Roman struggled to rise with her help. He leaned against the wall, and they took a few laborious steps before he stopped.
“Did you get my bag … my bag, Iris?”
Why was he so worried about his bloody bag? She exhaled and looked for it, her body burning with the strain of bearing his weight. I can’t carry him alone, she thought just as her eyes fell on a soldier who was about to pass them, his rifle slung across his back.
“Hey!” Iris shouted, intercepting him. “Yes, you, Private. Help me carry this correspondent to Station Fourteen. Please, I need your help.”
The soldier didn’t even hesitate. He looped Roman’s other arm over his shoulders. “We need to hurry. They’ve taken the front trenches.”
His words sent a bolt of fear through Iris’s stomach, but she nodded and shifted beneath Roman’s other arm, so that he was between her and the soldier. They moved faster than Iris had anticipated, winding through the trenches. There were more wounded sprawled on the ground. She had no choice but to step around them, and her eyes were smarting, and her nose running, and her ears continued to ring but she was breathing and alive and she was going to get Roman out of here and to a doctor, and she—
The private turned a corner and abruptly stopped.
They were almost to the end of the trenches. They were almost to the woods and Station Fourteen and the road that would lead them to town, but Iris had no choice but to follow the private’s lead, Roman groaning between them at the jolt. She recognized the captain who had brought her and Roman to the front moving through the confusion. Blood was splattered across his face and his teeth gleamed in the light as he grimaced. Wounded soldiers lined the trenches around him; there was no way that Iris was going to be able to get past them, and she panicked as the private began to lower Roman down to the ground.
“Wait, wait!” she cried, but the captain caught sight of her. He called out a few more orders before he approached, and Iris watched as the wounded were carried away on stretchers, up and out of the trenches.
“Miss Winnow,” the captain said, glancing down at Roman. “Is he breathing?”
“Yes, only wounded. Shrapnel, right leg. Captain, can we—”
“I’ll have him carried out on a stretcher and loaded into the lorry for transport. Are you wounded?”
“No, Captain.”
“Then I need you. I’m short of hands, and we need to get as many wounded to this point as possible before Dacre takes them. Here, go with Private Stanley and use this stretcher to bring back as many as possible. You only have as long as the guns fire. Now go!”
Iris was stunned as the captain turned and began calling out more orders. She was a correspondent, not a soldier, but Private Stanley was now staring at her, holding one end of a bloodied and vomit-stained stretcher, and time suddenly felt heavy on her skin.
Did it matter what she was?
Iris knelt before Roman. “Kitt? Can you look at me?”
His eyes cracked open. “Iris.”
“I’m needed elsewhere, but I’ll find you, Kitt. When this is over, I’ll find you, all right?”
“Don’t leave,” he whispered, and his hand flailed, reaching for her. “You and I … we need to stay together. We’re better this way.”
A lump lodged in her throat when she saw the panic in his eyes. She laced their fingers together, holding him steady. “You have to stay strong for me. Once you’re healed, I need you to write an article about all of this. I need you to steal the front page from me like you normally do, all right?” She smiled, but her eyes were burning. It was all the smoke, drifting closer from the barrage. “I’ll find you,” she whispered and kissed his knuckles. He tasted like salt and blood.
The pain in her chest swelled when she had to shake his hand away, taking the other end of the stretcher. When she had no choice but to turn and leave him, following the steady trot of Private Stanley.
They picked up one wounded soldier, carrying her back to the place Iris had left Roman. As she helped Stanley carefully slide the private off the stretcher, Iris’s eyes skimmed the others and saw Roman was still waiting, but closer in line to be carried up to the lorry.
They left again, scurrying just like the rats did through the trenches. They carried another soldier with a mangled leg back to Station Fourteen. This time, Roman was gone, and Iris was both relieved and anxious. He must have been loaded and be currently in transit to an infirmary. But that meant she wasn’t there to curse at him, to insist he keep his eyes open, to hold his hand and ensure he was all right.
She swallowed, her mouth dry and full of ash. She blinked away her tears.
It was just smoke in her eyes. Smoke in her eyes, burning her up from within.
“I think we can retrieve one more,” Stanley said. “As long as there’s gunfire, we have time. Can you do that?”
Iris nodded, listening to the pop of the guns in the distance. But her shoulders were sore, her breaths were uneven. Her heart pounded a painful song in her chest as she ran behind Stanley, the stretcher banging against her sore thighs.
They went deeper into the trenches this time. Iris’s legs were trembling as she realized the gunfire was beginning to ease. Did that mean Dacre’s soldiers had killed everyone at the front? Did that mean they would soon press closer? Would they kill her if they found her, stranded in the thick of the trenches? Did they take prisoners?
Before Dacre takes them. The captain’s words echoed through her, making her shiver.
Distracted, Iris tripped over something.
It brought her to her knees, and she felt stray pieces of shrapnel bite into her skin.
Stanley paused, glancing over his shoulder to look at her. “Get up,” he said, and he suddenly sounded afraid, because the gunfire was waning.
But Iris was scarcely listening to him, or the way the world was becoming eerily silent again. Because there on the ground was a leather bag that looked just like the one she was carrying. Scuffed and freckled with blood and trampled by countless boots.
Roman’s bag.
Iris slipped it onto her shoulder. It rested beside her own bag, and she felt the weight settle on her back as she rose to her feet once more.
* * *
“What are you still doing here, correspondent?” Captain Speer shouted at Iris. “Get in the lorry! You should have evacuated an hour ago!”
Iris startled. She was standing in Station Fourteen, uncertain what she should be doing. All she knew was there was blood dried on her hands and jumpsuit, and the scrape on her chest was burning, and her pulse was frantic, wondering where Roman was.
“Go!” the captain screamed when Iris remained standing blankly.
Iris nodded and stumbled through the dusky light to the back of the lorry. Soldiers were being loaded, and she waited, not wanting to push her way through. Eventually, one of the privates saw her and hefted her up into the crowded bed without a word.
She sprawled on top of someone groaning in pain.
Iris shifted her weight, unbalanced by the two bags on her back. “Oh, I’m so sorry!”
“Miss Winnow?”
She studied the bloodied soldier beneath her. “Lieutenant Lark? Oh my gods, are you all right?”
It was a ridiculous thing for her to ask. Of course, he wasn’t all right—none of them were all right—but she suddenly didn’t know what to do, what to say. She gently moved to sit beside him, wedged between his body and another soldier. The lorry jerked and rumbled forward, jostling everyone in the back.