Alfred

The silence after the battle was heavy and ringing. Alfred walked slowly across the field, checking the bodies. The method was simple: bayonet or shoot at the slightest doubt. He was about to leave when he spotted him.

A boy of about sixteen lay in the crater. Through the soot and dirt, a youthful beauty shone through, seeming almost blasphemous here, amidst death. Alfred froze: the wound on his leg was still oozing blood, and the boy's eyelashes trembled slightly. He was desperately feigning death.

"Hey, Alfred! Any survivors?" a fellow soldier called out.

Alfred looked at the boy, who seemed to have stopped breathing from fear. "You're still just a child," flashed through his mind. Clenching his jaw, he turned to his men and nodded curtly. "They're all dead. Come on, there's nothing left to see here."

An hour later, in the gray twilight, Alfred returned. He found the boy by a charred tree—he'd crawled away from the crater with the last of his strength, but he couldn't walk. Hearing footsteps, the boy went limp again, feigning death. Alfred chuckled softly and crouched down next to him.

"You don't have to pretend," he said quietly in broken Russian. "I knew right away you were alive."

He pulled a flask of water from his pocket and handed it to the boy, looking into his fearful eyes and waiting for a reaction. Whose side is right now if the enemy gives you your life?