Page 2 of All We Carry Home

“I’m sorry, Lieutenant.” My mouth was dry. “I didn’t mean to insult—”

“It’s okay, Captain.” The sun washed over her smooth skin as she looked over her shoulder. “You’re not the first to underestimate me.”

Her tone felt genuine and honest, which helped to unravel the coil of unease.

“Besides,” she added, “I know Mira means a lot to you.”

“You do?”

She smiled. “From what I hear, you’re her person.”

“Her person?”

“Some horses just have a person they trust implicitly.” She pointed to the mess hall, which was along our way to Mira’s stall. We gathered towels and a bucket of hot water and then resumed our original path.

“How is it you know so much about horses?” I asked.

“I grew up on a ranch. Gramps taught me every secret he knew about training them.” Admiration and appreciation shone through her gaze.

Why hadn’t I seen this woman around Kötzting before now? Surely the men would have been all abuzz about this pretty, blue-eyed nurse. I wanted to learn more, but as we reached Mira’s stall our collective attention shifted.

Lieutenant Bryant set down her bag, studying the mare. She moved slowly into the stall and closed the half door behind her. Mira, a brilliant gray Arabian with chestnut speckles across her coat, huffed and stomped her foot, shifting her weight as if to lie down. She was one of so few horses to have survived the desolation of Janów Podlaski, the state breeding farm in Poland. If this foal didn’t survive, there was every chance that the lineage, cultivated over hundreds of years, would become another casualty of this war.

Lieutenant Bryant rubbed the horse’s neck and whispered softly. The mare’s body and skin twitched as a contraction came and went and her sides rose and fell with each panting breath. “Why don’t you come in and soothe her while I examine her?”

Mira nickered at me as I walked in and sniffed my pockets for candy.

“I still don’t know why she likes me so much,” I said as I scratched the horse’s neck. “I know nothing about horses.”

The lieutenant wrapped thin fabric around the base of Mira’s tail, to keep the hair out of the path of delivery, I guessed. “She knows that you saved her.”

I smiled and scratched under the mare’s mane. “Honestly, I think she saved me.”

Lieutenant Bryant held my gaze, her own sparkling in delight. “They have a way of doing that.”

When we’d liberated Hostau stables, we’d discovered hundreds of Allied prisoners of war and nearly six hundred horses stolen from all over the continent. This was the goal of Operation Cowboy.

In the massive evacuation, I’d watched as one of the mares had fallen from the steep ramps we’d constructed for the few horses who were too pregnant to walk the distance to the Allied-controlled border.

We couldn’t lose another.

After everything I’d faced and done in the past two years on this continent, these horses were the only bit of good in a mire of destruction and death.

Mira groaned and pulled free of us both, circling in the stall.

“This is progressing fast,” Lieutenant Bryant said. “You were right to go to Dr. Baumann when you did.”

She pulled me aside while Mira shifted, lowered to her knees, and fell to her side, her large abdomen protruding high and heaving with each breath.

“It’s time.” The lieutenant reached for her bag and the water.

“How can I help?”

She looked at me and grimaced. “Are you sure you want to? It can be quite an . . . involved process.”

“I’m not going anywhere.”

She knelt beside the mare, rubbing her neck and soothing her. Her touch seemed to instantly set the horse at ease. Was she this good with her human patients?