Among the Poppies

by J'nell Ciesielski

  “Captain’s got a bee in his bonnet, nay doubt.” MacDonald matched his long strides to hers. His sporran bounced in perfect rhythm. “Been sour since the woods. O’ course those lads running into the guns like they did would put any man off, but they had their own minds about it. Canna change that. The captain takes everything on himself though, doesn’t he? Shouldn’t. Not like he hasn’t lost a man before. Wonder why this one’s got him so vexed.”

  Her inability to surrender was due to some ridiculous notion that love was the ruination of freedom. Love offered a girl a limited view from her kitchen window. Love kept a girl from chasing adventure around the world. Dreams abandoned for another person’s in the name of love. To live in a tiny flat above a garage. Yet somehow Mum found such happiness there, even while yearning for exploration.

  Love.

  Gwyn kicked another rock. It disappeared into a tangle of dried wheat. Who was talking about love after one kiss under a moonless sky?

  “Lassie, you keep stopping like that, and I’ll just have a wee sit.”

  “Oh, sorry.” Gwyn quickened her pace before William could turn around again. “Lack of sleep has my mind wandering.”

  “Feel free to talk it out loud. Helps me sometimes.”

  Gwyn smiled. “Not this time.”

  “Ah. Personal problem. Have me three sisters, so I know all the advice if you want to give it a go.”

  “Thank you, no. I think I’ll stew on it for a bit.”

  “Like the Captain. Ruthers, if you keep stopping—”

  “This has nothing to do with Will, the captain.”

  A frown pulled at his wide mouth. “Didn’t say it did. Just that you both got the same brewing expression. And got it around the same time. If I were an observant man, I might say—”

  “Well, don’t.”

  “Just saying, with two of the three sisters married, I can help.”

  Gwyn jumped as if he’d zapped her with a lightning rod. “Who’s talking about marriage?”

  “No one. Unless you want to.”

  “I most certainly do not.”

  “Quiet!” William had stopped, motionless as a deer in a clearing. Mouth pressed into a grim line, he stared at the eastern sky. Wisps of smoke curled over a crop of trees. “MacDonald, you come with me. Roland, you stay here with Gwyn. Keep your heads down. We’ll be back soon. That smoke looks to be nothing more than a campfire.”

  “As the more senior officer, I should be going, not MacDonald,” Roland said, a defiant scrunch to his chin.

  “He’s not the one with a busted leg. You’ll stay here and keep a lookout.”

  “Lookout, bah.” Roland crossed his arms and huffed. “More like a babysitter.”

  “I don’t need a babysitter, nor am I going to sit here as an unarmed target.” Gwyn brushed past Roland to plant herself in front of William. The memory of last night’s kiss burned in her chest. She squelched it before it had time to spread. “I’m going too.”

  “No.”

  “Yes.”

  A muscle ticked in his neck. “You’ll stay here as commanded.”

  Gwyn rolled her eyes. “I’m fed up with commands. You want me to stay put, then you’ll have to tie me to a tree. But first you’ll need a rope, and I doubt you have any of that stuffed in your boot.”

  His neck muscle clenched, a vein pulsed wildly beneath the tanned skin. The crystal blue eyes glittered like ice. If she wasn’t so hot, hungry, and exhausted, she might have summoned the sense to heed the warning.

  “Captain Morrison and I are vulnerable near the road. It’s safer for the group to stick together.” She eyed the trees. “You said it looked nothing more than a campfire. Doubting yourself?”

  “The only doubt I have is your ability to stay clear of foolish predicaments.” He inhaled deeply, straining the buttons down his chest. “But I know for a fact you won’t stay put, and, unfortunately I’m all out of rope.”

  He pulled the German knife from his belt and handed it to her. Heavy and cool in her palm, Gwyn wrapped her fingers around the handle.

  William’s hot hand clamped down on top of hers. “If there’s trouble, don’t try to use this. Just run.” She nodded and tried to pull her hand back, but he held tight. “I’ll have your word on it, Gwyn. No heroics.”

  The same intensity burned in his eyes as the last time he’d stood so close to her. His hand had been warm then too, his gaze intent on her mouth. Her palm grew slick against the handle. “You have my word.”

