Some of the souls fought viciously, thinking male Reapers were enemy soldiers. Female Reapers became invaluable in the midst of battles, as the dead believed them to be angels of mercy or Valkyries. Perhaps they were. Many all-male branches began to rethink their staffing practices.

Angels and demons alike were appalled by the carnage.

"And the Highest loves these monsters! Why?"

"Thought we were supposed to be the bad ones. By comparison, we're pikers. Inventive, aren't they?"

A few Angels fell. A few demons rose. The Reapers worked double shifts while the humans warred around them and the demons and angels warred above them.

Injuries were common. It took some practice never to manifest into the Human realm enough to be affected by the battles around them. A bullet or two could go through with no particular damage. A mortar shell could require an unpleasant two or three days of regeneration.

Senior Collections Agent Ten Hagen (London) was one of a team assigned a defense shift, its purpose to protect a group of Belgian Reapers. They were working among humans along the edge of an artillery barrage. The Reapers were keeping up with the deaths fairly well. Dutch was moving alongside them to help with souls and records out of control. His demon detector kept up a constant low buzz, as there were always predators on the battlefield. He had it turned down to its lowest setting. The detector could run out of power over a double shift of constant alerts. Something to complain to Smitty about, maybe, or more likely Franklin, as the detectors were a product of the London Labs.

He was reeling in a detached string of life records when the detector yelped and spat. He ducked quickly. A demon grabbed his shoulder as it flew over. It had missed his scythe, but caught his arm. They went down together in a heap, struggling for control. It grabbed again for his scythe, which he banished to safety; the demon wound itself around his chest. Dutch manifested into the human realm with enough physical presence to grab a fallen rifle. As he rammed the butt into the demon's face, everything blew upwards with a crushing force and came down hard in a torrent of mud, blood and body parts.

Senior Collections Agent Terry (London) followed his partner down into the ground, caught his collar and ported him back to the surface and the supernatural plane. Ooof. Heavy.

Oh. Dutch was entangled with someone else. Not a human. Both injured. He didn't recognize the other fellow, whose face was going to need some healing. He waved for the nearest stretcher crew, a group of entry-level Angels. All the Reaper medics had been pressed into Collection teams for this battle. Dutch looked like a shift or two in bed would fix him up fine - he was covered in mud and blood, but all appendages appeared present. Terry, summoned by shouts on his right, left the Angels to it and got back to work.

–End of shift: Field hospital behind the lines–

The doctor watched as two partners held an entire conversation in a wordless series of glances.

I'm fine.
Pleased to meet you, Mr. Fine. And I'm the Queen of Romania.
Help me up?
No. Not until they say so. Stay down or I'll sit on you.

This exchange was a daily occurrence, the only difference being in who was on the cot and who was standing next to it. It was standard between partners regardless of Branch. Patients shared an earnest desire to return home and complete their healing in their own beds. It had led to an order that the patients' clothes were locked up and only reissued at discharge. It did cut down on the number of escapees. Somewhat. Victorian propriety was not yet entirely out of fashion. It had its uses, and its limits.

Examined, treated, and warned against manifesting into artillery barrages, Reaper Ten Hagen was given his muddy suit. The doctor hurried off to see to another admission. Reaper Terry steadied his partner as he dressed. "Ready to go home?"

Ten Hagen shook his head slightly, touched his finger to his lips, and knelt by the next cot. He whispered to a patient whose head and torso were swathed in bandages. There was a pained response. Ten Hagen waved his partner over to kneel on the other side of the bed. To the patient, he murmured, "My partner. Senior Collections Agent Samuel Terry. Reaper Realm, London Branch, Collections Division, Operations Department, Personnel, on temporary assignment to Bristol." The patient groped, caught Terry's shoulder, peered through a gap in the wrappings, gasped "Fergilept. Fifth Circle. First Army. Sixth Company, Third Battalion, Second Regiment, First Brigade. I owe you one. Remember."

Ten Hagen stood with some difficulty. In a normal if offensively cheerful tone, he said, "See you later, Fergie! Get some rest while you can." There was an irritable growl from amidst the bandages. Terry and Ten Hagen left the tent in silence, and in silence ported back to their headquarters. They checked their schedules, updated their status, offloaded their Reaps and were dismissed to take a portal back to London. Once in the home office, Terry demanded, "Explain!"

"Let's get back to the dorms. My room." Once they had checked in with Scheduling and were dismissed to their rest shift, they went over to Senior Housing. In his room, Ten Hagen checked his watch against a schedule pinned to the curtains.

"Smitty's still at work. Now we can talk as long as nobody shouts, okay? Everything hurts. I need to lie down."

"Do that." Terry, that prince among partners, hastened to make Dutch as comfortable as possible.

"Give me your jacket. Now your knives. Strip. Get in the shower. Go back, you've still got mud in your hair. Here's your pajamas. Steady, now. Sit down. Another blanket?" Clothing was bagged for cleaning, shoes were put away, a glass of water set upon the bed table, and a meal ordered for delivery. Dutch raised the water glass and tossed back a white pill.

