Chapter 424: I Have Received Your Letter, I Am Well

Richard pushed the sugar bowl to the side of the table and laid out his gathered intelligence piece by piece.

He finally drew his conclusion: the enemy might be planning a poison gas attack!

Clara stared at him.

"Where did you get all this intelligence?"

"Half of it is a bit hard to explain..."

"Then don't explain."

Richard looked up at her.

"I've been thinking these past few days about whether I should pass this information up the chain through Professor Mortimer."

He pulled his hand back from the lid of the suitcase.

"But for a prep student to claim he knows how the enemy will fight this war..."

Richard gave a self-deprecating smile.

"If I were sitting behind that desk, I wouldn't believe it either."

Clara did not smile. The flame in her eyes, suppressed by illness and injury, flared back to life.

"I understand."

"The things I bought with my ear, my lung, and my damaged circuits were just stamped and filed away."

Richard fell silent.

"But really, you don't need to worry so much about the higher-ups."

Clara paused, abruptly shifting the conversation.

"They've known for a long time."

Richard was slightly confused.

"...Known?"

"They definitely know more than you do."

"Don't think of the people at the top as being too smart, but definitely don't think of them as being too stupid."

Richard sat there, speechless for a moment.

"Then... if they know, why haven't I heard anything through my grandfather's military channels about taking preventive measures?"

Clara cradled her teacup in her hands.

"We have the Hague Conventions."

"They don't teach it in the prep program. It only comes up in second-year Ritual Studies, and even then, only as an example."

"In 1899, the nations signed a declaration at The Hague.

It prohibited the use of anything meant to spread asphyxiating gases. You've probably seen that in the newspapers."

"I have."

"That was the half for the Surface World."

"At the exact same time, representatives of the mystical side from twenty-six nations also swore an oath before a witness."

Richard's breathing slowed.

"Who was the witness?"

"The literature doesn't give a name. It just says 'that one.'"

"'For those who break this oath, that which they unleash shall no longer recognize their borders.'"

A bead of condensation traced a line down the tearoom's window glass.

Clara spoke.

"Whatever you unleash will cease to recognize you the moment you break the oath."

"It won't distinguish friend from foe. The other side can just seize control of it and send it right back."

"So we aren't completely defenseless."

Richard suddenly remembered something.

"The Gale Tradition?"

"Right."

So that was it. Richard leaned back in his chair. It seemed his groundless fears had been exactly that.

It made perfect sense. The people at the top stood higher than he did; naturally, they could see further.

Clara lifted her tea and took a sip.

"Richard, this was never something for two students like us to worry about anyway."

She nudged the leather suitcase again.

"Keep the machine safe. The Condensate in the copper urn is a consumable.

When you run out, come to me for a refill. Don't pour random things into it yourself.

That roll of grid paper is also specially made. Ordinary paper can't hold Ether. Let me know when you use it up."

"Thank you, Senior."

Richard hefted the leather suitcase to check its weight, suddenly remembering something.

"There seems to be an inscription inside the brass frame."

Just now, when he had swept the machine's casing with his Spirit Vision, he had caught a glimpse of a line of tiny Latin text engraved on the side of the cylinder shaft.

Clara tried hard to act nonchalant.

"My uncle has a habit of carving a phrase into everything he makes."

Using the light from the window, Richard leaned in close to make out the tiny letters.

"Quod fugit, teneo. (What fades away, I hold fast.)"

Richard looked up.

"Senior, did your uncle choose this phrase, or did you?"

Clara kept stirring her teacup, even though it was completely empty.

"I did."

"Scholars must always take those hidden, unclear things and preserve them, one by one."

"I thought this phrase... suited you."

The normally calm senior, who always calculated everything perfectly for everyone, was now stumbling over a single sentence.

"Thank you, Senior."

"You're welcome."

Outside the window, an early swallow swooped past.

Its wingtips dipped lightly in the water before it darted into the weeping willows.

...

The mud in Flanders was alive.

The moment a person stepped on it, the pent-up breath of the earth would rise to swallow their boot, slowly and methodically dragging them down.

Coleman pulled his left foot out, and the mud released its grip with a wet pop.

"You're going to leave that boot behind here sooner or later."

