The Longest Winter

by Mary Jane Staples

  James, with his chin bristly, his dark, tanned face lined with sweat, said with a faint smile, ‘What a bright, brave pair you are, I love you both. One day we’ll climb a mountain together, all three of us, and stand on top of the world.’

  ‘James, now you are thinking in very impractical terms,’ said Sophie.

  ‘Come on,’ said James.

  They resumed their flight. The sun climbed, a blinding brilliance in the blue sky. It made an oven of the woods. The strap of Anne’s right shoe suddenly flapped loose, the button torn off. She stumbled. James caught her.

  Breathlessly Anne said, ‘Thank you, James, you are always there, aren’t you?’

  Sophie, seeing him with his arm around her sister and the smile on Anne’s face, thought oh, this is terrible, I am beginning to be as jealous as a female Iago, and what did he mean, he loves both of us? He must love one of us more than the other, unless he meant he only loved us for our bravery. But I don’t feel at all brave and if I were brave I should want to be admired for it, not loved. I should want to be loved for my weaknesses as well as my virtues. Oh, I don’t know what I want except that I am all terrible nerves when he is close to me.

  James knelt, using his handkerchief to bind Anne’s shoe to her foot, running it like a twist of rope under the sole and tying it tightly around her instep.

  ‘That will do very nicely,’ said Anne, ‘and do you think we’re safe now? I mean, we haven’t run into anybody, have we?’

  ‘No, we haven’t, not yet,’ said James, ‘but we’ll go on.’

  He continued to hurry them. He had not lost his feeling of uneasiness since they began their flight. The girls were desperately hot, their clothes sticky and hampering, their breathing noisy, and it was an effort to duck under every low branch. James kept forging ahead to make quick surveys of what lay in front, frequently bearing to the right to explore the possibilities of ascending to the road. Always the climb was too risky to attempt. Sophie thought they had lost him after a while and a little spasm of panic attacked her.

  ‘Anne, quickly, we must catch him up.’

  ‘Sophie—’

  ‘Quickly!’

  But James was suddenly before them, his face glistening with sweat. The girls stopped.

  ‘Quietly now,’ he said, ‘there’s a break in the trees farther up and a place where I think we can make our way up to the road. We can’t go on like this for ever.’

  They followed him as silently as they could. Sophie, despite the heat, kept shivering. Anne took her hand, wondering about Sophie’s nerves. It was unpleasant for all of them, this feeling that those men must be somewhere about, but it was not like Sophie to give way to emotion. James would get them out of this.

  The trees thinned and the sun poured through. There on the right was the ascent to the top and not far from the top was the road. It was easy enough for all of them to climb. But James suddenly froze. He leaned back on the girls to bring them to a halt. At the top of the slope on their right stood a man. It was Dobrovic, his face and head swathed in bandages and a rifle under his arm. He was moving, turning this way and that, alternately watching the road and surveying the valley. His thick bandages gave him a mummified look, but there was nothing of embalmed peacefulness about him. His movements were quick, restless, angry, and James sensed the man was savage with desire for revenge.

  Sophie and Anne, glimpsing the figure, stopped breathing. Dobrovic glanced across the valley and signalled with his rifle. James construed it as a negative message. It was full of angry frustration. But it brought a response in the form of a shout, which sang through space. Dobrovic acknowledged it with a brief flourish of his rifle. He was not, apparently, able to do any shouting himself.

  Under his breath James swore at the green-eyed gods of fate. Sophie fought sick disappointment and Anne sighed. They retreated to thicker cover.

  ‘James, they know we’re here,’ whispered Sophie.

  ‘No, they only hope we are,’ he said, ‘there’s one man across the river so they can’t even be sure which side we’re on. It’s damn bad luck having that character with the flattened face up there.’

  They heard another shout. It was fainter but they felt its message boded them little good. A snapping twig froze them. It came from the river side of them. James pushed at the girls and they fled into the area close to the slope. Anne caught her foot, tumbled and fell. Sophie turned, James turned. He rushed at Anne, Sophie with him. Anne looked up as James helped her to her knees. She brushed dirt from her face.

