty scent of fresh blood.
Pavel lay prone behind a crumbling concrete wall, its surface riddled with bullet holes like a piece of worm-eaten cheese.
She scanned the terrain ahead through a jagged crack.
The moonlight was pale and cold, spilling onto the earth without a hint of warmth.
The once-golden wheat fields were long gone, replaced by a churning mire of scorched black earth.
Crater upon crater, like festering sores on the earth, reflected the broken moon in their stagnant ◈ Nоvеlіgһт ◈ (Continue reading) pools.
The corpses were not scattered sporadically but piled together like discarded stalks after a harvest; some were reduced to nothing but charred remains, while others still clung to tattered military uniforms, looking particularly ghastly in the surrounding silence.
"From here to the next bunker, it's about forty meters,"
she whispered, "There are two patrol routes crossing in the middle, but it should be shift change time now. Those idiots from Usar always change shifts on the hour, without fail—oh right, and mines. Three meters to the left, there's a bounding mine I buried two weeks ago; it shouldn't have been triggered yet."
"You remember the location of a mine you buried two weeks ago?" Eleanor's voice held a hint of disbelief.
"Of course," Pavel said without turning her head, "I remember every mine I buried with my own hands—location, model, fuse sensitivity... these things are for saving lives."
She paused, her tone becoming slightly ethereal, "And when I lay them, I talk to them, like 'You need to lie here nicely,' or 'Wait for the bad guys to come before you explode,' and things like that."
Eleanor didn't reply for a long time.
Pavel could feel the gaze behind her becoming strange.
"...You're sick." Eleanor finally gave a fair assessment.
"Thanks for the compliment."
Pavel poked half her head out from behind the broken wall, confirmed there were no moving lights in the distance, and turned back to make a gesture.
"Follow me, and step where I step."
The two moved through the ruins like ghosts.
Pavel walked in front, her footsteps unbelievably light, each step landing precisely in a specific spot: she bypassed a seemingly ordinary rock, stepped over a shallow ditch, and squeezed sideways between two crumbling walls.
Thus, she bypassed three mines.
A tripwire mine, a pressure fuse, and an acoustic alarm.
Eleanor followed behind; the injury to her right leg made her movements somewhat stiff, but years of training allowed her to precisely replicate every step of the person in front.
She noticed that Pavel's breathing was steady, her movements fluid, and even... somewhat lighthearted?
"You seem to be in a good mood," she whispered.
Pavel stopped at the edge of a crater and looked back at her.
Under the moonlight, that pale little face actually held a faint smile.
"Because I'm dead."
"...What?"
"I mean, the officially certified kind," Pavel crouched down, checking the soil at the edge of the crater, "Killed in action, confirmed, presumed vaporized. Clean and simple, end of story."
She stood up and brushed the mud off her hands.
"You know, when you're cannon fodder, the first thought when you open your eyes every day is whether you'll die today, and the last thought when you close them is whether you'll survive tomorrow. You die if the mission fails, and you might die if it succeeds. You die if supplies are cut off, and if they arrive, they might be poison. You die if your superiors don't like you, and you die if they like you too much and want you to be a scapegoat."
She jumped into the crater, landing almost without a sound.
"But it's different now. I'm already dead, what could a dead person possibly be afraid of?"
Pavel looked up and gave Eleanor, who was at the edge of the pit, a sincere smile.
"This is the most relaxed I've felt since I came back to life."
Eleanor was silent for a moment, then jumped into the crater as well.
Her landing wasn't as light as Pavel's, and a sharp pain shot through her right leg, but she held it in without making a sound.
"You really are a strange person," she said.
"This time, I prefer the word 'unique'."
"No, it's just strange." ƒrēewebnoѵёl.cσm
Eleanor sat down against the crater wall and moved her right leg, "Ordinary people would be angry, desperate, and devastated if abandoned by their country. You, on the other hand, are as happy as if you'd won the lottery."
