Oren saw a hand first.
A hand stretched into the air, its fingers spread as though trying to grasp something that wasn’t there, then a piece of dark cloth, then a shoulder he knew, then Daren’s voice, faint, different from any voice he’d heard from him before.
“Silen.” One name, without a scream, as though Daren himself didn’t believe what his eyes were seeing.
Oren drew closer, the smoke still coiling through the place, and saw the tangled bodies before him more clearly; the enemy lying on his side, the knife still in his hand, and Silen barely standing, bent slightly forward, his right hand pressing against the left side of his chest, where a dark stain had begun spreading quickly across the fabric of his uniform, close to the heart.
Oren didn’t understand at first.
He looked at Daren, who stood nailed in place, his jammed rifle still slung over his shoulder, then looked at the fallen enemy, then at Silen again, and something within him refused to connect the three things.
Silen collapsed to his knees.
Daren finally moved, catching him before his body reached the ground entirely, propping him against his chest, while Oren raised his hand to touch the wound, and his fingers felt the warm wetness before his eyes caught up to what they were seeing.
Not long passed before Daren moved again, this time toward the fallen enemy, who had begun to stir, trying to rise with an injured hand, his weapon lying beside him.
Daren didn’t think.
He drew the small knife he’d carried since his journey, the one he’d sharpened with his own hands at an inn far from this place by weeks not nearly enough to change anything, and lunged at the man with a quick, furious motion, without any clear skill, only with the force of fear that outruns thought.
It was over within seconds.
Daren didn’t look at the body afterward.
He went straight back to Silen, knelt beside him, and pressed his hand hard against the wound, trying to stop something he didn’t know how to stop.
“We’ll move him,” he said, in a voice he’d meant to sound firm, but which trembled despite him.
“We have to get him to the medic,” Oren said in a sharp voice fighting through the noise.
They lifted Silen between them, Daren gripping him from beneath the arms, Oren from the other side.
Silen took no steps himself; his body went entirely slack, weight like a dead thing, his feet dragging over the dirt, and his blood-smeared hand clutching weakly at Daren’s shirt.
They rushed him through the burning passage, the sharp whistle of bullets passing over their heads to strike the mud walls.
A nearby explosion shook the ground beneath their feet, and fragments of gravel rained down on their backs, forcing Oren to bend his body to shield Silen’s head.
They passed through thick clouds of sulfur smoke, soldiers shouting for ammunition, and bodies lying about that they no longer had time to look at.
Daren stumbled over a body lying in the dark, and all three nearly fell together, but a nearby officer’s shout demanding the road be cleared drove them to keep running without pause.
Silen was breathing with tremendous difficulty, blood from his lung showing on his lips with every rattling breath.
Daren tilted his head toward his mouth to catch his broken words amid the roar of the shelling.
“Daren…” Silen whispered, his voice faint, swallowed by the explosions, “the house…
the field I…
talked about…” “You’ll plant it yourself!” Daren shouted sharply to give him hope, his tears mixing with the dust on his face.
“Just hold on!
You’ll plant it!” Silen tried a faint, half-formed smile, and said in a voice growing weaker: “Plant…
onions…
if I get there first…” “You won’t get there before us,” Oren said, tightening his grip on him, and felt Silen’s head lean against his shoulder with a heavier weight.
“Look at me, we’re almost there!” Silen opened his eyes with tremendous difficulty amid the smoke, and looked at Oren for a second, before his breath weakened further, and he whispered in a voice nearly gone: “Strange…
I don’t want the onions now…
I just want…
to go home…” Neither of them found words to answer with; they only kept running him through the collapsed alleys, the smoke blinding their sight, until the treatment tent appeared before them.
They finally reached the treatment tent, where the medic was busy with another soldier, but he left what he was doing the moment he saw them approaching, and quickly pointed them toward an empty space on the ground.
“Put him here.” They set him down carefully, and the medic began examining the wound quickly, his hands moving with the skill of a man who had seen many injuries before, but something in the expression on his face, when he touched the wound and looked at its location, made Oren feel something drop within him.
“Can you save him?” Daren asked, in a voice pleading more than asking.
The medic didn’t answer at once.
He looked at the wound again, then at the blood covering his own hands and Daren’s, then said, in a calm voice: “Stay with him.” Silen looked at Oren and Daren, his eyes half-open, his features weaker than they had been only minutes before.
“Did…
we make it?” he asked with difficulty.
“Yes,” Daren said, his tears still falling without pause.
“We made it.