  His gaze flickered down to her lips so briefly that Gwyn thought she’d imagined it. And then his hand was gone.

  Easing off the dusty road, they stalked through the tall grass. Gwyn batted the dried weeds from her face as she trudged behind Roland. Poor man was getting the worst of it as the slender stalks snapped back in place behind MacDonald’s broad back and smacked the captain on the ears.

  Gwyn clutched the knife tighter, grateful for her thick boots and long trousers despite the sweat they trapped inside. She didn’t want to imagine what kind of rodents and slithering creatures watched her with their beady little eyes.

  Her head bumped into something hard. William. He glared back at her. In front of him towered the edge of the woods.

  “Sorry,” she mouthed.

  He grabbed her wrist and flipped it so the knife pointed down. Leaning down, his warm breath hissed in her ear. “Try not stabbing me.”

  “Sorry. I didn’t get much weapon training on the driving course.”

  The side of his mouth twitched, fluttering butterflies through her stomach. Butterflies. Golly molly. They were approaching the enemy, not an ice cream social.

  “Keep your head down, and remember your promise.” Signaling to the other men, they crept into the woods.

  Moving as one, they ducked and stalked between the towering trees. Their heavy boots making nary a sound on the grass and twigs while Gwyn’s heels managed to crunch every leaf on the ground. Oh, to have their training. She’d never seen soldiers in head-on confrontation before, but their confidence was enough to bolster hers, weak as it was.

  Smoke purled through the air, tickling her nose with burning pine sap. A relief against the onslaught of gunpowder usually singeing the winds. Until she caught a whiff of blackened meat.

  The men stopped. Low voices rumbled from the other side of a fallen log. William pointed down, then forward. MacDonald and Roland hunched over and scurried behind the log. Heart in her throat, Gwyn followed and landed with a soft thud on the grass beside them.

  “Two. Infantry,” William whispered, peering through the leaves. “A small wagon and farm horse. They’re not in a hurry.”

  MacDonald angled up on his elbow and looked. “Deserters. No more than lads.”

  Gwyn edged herself to the top of the log and thumbed back a few leaves. Two soldiers not old enough to be in university hunkered over a tiny fire where a skinned rat blackened on a stick. Filthy uniforms hung on their skinny bodies, their lean faces intent on the meal before them.

  “How do you know they’re deserters?” she asked.

  “Food is scarce, but no soldier in the German ranks is that skeletal and ragged.” Sadness tinged William’s voice. “And there’s no reason for them to be this far from their lines with an empty wagon and horse.”

  Deserters. The slime of the military. No one was more hated than a coward fleeing his duty. If caught, the penalty was death. As much as Gwyn despised disloyalty, her heart heaved with sadness for the poor boys. They must have been terrified to risk a firing squad.

  William turned and leaned his head against the log. Squeezing his eyes shut, he pinched the bridge of his nose and sighed. Gwyn longed to smooth the deep wrinkles from his forehead, to tell him he need not put himself in this difficult situation. But her words would fall on deaf ears. He was here, and there was no backing down now.

  “We’ve got a clean shot,” MacDonald said.

  William’s eyes flew open. “No.”

  Rolandshifteduncom
fortably.“They’redeserters,Will. German cowards.”

  “They’re boys on the run.”

  “And they might be sitting on a stash of pistols. Better them than us, or some other detail on patrol.”

  “We’ll take them alive.” William’s tone cut the argument like steel. “MacDonald, you ease around the other side, Roland behind, and Gwyn stay with me. Wait for my signal.”

  The men moved into position as Gwyn tried to keep her frantic heart from beating clean through her chest. The dagger slipped from her sweaty fingers. Picking it up, she laid it across her knees and swiped her palms against her thighs.

  “Do you remember what I told you?” William’s low voice whirred in her ears. She nodded, gripping the knife again.

  “Don’t hold it like that.” Prying her fingers from the handle, he rearranged them to firmly enfold the grip. “You don’t want to hammer or slash down at your attacker because they can easily block it. You want to slice in and out, like filleting a fish.”

