The buckles kept slipping in his hands, the freezing water making his fingers numb and the harness difficult to remove. All the while, Victor cursed and muttered under his breath as the cart horse neighed and screamed agains the flashing lightning and now ground quaking thunder. The beast was scared witless. In such a panic, it could easily lash out with a hoof to catch Victor in the thigh or chest to leave him in a heap upon the ground, only Victor did not want to see the animal further hurt itself as it rolled about between the wagon traces. “Damn you!” he shouted finally, “Be still while I-“

A sudden blinding flash and explosive din, and Victor was transported back to the battlefield. In his ears the screams of the horse became the cries of the dead and dying about him, the cart nothing more than a cannon’s carriage. Victor slipped in the mud, his bad leg giving out beneath him. The storm began to reach its peak, the thunder and lightning becoming mortar and artillery fire all about him. The old soldier’s fear rose in his breast. Eyes wide and wild, Victor cursed again as he dragged himself forward through the mud away from the wounded animal. Where was the reinforcing regiments?! Where was his battalion?! What addled generation had commanded an attack in the middle of storm?! Every bilesome vexation he could call down upon the heads of his commanders found rebirth in his mouth as he crawled through the rain. 

Only the storm and memories became as one to him. A current set of strikes blazed down upon the orchard, setting fire to a nearby set of trees and adding the smell of ozone and smoke to the misery. Hastily, Victor scrambled back to the shelter of the artillery carriage as he glanced about in heart pounding terror. In the shadows between trees, he thought he could see men running forward, always forward. “Get back here, you idiots!” he screamed at them. “Reform! Reform, damn you!” The phantoms in his mind pushed forward though, ignoring him as he begged and pleaded and ranted at them not to through their lives away. Victor tried to rise only to slip once more as he knee buckled. Had he been shot on the leg or taken shrapnel? He couldn’t recall, he only knew he had been wounded and that it hurt like hell. Tears formed in the corners of his eyes as he watched troops in his mind charge off to their bloody, explosive demises… and he could do nothing to stop them because of his useless leg. 

The last of the soldiers were gone, vanished among the orchard’s trees and the heavy smoke from the rapidly smoldering trees; they had flamed briefly, but the torrents had quickly extinguished the flames to leave a haze of smoke and fog between the raindrops. Leaning weakly against the cart as the horse gave once last whinny before collapsing, Victor cursed the skies and the men beneath it who thought that land and wealth was worth more than other men’s lives.

The his ears caught it. Someone was calling his name, calling out for him from the darkness. The sound brought confusion for it was a woman’s voice! How had she come out onto the field?! Didn’t the fool woman know the danger?! A sniper might well sight in on the spark of her lantern, his attention caught by the force of her voice over the roar of the battle in his head and in the heavens! An artillery shell could pick up and fling her against the landscape in bloody chunks across the landscape! Hell, their own side could order a charge and she would be run down by the hooves of the heavy cavalry before they ever saw her.

Fearing for her, Victor screamed out to her. “Over here! Over here, quick like!” Another burst of lightning and Victor shielded his face against the blaze. “God damn it, woman, get down before you’re shot!”