Ian whirled around only to come face to face with the grille of a motorcar. He pulled Carl out of the way just as the automobile came to a rather abrupt stop. Ian struggled to comprehend what a motorcar was doing slogging through the forest, but he barely had time to digest its appearance before several uniformed and heavily armed men jumped out and pointed their guns directly at him, Carl, and Eva.
“What do we have here?” asked one mean-looking man with a rat-shaped face.
Neither Eva nor Ian replied—both of them were too stunned under the threat of the guns being pointed at them to respond—and poor Carl was doubled over, still coughing and fighting for air.
The rat-faced man stepped up to Eva and eyed her up and down suspiciously. “What are you doing out in the forest, you little Polish scum?” he snarled.
Eva gasped, and she shook her head. “I don’t understand you, sir,” she said in a quivering voice. “I only speak Polish.”
The man slapped her so hard across the face that Eva spun in a circle before collapsing to the ground. “Stop!” Ian shouted at the soldier while he attempted to go to Eva’s aid, but before he could move more than a foot, the nose of a gun was placed right against his temple. Ian froze and closed his eyes, not even daring to breathe.
He heard the squish of leather boots in the mud and opened his eyes again to look directly into the narrowed eyes of the rat-faced man. “Are you from the village?” the soldier asked him.
Ian believed that at that point, it might be prudent to lie. “Yes, sir,” he said. “I live in the village.”
The man rocked back on his heels, a triumphant look in his eyes. “And you speak German!” he said. Ian couldn’t help noticing the accusing tone his words held. “Herr Black was right! These woods are full of Polish spies!”
“Colonel,” said another soldier, hovering near Eva, who was now struggling to her feet, “look at what has come out of the girl’s pockets.”
The colonel moved away from Ian, who was still held fast by the nose of the gun next to his head. He watched with wide eyes as the colonel bent and picked something up off the ground. Ian knew immediately what had dropped out of Eva’s pocket, and he also knew that it would be their undoing. “An English pound note?” the colonel inquired, holding the bit of paper up to his eyes, which then moved back to Eva. “Is that who is paying you to spy on us?” he spat, his face turning red with anger.
Eva was shaking her head as she shivered in fear. Her left cheek was scarlet from the slap the colonel had given her. “Yes!” she told him. “Take my money! Take all of it!” And with that, she emptied her pockets of all the pound notes she carried; Ian knew quite well it was a small fortune.
The colonel glowered at her in disgust. “You see that?” he said to one of his men standing nearby. “She confesses.”
Ian searched for anything he could say to the colonel, any explanation he might offer that would get them out of their situation, but before he could even form the words, the colonel had pulled out his pistol, held it up to Eva’s chest, and fired.
The poor girl was flung backward by the force of the point-blank shot, and as she fell, a scream echoed through the trees just behind Ian. He had no time to react, no time even to take in what was happening, but somewhere in the back of his mind, he knew who that scream belonged to.
“Ah,” said the colonel, looking just past Ian. “Even more come out of the forest hoping for mercy. We will show them none.” Turning to the man holding the gun at Ian’s temple, the colonel said, “Sergeant, shoot these Polish scum. I am off to see if our friend Magus Black is correct and this path is wide enough for my panzers. We must make haste if we are to meet up with the rest of the divisions on their way to take Warsaw!”
Ian gasped at both the mention of Magus’s name and what else the colonel had just revealed, but he barely had time to register that the vile sorcerer was working with the German army to invade Poland when his eyes swiveled to lock with those of the man the colonel had given their death orders to. He noted that the sergeant appeared uncertain.
“Colonel,” the sergeant said quietly, and the nose of the gun came away slightly from Ian’s temple. “They are just children. Are you certain it is necessary to shoot them?”
The colonel stepped up to the sergeant and pointed his own pistol directly at him. For a long tense moment, Ian was convinced the rat-faced man would shoot his own soldier. “Are you questioning a direct order?” the colonel asked in a dangerously soft tone.
The sergeant was quick to shake his head. “No, of course not, Colonel Gropp,” he said. “I shall shoot these Polish scum, just as you so wisely commanded.”
