Read Chapter 14: The Oath

The forest floor squelched beneath them, black mud and rotting leaves sucking at their boots. Jack’s breath came in ragged bursts, each one a spike through his shoulder. He pressed his good hand against the wound, feeling the warmth of his own blood seep between his fingers. The trees around them were dense, old oaks whose canopies swallowed the moonlight. Somewhere behind them, a dog barked—distant, but persistent.

Henri grabbed Jack’s arm and pulled him sideways, off the faint game trail they’d been following. “There,” he said, nodding toward a fallen trunk, its roots torn from the earth and reaching skyward like the fingers of a buried giant. The hollow beneath it was dark, dry, and just wide enough for two men to crawl into.

Jack dropped to his knees and let Henri push him forward into the space. His shoulder slammed against the packed earth and he bit back a scream, the taste of copper flooding his mouth. Henri crawled in behind him, dragging the canvas sack of explosives with one hand. For a long moment, neither of them spoke. Only their breathing filled the hollow—Jack’s wet and labored, Henri’s sharp and controlled.

Henri moved first, shrugging off his coat and tearing a strip from his own shirt. He leaned over Jack, peering at the wound in the near-total darkness. “Let me see.”

“It’s fine,” Jack said, but his voice came out thin, unconvincing.

“You are bleeding through your fingers, *mon ami*. That is not fine.” Henri’s hands were steady as he pulled Jack’s hand away and pressed the cloth against the wound. Jack hissed, his body tensing. “The bullet passed through. I think. There is an exit hole. You will live, but you will not be able to use this arm tonight.”

“Then I’ll use the other.”

Henri did not respond. He worked quietly, binding the cloth tight around Jack’s shoulder and across his chest, a crude sling that pulled the arm close to his body. When he finished, he sat back on his heels and wiped his hands on his trousers, leaving dark smears.

“I have seen men die from less,” Henri said, his voice low. “You should not have gone into that cellar first.”

“I didn’t see you volunteering to take the point.”

Henri’s jaw tightened. The faint light from the moon, filtering through the gaps in the roots, caught the hard line of his face. “I would have. If you had asked.”

“I don’t ask.”

“No. You do not.” Henri’s voice carried something new—not anger, but a weary sort of recognition. He moved back, settling against the earthen wall of the hollow. “You would rather bleed in silence than tell a man you need him. It is the same with your bridge, yes? You would rather burn the whole thing to the ground alone than let anyone help you.”

Jack’s eyes narrowed. He shifted, trying to find a position that didn’t send a spike of pain through his chest, and gave up. “The bridge is my mission. My responsibility. The fewer people in the way, the better.”

“In the way.” Henri repeated the words, tasting them. “I have been fighting these bastards for four years, Sergeant. I have hidden men in my walls, fed them, buried them when they did not make it out. And you call that being in the way?”

Jack opened his mouth to answer, then closed it. The forest was quiet now, the dogs fainter, the search likely swinging toward the road. He looked down at his hands—one slick with blood, the other still shaking from the adrenaline and the running and the fear he refused to name. He reached into his jacket pocket and withdrew a silver watch on a broken chain. The glass was cracked, the hands frozen at some forgotten hour.

Henri watched him but said nothing.

“My father gave me this,” Jack said. His voice was rough, scraped raw. “Before I shipped out. He told me—he never wanted me to go. He said war was a fool’s business, and I was a fool for believing in it. But he knew I wouldn’t listen. So he gave me this watch, and he said, ‘When it gets hard, when you don’t know what to do, look at this and remember that your mother and I raised you to do the right thing. Not the easy thing. The right thing.’”

He turned the watch over in his fingers. “He died two months ago. Stomach cancer. I found out in a letter my sister sent me, a week before I dropped into Normandy.” He paused, his throat working. “I never got to say goodbye. I never got to tell him I understood.”

Henri’s expression shifted, some of the hardness leaving his eyes. He waited.

“So I made a promise,” Jack said, his voice dropping lower. “Standing in that C-47, waiting for the door to open, I made a promise to him. I told him I’d do the right thing. I’d finish what I was sent here to do, and I’d do it in a way he’d have been proud of. I’d come home with my head held high, and I’d put this watch on his grave and tell him it was worth it.” He looked up at Henri, and for the first time, the walls cracked. “If I die on that bridge tomorrow, I die knowing I kept my word. But if I let those bastards blow it up because I was too stubborn to let you help me? Then I die having broken it. And I don’t get a second chance to make it right.”

