Chapter 1
The dead man in the hospital steward's coat had been carried forth from the bomb-proof pit.
Big Belt perceived that the day was working out according to its evil beginnings.... After coming in from the infantry hollows as one risen from the dead (and transfigured in the garish light of field bravery) Peter Mowbray had left him again, now in the possession of strange devils.
Boylan was not ready to go back to Judenbach. It was almost noon. He was watching the heart of the Russian invasion of Galicia, and from its main lesion. This he knew quite as well as Dabnitz, or Doltmir, or the half-insane Kohlvihr himself. The Austrians still held. Indeed, it was not hard for them. The Russian west wing entire, and possibly part of its center, would be called upon to flank this stoutly adhering force, if Kohlvihr continued to fail. Such an action would greatly delay the general forward movement of the Russian arms.
“You will be without a command, General,” Doltmir suggested, at the end of the second infantry throwback, following that in which Peter had participated. “We are not disturbing them greatly in our advances. We are chiefly effective in destroying their ammunition—”
“Then we must continue that,” said Kohlvihr.
“But the troops will not continue to charge. Our reserves are in. The fresher men see the fate of the former advances. The hollows are in plain sight from the forward rifle pits.”
“The officers must drive them forward—”
“Most of the lesser commanders are lying in the valley. The troops are killing them as well as the enemy—”