Chirping crickets chirped within the brush in the afternoon heat. The sounds of combat continued in the distance, ebbing and rising in furocity as the German assault continued. The low booming thud of bombs rolled through the distance. To the north a low black haze drifted through the skies. Drawn through the clear blue by the efforts of the Luftwaffe against the allied defenses. Under their radar, the countryside was quiet and even nature seemed to ignore the conditions in the distance. All the same there was a low uncertainty about it. A tense uneasiness that hung through the air and bound all things living to a dreary sort of anxiety.

The grass crunched underneath William as he crawled up the hill, keeping low as he scanned the distant hills. His breathing was low and repressed. As if he was afraid behind each crest or bush there hid some British rifleman. He was unarmed, there was little he could do in such an event.

He crawled to the peak of the hill and sat up. Leering across the landscape before him.

Rising and dipping gingerly was the continuing landscape of wrapping and branching hills. A mat of trees dressing the sides as they continued their march. But there was something promising to the officer. Across the landscape, running along the crows on the hills and dipping into the valleys below twisting and dusty roads wound and wrapped their way across the landscape. Signs of civilizations that wound about seeking the numerous olive groves and vineyards that dotted the terrain below. Nothing he could use until he found a name. But he doubted many of these roads would have as much as that.

He lapped his dry lips, panting in the high heat of the afternoon. Rivers of sweat had begun beading at his brow line. Sure enough, this was Greece.

He looked across to the distant crowns. Glimmering stop the next hill he saw – to his pleasure – what looked like a structure of some sort. Between the trees the faint suggesting of white mortar and human orderliness stood behind the cover of nature. One looked like walls. And above them a tower. Perhaps a bell tower. Could it be a church? If it were, it'd be on his map.

He smiled, panting. He laughed dryly to his fortune and went forward.