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The biting wind blew away the clouds, leaving the sky a keen ice blue. Viktor was staring down the trench from his foxhole dug into the frozen earth as far as he could go. Haas was taking his time and it was making Viktor nervous.
“Haas! Come on,” he hissed, “Quit pissing around.”
“You know my father has never left his province, much less Berchta,” Haas lifted his head as far as he dared above the edge of the trench, his prominent front teeth chattering.
“That’s nice, now get back here. You know better.”
“Do I?” Haas dropped back down onto the trench floor with a smirk.
Viktor blinked. Georgiana stood in the sunlight before him, transparent as a ghost. She was dressed the green gingham dress she had worn that day he had received his wife’s wedding ring in the mail.
Haas hazed in behind her wavering figure, hitching his pants to relieve himself against the trench wall. The sniper’s bullet skimmed through Georgiana like a stone skipping on a lake. It cut into Haas and the man fell hard into the ice.
Another gun shot. Then another. The scene faded to black and still the sharp pop and whizz of a semi-automatic sounded through his subconscious. Viktor blinked away his sleep and lay motionless in the dark.
The shots were coming from outside.
He burst from his blankets and rushed the window, staring down towards the city hall. Shadows in the street bolted from Regenian Police and Berchten MPs on guard. One of the figures turned and shot an MP. Another body lay inert in the snow, from his room Viktor couldn’t tell if it was friend or foe.
Viktor ripped on his uniform coat, the sides flying unbuttoned as he thudded down the stairs out into the night. The Regenian Major Bartel was hot on his heels as they rushed towards the scene.
Viktor lifted his pistol as the last of the figures disappeared into an alley. There was no way he could make the shot. He heard a groan in the snow and knelt down to the MP who had been shot. A young man barely eighteen years old who had only arrived as a replacement when they reached Belnon.
“Am I going to die, Lieutenant?” He stuttered, teeth chattering like Haas in Viktor’s dream.
Viktor glanced down to see that the bullet had gone through the boy’s shin. He’d live but it'd be a long time before he’d walk again. Viktor gave him a tight lipped smile and made a tourniquet from the boy’s scarf.
“No, of course not. The medic will be here soon.” Viktor comforted him as one of their medics rushed over.
While the medic saw to the MP, Viktor rose to his feet and surveyed the scene. Bartel was talking with the witnesses by a broken basement window in the town hall. A few of the men had been sent after the culprits but Viktor would be surprised if they caught up to them.
Clearly, this was a job done by locals. Their men would never find their way through the woods at night, especially with the snow starting up again and covering their tracks.
“Not all of them got away,” Bartel murmured as he came alongside Viktor, “But it seems the Resistance in the area got a little bolder tonight, Lieutenant. These were the prisoners accused of rigging the train tracks, am I right?”
“Yes. How could they have known where they were kept? And when they were to be shot.”
As he finished the sentence, Viktor’s mouth went dry. Tidbits of his conversation that evening with Georgiana tumbled into his brain. He hadn’t told her where they were being kept, only when the execution was going to happen.
However, he knew that his instincts were never wrong. Georgiana had sent up red flags in his brain from the beginning.
Even before he had fallen in love with her.
“Lieutenant?”
Viktor jolted, “Yes, Major?”
“Permission to head a scouting party into the woods?”
Clearly the man had a few things to learn about the area. It would prove to be a fruitless effort, but at least it would get him out of the way, “Permission granted, Major.”
While Bartel was barking out orders to his men, Viktor meandered over to the basement window. Shards of glass frosted by ice and blood lay strewn on the thin layer of snow. The flakes were picking up, thick as tufts of cotton.
A groan erupted from the motionless body of a prisoner nearby. Viktor’s adrenaline pumped, anger at his own stupidity concerning Georgiana searing through his veins. He roughly kicked the man over with his boot and drew his pistol. Viktor glared down into the pale face of the grocer.
The Regenian’s spectacles were cracked but still perched on his nose, the snow around him heavy with blood. The grocer opened his eyes. Viktor exhaled hotly out his nostrils, lifting his pistol once more. The grocer weakly lifted his fingers where they lay on his torso.
“Mercy,” was all he said.
He would be dead soon. Viktor’s grip on his gun loosened as he remembered the face of the man’s wife as she flailed in the square. He wasn’t even sure if this man was guilty. His skin was turning grey as Maier’s had been when he had found him under that ash tree.
Viktor lowered the weapon. The man’s hand fell limp and the life in his eyes departed, an event Viktor had seen one too many times.
“Why didn’t you shoot him?”
Viktor glanced over his shoulder at Bartel, “No need.”
An MP trotted down from city hall, his young face pale, “Something else has happened outside of town. Lieutenant, you should come hear this.”
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