Just rest.” Silen looked at him a moment, as though the words had reached him from a great distance, then smiled a small, faint smile.
“Good,” he said.
He stayed silent a moment, then whispered: “I want to go home.” And his eyes stopped moving.
No one moved for seconds.
The medic stopped the motion of his hands, looked at Silen’s face, then at his pulse, then slowly drew his hands back, without saying anything.
Daren didn’t understand at first exactly what was happening.
He stayed standing beside the bed, waiting for Silen’s chest to move again, for him to open his eyes as usual, to cough or complain about some trivial thing as he always did, but none of that happened.
“Silen?” he said, in a voice he himself hadn’t expected to come out with this forced calm, and stepped closer, put his hand on his shoulder, shook him gently at first, then harder when the body didn’t respond beneath his hand.
“Silen.” Nothing moved.
Daren’s head lowered slowly, and he stayed like that for long seconds, entirely silent, before a sharp gasp escaped him as though torn from his chest by force.
He finally raised his face, and his eyes had filled with tears without his noticing the moment they’d begun falling.
“No,” he said it the first time like someone refusing an order given to him, then repeated it, fainter and heavier, “no.” And after that he broke down entirely.
This time he didn’t try to hide his weeping as he had on other, less brutal occasions.
Broken sobbing came out of him, his whole body trembling with it, and he gripped Silen’s shoulders with both hands, as though keeping him close could, by some miracle, bring back what he’d lost only moments before.
“He was with us,” the words broke between his gasps as he bent further over him, “he was with us just a moment ago…
he was talking…” He stopped, his hand trembling over his friend’s shoulder, then continued in a voice nearly choking: “He was talking about onions.” He finally sat beside the bed, rested his forehead on Silen’s shoulder, and surrendered to weeping with no further attempt to hold himself together.
Oren stood before them, unable to move or speak.
He looked at Silen’s still face, then at Daren collapsed beside him, and felt his own eyes burning before he realized he too had begun to cry, almost without sound, tear after tear falling as he stood without moving.
He finally came closer to them, bent toward Daren, who was no longer even able to sit up straight, and gripped him by the shoulders, then pulled him close, and Daren didn’t resist it.
He buried his face in Oren’s shoulder, and broke into a sobbing even harder than before, rising and falling with every failed attempt to catch his breath, his hands gripping Oren’s shirt as though searching for something to keep him from falling.
Oren kept weeping in silence, his throat aching from the weight of what he couldn’t say, but he stayed holding Daren, pressing him close with both arms, finding not a single word worth saying.
He didn’t tell him Silen was fine, because that was no longer true.
He didn’t tell him everything would be all right, because he didn’t know that at all.
He only stayed, another body close by in a moment when no one had enough words.
After a time Oren couldn’t judge the length of, Daren pulled back a little, wiped his face with a hand still trembling, and looked at Silen a long look that hadn’t ended even when he finally said, in a voice barely coming out, hoarse: “I want to stay with him.” Oren didn’t answer.
And at that moment a nearby explosion boomed, shaking the tent’s walls slightly, followed by the sound of quick footsteps before a soldier entered carrying his rifle, and looked at them with a quick glance that could bear no further detail.
“You two,” he said.
“We need you at the line.
The fighting’s still going, and the officers have called for all support personnel to return.” Oren raised his head, but Daren didn’t move, didn’t even look at the soldier; his eyes stayed on Silen alone, as though the world outside this bed had ceased to exist for him.
Oren came closer to him.
“Daren.” No answer.
“We have to go.” Daren shook his head in refusal.
“You go.” “I can’t leave you here.” Daren finally raised his eyes to him, his face still wet with tears, and looked at Oren with a look carrying not so much anger as complete exhaustion.
“Oren…
leave me alone.” Oren stayed standing before him an extra moment, then looked at Silen one last time, came closer, and set his hand on his shoulder for a brief moment before drawing it back.
“I’ll come back,” he said, without knowing himself whether he believed this promise, or was saying it because it was the only phrase left to him.
Daren didn’t answer.
Oren turned and left the tent, the soldier waiting for him at the entrance, and the two moved together toward the line.
After a few steps, Oren looked back, and saw Daren still sitting beside Silen, alone, looking at nothing but the still body before him.
Oren turned his face forward, and walked.
Outside, the explosions continued without pause, soldiers ran between clouds of smoke, and orders crossed over the successive sound of gunfire, and Oren returned, with heavy steps and a face still bearing the trace of his tears, to the war.