Chapter 100

Months before the armistice, Martha lives through an artillery barrage that annihilates most of the Women's Combat Battalion, shielded only by the bulk of a gun manufactured by Blackbell Heavy Industries. The horror deepens when her own captain begins executing deserters, until enemy fire tears through the trench and kills him along with several others. The ordered retreat into the southern woods leaves the injured Martha behind and alone. Two Westalian soldiers hunt her to a cliff edge; struck by a bullet, she plunges into the river below.

She wakes in a proper bed with her wounds dressed, greeted first by a friendly dog named Baron and then by his scowling owner, an elderly woman who knows exactly what the girl is and shelters her regardless. The woman's late daughter, a nurse, died in the same war, yet not one bitter word about Eastern soldiers ever passes her lips, a restraint that quietly stuns Martha. As she heals, Martha hides from a postman delivering warnings about stragglers from the Eastern army, and learns the surrounding village is packed with refugees who despise Ostania. When her host, Mrs. Anabel, condemns a country pathetic enough to send girls to the front, Martha breaks down, confessing her own hatred of Westerners and her simple wish to return home. The old woman voices dry approval and tells her to forget they ever met. Slipping away that night, Martha loses her bearings under the unfamiliar stars and shelters in a small cave until dawn, where she opens her bag to find bread, money, the scarf Anabel had been knitting, and a map marked "Go home." Weeping at the hidden care of the old woman, she resolves to bring Henry stories of Westalis when she returns: its lovely night skies, its good bread, its kind people.

Artillery fire wipes out the Women's Combat Battalion, leaving Martha among the few survivors.

Westalian soldiers shoot Martha off a cliff into a river.

Mrs. Anabel and her dog Baron rescue and shelter the enemy soldier despite having lost a daughter to the war.

Martha departs for Ostania and discovers Anabel secretly provisioned her journey.

Her hatred of the West begins giving way to a resolve to speak well of it to Henry Henderson.

The flashback is placed shortly before Henry Henderson learns of the battalion's destruction, dovetailing with earlier chapters of the arc. Martha's face on page 14 was redrawn slimmer for the Volume 15 printing.

Mrs. Anabel and Baron both debut here, and Martha Marriott appears alone on the chapter cover.