A former war photographer, having retired from the world, sits in a tower and paints a fresco - his most important, absolute, final work, full of pain, blood and war. The current military television journalist and his cameraman in the Balkans are on guard for the explosion of a bridge. Someone whose life has gone downhill because of a single photograph comes to the photographer, and in the midst of careful conversations about world art, masking the grief of loss, and the thirst for revenge, and love, and despair, and shameful secrets, both their eyes open. The bridge is still intact, but the explosion is about to happen, and the journalists will film it if they have time, if they remain alive in this Comanche territory, where “instinct tells the war reporter that he needs to slow down and turn back ... where the roads are deserted and the houses have turned into charred ruin; where it seems that twilight is about to come... Where you don’t see sniper rifles, but they see you”... “Battleist” and “Comanche Territory” - two stories by Arturo Perez-Reverte, fictional and documentary, about the same thing: dirt , blood, fear and grief of the war in Bosnia and all other wars through the eyes of people whose job is to look and show others what they saw. Perez-Reverte is a former military journalist who worked in many hot spots, a renowned author of brilliant historical, military, adventure novels translated into forty languages, creator of the cycle about Captain Diego Alatriste, winner of the most prestigious literary awards. He has something to tell about the war - he was there, more than once. “In any war,” he says, “the same thing happens: somewhere unfortunate, half-dead with fear, people in military uniforms of different formations are shooting at each other, sitting in trenches, smeared with clay, and some freak is in a cozy office air-conditioned, smoking a cigar, far from the front line, designing banners, creating national anthems and erecting monuments to the unknown soldier, thus making money from all this blood and shit.” It is impossible to be romantic in war. In war it is impossible to be objective. In war, it is impossible not to understand that there should be no war. “Battleist” and “Comanche Territory” are provided with extensive commentary. “Comanche Territory” is published in a new translation.