"Because I never belonged there in the first place," Pavel sat down against the opposite wall, her voice very soft, "Not from the beginning."
When she said this, her gaze became somewhat distant, as if she were looking at some very far-off place.
Eleanor frowned.
She wanted to ask more, but footsteps suddenly sounded in the distance.
Both of them tensed their bodies simultaneously.
The footsteps drew closer, accompanied by the sound of clashing metal—it was an Usar infantry patrol.
Pavel made a shushing gesture to Eleanor, then shrank into the deepest shadow of the crater.
Eleanor also lowered her body as much as possible.
The crater wasn't big, and when the two huddled together, their shoulders were almost touching.
Pavel could feel the body heat coming from beside her—it was much higher than her own.
She smelled gunpowder, blood, and a little... some faint fragrance?
Being able to maintain such a scent on the battlefield was truly something only a Victoriana noble could do.
The footsteps were close at hand.
"Damn it, having to change shifts in a godforsaken place like this..."
"Shut up, watch out for Victoriana stragglers."
"Stragglers my ass, their main force is pushing forward at the front, who would be crouching in a crater like this..."
The voices gradually faded away.
Pavel counted for thirty seconds, and after confirming the patrol had gone far away, she let out a sigh of relief.
"That was close."
She turned her head and found Eleanor looking at her with a complicated expression.
"What's wrong?"
"Your heartbeat," Eleanor said, "it didn't change from beginning to end."
Pavel blinked.
"What's strange about that?"
"In this situation, an ordinary person's heart rate would accelerate, their breathing would become irregular; even well-trained soldiers would have a slight stress response, but you..."
Eleanor's ice-blue eyes carried a scrutinizing light, "You are as calm as if you were taking a stroll in the afternoon."
She braced herself against the crater wall to stand up, but her right leg suddenly went weak, and she almost fell.
A hand caught her arm just in time.
Pavel had stood up at some point and was looking at her.
"If there's an opportunity later, I'll introduce you to the daily life of the Punishment Camp, so you won't be so surprised by this."
"Did the wound open up again?"
Eleanor looked down at her right leg; sure enough, blood was seeping through the bandage again.
"It's nothing," she said, "I can still walk."
"That's good."
Pavel let go, but didn't climb up immediately; instead, she sat down again, "However, we'd better wait. That patrol team will circle around in front and come back from another direction in five minutes. If we go out now, we'll run right into them."
"You even know their patrol route?"
"Of course," Pavel said matter-of-factly, "I designed this route too."
At least that's what her jumbled memories said.
"..."
Eleanor felt she had heard too much absurd information tonight, to the point where she was now somewhat numb.
"So," she took a deep breath, deciding to change the subject, "what are you planning to do? I mean, after we reach our lines."
Pavel didn't answer immediately.
She looked up at the small patch of night sky visible above the crater.
"I haven't thought about it yet," she said, "Let's just leave this battlefield first, and then... find a safe place and live a peaceful life?"
"As an Usar deserter?"
"I am KIA," Pavel corrected, "officially certified as KIA. Deserter is a status only for the living; I am a dead person."
She turned her head to meet Eleanor's gaze.
"A dead person can go anywhere and become anyone; isn't that romantic?"
Moonlight poured down from the crater's rim, illuminating that pale little face.
Short silver hair, bright eyes, and that faint, relaxed smile at the corner of her mouth.
At this moment, Eleanor suddenly felt that the person in front of her didn't look like a soldier who had been struggling on the battlefield, but rather like a traveler from a distant land who just happened to be passing through this mountain of corpses and sea of blood.
"You really are strange," she said again.
"You've already said that twice."
"Because you really are very strange."
Pavel laughed, her voice kept very low, but she was genuinely laughing.
"Miss Schwartz," she said, "may I ask, are you betrothed?"
Eleanor nearly choked on her own saliva.
"...Why are you asking this?"