Gropp lowered his pistol and waved to the other soldiers to get into the motorcar. “You will meet up with us later,” he told the sergeant, making a point of staring up at the rain coming down in a steady flow. “Perhaps a little time spent in this miserable downpour will reinforce how comfortable my car was.” With that he got into his automobile and shut the door, but the car did not drive off. Ian suspected that the colonel wanted to watch his sergeant and make sure he did as he was told.
“You there!” the soldier shouted to someone just behind Ian. “Come out here at once!”
Ian heard the sound of soft footsteps and he felt a wave of despair. A moment later Theo stepped up next to him and took his hand. “I’m so sorry,” she said to him, tears rolling down her wet face to mix with the rain.
Ian turned his eyes back up to the soldier aiming his gun at them. “Please spare her!” he begged. “She’s just a little girl, sir! Innocent! She’s done nothing wrong!”
“Silence!” the soldier commanded, his eyes showing no mercy. “Turn around and march over there!”
Ian glanced sideways at Carl, whose eyes were wide with fright. “Is he really going to shoot us?” Carl said, as if he could hardly believe it.
“Now!” shouted the soldier, and the three of them quickly turned around and walked to where the soldier had pointed. Behind them Ian could hear the man’s heavy footsteps and he braced himself, unsure when the sergeant would pull the trigger. They walked just a few meters down an incline to the edge of a steep ravine before the sergeant commanded them to stop. “On your knees,” he ordered, “with your hands behind your head!”
Ian’s mind was racing to find a way to escape their situation. Should they run? Should he tackle the soldier, hoping it would give Theo time to get away? “Down on your knees!” their guard shouted impatiently.
Ian sank to his knees, so terrified that he was unable to form a plan. All he could do was numbly follow the orders being given to him and pray for a miracle. He saw the car’s wheels and underbelly up the hill. They obscured the view of the terrible man inside who’d just condemned them to death. “Hands behind your heads!” the sergeant shouted again.
Ian placed his hands behind his head and swallowed hard as he stared defiantly up at the man ordered to shoot him. He vowed to force himself not to look away. Suddenly, he felt the full weight of Theo as she ignored the soldier’s orders and crawled over to hug him fiercely while she buried her face in his drenched shirt. Something flickered in the soldier’s eyes as he looked down at Ian and Theo, and for a moment he hesitated, but then he demanded that Ian force Theo to let him go and place her hands behind her head.
But Ian had no intention of complying, and he suddenly didn’t care if it angered the man with the gun. His dying breath would be spent trying to comfort the one person in all the world who meant the most to him. Ignoring the soldier, he wrapped his own arms around Theo, feeling dreadful shame for not having lived up to Laodamia’s command to guard and protect the One. Lowering his head, he whispered in her ear, “Don’t cry, Theo. It will be very quick, I promise you. Just a bee sting really, and it will all be over. Hold on to me as tightly as you can, and you’ll hardly feel a—”
Ian’s words were cut short by the explosive sound of a gunshot. Next to him, Carl grunted and fell backward. Ian squeezed his eyes tightly shut and held on to Theo for all
he was worth, waiting with a hammering heart for his turn. The smell of gunpowder clung to his nostrils and the sound of rain pattered on the leaves all around him, and for a moment there was no other noise. Ian began to wonder what was taking so long when two more rapid shots deafened his ears. He startled at the noise and felt an immediate punch to his left side, which sent him sprawling head over heels. He landed hard at the bottom of the ravine, still clinging to Theo, whose lifeless body lay in his arms. After that, all Ian could do was wait for the world to go dark.
SHELTER IN THE TREES
For a very long time, Ian lay still, his breathing shallow while the pain in his side throbbed on and on. He listened to the squish of the soldier’s boots when he walked away from them, the roar of the colonel’s engine as it moved off deeper into the woods, and the soft but constant thwap of raindrops hitting the foliage all around him.
He focused with all his might on these sounds, because what had just happened to his whole world threatened to make him insane. He couldn’t face the reality of it, so he listened to the rain and hoped his own death would come soon.