Tucker was squatting on the fire step, using a willow branch to scrape the soles of his boots.

"When the war is over and the locals dig it up while plowing, they might just enshrine it as a holy relic."

"Someone would have to write down its history first," Coleman said.

"I'll write it." Tucker was perfectly serious.

"The Boot of Saint Coleman, martyred at Willow Stakes, aged twenty-one."

This sector of the defense line was called Willow Stakes because it had been a tree nursery before the war.

The fields of willow branches had grown in neat rows, harvested to weave baskets.

Now the rows were still there, and so were the willow stumps.

Rows of knee-high, blackened wood thrust out of the earth in No Man's Land. No one could say which ones pinned corpses beneath them.

Fighting had raged in the south all night long, flares rising into the sky one after another.

Yet this sector was unnervingly quiet. The enemy wasn't even firing their routine harassing shots.

Coleman lay against the parapet until nine o'clock.

The things he wanted tonight were simple:

He wanted those larks to come back tomorrow morning, he wanted to sleep for two hours, and he wanted the rats to come back and take a bite out of him.

At a quarter past nine, the signalman came running back from the communication trench.

The signalman was eighteen this year, and his legs always flailed too widely when he ran.

He stumbled along the whole way, the rum jug in his arms sloshing and clanking loudly.

"Sergeant," he panted.

"Over by the entrance of the communication trench... there's a dog."

The sergeant was mending his socks and didn't look up.

"What about the dog?"

"It's huge."

"The locals' dogs are all huge. They use them to pull carts."

"It's not moving." The signalman's hands were shaking non-stop, the jug knocking against his leg.

"Sergeant, I walked right past it, and it just sat there watching me without a sound."

The communication trench turned three corners, and beside the exit lay a pile of discarded sandbags.

Something was crouching on top of that sandbag pile.

Flares kept rising in the south, one after another, their light spilling over and plating everything in a pale, ghastly white.

But that layer of white light simply slid right off it, failing to stick at all.

It was a full size larger than an ordinary dog. Its tail was pressed against the mud, and its front paws were placed neatly together.

It didn't bark. It didn't move. Nor did it seem to be in any hurry.

Coleman stood at the entrance of the trench, his right hand resting on his rifle sling.

The instructors at the military academy had talked about this. They had kept it brief, spending no more than two minutes on it before turning the page and announcing that this lesson wouldn't be on the exam.

...

Baldwin came to a halt at the trench entrance, thrusting both hands into his overcoat pockets.

"Listen to me."

He swept his gaze over his men.

"No one is allowed to look into its eyes."

"No one is allowed to speak to it."

"No one is allowed to walk toward it."

The sergeant swallowed hard.

"Sir, what kind of dog is that?"

"Just a wild dog," Baldwin said with a wry scoff.

"The locals' wild dogs have gone mad from hunger. It followed the supply convoy up here."

That sentence was meant for the entire trench to hear.

At 1:00 AM, the signalman began to cry.

He cried very quietly, burying his face in his knees. His shoulders hitched as he tried to hide the sound, making him look miserable as he held it in.

Coleman fished a card out of his pocket and pressed it into the boy's hand.

It was a field service postcard, a pale yellow slip printed with a few ready-made lines:

I am quite well.

I have been admitted into hospital.

I have received your letter.

Letter follows at first opportunity.

At the very bottom was a line of fine print:

The lines not erased apply.

If anything else is added, the postcard will be destroyed.

The signalman wiped his face and took the card. Using the light of the flares, he crossed out the unnecessary lines one by one.

By the end, only one line was left on the card: I am quite well.

At 2:00 AM, the black dog began to move.

Coleman kept his eyes fixed on it as it walked.

It would stop at every position, sit down to look for a while, and then move forward again.

Coleman understood what it was doing, and his fingers went cold.

The dog... it was counting.

"Coleman."

Baldwin crouched down beside him.

"Major."

"You saw it."

"It's not looking at any one person in particular," Coleman said.

The Major did not deny it.

"My father once said something. He said these things are like the weather."

"The weather?"

"You can't argue with a rainstorm."

"You can only watch the direction of the wind and pick a higher patch of ground to stand on."

Coleman stared at the black silhouette to the south, his jaw clenched tight for a long time before he finally relaxed it.