Henri was silent for a long moment. The wind moved through the trees outside, rustling the leaves, carrying the faint metallic tang of the swamp. Then he moved, shifting across the hollow until he sat beside Jack, close enough that their shoulders almost touched.

“My brother,” Henri said, his voice quiet. “His name was Marcel. He was younger than me by six years. He wanted to be a doctor, before the war. He used to practice on the farm animals—setting splints on a chicken’s leg, bandaging a goat’s ear. Drove my father mad.” A ghost of a smile crossed his face. “When the Germans came, he joined the Maquis. He was seventeen. I told him he was too young, that he should wait, that the war would not be won in a month. But he was stubborn, like you. He said he could not sit at home while his country burned.”

He paused, his eyes fixed on the darkness. “They caught him in a roundup near Caen. Not in a fight—just in a sweep, like animals. They took him to a camp. I do not know which one. I received one letter from him, smuggled out by a guard who had a conscience. He said he was being treated well, that I should not worry. He said the war would be over soon, and we would see each other again.” Henri’s voice broke, just slightly, on the last word. “He died three weeks later. Dysentery. Malnutrition. The guards shot him when he tried to steal bread from the kitchen. I do not know which. I only know he is gone.”

Jack did not speak. There was nothing to say.

“And now Émile,” Henri continued, his voice hardening. “My sister’s boy. The only family I have left. They have taken him, and I cannot get him back. But I can make sure that the bridge they are using to defend themselves becomes their grave instead.” He turned to face Jack, his eyes blazing even in the dim light. “So do not tell me about promises, Sergeant. I have my own. I made a promise to Marcel that I would live for both of us. I made a promise to Émile’s mother that I would keep him safe. I have failed them both.” His hand closed into a fist. “But I will not fail them again.”

Jack met his gaze, and for a moment, the hollow beneath the tree felt smaller, more intimate—not two strangers thrown together by war, but two men bound by the same weight, the same grief, the same impossible hope.

“So we’re the same,” Jack said quietly. “Both trying to keep promises to dead men.”

Henri nodded slowly. “Perhaps. Or perhaps we are both trying to make sure they did not die for nothing.”

Jack looked down at the watch in his hand, the silver dull and cold. Then he closed his fingers around it, feeling its weight, and tucked it back into his pocket. He reached out with his good hand, the one that wasn’t bound against his chest. “Then we do this together. Both of us. All the way to the bridge and back.”

Henri looked at his hand, then at Jack’s face. He took it, his grip firm, warm. “Together,” he said. “To the bridge and back.”

They held the grasp for a heartbeat longer than necessary, then released. Henri sat back, the tension in his shoulders easing slightly. Jack let out a long breath, the pain in his shoulder no less sharp but somehow more bearable, as if sharing it had lightened its load.

Outside, the forest was quiet. The dogs had stopped barking. The search had moved on, for now.

Henri dug into his pack and pulled out a hard piece of bread, breaking it in half and handing a chunk to Jack. “Eat,” he said. “We will need our strength. And your arm will need time to mend before we reach the bridge.”

Jack took the bread, chewing slowly, tasting nothing. He looked out through the gap in the roots, at the sliver of sky visible above the treetops. Faint traces of gray were beginning to creep into the darkness—dawn, still hours away, but coming.

“What about detonators?” Jack asked, his mouth full.

Henri swallowed his own bite. “Father Michel was our last contact in the diocese. But there is another man—a farmer east of the village, who traded with the Baron. He may have what we need. He is not Resistance, but he is not a collaborator either. He simply wants to be left alone.”

“And you trust him?”

Henri’s smile was thin, mirthless. “I trust no one. But I trust his greed more than his loyalty. He will not betray us to the Germans, because he does not want the attention. And he will part with the detonators, because he will want the money more than he wants the trouble.”

Jack nodded. “Then that’s our next stop.”

He leaned back against the earthen wall, letting his eyes close. He could feel the dull throb of his shoulder, the ache in his legs, the hollow weight of exhaustion pressing down on him. But beneath it all, there was steadiness, too—a sense, faint but real, that he was no longer alone in this.

Beside him, Henri settled in, his breathing slowing as he prepared to rest through the few hours of darkness left. Neither of them spoke again. There was nothing left to say.

Outside, the first birds began to call, soft and tentative, welcoming the dawn.