  ‘Ah, so.’ It was a bold, amused voice. Anne and Sophie froze again. Avriarches, rifle in his hands, regarded them with a smile. They had never seen so huge a man. He seemed as wide as he was tall, so that although he did not command any more height than James he seemed ten times bigger. His large teeth gleamed amid red lips and black beard. His grey eyes were like polished stones. ‘Dirty, yes,’ he said, speaking German, ‘even unwashed. But quite up to expectations. Sometimes people exaggerate, yes?’

  Anne was in horror, Sophie in rigid fright and James in despair. One shout from this fat giant would bring Ferenac and his men racing to the spot. This, he felt sure, was the man Avriarches, whom Ferenac had mentioned. He slid his hand inside his jacket and shirt as Avriarches, in vast self-confidence, took time to study the rounded fairness of Anne and the aristocratic promise of Sophie. Being a man of boundless experience he could appreciate what lay beneath the dust and exhaustion of the cornered prey. Yes, they were a fine pair and he would lay odds that neither of them would be a disappointment. They might need a little fussing and coddling to bring them to sweet moods, but they would do, they would do very nicely. What was that pipsqueak of a man fumbling about for?

  Avriarches grinned as he found himself looking at the blue snout of James’s revolver.

  ‘Drop your rifle,’ said James quietly, ‘and keep your mouth shut.’

  Anne’s blood rushed in wild hope. Sophie stared at James with eyes huge. Avriarches laughed. The noise came rumbling up from his belly and spilled in deep chuckles from his full lips.

  ‘Pipsqueak,’ he said, ‘I’ve had a dozen like you for supper.’ He laughed again. ‘However, hot bullets give me indigestion. So, take it.’ He tossed the rifle at James. But he did not let go of it. The butt leapt and the barrel slid smoothly through the brigand’s hand, only to be gripped at the last moment. He impelled the butt forward and it smacked the revolver. The weapon dropped, struck violently from James’s grasp. Avriarches put his foot on it. Anne sprang to her feet, a hand took hold of the back of her dress, wrenched and spun her like a rag doll. She fell.

  James flung himself on his knees and grovelled in supplication at the feet of Avriarches, begging hoarsely, ‘No, leave the women alone, let them go, I’ll give you money, anything.’ He abased himself at the booted feet. Avriarches, who despised cowards and considered their gutlessness should be forcefully brought home to them, kicked the snivelling runt in the chest. That is, he went instinctively through the motions but as his boot lunged up and forward James took the opportunity his ruse had given him. He caught the foot under his left arm. Instantly his other arm curled around the Greek’s left leg. He heaved titanically while Avriarches was still grinning with surprise. The biggest man will fall if his legs are taken from under him. Even Avriarches could not defy the resultant force of gravity. He crashed like a lassoed bull. The ground came up and shook every bone in his body, driving his breath from him. James twisted free and scrambled for the revolver. Sophie seized the fallen rifle and with the primitive instinct of a creature fighting for survival, struck the head of the momentarily stunned brigand with the butt. His fur hat was off, his tongue shot out at the blow and he opened his mouth to roar. James kicked him in the jaw, the rifle butt struck his temple again and James finished the work, using the revolver to club the massive Greek senseless. The world which belonged to Avriarches spun under him and whirled him into black emptiness.

  Chapter Eight

  Avriarches ca
me to. There was a thunderous pain in his head. There was cramp in racked limbs. He was stretched out on his back, spreadeagled between trees. Nothing clothed him except his long woollen vest that reached to his thighs. His stripped and ripped clothes had been used to bind his limbs and lash them to trees. Forked pieces of branch had been thrust into the earth to clamp his lower thighs. Any writhing movement would cause the rough timber to break the skin and draw blood. Deep in his mouth was stuffed part of his own shirt.

  His livid eyes almost burst from their sockets, for the ants were already there. Red and scurrying, they swarmed to the writhing giant. Despite the pinning timber forks his body arched and thundered up and down, the choking gag reducing his screams to wet gurgles. He jerked with his arms until they threatened to unsocket. Mother of God, he would be slowly eaten alive unless Ferenac or his own men found him.

