The night sky had not yet fully shed its inky darkness; only a thread of fish-belly white struggled through on the eastern horizon.
Within two vast seas of light ten li apart, clamor had replaced the dead silence of midnight, yet an even deeper, tauter silence hung over every soldier's heart. No one laughed or talked loudly; few even spoke in low voices.
Everyone seized these final moments before battle, silently chewing the hard, cold rye bread and cured meat in their hands, or gulping down steaming yet bland bean porridge.
The sounds of chewing, bowls and spoons clinking, and suppressed coughing formed the main melody before dawn. The air was thick with a complicated odor of firewood, food, leather, rust, horse manure, and tension so dense it could not be dissolved.
In the assembly area of a standard infantry battalion of the Carnford Army, Peter leaned against the remains of a campaign cooking stove half-buried in frozen earth, mechanically and forcefully gnawing on a piece of Black Bread scarcely softer than stone, as though it were not food but something that needed to be destroyed.
His gaze was somewhat unfocused until a familiar figure approached their platoon—it was their Platoon Leader, Webber.
Webber was not eating. He merely sat on an overturned wooden barrel, meticulously inspecting his gleaming, well-maintained Flintlock Rifle over and over: checking whether the lock mechanism moved freely, whether the ramrod slid smoothly, whether the bayonet catch was secure, whether the priming pan was dry... Every movement was painstaking, as if he were performing some sacred ritual.
In the flickering firelight from the stove, his profile looked exceptionally grave. His eye sockets were slightly red, whether from staying up through the night or some other reason.
Most of Peter's comrades were much the same, eating in