The battlefield was empty.
The battlefield was empty but still he marched onward – to what purpose and destination, he didn't know. The pale sun was high overhead in the cloudless sky but he didn't feel its warmth. The air was cold, still and silent – no musket fire, no thunder from the cannon, and no screams of the dying.
And ahead of him it stretched on, raw dirt churned by the boots of a thousand dead men. He couldn't see them but he knew they were there all the same. Smoke still rose from the charred ground, mingling with a sharp, metallic scent he knew all too well.
His next step splashed and the smell grew stronger. Looking down, he found a puddle of crimson soaking into the black earth.
Lifting his eyes, he saw before him a whole field of blood, sucking at his boots with every step.
And suddenly, the battlefield was empty no more. The sky reddened and burned, as dark as the ground beneath his feet, and many thousands of ghosts walked alongside him. They left behind their mangled forms - twisted faces forever frozen in silent screams and torn uniforms so stained with blood he couldn't tell blue from grey.
It was clear to him that this ground on which he trod was the devils land. He was passing through hell and the flames licked at his heels, racing up his legs and across his body.
As he pushed onward, he heard a woman's voice and felt a cool hand on his forehead. And then the pale face of an angel swayed before him, stark against the bloody sky. Eyes of the clearest blue looked at him with sympathy and he wanted nothing more than to sink into their depths and stifle the flames spreading across his body before they consumed him completely.
The black skirts that swirled around her told him she was no ordinary angel – she was the angel of death.
He'd been walking for so long, walking and starving. He'd seen so much death, so much pain, that he found he was glad to shuffle off this battered and beaten mortal coil, so long as his angel took him home.
He reached for her but his arms passed right through, his fingers grasping at nothing more than the mist swirling in her place.
As he felt her cool hand on his face once more, he closed his eyes and sank into her darkness.
"He's burning up," Carol sighed.
Maggie came to stand beside her and together they frowned down at the stranger in Carol's bed, shivering even beneath her heaviest blankets. His eyes fluttered but didn't open as Carol laid the back of her hand across his forehead again. It was like touching her fingers to a hot kettle.
"It's that wound," Maggie told her, tugging the blanket down to reveal the angry looking injury to his side.
Carol ran her fingertips over the hasty, makeshift bandage and the man's head lolled to the side on the pillow, his eyes moving behind their lids. A bullet had also torn its path through the flesh and hair along the side of his head though that wound was shallower and of less concern.
They'd cleaned both wounds as best they could and there wasn't much else she could do for the man but keep him warm and let him rest.
Next to her, Maggie eyed the broad expanse of bare chest and raised her brows at Carol, a slow smile working its way across her broad mouth.
Carol shook her head and tugged the blankets up to the man's neck, warmth flooding her cheeks.
Losing interest, Maggie stomped off across the small cabin to sit by the fire, "I just don't understand why you wouldn't let me go. We'd be eating right now, you know. I've never gone hungry in my life."
"I can't expect you to do everything for me, Maggie," Carol told her, tucking the blankets carefully around the still-shivering man. "I have to learn for myself."
"You don't learn to hunt by marching off into the woods with a gun you don't know how to use."
She spun on the girl, eyes flashing, "Well, how do you learn if not by doing? Tell me that, Maggie."
Maggie stood to face her, jaw tight and hands on her hips, "You stop trying to do everything yourself and let someone teach you, you stubborn fool."
Across the room, Sophia wailed from her crib and Carol turned away, still smarting.
"Take that baby to Lori," Maggie insisted wearily, her voice softer now.
"I won't take food out of her baby's mouth," Carol told her, gathering Sophia up out of her crib and cradling her to her chest though it did nothing to stop her crying.
"She won't mind – not a bit," Maggie said. "Her husband left her better off than your no-count bastard left you."
Carol lowered her eyes, watching the fire dance and crackle in the hearth as Sophia continued to scream at the top of her little lungs.
"Oh, give her to me and I'll take her," Maggie finally snapped.
