We entered single file. Bisch took point, me in the middle, Thomas bringing up the rear. I had to bend nearly double to fit through the narrow opening, my shoulders scraping against stone that had been carved centuries ago by water and time.
The smell hit me first, a disgusting combination of sewage, rot, and the accumulated filth of a fortress full of men with no regard for what flowed downhill. I breathed through my mouth and focused on putting one foot in front of the other.
The passage climbed steadily, switching back through the heart of the cliff. Water seeped from cracks in the stone, turning the floor into a treacherous stream of mud and worse. Only my hand on the wall kept me from going down.
Ahead, Bisch moved with surprising grace despite his limp. He knew these kinds of passages, had crawled through them during the war, probably, escaping or infiltrating or doing the thousand dirty jobs that men like him did so that the rest of us could pretend the world was clean.
“Narrow ahead,” he whispered back. “Keep your weapons dry.”
The passage contracted to a gap barely wider than my shoulders. I turned sideways and squeezed through, feeling the stone press against my chest and back like hands trying to hold me in place. For aterrible moment I was stuck, my breath coming fast and shallow, the weight of the mountain pressing down.
Then I was through, stumbling into a slightly wider section and gasping.
Thomas’s hand found my shoulder in the darkness. “You okay?”
“Fine.” I wasn’t fine, but I would be. “Keep moving.”
The passage twisted twice more, each turn bringing us higher and closer to the fortress above.
I lost track of time in the darkness.
Five minutes, ten, twenty.
There was only the next step, the next breath, the stone walls sliding past like the throat of some great beast swallowing us whole.
Then Bisch stopped.
I nearly collided with him, catching myself at the last moment.
Ahead, I could see what had made him pause. A faint glow filtered down from somewhere above.
Artificial light.
We had reached the fortress.
Bisch held up a fist.
We froze.
Voices.
They were distant, muffled by stone, but unmistakably human. German, I thought, though I couldn’t make out words. Beneath the voices, therewas the mechanical rhythm of ventilation. It sounded like the heartbeat of the fortress pumping air and power through its ancient veins.
Bisch pointed upward to a ladder, rusted and old, bolted to the stone wall. It climbed toward a grate that was the source of the dim light.
He went first, testing each rung before committing his weight.
The metal groaned but held.
I followed, trying not to think about the drop below, the darkness waiting to swallow me if I fell.
At the top, Bisch halted.
I watched him press his eye to the gaps in the grate, scanning whatever lay beyond.
After a long moment, he reached up and pushed.
The grate lifted with barely a sound. It was well oiled and recently used.
