The passage narrowed again. I had to turn sideways again, had to press the Baroness against the wall to squeeze through. She groaned but didn’t scream. She was a hell of a lot stronger than she looked.
“Almost there,” I said.
I could feel the air changing, growing colder and fresher, carrying the scent of pine. The outside world waited just ahead.
Then I heard it.
Boots splashing and echoing down the channel behind us.
They’d found the entrance.
They were coming.
“Thomas—”
“I hear them.” His voice was tight. “Go faster!”
The stone tore at my hands and knees. I left trails of blood in the muck.
The Baroness had gone limp against me. I prayed she was unconscious again and not—
I didn’t stop to check.
Light ahead.
Faint, gray, but real.
The exit.
I pushed toward it, dragging myself the final few meters, and then I was tumbling out into the night.
Cold air gusted into my face like a benediction.
Stars wheeled overhead.
Snow crunched beneath me as I rolled clear of the opening.
The Baroness spilled from my arms onto the frozen ground. I scrambled to my knees and checked her pulse. It was still there, weak, but there.
Thomas emerged a moment later, Otto over his shoulder, both of them coated in filth and blood. He dropped beside me, gasping.
“Bisch?”
As if in answer, a shape appeared in the channel mouth. It was Bisch, his face gray with exhaustion, his coat torn and bloody. He pulled himself out and collapsed against a tree.
“I slowed them,” he rasped. “Collapsed a section. It will not hold long.”
I looked back at the cliff face, at the dark mouth of the channel. Already I could hear sounds from within—rubble being shifted, men shouting orders. We had minutes, maybe less.
“The car,” Thomas said. “Can you make it?”
Bisch nodded once and pushed himself to his feet.
I gathered the Baroness in my arms again. She weighed less than nothing.
As we ran, the forest swallowed us. Behind, the fortress blazed with light and fury.
I heard shouts and engines roaring to life. I heard the sounds of pursuit organizing itself.
