This is the fortieth chapter of Wealthgiver, an alternate history serial romance about nationalism and cave-Thracians. For the back-of-the-book description and an index of chapters, click here. For the beginning, click here. For the previous chapter, click here.
Once, Andrei had tried to sleep in an alpine meadow. He had worried here about the old shepherds and found their prayers in his pack. He'd killed a snake here and made a deal with his conscience. Now, he was destroying the place.
Mud, stinking of worse things than sulfur, lay churned in the no-man's-land between the rifle pits seized by Andrei's Bessian army and the wooden barricades of Nikolai's Hadeans. Two tiny factions, constructing between them a miniature hell.
The air stung the back of his throat. Trenches and holes blasted by cannonballs. There were Kori's pits. Men swarmed from them, every one a hero, each forgotten. He'd forgotten about this apathy. Men worshiped war the way an ant might worship the sole of a …
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