...“I brought you water,” Andy offered. Despite the stranger’s harsh words, he felt a sudden kinship with this man, unseen beyond the circle of light cast by his lamp. They were just two soldiers, without rank, two souls somehow alive on a battlefield littered with dead.

“Water?” the soldier asked, as if he had never heard the word before. The surprise turned to suspicion. “Why?”

“I thought you were dying.” Even though the stranger couldn’t see him, Andy shrugged. “I don’t know. My men heard you singing and thought you were a ghost out here, come to steal their souls for the devil.” The stranger laughed again, and Andy smiled at the sound. “I came because if it were me, I’d want you to come. I’d want someone to find me and sit with me a bit, ’til I go.”

“I ain’t going nowhere,” the soldier said softly, and Andy heard the faint clatter of metal as the rifle was set aside. “Water?”

Andy unshouldered his own rifle and set it down on the ground beside the lamp to show the soldier he was unarmed, as well. Then he shook the canteen, more than half full. The water sounded like a promise as it sloshed around inside the container. “Water,” he affirmed. “I can toss it to you—”

“You can bring it,” the soldier replied. “I’m…there’s a bullet in my thigh. I don’t cotton the thought of dragging through the dead to find the canteen if you miss.”

With slow, deliberate movements, Andy picked up the lamp again and stepped closer. In the flickering glow he saw the soldier appear like a ghost, a faint outline propped against a fallen log, taking shape and definition as Andy approached. He saw pants dark with blood from a ragged hole high on one leg, and he held the canteen out as an offering of peace.

When he wasn’t shot as he approached, he came closer, and knelt by the man’s side.

The soldier took the offered canteen with a sigh. “I’m so damn thirsty,” he whispered, uncorking the container.

Andy frowned as the stranger gulped down the water. The lamplight fell short of the man’s face, but Andy could see the dark coat he wore, marking him as a Union soldier. Hardly more than a boy, he corrected, taking in the smooth hands and thin wrists that held the canteen tight. “I thought you a rebel,” he said as the soldier drank. “You sound Southern.”

The soldier laughed. “Most men I know would kill you for that comment alone, water or not.”

“Then I’m glad you’re not most men.” Andy sank to his knees beside the soldier, the damp ground seeping through his weathered breeches. “You say you aren’t dying?”

“Who are you?” the soldier asked abruptly, ignoring his question. “I can’t see your face.”

“Lieutenant Anderson Blanks, of the Fifth Regiment out of Biloxi.” He felt a cold hand grip his as the soldier caught his breath. “What is it? What—”

“Andy.”

The word was nothing more than a sigh, barely heard over the breeze, but it rang through Andy like the peal of a church bell, echoing through his heart and his blood. My God, it can’t be. It’s the night and the weariness and the memories haunting me, nothing more. Sweet Lord Jesus above, don’t do this to me, don’t You dare…

But his name in that voice, one he’d heard in dreams every night for the past three years, since the day he had watched the train carrying his lover disappear into the west. “Sam?” he breathed. “Sam Talley? Christ above, is it really you?”