But then, with suddenness, a new sound added itself to the mix, and it took Ian a bit of time to comprehend it, because the noise was impossible.
Carl was coughing.
And if his best mate was coughing, then he was still alive. But Theo …
Ian resisted the urge to open his eyes and held her close. She still felt warm. He swallowed hard; the reality he’d been fighting was starting to seep into him, like the venom from the hellhound, poisonous and bleak.
And then … a miracle. Theo moved.
Ian snapped his eyes open and pulled his chin down so that he could see the top of her head. She stirred again, and behind him, Carl’s coughing intensified. Ian sucked in a breath and carefully sat up. Theo pushed against his chest and grunted. “Ian!” she complained softly. “You’re holding me too tight.”
Belatedly, he relaxed his arms, and Theo tilted her face to him and asked, “You all right?”
He was so stunned that all he could do was nod.
“He shot just over our heads,” Theo said, pointing to a tree jutting out on the other side of the ravine. Ian could see that the trunk was missing three chunks of bark. “I thought for certain he was going to kill us, but when I saw that he marched us over to the edge of the ravine and shot above Carl’s head before kicking him down the slope, I knew he was saving us instead.”
Ian looked down at his left side and pulled up his shirt to reveal a red mark about the size of the toe of a man’s boot. “He kicked us to get us to fall over?” he asked.
“Yes,” Theo said. “I saw him kick Carl….” Theo’s voice trailed off as she looked past Ian to where Carl lay on the wet ground. She got to her feet, hurried over to him, and helped him sit up. Carl’s cough had subsided just enough to allow him to look about in a daze.
“Are we dead?” he asked.
Ian shook his head. “Not yet, mate.”
A loud agonized moan sounded from up the hill, and all three of them immediately looked in that direction. “Eva!” Ian said, scrambling to his feet and clambering up the ravine to her.
She lay on her back, staring at the sky in terror and pain. “It hurts,” she mouthed while tears leaked down her cheeks. Theo and Carl joined him then and knelt down next to Eva. Ian gently eased the flap of her coat away from her right shoulder to reveal a gaping and bloody wound that went clear through the poor girl. The ground behind Eva was red with blood and her skin was starkly pale.
“We’ve got to help her,” Theo said.
Ian looked about and saw the knapsack not far away. He retrieved it, then rummaged through the contents, coming up with a knife and one of Carl’s extra shirts. He cut off several long strips and wadded up two of them, then placed those on the entrance and exit wounds and bound the wounds awkwardly with the other strips. He knew that the makeshift bandage wasn’t likely to hold long, but it was the best he could do.
“We’ll take her back to her grandmother’s,” he told them.
But Theo shook her head. “It’s too far.”
“We have to try, Theo,” Ian told her firmly. “We can’t very well leave her here.”
Theo laid a gentle hand on his arm and looked over her shoulder. “There is somewhere we can take her that is much closer and will give her some shelter from the rain,” she said to him, pointing. “I’d just discovered it when I heard you and Eva arguing.”
Ian’s gaze followed Theo’s finger and he saw the large gray rock that he and Carl had discussed earlier. “But that’s not much shelter,” he told her.
Theo merely said, “There’s more there than meets the eye, Ian. Come along. You take Eva’s front and I’ll take her legs.”
But Ian shook his head. “That’ll put too much strain on her wound.”
“It’s not far,” Theo insisted.
Ian shook his head again and got his left arm under Eva’s legs while moving his right under her torso. Counting to three in his head, he lifted her off the ground as gently as he could, but the strain on his own wound was enough to cause his eyes to water.
Theo looked at him worriedly for a moment but said nothing as she got up and led them slowly through the woods toward the rock.
They’d gone only a few meters when Ian had to stop. He sank to his knees, panting heavily, with Eva still cradled in his arms. “I can carry her,” Carl suggested, but immediately he started to cough again, doubling over as great rattling hacks shook his body.
