Dark Echo

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Captain Destain was with Sergeant Boulez on the steps at the western entrance to the cathedral when the mist came in. They were sharing coffee brewed at a stall in one of the warren of streets surrounding the great building. He was adamant that neither man had ever in their lives seen the like of this fog. It funnelled and unfurled through the cramped thoroughfares, obscuring detail and devouring space. Destain described it as roiling and impenetrable, worse than anything he had ever encountered before near the sea, in such ports it had been his experience to visit as Antwerp or Zeebrugge. It was palpable, this fog.

Had his men not been such experienced fighters, he thought some of them might have slipped on their gas masks in panic, believing it a chemical attack launched from long range by the heavy German artillery. But they had not heard the whistle of shells that morning. There had been no bombardment from the German front, forty miles to the east. And as they were shortly to come to learn, it was not gas that was attacking them.

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