"Nothing," Pavel said nonchalantly, "I just think that hiding in a crater, shoulder to shoulder with a noble miss from an enemy country, with the flames of war overhead and corpses strewn all around, and with you just happening to press down on my hand—this situation should count as a date, right? And a rather exciting one at that."
Eleanor looked down, and sure enough, the hem of her uniform was pressing on Pavel's left hand.
She immediately moved away, her ears feeling a bit hot.
"What is going through your mind?"
"Thinking about whether we would have met in another way if we weren't soldiers."
Pavel pulled her hand back and flexed her fingers, "Like at a ball? You wearing a red dress, me wearing... uh, maybe also red, and then we dance a waltz together, instead of dodging bullets in a crater."
"You know how to waltz?"
"Probably not," Pavel admitted frankly, "but one must have the attitude to learn."
Eleanor couldn't help but chuckle.
"You are the least soldier-like soldier I have ever met."
"Because I wasn't a soldier to begin with," Pavel said, "I'm just a... good person who happened to be stuffed into a uniform."
She added, "A dead good person now."
Footsteps sounded again in the distance; the patrol was returning.
Both of them quieted down again, waiting for the footsteps to fade.
This time, Pavel noticed that Eleanor's breathing was much steadier, and her muscles were not as tense as before.
It seemed the joke she had just told was very effective.
After the footsteps disappeared, Pavel stood up first.
"We can go now,"
she reached out a hand to Eleanor, "The next stretch will be more dangerous; there's a combat zone to cross, and I need you to cover me."
Eleanor took that hand.
She noticed that the hand was small, bony, and delicate.
Not like the hand of a veteran, but more like that of a young girl.
"Eleanor."
"Hmm?"
"Just call me Eleanor," she said, "Always 'Miss Schwartz, Miss Schwartz'—it sounds like you're calling my mother."
Pavel was taken aback for a moment, then laughed too.
"Then you can call me Pavel," she said, "or Little Pa, but only close friends can call me that."
"Are we close?"
"Hiding from a patrol together in a crater—doesn't that count as close?"
Pavel said while pulling Eleanor up out of the crater, "By the standards of the Punishment Camp, we could be sworn sisters."
Eleanor was pulled onto the edge of the crater and was about to say something, but Pavel suddenly made a shushing gesture.
Her eyes instantly became sharp, staring in a certain direction in the distance.
"Something wrong?" Eleanor whispered.
"Firelight," Pavel said, "not artillery fire, but a campfire. Someone is starting a fire in the ruins."
She narrowed her eyes and observed for a while.
"It's Usar stragglers, about... five to seven people. It should be regular troops who were scattered, not Punishment Camp."
"How did you determine that?"
"People from the Punishment Camp wouldn't be stupid enough to start a fire on the battlefield," Pavel said, "That's something you'd only do if you were tired of living."
She turned to look at Eleanor, her eyes full of inquiry.
"Going around will take another half hour, and we'd have to cross a minefield. If we charge straight through..."
"Seven people, the two of us, and you're injured," Eleanor analyzed calmly, "It's not impossible to fight, but it will be very troublesome."
"My thought is also to go around," Pavel nodded, "But your leg..."
"I said, it's nothing."
Pavel looked at her, a hint of admiration flashing in her eyes.
"What a strong-willed noble miss."
"This isn't being strong-willed," Eleanor said, "This is a necessary condition for survival."
Pavel grinned.
"Then we are quite alike."
She turned and walked in another direction, her footsteps still light.
"Follow me," she said, looking back, "I'll take you on a path with better scenery."
"Is there such a thing as scenery on the battlefield?"
"Of course there is," Pavel's voice came from ahead, with a touch of dark humor, "Like that pile of burning mecha wreckage over there, how beautiful. Just like fireworks."
Eleanor looked up, and sure enough, a ball of fire was blazing in the distance.
It was an Usar mecha; the model was unclear, but judging by the size of the wreckage, it should be a main model.
"Pity that these fireworks are not for celebration,"
"They are for a funeral."
