Dyptich

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The two soldiers looked up toward the direction of the voice. Nikos, his pale face transformed into a mask of trickling blood and smudges of soot. The youth gestured urgently from the far end of the stone hedge, a little further up the mountain. He crouched down at an angle to be hidden from the soldiers’ view, but his position would be exposed once the enemy gained a little more elevation. He waved again, and the men pushed forward.

“Don’t stop! Run!”

The pair scrambled towards him at a crouching dash, Stavros keeping Yanno’s head down with one hand, his other firmly closed around the barrel of his gun. The weapon was slick, slimy to the touch with his skin’s own concoction of melting grime and sweat. He clenched his hand more tightly around it until his fingers numbed with the pressure.

Niko hustled them along behind the hedge, glancing back every so often to make sure they were there. Up close, Stavros noticed his friend’s scruffy blond beard was black with grime, singed in two places where a bullet had nearly planted on him its kiss of death. Blood trickled down through his nostrils, due to the dust or the impact of the grenades. Little did Stavros know or care that this was as close as looking into a mirror as he would get for a long time.

“Living sounds good to me about now,” he grunted.

An explosion close by, and their ears rang until only the sound of heartbeat remained. Another grenade landed even closer and a rain of stone shattered the air around them. The youths flinched and kept running. The last ones in their small fighting band, they kept glancing back over their shoulders, afraid to find a face following them.

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