The writer Vasil Bykov is a participant in the Great Patriotic War, which determined the themes, plots and choice of characters in his works. His story is, first of all, about a man tortured by the icy water of swamps, the wet clay of trenches, the emptiness of the forest in no man's land, the uncertainty of the outcome of the war, the temptation of powerlessness, hopelessness, apostasy, the infinity of muddy roads... The story is about the events that occurred during the Great Patriotic War , in 1942. A young, not yet experienced scout of a partisan detachment, Zoska, is sent on a mission to a local village. In the forest, the girl meets a soldier from her squad, Anton, who has gone AWOL to help his beloved girl. But Anton’s plan turned out to be completely different...