At 4:20 AM, the entire line was put on alert.

Everyone climbed onto the fire steps and mounted their rifles, standing shoulder to shoulder. None of them looked to the south.

Only Coleman looked.

The sliver of gray on the horizon had widened by a fraction.

The boundary between light and darkness slowly pushed inward from No Man's Land.

The black dog was crouched right on that dividing line. It didn't get up, but it slowly faded away.

Baldwin thrust his hands back into his pockets. "Stand down. Time for breakfast."

Breakfast consisted of hardtack biscuits, tinned corned beef, and the same two types of jam that never seemed to have a third alternative.

Tucker sat on an ammunition box, scraping plum jam onto his biscuit.

"I timed it," he said suddenly.

"It sat in front of the sergeant's fire step for nineteen minutes. It sat in front of the sapper's dugout for eleven minutes. And it sat in front of me for six minutes."

"You actually timed it?" The sergeant glared at him.

"I couldn't sleep. I had to do something."

Tucker stuffed the biscuit into his mouth. "By that calculation, I'm going to outlive you by eight days."

"Your math is wrong." The sapper stood his shovel up and leaned it against the wall.

"When it was sitting in front of my dugout, I wasn't inside it. I was hiding behind you."

"Then my math is right. You took on eleven minutes for me."

"Took on your ass!"

Beside them, the signalman suddenly burst out laughing.

"What breed was it anyway?" Tucker wouldn't let it go. "Looked like a mastiff to me."

"Greyhound," the sapper insisted.

"Folks where I'm from use greyhounds to chase rabbits. It had the exact same build—runs right low to the ground."

"Greyhounds get that big?"

"The greyhounds where I'm from get that big!"

"Everything where you're from is bigger than anywhere else."

The sapper coughed, picked up his shovel, and walked back to his dugout.

The sergeant finished chewing the last half of his biscuit and asked, "What do you think, Coleman?"

Coleman scraped his tin clean and looked up.

"I say it was a dog."

"...Bullshit."

That morning, Baldwin sat in his dugout for a long time.

A piece of paper lay flat in front of him, his pen hovering over it without ever coming down.

The mailbags arrived in the afternoon.

Tucker was the first to pounce on them as usual, reading out the names for the whole platoon.

Coleman's name was called twice.

The first item was a parcel from home. It was wrapped in two layers of oil paper and tied tightly with string.

Inside was a tin box containing gingerbread cookies, neatly padded with old newspapers. Not a single piece was broken.

The note pressed at the very bottom was in his mother's handwriting.

The second item was just a letter.

The envelope bore the address of Imperial Capital University. The handwriting was neat and the pen strokes sharp and clean.

When Coleman opened it, he rubbed his fingers over the seal a couple of times before tearing it open. The letter was very short.

Tucker leaned his head over from the side.

"Who's it from?"

"A classmate."

"Nice handwriting."

Coleman folded the letter back up.

That night, he sat in a dugout, writing a letter by the light of half a candle.

He wrote about how when he was fourteen at St. George's, the instructors had spent less than two minutes teaching that lesson, and how he now desperately wanted to go back and ask why it wasn't on the exam.

He wrote that the black dog didn't bite; it just counted, and when it finished counting, it lay down and even yawned.

He also wrote about throwing out a needle, and how it came back completely blackened.

He wrote about who had reattached his arm, how he hadn't slacked off for a single day over these past few months, how he had originally planned to go to the Imperial Capital...

When he reached the last line, he stopped.

Coleman held the paper to the candle flame.

The fire caught a corner first, biting down and refusing to let go, creeping upwards inch by inch.

He pinched the very last bit, only letting go when it burned his fingers.

The ashes fell on his knee, and he wiped them away with the back of his hand.

Then he took out a field service postcard of his own, and began crossing out the lines one by one by the candlelight.

I have been admitted into hospital, crossed out.

I have received your letter, his pen hovered over this line for a moment, then left it.

Letter follows at first opportunity, crossed out.

The fine print at the bottom remained: If anything else is added, the postcard will be destroyed.

In the end, only two sentences remained on the card: I have received your letter. I am quite well.

Coleman pressed the card flat against his knee, flipped it over, and wrote the address.

He wrote the words for Imperial Capital University out very neatly, too.