  In his huge plunging he was the instrument of his own torturing pain, the deadly forks of barked wood scraping his thighs. A thousand ants climbed the writhing limbs to investigate. Avriarches bellowed and screamed, but emitted only strangled sounds.

  Ferenac and his men entered the woods, drawn by the sound of a shot James had purposely fired from the revolver. He had also planted Anne’s handbag back along the way they had come, Anne taking only her most wanted items from it and putting them into Sophie’s bag. He had to draw Ferenac and his men into the woods, away from any points overlooking the river. The risk was a desperate one, the planted handbag a hope that would make Ferenac think they had turned tail and gone back to the village of Kontic.

  James heard the hunters, the noises faint but unmistakable some way off. He shepherded the girls into the river then. The waters were deep at this point and only the foam-washed boulders prevented them from being swept off their feet. They made for the shelter of a cluster of boulders, standing high out of the rushing river. Desperation lent new courage, Sophie and Anne defying the icy cold and tumbling tide as James brought them within the shelter of the boulders. There they all immersed themselves to their shoulders. And there for the moment they had to stay and wetly freeze. The girls turned blue, the water slapping at their faces inside their stone shelter, the tide sucking at their legs. They clutched and pressed the stone. Anne’s teeth chattered noisily and every breath was a wet gasp. Sophie clenched her teeth and breathed through her nose. James had his arms around them under the water, holding them. His gleaming wet face looked devilish. It wore something of a fixed, villainous grin, for despite everything he could not help thinking of Avriarches with undiluted relish.

  They had downed that formidable man-mountain. James had made the girls wait at the edge of the wood while he dealt silently, speedily and mercilessly with the unconscious Greek. He knew that Ferenac and his men, raging around on both sides of the river, might flush him out any moment. But Avriarches had to be attended to. The few words the brigand had spoken had left James in no doubt about what was to happen to Anne and Sophie. It made him pitiless. He completed his work, leaving the stripped giant tied and spreadeagled. Then he had fired his shot and rejoined the girls.

  They stood now in that icy water. Avriarches’ rifle, wrapped in James’s jacket, lay along a lower stone above the water. That rifle, together with the revolver, pocketed in the jacket, might be the final life-saver.

  Sophie wondered if she would expire. She hoped not. She dearly wanted to live, she wanted them all to live. Amid fine spray she met James’s eyes. He smiled very wetly. She smiled back and her eyes said, ‘I love you, please love me.’ As her limbs grew numb she heard Ferenac and his men savagely beating through the woods. James’s look cautioned both her and Anne as they heard the distinct sounds of a man on the shelving bank. Above the noisy turbulence of the river the man’s curses reached their ears. They gritted their chattering teeth and clung to the rocks and each other, the foam and spray flinging past them.

  They heard the man scrambling along the bank. He was going back, parallel with the men in the woods, back in the direction of Kontic. Ferenac might find Avriarches now. James waited, forever governed by caution and the safety of his charges. The resilience of healthy bodies withstood the uncharitable embrace of the icy waters for minutes more, although lips as well as faces were blue. Summer heat meant nothing to this river. It was fed by cold mountain streams.

  ‘Now,’ said James at last. It took an enormous physical effort to leave their shelter, to force their suffering bodies through the tide to the other bank again. James would not chance the wooded side in case Ferenac had left one man scouting about. Desperation pushed them on, James behind the girls and using the wrapped rifle as a wall for their backs. Movement, however difficult, became a gradual tonic after prolonged, static immersion. They all knew it only needed one man to turn back, to break out of the woods, for them to be seen. But James thought they would have found Avriarches by now and that would turn them into a bunch of chattering furies for a while.

  They fought the river, they lurched, swayed and fought on. They reached the shallows, waded through to the bank, then, streaming water, ran exhaustedly up over the incline to the littered foothills. There, in the shelter of piled rockfalls, they stopped. Anne sank down on a flat boulder, shoulders heaving, elbows on her knees and face in her hands. Sophie, gasping, pressed her back against the hillside, spread her arms flatly and closed her eyes. She breathed as if her lungs were squeezed. The sun smote her and her soaked dress glistened as it clung around her body.

