'I?' asked Yakob.
The other three soldiers approached inquisitively to where Yakob was crouching.
'A nice mess you've made,' one of them said, pointing to the wounded who were arriving across the fields. 'Do you understand?'
Yakob fixed his eyes on the soldiers' boots, and would not look in that, direction. But he could not understand what it all meant…all this noise, and the firing that ran from hill to hill.
'Nice mess this you've made, old man.'
'Yes.'
'You!'
Yakob looked up at them, and had the sensation of being deep down at the bottom of a well instead of crouching at their feet.
'That is a lie, a lie, a lie!' he cried, beating his chest; his hair stood on end. The soldiers sat down in a row on the stones. They were young, cold, tired.
'But now they'll play the deuce with you.'