  “Filleting a fish.” Her stomach twisted. “But fish are fish, with tails and fins, and humans are … are …” Her hand shook, threatening to drop the knife again. She’d seen men with bayonet wounds, their insides out and cut like fine ribbons. But it had been the enemy’s handiwork, not her own. “Why are you telling me this when you want me to run?”

  “Because I can’t leave you helpless. You’re better off knowing and not needing it than finding yourself a victim.” He scouted through the bushes again. “They’re in place. You stay right here. Understand?”

  She nodded as the tension knotted her insides. William checked his rounds one last time and started to rise from his crouch. Gwyn caught his arm. “Please be careful, William.”

  His eyes softened for the briefest of seconds before snapping back to soldier steel. Springing to his feet, he pulled the rifle against his shoulder.

  Click.

  The German boys froze and stared at the man who had mysteriously risen from the ground.

  “Slow and easy, lads,” William said as MacDonald and Roland came into the clearing. “Keep your hands where I can see them. Englisch?”

  Terror collided with confusion on the boys’ faces. “Nein.”

  William stepped further into the small area, the pointed rifle steady in his hands. “Check them, Roland.”

  As Roland approached, the younger-looking boy began to tremble, his eyes darting all around like a spooked horse. He backed away.

  William’s aim followed him. “Don’t do it, boy.”

  The boy broke into a run.

  CRACK!

  The boy hit the ground. William cursed and sprinted to his side, joined by MacDonald and his smoking rifle.

  “I told you not to shoot.” William growled, holding the squirming boy down as he tried to clutch his bloody knee. “What am I supposed to do with him now?”

  “Bandage him up.” Gwyn knelt beside him. Without hesitation, her feet had carried her to the sight of blood.

  William grabbed her arm as she reached for the boy’s knee. “I told you to stay put.”

  She jerked away from of his grasp. “Only if there was trouble. The only trouble here is this boy squirming in agony. Search the wagon for anything I can wrap this shattered knee in. And some kind of brace. Sticks if need be.”

  Warmth pulsed over her fingers as she examined the open hole. Thankfully, the bullet had gone straight through. “Mr. MacDonald, I am in no way condoning this, but that was quite a shot.”

  “Best way to stop a cattle reiver,” he said, puffing his thick chest out. “Enough to stop ’em cold and keep ’em alive.”

  She ignored the pride in his voice and took the canteen William had found. She washed the wound before wrapping it in torn strips of tarp. The boy winced, biting hard down on his lip. Hatred burned in his eyes as he watched every move she made.

  Rocking back on her heels, Gwyn pushed a damp bit of hair from her forehead and examined her work. Sister would have a seizure if she saw such an unsanitary and crude dressing. But Saint Matthew’s was a long way away. “That’ll have to do.”

  “Better than what he deserves,” Roland said from where he perched atop the other captive. “I’d say your shot was about three feet too low, MacDonald.”

  William’s face set to stone. “I wanted no shooting.”

  “They’re deserters, Will. Keeping them alive is not what the cowards deserve,” Roland said. “You know the law.”

  The muscles in William’s neck seized, and for the first time, Gwyn clearly saw the burden he carried. Did he obey the orders of man or the orders of honor? “They’re not British citizens.”

  “So you want to set them free? Or maybe you plan to bind them hand and foot and carry them all the way back to headquarters if we can ever find it. I’ll tell you this, I have no intention of marching any mile with a Kraut at my back.”

  “They don’t want to be here any more than we do.” William pointed at the burning rodent. “They’re starving to death. I doubt they could overtake you on a march.”

  “It may have been a tasty meal to start, but it’s burned to the bone now. Stinking up the air.” MacDonald grumbled and kicked the makeshift spit onto the grass. “Filthy rat.”

  Too much sun and heat. The men wavered on the edge of going for each other’s throats. And Gwyn was ready to push them all into the nearest river. At least when the women turned foul, they only used scathing words as weapons. Her current companions carried guns.

  Plopping down, she plucked a dried blade of grass and rolled it between her fingers. How lovely a river sounded. Cool and fresh to wash away weeks—months of grime. She wiggled her cramped toes, eager to feel the watery flow between them. Perhaps, for just a minute, she could slip off the confining boots and—

  Her scalp split with fire as the wounded German grabbed a fistful of her hair and yanked her head back, exposing her neck to the blade he’d slipped from her belt. She clawed at his arm, but he held tight.

