First, there was Sameer, a charming and cynical man who could talk his way into and out of any situation.
He had a gift for languages and a healthy distrust of authority. Then there was Charlie, a Scottish sniper with a haunted look in his eyes and a quiet dedication to his craft.
He didn't say much, but his aim was impeccable. Finally, there was the Chief, an honorable smuggler who knew the back roads of Europe like the back of his hand.
I met them in a grimy pub, the air thick with the smell of stale beer and desperation. They were all wary, skeptical of my plan, but I knew what would convince them.
I brought Diana with me. As we sat at a table, a large, drunk man stumbled over, yelling insults at us.
Diana, with a single, effortless hand, picked him up and threw him across the room. He landed in a heap, and the pub went silent. The men's eyes widened in stunned silence.
My companions immediately agreed to join us. They had seen something that transcended the war, something that just might have a chance of ending it.
And then at the right moment Sir Patrick, a senior General with real power showed up to help us like a messiah sent by God.....but I knaw a Devil when I see one...
My senses, finely honed by years of espionage, immediately bristled at the sight of Sir Patrick.
He was a man of immense power, a force of political will, but something about his presence was deeply unsettling.
He was smooth and gracious, offering us the funds we desperately needed with a practiced ease, but my instincts, that primal sixth sense that had saved my life more than once, screamed that something was wrong.
It was a feeling of being in a life-or-death situation that I couldn't explain.
Unfortunately, there wasn nothing I could do in our situation but accept the 'help' I was offered for I was short on both evindence and time. Oh, and cash too.
I watched him as he spoke, not with my eyes, but with my peripheral vision, a skill I'd mastered over years of training.
He was a master of his craft, a man who had perfected the art of deception, but I saw the subtle tells he couldn't hide. His eyes, though he tried to keep them fixed on me, would constantly drift toward Diana, a flicker of an unusual interest that he tried to conceal.
He wasn't looking at her directly, but I could feel his focus on her, a low-level hum of attention that was both unsettling and predatory. He would use his peripheral vision to focus on her at all times, a method I knew well.
I made a mental note to keep an eye on him. I didn't know what his game was, but I knew one thing for sure: Sir Patrick was not to be trusted.
He was a player in a game far deadlier than the one I was in, and I wasn't about to let him endanger Diana.
My mission was to get her to the front, to stop Ludendorff, but a new, more personal objective had just been added to the list: protect Diana from the man who was watching her from the shadows.
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After all the preparations, we departed for the front. The journey was a relentless march of mud and miles.
We traveled on horseback where the roads allowed and on foot when they did not. The cold, damp air bit at our faces, and the rhythmic thud of hooves on the ancient European roads was the only consistent sound for days.
We navigated by instinct and the moon, sleeping in abandoned barns and under the stars, our small group a tiny, moving speck against the vast, desolate landscape.
The world outside Diana's insulated paradise was a harsh teacher. She watched with a quiet intensity as the vibrant green countryside slowly gave way to a desolate canvas of gray.
The pastoral scenes of farms and villages were replaced by the skeletal remains of forests, their trees splintered and stripped bare. The landscape itself became a monument to ruin, a world choked by the poison of conflict.
She walked and rode with an unflagging pace, never complaining, but I could see the change in her eyes as they took in the barbed wire—a grim spiderweb stretching across fields—and the overturned supply carts that marked the path of destruction.
We were nearing our destination now. The subtle hum of distant artillery began to grow, a deep, guttural thrum that seemed to vibrate in my bones.
It was a sound that replaced the chirping of crickets and the rustle of leaves with the constant promise of death. My companions, battle-hardened veterans, fell into a grim silence, their faces etched with the memories of countless battles.
The smell of the air changed, too, becoming a foul miasma of damp earth, cordite, and unwashed bodies.
We reached the trenches in the dead of night. They were a grim, muddy scar on the landscape, a sprawling labyrinth of filth and despair. The air was thick with the stench of mud, blood, and fear.
This was not the clean, heroic battlefield of my father's stories or the gods Diana spoke of. This was a man-made hell.
My companions moved with the weary resignation of men who had seen it all. Diana, however, remained resolute, her eyes wide with a sense of purpose.
She had come here for a reason, and nothing was going to stop her now.
This was no man's land, a stretch of territory where we were supposed to travel for another day to a relatively safe zone.
But Diana stopped, her eyes fixed on the stragglers—the women and children trapped in a besieged village.
"We cannot leave without helping them," she said, her voice a quiet but firm command. "They have nothing to eat. They will die."
I turned to her, a sense of helplessness washing over me. "We have to reach our next position by sundown," I said, knowing that her simple plea was a death sentence for all of us.
"How can you say that?" she asked, her gaze filled with a profound disbelief.
"This is No-man's land, Diana. The battalion has been here for a year. No one has ever crossed it. We can't save everyone in this war." I wanted to help, but I knew it was suicide.
"But it's what I'm going to do," Diana said, her voice an unwavering statement of fact.
And that was the day I believed for the first time that Gods might exist for I saw the Goddess of Battle walk the earth.