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Bentley Pringle ffox was woken by a kiss.

He lay with his eyes shut, holding on to the sensation. The rough bristles against his cheek. The taste of tobacco.

Gradually, he became aware of dampness seeping in through his clothes. He was lying on cold, hard ground, although his head was pillowed. His chest hurt with every breath.

He opened his eyes and propped himself up on his elbows. There was blue sky above him and greyish mud all around. A shell crater, he realised. Peering anxiously into his face was a young badger.

He recognised the private as Wills - though the men all called him Woody, after the cigarettes. Wills Wild Woodbines, in the orange packet.

"Hullo, Wills," Bentley said, and coughed. "What's going on?"

It was coming back to him now: they had been ordered to attack and occupy a German trench. Over the top, cut the wire, run towards the enemy. Bentley had been afraid, very afraid, and it shamed him to think of it.

He remembered seeing someone falling, out of the corner of his eye. Then a bang and a sharp pain in his ribs. Then nothing. Then the kiss...

"You stopped one in No Man's Land, Sir, and I got you down here."

It wasn't all he had done. Bentley's shirt was open and a clumsy field dressing was strapped to his chest, just under the heart. Wills's jacket was wadded under the fox's head, while his own trenchcoat covered him for a blanket.

"Thank you, Wills. Oh, and, Wills -"

"Sir?"

The badger was the only other occupant of the crater, and thus the only possible source of the kiss. But Wills?

Bentley prided himself on getting to know his men, and he knew this one as solid, trustworthy and utterly lacking in imagination. He couldn't have. Could he? Surely Bentley must have imagined it, or dreamed it. But it had been so real.

He sat up and started buttoning his shirt.

"Did any of the others get through?" he asked.

Private Wills, did you kiss me?

"Jocko bought it, Sir, and Tip and Whitey. I didn't see the rest."

Private Wills, as your superior officer, I order you to tell me...

"Jocko! God."

He could still taste that kiss. It took him back to the summer of his eighteenth birthday, and Tommy Destrier. The hayloft. Tommy's big white teeth parted in a smile.

They had been careful. It had lasted several weeks before Dr Burns caught them holding hands down by the river.

Bentley preferred not to think of the time that had followed. His mother weeping; Pater's arm bringing the whip down again and again, trying to beat the wrongness out of his only son.

Tommy's people had put him in the army. He'd died in Africa, at Spion Kop. The ffoxes were not invited to the memorial service, and Bentley had found out from a mutual friend at Trinity.

"We should wait until it gets dark, Sir, then we'll have a better chance of making it back to the Lines."

"Good man, WIlls."

Bentley seemed to see two futures ahead of him. In one, he returned from the war, married a nice girl - Julia Portman, maybe - settled down, raised cubs. The other - he wasn't sure. Ostracism; disgrace; prison? His father had told him what happened to those who 'played for the other team', as he had put it.

But in this war the next five minutes were uncertain, let alone the rest of one's life. The odds were he wouldn't survive to get that wife and children and cosy chair by the fireside. As for the other thing - how could he be afraid of words, even of imprisonment, when he was used to facing death at every moment? Was he going to throw away the chance of something wonderful because he was scared of a future he might not have?

He fiddled elaborately with his shirt collar.

"Wills - why did you kiss me?"

The badger's eyes shrank to anxious slits.

"You were so beautiful!" he burst out, astoundingly. "I thought you were dying! I wanted...I...please don't tell anyone, Sir. I'll do anything."

Bentley took hold of the black blunt paws, feeling how rough the nails were against his pads.

"It's all right, Wills. It's all right."

They stood there frozen, holding hands. A shell burst somewhere nearby, and both animals flinched. As if the explosion had made his mind up, Bentley laid his muzzle alongside the badger's and kissed him.

The taste of tobacco filled his mouth again, and with it warmth and wetness. He shuddered, running his tongue along Wills's teeth and feeling the badger do the same to him. He squeezed Wills's hands and drew him closer until they were leaning on each other, knee braced against knee.

A thought struck him. Even though he didn't want this to end, he moved his head away.

