They shoot the white girl first. She meets death bravely with earthquake hands and open eyes and the dust spirals upwards half-heartedly as she hits the floor. The commander folds his hands open into the air and looks over at the sailors arrayed in formation behind him. The other women shake and shake and shake in their bonds.
"Do you see what we do to resistance fighters?" he asks, his voice quiet and still and carrying in the thick air. "No mercy, you hear me? No mercy."
Georg wants to run, he wants to run forward and untie them and hustle them away to the safety of the hills where they can hide in the caves and drop rocks on their pursuers and disappear into the thin mountain air where no-one will ever find them, but he's stuck in place. Think of Maria, he says silently to himself. Think of Maria and the children. You can't do anything rash.
The rest of the executions take place quickly, nearly humanely but still Georg can't countenance the killing of so many young women and girls, without a trial, without proper evidence even if they are the enemy. Well. Not his enemy. Anyone brave enough to stand up and do what he couldn't is always deserving of his respect.
"Dismissed," the commander snaps, and he watches as his men file silently out of the town square, back towards the harbour. Someone picks up the limp bodies and drags them carelessly towards the cemetery. Nausea splashes up his windpipe. Those girls were people's daughters, wives, sisters, mothers, and here they are, executed for standing up for what is right and dumped in a shallow grave because no-one can be bothered to give them a proper funeral. The army is a machine, and they are the remains of what got in the way.
He excuses himself from the suggestion to go to the mess, and heads back to his cabin to be sick in private.
When he gets home – months and months and long aching months later – Maria is wearing a yellow dress and yellow shoes and beams like the sunlight, obviously not remembering that he knows her well enough to see the rain behind her smile. She greets him with a kiss and he holds her, his hands at her waist and his forehead against hers, breathing in lazy lakeside days and yodelling songs in the mountains.
"Everything's been fine?" he asks and in front of the children, she nods.
Later, when they are lying in their bed, listening to the crack of the thunderstorm lashing the hillside, she rolls over onto her stomach, tracing a line down his chest. "They've been trying to bully the boys into joining Hitler Youth," she says.
Ice prickles his spine. "No," he says. "I can't let them."
Maria's eyes are infinitely old and sad in the perfect frame of her face and her messy golden hair. "The thing is Georg, I think you have to."