Carol turned in time to catch the movement through the window behind Maggie's head.
"Someone's here," she whispered as Maggie slipped Sophia from her arms.
Maggie turned and then looked up at Carol with wide eyes, "The Home Guard?"
"I'm sure," Carol answered, sweeping past her to yank the blankets over the man's head. "I knew they'd have heard that shot."
"What'll we do with him?" Maggie hissed, cradling Sophia with one arm as she helped Carol fluff the blankets out to hide the shape of the body resting beneath them.
Carol pushed past her, heart pounding as she threw open her chest of drawers.
By the time three ominous knocks sounded at the door, Sophia was back in her crib and Maggie was kneeling by the bed.
Carol opened the door to reveal Phillip Blake, his black coat flapping in the wind. He was soaked to the bone but smiled despite it, an expression made all the more eerie by the black patch stretched over his empty eye socket.
Beyond him she could see the rest of his boys, a pack of wolves eyeing her hungrily from atop their horses.
"Evening, Mrs. Peletier," Phillip told her in a voice that held no warmth, glancing over at Maggie where she knelt with needle in hand as if ready to mend the dress they'd laid out across the bed, "Ms. Greene."
"Mr. Blake," Carol replied coolly, lifting her chin.
"Bosie thinks he heard a shot from out this way," Phillip told her, rain coursing down his face. "Don't suppose you've heard anything?"
"No, we haven't," Carol answered stiffly. "Sophia's been rather cranky this evening."
As if on cue, Sophia whimpered from her crib and let out a soft, testy little cry.
Phillip nodded but the look in his eye was hard, "He thought he saw some people out in your field when he rode up this way just after dark – a man, he said. A man in uniform."
Carol lowered her eyes, "I don't know what you're talking about, Mr. Blake. There's been no man here."
She saw the man's dirty boots by the door at the same time Phillip did and the breath caught in her throat. When he looked up at her again, his smile was victorious.
"And who might those belong to, Mrs. Peletier?"
Chin high and jaw tight, she met his gaze without hesitation, "They're mine, Mr. Blake."
His eye narrowed to a slit and behind her, Maggie piped up, "Mine too, Mr. Blake. I mean, we both use them – when we go outside. To save our good shoes."
"They belonged to my husband, God rest his soul," Carol told him, letting her voice waver.
She prayed God wouldn't strike her dead if he knew her heart, knew how she really felt about her late husband.
Edward Peletier had gone off to the war late, delaying it until it could be delayed no more. He was dead of a fever within three months, before he ever knew she carried his child. And she hadn't been one bit sorry to see him buried. He was where he belonged for the things he'd done.
But still her stare was steady, daring Phillip Blake to contradict her – daring the man to call her a liar with her dead husband's name still hanging between them.
He gritted his teeth, looking for all the world as though he wanted to strike her. It was a look she recognized in men. But instead he took in a deep, slow breath and forced the smile back onto his face.
"You just remember, Mrs. Peletier – we're not the enemy," he told her, deep voice booming as if from the pulpit. "It's our duty to protect those left behind, those that others would harm or take advantage of. Lest you forget, there are dangerous men in these parts."
The men behind him tittered and Carol met the strange, violet eyes of Bosie Charles. Beside him was the only man who wasn't laughing, a man she'd only seen with the Home Guard once before – a tall man with close cropped hair, hard eyes, and a missing hand. It'd been lost in battle, she heard, though some said he'd taken it off himself in escaping the Yankees.
He caught her looking and gave her a quick nod, shifting in his saddle.
She looked back to Phillip and he bared his teeth to her, tipping a hat he wasn't wearing before he rejoined his men.
With one last glance at the ragtag band, she closed the door behind him and leaned against it, weak with relief.
Maggie sat down hard on the edge of the bed, face drained of blood.
"They'll be back," she told Carol, the thread-less needle falling from her fingers as she uncovered the blankets from the man's face and found him still unconscious. "Maybe not tonight but they'll be back."
Even as she told Maggie to stop her worrying, Carol knew she was right.