"Do you...have anyone, Wills?"

"I did, Sir." His eyes flicked briefly far away. "You remember Taffy?"

Taffy Jones, a jolly little terrier, had gone West on the first day of the offensive.

Bentley's first thought was a reflex: Old Taff a woofter? Instantly ashamed, he wrapped his arms around Wills.

The badger clung to him like a cub, pushed his head into Bentley's chest, and sobbed as his commanding officer held him.

"I'm sorry, Sir," he choked at last. "I couldn't mourn him proper at the time. It would've looked funny."

"I know, Wills." Bentley stroked the back of his head.

"Do you have someone special yourself, Sir?"

"I have now."

The tears were still wet on Wills's face when he moved in for another kiss. Bentley resisted at first, then let him. One got over people quickly in wartime.

The badger's paws dropped to Bentley's waist and started undoing his braces.

"Wills! They'll shoot us twice - once for dereliction of duty and once for - mmm!"

Wills was easing him back down to the muddy floor. He pulled Bentley's trousers down below his hips, and unbuttoned his linen shorts.

"I'll be careful of your wound, Sir," he promised.

Bentley had forgotten all about it.

Moments later, he had forgotten where he was, why he was there, and the entire wretched war.

He was experiencing things he'd never known, not even with Tommy, and doing things he had never thought of. His trenchcoat was trodden in the mud as they rolled and wrestled on it. Sometimes Bentley was underneath and sometimes on top. The smell of Wills...the taste of him...the feel of him was everywhere.

At last they were both tired out and panting, and Bentley's chest ached raggedly.

Wills sat between the fox's legs, his head resting on Bentley's right shoulder. Bentley locked his fingers together around Wills's stomach and held him close. The sky above them had turned from blue to deep navy, with a scattering of stars.

Bentley saw those two futures again. This time he realised that the acceptable lie was not for him and never could be. If he was to have a chance of survival, he needed something better than that to live for: a future in which he could be who he truly was.

"Wills? When we get back home, would you come and live with me?"

"I'd like that, Sir. I could be your butler, or your, what's-it-called, vallet."

"No, as my..." He remembered a pair of elderly spinsters in the village - Miss Greene and Miss Mole. No wonder they had always looked so happy.

"My companion."

"People will talk, Sir."

"The world's going to change, Wills. It must. Things can't possibly stay the same after all this. Look at the suffragettes and what they're fighting for. They'll succeed, I know it, and we can too."

"Do you really think that, Sir?" Wills was looking intently at him, his eyes grave but hopeful.

"Yes, Wills. Absolutely."

Resting his chin on the top of Wills's head, Bentley pricked his ears and listened. The heavy artillery had ceased some time ago, and the rattle of small arms fire was less frequent.

"Time to go, if we're going," he said.

They kissed again and clasped paws in an unspoken pact.

Bentley hauled himself out of the shell hole, wincing as the exertion pulled at his dressing, and crouched close to the ground. He could just make out the barbed wire that lay between him and his trench, fallen in coils where they had cut it. In the other direction the wire was whole, and beyond it lay the enemy Lines.

He held out his paw to Wills and helped him over the lip of the crater. As Wills steadied himself against Bentley, his shape was silhouetted, just for a moment, against the horizon.

The badger's head lolled and he became so heavy that Bentley sank to his knees under his weight.

The small, neat hole above his ear was barely bleeding.

Bentley laid the body down in the mud and kissed the dry lips, noticing how pale Wills's eyelids were. Whiskers brushed his cheek. He smelled earth, tobacco, and a faint whiff of burnt fur where the bullet had struck.

He drew his Webley and ran towards the enemy trench, roaring as he went.

It wasn't for his country, nor for the DSO he would receive ten months later. He charged because he was no longer afraid of the future. Either he died, or he survived the war and went home to start making the world a better place. And suddenly, neither option held any terror for him.

As he ran he thought of Tommy and Taffy and Jocko; of Tip and Whitey and all the others he had lost. But most of all he thought of Wills - Wills, and the happiest hour of Bentley's war.