  ‘Well done, my braves,’ said James in tender affection. He unwound his jacket from the rifle, which emerged clean, shining and wicked. His satisfied eyes reflected the dull glint of the metal. With the rifle was Avriarches’ cartridge belt. They had not done so badly, no, not at all. He looked at Anne, she raised her head and smiled weakly at him. For all her wet, flattened hair and her loss of all make-up, he thought her brave and beautiful. If she married Ludwig, Ludwig would get a girl beyond price. He put out a hand and touched her cheek. ‘We’ll do them down yet, sweet one,’ he said.

  ‘You will, James,’ she smiled.

  He went to Sophie. She opened her eyes. She saw the smile in his own.

  ‘James, please don’t look,’ she said, ‘I am such a mess.’

  ‘Are you? I don’t think so. If there were only ten more like you the angels would dance. What’s a slightly pink nose to any of the angels?’

  ‘Oh, please don’t be comical, I think I am quite over the edge.’

  ‘No, you’re not,’ he said. His look was expressive of his intense belief in her. It stirred her every emotion. ‘And we can’t stand around, you know. My very brave Sophie, we can all make a final dash together, can’t we? Look, do you see that point, where the river bends again? When we reach it you and Anne go on. I’ll stop there. I have the rifle and revolver—’

  ‘No! No, no, no!’ Sophie, pale, flung the negative almost wildly at him. ‘Oh, how can you even think we would let you do that! No, no, no!’

  ‘Sophie—’

  ‘Never, never! We must all go together.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Anne, coming up to them, ‘we must all go together.’

  ‘From the practical point of view,’ said James, ‘I—’

  ‘I don’t want to hear,’ said Sophie, her mouth trembling, ‘I hate practical points of view, they are all a danger to human relationships. We are all going on together and I don’t care whether that’s practical or not. I know at least that it’s right.’

  ‘Well,’ said James, ‘I—’

  ‘No. It is not to be mentioned again. Ever.’

  ‘Ever,’ smiled Anne, who knew now why Sophie’s emotions had been in the balance lately.

  ‘Very well,’ said James, ‘but everything about you both has put me in your debt.’ He turned, scouring the valley with anxious eyes. He seemed to have made so many surveys, seen so very little most of the time, yet Ferenac and his men had never been far behind them. There was no sign of any of them now. ‘Shall we go on?’ he said.

  ‘Yes, togethe
r,’ said Sophie.

  He risked everything to make the going as easy as possible so that they could move quickly. He took them down to the water’s edge where the profusion of rockfalls was neither so thick nor so restricting. He made them run, telling them it would dry their clothes out quicker. The girls picked up their wet skirts and James had them going at a facile jogtrot. Their feet were aching and sore in sodden, splitting shoes, but James kept them at it. Go, go, go. The river ran with them on the right, sparkling, murmurous and winding. They took each bend gratefully, for each bend gave them extra cover. James carried the rifle, the cartridge belt around his waist, and he forgot his soaked garments in the vigorous exercise of the moment. Heat poured into him, but he smiled as Sophie and Anne ran on gamely. They flagged eventually and he let them walk for a while.

  ‘James,’ gasped Anne, ‘you are very gracious. But oh, I am famished.’

  ‘Think of other things,’ said James.

  They ran again in a while.

  ‘Keep going,’ panted James, ‘not far now – be easy to cross in a moment – river’s shallower.’

  ‘That river again?’ gasped Sophie. ‘Oh, merciful Mary.’

  A man, feet astride in the river, waders clasping his legs, a waterproof jacket around him, looked up with a frown as three figures came round a bend at a stumbling run. He delayed the throw of his line, his long rod quivering. James ran into the river, the girls lurching in after him.

  Major Frederic Moeller, retired German officer and keen sportsman, could not believe such crass, outrageous behaviour.

  ‘Damn and blast!’ he roared at James. ‘The fish, man, the fish!’

  James panted something uncomplimentary about all fish. The major shuddered. Sacrilege added to asininity was unforgivable. The fellow was even waving a rifle in the most dangerous fashion. And by heaven, the women. They looked like camp followers, female ragtag and bobtail. He had never seen three more unappealing people, and he had certainly never known any to behave more thoughtlessly. They were treating the river like a paddling pool. Gypsies, by God.