Silen never finished his sentence about the onions.
The fourth sound landed closer than the three before it, and the ground shook beneath him this time in a way he could feel, and he sprang to his feet while Daren had already risen, and Oren was still trying to make out the direction the sound had come from when an officer ran past them, shouting the name of a unit they didn’t know, then another name, then an incomplete order swallowed by the rising noise around them.
Fire broke out at a lit point near the weapons store, and the air filled with a sharp smell of smoke, while soldiers began pouring out from every direction, some only half into their gear, running toward gathering points whose locations Oren didn’t know precisely.
“Move!” a voice shouted from behind, another officer this time, pointing at them directly.
“You three, with me!” There was no time to ask where.
They ran behind him through the passage between the tents, past carts being loaded in haste and crates of ammunition being pried open hurriedly, until they reached a low defensive line at the edge of the camp, where other soldiers were positioned behind sandbags and temporary wooden barriers.
“You’ll move ammunition from here to there,” the officer said, pointing to crates stacked a few meters off, then toward the front line where the first sounds of gunfire had begun rising from the darkness opposite.
“Keep your heads down.” The first wave began with a broken sound of distant shots, closer to a warning than to a real assault.
Oren watched the soldiers ahead of him settling behind the barriers, rifles braced, eyes on the darkness stretching before them where nothing clear could be seen yet but scattered flashes of light.
He carried the first crate of ammunition, heavier than he’d expected, and walked it bent low toward a soldier who called for resupply in a sharp voice, set it beside him, then turned back without waiting for thanks.
He repeated it twice more, while Daren helped brace part of the wooden barrier that had begun leaning under repeated impacts, placing his hand on the metal joint linking two panels, trying to strengthen it from within until the barrier steadied in place once more.
“It won’t hold long if the shelling keeps up,” Daren said, more to himself than directed at anyone.
No one answered.
There was no time.
Silen approached a young soldier sitting on the ground, his hands shaking as he tried to reload his weapon, his fingers dropping the ammunition more than gripping it.
“Slowly,” Silen said, sitting beside him a moment, taking the ammunition from him and helping fit it into place.
“Like that.
Breathe first.” He didn’t know the soldier’s name, didn’t ask, but stayed beside him until his hands steadied, then moved on to the next barrier.
The enemy drew closer as time passed, and the shots began turning from scattered warnings into real exchange, successive sounds tearing the air from both sides, and smoke began rising from multiple points, gradually obscuring vision until it became hard to tell distant shapes apart.
A soldier fell near Oren, whose name he didn’t know, and another cried out a name in panic, and two soldiers bent to drag the wounded man back while the others kept firing without pause.
Oren was forced to move a crate heavier than the ones before, trying to use his path to move part of it without touching it while carrying the other part with his hands, and felt that familiar scattering of focus, the crate shaking midway, nearly slipping from his mental grip, until it finally steadied after more effort than he’d exerted in training.
He stopped for a moment, panting, before going back for more.
The third wave came with no real warning.
The enemy broke through a point on the right side of the defensive line, and the rows suddenly fell into disorder, conflicting orders crossing over one another, and a group of soldiers began retreating toward a more fortified point while another advanced to close the gap.
“With me!” shouted the officer who’d been overseeing them earlier, pointing at Oren, Daren, and Silen as he ran toward the new gap.
“There’s a barrier that needs bracing, now!” They ran behind him across ground filled with smoke and scattered debris, passing a body lying on the ground that no one stopped for, until they reached a damaged position where part of the barrier had collapsed entirely, leaving a gap the enemy could cross without any real obstacle.
Silen rushed toward the scattered timber, trying to lift a large plank with another soldier, while fastening another part of the barrier using his path, linking the motion of a tilting post to the motion of its base fixed in the ground, so it steadied temporarily, enough for the soldiers to reorganize their line at that gap.
Daren worked on strengthening the metal edge of the remaining barrier, trying to make it more solid under the repeated pressure, while Oren continued moving what ammunition and tools he could between positions, his body now moving in a rhythm that stopped little to think, only to act.
In a brief moment, Oren saw a soldier he’d spoken with that very morning, who had joked with him about the taste of the soup, fall a few meters from him, silent, with no clear cry.
Oren froze for a moment, his eyes on the fallen body, until an unknown voice shouted at him: “Move!
The ammunition!” He moved.
There was no time for more than that.
As the night wore on, things began to settle somewhat in this part of the line, though that didn’t mean the fighting had ended, only that it had shifted into a slower rhythm of intermittent exchange, while the sounds of other battles continued echoing from farther positions.
A small group of soldiers gathered, among them Oren, Daren, and Silen, behind a damaged but standing barrier, quickly reorganizing themselves, checking their remaining ammunition, and taking short breaths between the more scattered shots.
Daren knelt on one knee, examining his rifle after feeling a strange resistance in its mechanism on his last attempt to fire.
He tried again, and it didn’t respond as it should, a dry clicking sound instead of the expected blast.
“It’s jammed,” he said calmly, partly disassembling it, his eyes on the inner mechanism coated with a thin layer of dust accumulated over the course of the battle.
“Dust?” Oren asked, coming a little closer.
“Maybe.
Or something inside it.” Daren continued working with his hands in calm motions despite the surrounding chaos, trying to dislodge the blocked part without losing any small component in the dark, even as his energy for the day drained away.
He stayed occupied with it for long seconds, bent over his weapon, his back half-turned toward the direction the last breach had come from, while Silen stayed nearby helping another soldier finish fastening a quick bandage around his arm, and Oren watched the darkness before them, trying to make out any movement amid the rising smoke.
The movement came from an angle no one expected.
Oren heard a faint sound, an unclear scraping amid the general noise, then saw a shadow moving quickly from the side of the damaged barrier, where the gap that had been partly repaired was still less fortified than the rest of the line.
He began shouting Daren’s name.
At that same instant, Daren raised his head and began to turn, his jammed weapon still in his hands.
The shadow rushed toward him, a man carrying a knife in his hand, his arm already raised.
More than one person moved in that same instant.
A step, then another, bodies colliding near the barrier, and the sound of a boot sliding over the dirt.
Oren couldn’t see clearly amid the smoke and the flickering light.
He caught a glimpse of a shoulder lunging, an arm rising, then a body leaning violently.
He tried to reach them.
Then he heard the sound.
A muffled, short sound, a piercing he couldn’t confuse with anything else he’d heard that night.
Everything around him stopped for a fraction of a second, amid the continuing distant noise, broken screaming, scattered shots, and the ground shaking from an explosion somewhere else.
But that small moment before him seemed entirely isolated from the rest of the battle.
He couldn’t tell who was still standing, and who was falling.