  “Nicht kämpfen oder ich werde dich aufschlitzen.” His voice shook.

  “William.” She gasped, throwing her arm back at the boy’s face.

  His hand trembled, scraping the knife against her skin. Wet drops trickled down her neck. “Ruhig sein!”

  Terror blazed in William’s eyes for an instant before fury rolled across his face. He threw the rifle against his shoulder and aimed. “Let her go, or I’ll put a bullet straight into your skull.”

  “Don’t. You’ll hit her.” MacDonald readied his gun.

  William swung his gun and pressed the muzzle to the other German’s head. “Then his freund goes first.”

  The boy under William’s gun sobbed and pleaded with his friend, garbled words muffled as Roland pressed his elbow against the back of his neck, pressing the boy’s face into the dirt.

  Gwyn’s head throbbed as her captor dug his fingers in and twisted. But it was the stifled sob that gave him away. He’d gotten himself into something he had no way out of.

  “Please, please let me go,” she whispered.

  The blade pressed harder. Her pulse pounded out more trickles of blood. Red exploded across William’s face.

  “Lassen sie mich und meine freundin gehn!” Her captor yanked her head further back until she cried out. “Und ich werde nicht verletzt das mädchen.”

  Tears pricked Gwyn’s eyes from the pain shooting to the roots of her hair. And then—like the snap of a twig—the pain vanished, along with her patience for pushy Germans. Balling her fist, she smacked his blown knee as hard as she could.

  Howling with pain, the boy fell back clutching his knee. Gwyn leaped to her feet and grabbed the knife. “I saved your life!”

  William was at her side, attempting to wrest the knife from her, but she refused to let go. She needed it. Needed it to keep her safe. Safe from all the Germans desperate to snuff her out. Well, she wasn’t ready to be snuffed out.

  A rough hand caressed her cheek. “Let go, Gwyn.”

  Tears stung her eyes.
Her fingers opened, surrendering the knife to William.

  Grabbing the boy by his collar, William dragged him to where his friend lay prostrate under Roland. “On your knees. Hands behind your heads.”

  Tears streaming down their faces, the boys shook their heads in confusion and offered their bare hands as a plea. Impassive as stone, William watched in silence as MacDonald shoved the boys into position. Gwyn’s failed captor buckled and stuck his busted leg out, unable to bend it. The tarp around his wound seeped deep red.

  “I would ask for last words, but you can’t understand me.” William’s lips barely moved as he shrugged his rifle into position. “I’ll trust the sobbing is making peace with God.”

  The boys cried harder.

  Gwyn’s heart sagged. “No, William. Please no.”

  “They’re deserters.” William’s voice was cold as stone. “He tried to slit your throat, or can you not feel the blood running down your neck?”

  Gwyn touched the side of her neck. “He was scared. This is wrong. We’re not murderers.”

  William’s shoulders strained the fabric across his back. Minutes passed without a twitch of the fingers. Gwyn’s lungs constricted with each pulse of the vein in his neck. Finally, he threw his gun down.

  And punched the boy in the jaw.

  “Get their boots off and strip them down to their underwear. They’ll be too humiliated to assault a cat on the return trip to the Fatherland.”

  A minute later, with barely a shred of clothing to hold their dignity in place, the boys knelt trembling in front of William. With a low growl, he waved them off. “Get out of my sight. Go!”

  Scrambling to his feet, the abled-bodied boy hauled the other to his good foot and slung an arm around him for support. Crying together, they limped off into the woods.

  Exhausted, Gwyn shuffled back to the log she’d hidden behind and slumped down. Her arms and legs felt as if a stack of tires weighed atop them, and her brain was as oozy as motor oil. Her eyelids fluttered shut to a relief of darkness. The days seemed never to end. They were doomed to wander in circles until their feet turned into bloody nubs or another German patrol overtook them. Would they be as lucky to escape the next time? A tear squeezed from the corner of her eye. How much longer?