Harry Turtledove - Return engagement

That was one thing Armstrong didn't say. Everybody who outranked him was awfully touchy about defeatism. You could grouse about why the Army wasn't fighting back as hard as it might have; that was in the rules. But if you said you'd just as soon not be fighting at all, you'd gone too far. He didn't know exactly what happened to soldiers who said such things. He didn't want to find out, either.

Overhead, shells made freight-train noises. They flew south, south past the U.S. lines, and came down somewhere not far from Astoria. That was Confederate-held territory now, which meant those were U.S. guns firing, and that the soldiers in butternut and their swarms of barrels hadn't broken through.

Counterbattery fire came back very promptly. It might be dark, but the Confederates weren't asleep. Those shells flew over Armstrong's head, too, roaring north. As long as the guns traded fire with one another, he didn't mind too much. When the Confederates started pounding the front line, that was something else again.

That was trouble, was what it was.

Armstrong rolled himself in his blanket and went to sleep. He'd discovered he could sleep anywhere when he got the chance. All he needed was something to lean against. He didn't have to lie down; sitting would do fine. Sleep, in the field, was more precious than gold, almost-but not quite-more precious than a good foxhole. Whenever he could, he restocked.

Corporal Stowe shook him awake in the middle of the night. Armstrong's automatic reaction was to try to murder the noncom. "Easy, tiger," Stowe said, laughing, and jerked back out of the way of an elbow that would have broken his nose. "I'm not a goddamn infiltrator. Get your ass up there for sentry duty."

"Oh." Now that Armstrong knew it wasn't kill or be killed in the next moment, he allowed himself the luxury of a yawn. "All right." He pulled on his shoes, which he'd been using for a pillow. "Anything going on? Those bastards poking around?"

"That's why we have sentries," the squad commander answered, and Armstrong really wished that elbow had connected. Stowe went on, "Seems pretty quiet. You run into trouble, shoot first."

"Bet your ass," Armstrong said. "Any son of a bitch tries to get by me, he pays full price."

When the war first broke out, Stowe would have laughed at him for talking like that. But he'd lived through more than a month of it. Not only that, he'd shown he was one of the minority of soldiers who did the majority of damage when fighting started. The corporal thumped him on the shoulder and gave him a little shove.

He got challenged by the man he was replacing. Gabby Priest hardly ever said anything that wasn't line of duty. He and Armstrong spoke challenge and countersign softly, to keep lurking Confederates from picking them off-another drawback to a war where both sides used the same language.

Gabby went back the way Armstrong had come. Armstrong settled himself as motionlessly as he could. He listened to chirping crickets. They didn't know anything about war, or how lucky they were to be ignorant. An owl hooted. A whippoorwill called mournfully.

Armstrong listened for noises that didn't belong: a footfall, a twig breaking under a boot heel, a cough. He also listened for sudden silences that didn't belong. Animals could sense people moving even where other people couldn't. If they stopped in alarm, that was a good sign there was something to be alarmed about.

He heard nothing out of the ordinary. Somebody fired off a burst of machine-gun fire over to the west, but it had to be at least half a mile away. As long as nothing happened any closer than that, he didn't need to worry about it.

He yawned. He wished he were back under the blanket. After another yawn, he swore at himself in a low whisper. One of the things they'd made very plain in basic training, even before the war started, was that they could shoot you if you fell asleep on sentry duty. That didn't necessarily mean they would, but he didn't care to take the chance. If the Confederates broke through because he was snoring, his own side wouldn't be very happy with him even if he survived-which wasn't particularly likely.

Some guys carried a pin with them when they came on sentry duty, to stick themselves if they started feeling sleepy. Armstrong never had. From now on, though, he thought he would.

Was that…? He tensed, sleep forgotten as ice walked up his back. Was that the clatter of barrel tracks, the rumble of engines? Or was it only his imagination playing tricks on him? Whatever it was, it was either just above or just below his threshold of hearing, so he couldn't decide how scared he ought to be.

If those were barrels coming forward, the Springfield he clutched convulsively wouldn't do him a damn bit of good. He could shoot it at a barrel till doomsday, and he wouldn't hurt a thing. He listened as he'd never listened before-and still couldn't make up his mind whether he'd heard anything. He didn't hear any more. That meant the barrels weren't coming any closer, anyhow, which suited him fine.

The artillery duel between U.S. and C.S. guns started up again, each side feeling for the other in the night. Listening to death fly back and forth overhead was almost like watching a tennis match, except both sides could serve at once and there could be more than one ball in the air at the same time.

One other difference belatedly occurred to Armstrong. Tennis balls weren't in the habit of exploding and scattering deadly shell fragments, or perhaps poison gas, all over the court. Artillery shells, unfortunately, were.

Armstrong longed for a cigarette. It would make him more alert and help the time pass. Of course, a sniper who aimed at the coal could blow his face off. Even someone who didn't spot the coal could smell smoke and know he was around. He didn't light up, but let out a soft snort of laughter. Somebody might smell him and know he was around. He couldn't remember the last time he'd bathed. Of course, any Confederate sneaking up was liable to be just as gamy as he was.

He crouched in the foxhole, peering into the night, hunter and hunted at the same time. With trees overhead, he couldn't even watch the stars go by and gauge the time from them. Little by little, though, black gave way to indigo gave way to gray gave way to gold gave way to pink in the east.

Soft motion behind him. He whirled, swinging his rifle toward the noise. "Halt!" he called. "Who goes there?"

"Nagurski," came the response: not a name but a recognition signal.

"Barrel," Armstrong answered. Any U.S. football fanatic knew the hard-pounding Barrel Nagurski. The Confederates had their own football heroes. With luck, they didn't pay attention to muscular Yankee running backs.

Yossel Reisen came out into the open just as the sun crawled over the horizon. "Anything going on?" he asked.

"I'm not sure," Armstrong answered, and told him of what he thought he'd heard. He finished, "They've been quiet since then. I am sure of that. Whether they were there at all"-he shrugged-"who the hell knows?"

Reisen started to say something. Before he could, he and Armstrong both looked to the sky. Airplanes were coming up out of the south, motors roaring. At the same time, the Confederate bombardment not only picked up, it started falling on the front line and not on the U.S. artillery. The foxhole Armstrong stood in wasn't really big enough for two. Yossel Reisen jumped in anyhow. Armstrong said not a word. He would have done the same thing.

Screaming sirens added to the engine roars: dive bombers stooping like hawks. "Mules!" Reisen yelled, at the same time as Armstrong was shouting, "Asskickers!" He hoped the Confederate artillery shells would shoot down their own airplanes. Wish for the moon while you're at it, went through his mind. It was a one-in-a-million chance at best.