She let him go, heard him walk on ahead.
She sighed heavily, shivering at the end of it. Hunger gnawed at her stomach. She swallowed dryly, wishing they could stop just for a minute. Instead, she pointed herself in the direction of the men and kept going. Her mind was muddling again, her thoughts blurring. All she could think of was taking this step, and the next one, and the next one.
Sometime near dawn, the snow turned to rain that turned their woolen coats into sodden weights. Isabelle hardly noticed when they started going down. The only real difference was the men falling, slipping on the wet rocks and tumbling down the rocky, treacherous mountainside. There was no way to stop them; she just had to watch them fall and help them get back on their feet when they came to a breathless, broken stop. The visibility was so bad that they were constantly in fear of losing sight of the man in front and plunging off the path.
At daybreak, Eduardo stopped and pointed to a yawning black cave tucked into the mountainside. The men gathered inside, making huffing sounds as they sat and stretched out their legs. Isabelle heard them opening their packs, burrowing through for the last bits of their food. Somewhere deep inside, an animal scurried around, its claws scratching lightly on the hard-packed dirt floor.
Isabelle followed the men inside; roots hung down from the dripping stone-and-mud interior. Eduardo knelt down and made a small fire, using the moss he’d picked that morning and packed in his waistband. “Eat and sleep,” he said when the flames danced up. “Tomorrow we make the final trek.” He reached for his goatskin bota, drank deeply, and then left the cave.
The damp wood crackled and popped, sounding like gunfire in the cave, but Isabelle—and the men—were too exhausted even to flinch. Isabelle sat down beside MacLeish and leaned tiredly against him.
“You’re a wonder,” he said in a hushed voice.
“I’ve been told I don’t make smart decisions. This may be proof of that.” She shivered, whether from cold or exhaustion, she didn’t know.
“Dumb but brave,” he said with a smile.
Isabelle was grateful for the conversation. “That’s me.”
“I don’t think I’ve thanked you properly … for saving me.”
“I don’t think I’ve saved you yet, Torrance.”
“Call me Torry,” he said. “All my mates do.”
He said something else—about a girl waiting for him in Ipswich, maybe—but she was too tired to hear what it was.
When she wakened, it was raining.
“Bollocks,” one of the men said. “It’s pissing out there.”
Eduardo stood outside the cave, his strong legs braced widely apart, his face and hair pelted by rain that he seemed not to notice at all. Behind him, there was darkness.
The airmen opened their rucksacks. No one had to be told to eat anymore; they knew the routine. When you were allowed to stop, you drank, you ate, you slept, and in that order. When you were wakened, you ate and drank and got to your feet, no matter how much it hurt to do so.
As they stood, a groan moved from man to man. A few cursed. It was a rainy, moonless night. Utterly dark.
They had made it over the mountain—almost one thousand meters high where they crossed the previous night—and were halfway down the other side, but the weather was worsening.
As Isabelle left the cave, wet branches smacked her in the face. She pushed them away with a gloved hand and kept going. Her walking stick thumped with each step. Rain made the shale as slick as ice and ran in rivulets alongside them. She heard the men grunting in front of her. She trudged forward on blistered, aching feet. The pace set by Eduardo was gruelingly hard. Nothing stopped or slowed the man, and the airmen struggled to keep up.
“Look!” she heard someone say.
In the distance, far away, lights twinkled, a spiderweb pattern of white dots spanned the darkness.
“Spain,” Eduardo said.
The sight rejuvenated the group. They continued, their walking sticks thumping, their feet landing solidly as the ground gradually leveled out.
How many hours passed this way? Five? Six? She didn’t know. Enough that her legs began to ache and the small of her back was a pit of pain. She was constantly spitting rain and wiping it out of her eyes, and the emptiness in her stomach was a rabid animal. A pale sheen of daylight began to appear at the horizon, a blade of lavender light, then pink, then yellow as she zigzagged down the trail. Her feet hurt so much she gritted her teeth to keep from crying out in pain.
By the fourth nightfall, Isabelle had lost all sense of time and place. She had no idea where they were or how much longer this agony would go on. Her thoughts became a simple plea, tumbling through her mind, keeping pace with her aching steps. The consulate, the consulate, the consulate.
“Stop,” Eduardo said, holding up his hand.
Isabelle stumbled into MacLeish. His cheeks were bright red with cold and his lips were chapped and his breathing ragged.
Not far away, past a blurry green hillside, she saw a patrol of soldiers in light green uniforms.
Her first thought was, We are in Spain, and then Eduardo shoved them both behind a stand of trees.
They hid for a long time and then set off again.
Hours later, she heard a roar of rushing water. As they neared the river, the sound obliterated everything else.
Finally, Eduardo stopped and gathered the men close together. He was standing in a pool of mud, his espadrilles disappearing into the muck. Behind him were gray granite cliffs upon which spindly trees grew in defiance of the laws of gravity. Bushes sprouted like cattle catchers around formidable gray rocks.
“We hide here until nightfall,” Eduardo said. “Over that ridge is the Bidassoa River. On the other bank is Spain. We are close—but close is nothing. Between the river and your freedom are patrols with dogs. These patrols will shoot at anything they see moving. Do not move.”
Isabelle watched Eduardo walk away from the group. When he was gone, she and the men hunkered down behind giant boulders and inside the lee of fallen trees.
For hours, the rain beat down on them, turned the mud beneath them into a marsh. She shivered and drew her knees into her chest and closed her eyes. Impossibly, she fell into a deep, exhausted sleep that was over much too quickly.
At midnight, Eduardo wakened her.
The first thing Isabelle noticed when she opened her eyes was that the rain had stopped. The sky overhead was studded with stars. She climbed tiredly to her feet and immediately winced in pain. She could only imagine how much the airmen’s feet hurt—she was lucky enough to have shoes that fit.
Under cover of night, they set off again, the sound of their footsteps swallowed by the roar of the river.
And then they were there, standing amid the trees at the edge of a giant gorge. Far below, the water crashed and roiled and roared, splashing up along the rock sides.
Eduardo gathered them close. “We can’t swim across. The rains have made the river a beast that will swallow us all. Follow me.”
They walked along the river for a mile or two, and then Eduardo stopped again. She heard a creaking sound, like a boat line stretched by rising seas, and an occasional clatter.
At first, there was nothing to see. Then the bright white searchlights on the other side flashed across the white-tipped, rushing river, and shone on a rickety suspension bridge that linked this side of the gorge to the opposite shore. There was a Spanish checkpoint not far away, with guards patrolling back and forth.
“Holy Mother o’ God,” one of the airmen said.
“Fuck me,” said another.
Isabelle joined the men in a crouch behind some bushes, where they waited, watching the searchlights crisscross the river.
It was after two in the morning when Eduardo finally nodded. There was no movement on the other side of the gorge at all. If their luck held—or if they had any at all—the sentries were asleep at their posts.