Ian waited until his friend had caught his breath again before saying, “That’s all right, Carl. I can manage.” Ian used all his strength and willpower to stand up again. Eva moaned in his arms. He knew she was in pain, and he focused on getting to the rock as quickly as he could so that he wouldn’t have to keep moving her up and down.
With supreme effort they made it to the huge monolith, and Ian leaned against it, panting for air while his legs trembled underneath him and his arm screamed with fiery pain. “Over there,” Theo said.
Ian turned his head dully and saw something remarkable. He blinked in the downpour and realized that he was looking at several planks nailed to a nearby tree, forming a makeshift ladder that led straight to a wooden bridge of sorts directly overhead.
The bridge linked a vast circle of trees together, and the trees seemed to mark the edge of a circle made of enormous stones just like the one he was standing next to. Within the circle of stones, nothing grew, and the rain was harsher there, because there was no foliage to stem the flow of the downpour.
Ian’s eyes drifted back up to the bridge and he was even more startled to realize that there were structures within the branches of the trees. He counted four, in fact, and each looked like a small house. “You want us to take Eva up there?” he asked Theo.
She nodded at him. “She’ll be safe and out of this rain,” she told him. “We’ll all be safe up there. If the soldiers return, they’ll never think to look for us so high up in the trees.”
“But, Theo,” he protested, “what if someone already lives there?”
“Then we’ll implore them to help Carl and Eva,” Theo told him, and her voice indicated that there was no room for further argument.
Ian continued to breathe hard from the strain of carrying Eva, but eventually he nodded. “Very well, but I don’t believe I can manage to carry her up that ladder, Theo. I don’t have the strength.”
Theo moved to the tree and he watched as she unhooked a rope from the other side and stepped out of the way as a wicker basket came down out of the branches. It was large enough to hold Eva.
Ian took a deep breath and pushed away from the rock to wobble awkwardly over to the basket. As gently as he could, he placed Eva inside, but the poor girl gasped when he removed his arm from around her and she fell against the back of the basket.
Ian also winced; his arm was now throbbing fiercely. “How do we get the basket up to the bridge?” he asked Theo.
Theo
tilted her chin skyward and pointed to something at the top of the rope. “There’s a hoist,” she told him smartly.
Ian moved to the ladder, and that was when he spotted Carl still standing by the rock, not looking well at all. “Carl!” he called, but his friend barely seemed to hear him. Ian moved away from the tree and over to him. “We have to climb the ladder.” For emphasis, Ian pointed to the nearby tree.
Carl blinked tiredly in the direction Ian was pointing. “I don’t think I can manage it, Ian,” he confessed just as his knees gave out.
Ian caught him and draped Carl’s arm around his neck. “Come on, mate,” he said, surprised at the intense heat rising from Carl’s skin. “Let’s get you somewhere warm and dry.”
Ian helped Carl to the ladder and stared straight up. He didn’t think that Carl would be able to manage it either, and Ian wondered if he had the strength to hoist both Carl and Eva up to the platform. “Get Eva up first,” Theo told him. “I’ll tend to Carl and work him into the basket after you send it down again. And then I’ll come up to help you hoist him the rest of the way.”
Ian smiled gratefully at her and set Carl down next to the tree with instructions to get into the basket as soon as Theo asked him to. Carl blinked dully at him and coughed into his hand.
Ian hoped he remained conscious long enough to oblige. He went to the wooden ladder and began to climb.
Had he not been weakened by the hellhound’s bite, navigating the ladder would have been child’s play. But with all the overexertion he’d endured recently, the climb proved challenging. Eventually, he made it to the bridge, panting again for some time before he felt able to crawl to the hoist. It was a fairly simple design, and he found that by using his body weight, he was able to move Eva in slow jerky tugs up to the bridge.
When at last she reached the platform, Ian tipped the basket gently onto its side and eased the girl out of the wicker container. He paused when he realized she was no longer conscious, and bent to feel her pulse. Fortunately, she was still alive, although he knew she was in a most desperate condition. Ian released the basket, calling down to Theo to let her know it was on its way, and tried to get Eva some protection from the rain by moving her under a thick set of branches.