Only then did Terry take a deep breath and hiss, "What the pluperfect hell was a demon doing in a Reaper-Angel field hospital?"

"Ahhh, well. You rescued him–"

"I what!"

"–and I didn't stop you. We were bashing each other hand-to-hand, you see. He was all wrapped around me so I couldn't reach my knives. I yanked him into the human realm, manifesting enough to pick up a gunstock to whack him with. While I was flattening his face and he was clawing at me, a shell exploded. We had enough mass to be blown sky-high. He took the worst of the blast, though. When you pulled me out of the crater, he was still hanging onto me…."

"The Reaper? Was actually a demon?"

"The stretcher bearers picked us both up, all covered in mud, and tossed us into an ambulance. I told him to hold his human form, which he did because the Angels were everywhere. The orderlies who washed us off are rookies who have never seen demons. His face was swollen beyond recognition anyway. Sometime tonight, after his ribs heal, he'll sneak off home."

Terry groaned. "The smell of disinfectants covered the smell of demon. You'd smashed up his inhuman beauty. His clothes looked like an Algerian uniform. Even the Angels standing guard missed him. And he's one of the mammalian types with blood rather than ichor, so the overworked nurses just wrapped him up and moved on."

"Yup. Wolf or dog demon, maybe. After a long shift of killing, I didn't feel like watching the Angels give him the chop. I'd be surprised if this hasn't happened before. Anyway, he owes us both. The canid types have a certain sense of honor, as long as they aren't ninth circle. That's why I introduced you. He's acknowledged the debt. Might come in handy someday."

There came a light rap on the door between Dutch's room and Smitty's. Sam called, "Come on in! your roomie is an idiot. I am now going to bop him one. Want to watch?"

Smitty peeked through the doorway. The sound of his brain moving into second gear was almost audible. "Isn't whacking your partner when he's down against the Pure and Noble Reapers' Code? You okay, Dutch?"

Dutch, giggling hysterically, flipped a pillow over his head. Sam slapped the pillow.

"Dutch will be fully healed from his concussion injuries by next shift. Getting over what I'm going to do him may take longer."

"Ah, Dutch, should I defend you against this vengeful maniac, or should I just step outside for a bit? Sam, whatever did he do to you? After all, he's the one who's just taken a pain pill and gone all silly."

"Yup," said Dutch happily. "Doctors' favorite. Doesn't do a thing for the pain but leaves you too stupid to complain about it. Sam just needs to snit."

"Is snit a verb?"

"Today it is. I snit, you snit, we snit. Conjugation; Snit snat snut. Sam did a Pure and Noble" — chortle— "Reaper Thing today. I just went along with it. Not the angels' business to interfere in our fights anyway. Snooty angels. Wake me up when the food gets here."

Smitty chuckled. "Thanks, Sam, for bringing him home and getting him cleaned up. Now tell all, both of you, or I swear I'll change the locks. I've an installation to do this evening. For your bosses. You've got ninety minutes before I have to go."

"That the Blooming Ambush? All poison ivy and blackberry canes with mountain lions and bears?"

"No. Worse. Stop trying to distract me from what promises to be a really good story."

"Oh, all right, if you insist." Dutch moved the pillow under his head. "I did a moderately unwise thing today, just the sort of stunt we advise the Juniors against. Sam will never let me forget it. We were working an artillery barrage alongside a troop of Belgian and German reapers. I was attacked by a demon. That's not so common as it used to be. And he was acting alone, that's odd—ouch. Stop poking. It's part of the story. This couldn't have happened if he was part of a group. Anyway, he missed his strike. He was trying to get my scythe, to use it on all the reapers I was protecting. I banished it and took him into the Human realm to pick up a gunstock. Whacked him several good ones on the nose. But I lingered too long on that plane. Blam. A whizzbang buried both of us deep in mud."

"So," Sam took up the tale, "I went down and hooked him out. He came up tangled with someone else whose face was all mashed. Looked like one of our allies, beneath all the mud. I waved for the stretcher carriers. Dutch wasn't missing any limbs so I figured he'd be okay. That same artillery strike gave us a lot of work to do, and I had to move on right away."

Smitty listened with appreciation as the two Reapers told their tale. He answered the outside door and brought in the food delivery. He and Sam eased Dutch upright so he could eat. Sam continued the story with some bitterness.

"At the end of the shift I went to retrieve Dutch from Medical's clutches. The next thing I know, I'm being formally introduced to a Fifth Circle demon, probably a brigade-major or staff officer because he carefully did not give his rank. And I cannot say a word because the angels would overreact and kill us all, and then Dutch would kill me all over again, to say nothing of the doctors and nurses whose ward was disrupted. They would kill everybody and then schedule them for punitive proctology and a thorough delousing involving carbolic and a fire hose."

"Fergilept. Fergie." Dutch snickered. "My friend. You be nice to him."

Sam moaned. "Go to sleep, you idiot."

Another knock. Sam went to the door. There was a brief exchange. Sam closed the door and returned, his anger forgotten. "Werther died. Humphries paid his confectioner's bill. That means he knows."

Smitty nodded. "He'll work on it. All we can do is wait."