Martin gave me a nice T-shirt to go with the sweater. I also got an army shirt with the sleeves cut back, and from the pile by the fire I chose other items, big and small, to cram myself into, and I was dressed like the other boys, and that was good. I kept the case with my maps, and the sad remains of the Manual and the Book of Knowledge and put them where they belonged. And when Dýha hung his canteen around my neck, the lads all laughed, and so did I.
Then a sound came down on us. My ears were muffled by that strange sound. I turned towards the heavy sigh that I could hear for the first time: Ooaaargh! And again: Ooaaargh!
It was coming from the mountain above us. I could have missed it, because Martin was talking. The hairs on the back of my neck stood on end, and a shiver ran down my spine. I glanced at the lads. They were all silent.
‘They’ve got prisoners up there,’ it crossed my mind.
‘It’s Baudyš,’ Dýha told me.
‘What’s wrong with him?’ I asked.
‘He’s groaning with pain, man,’ Dýha told me. ‘Moaning with the pain, our hero,’ someone whispered. I was still shivering at the sound. ‘The commander’s studded with all sorts of injuries,’ said someone else. There was another almighty sigh, so loud it seemed to fill the whole dark mountain above us, escaping like air from a giant balloon.
‘We sank a shaft for the commander, just like he wanted,’ Martin said in a whisper.
‘We did it with dynamite,’ whispered Dýha.
‘And people decorated it,’ said Martin quietly, ‘with branches and flowers. The womenfolk swept all the odd bits and pieces of rock out, so it’s all clean and cosy, like in church. You’d never believe it!’
‘Kids took their toys to the shaft to honour the commander,’ Mikušinec said.
‘But now nobody’s allowed near,’ said Karel.
‘At first,’ Mikušinec said, throwing a few branches onto the fire, ‘when our commander breathed like that, the whole mountain shook.’
‘And even animals from Chapman Forest would come!’ said Martin.
‘I never saw none!’ said Dýha.
‘But I did,’ said Martin. ‘And eagles circled over the mountain.’
‘Come off it, man,’ said Dýha, ‘where do you find eagles around here? Magpies maybe.’
‘When our commander ordered us to dig out a shaft, there was birds circling over the mountain!’ insisted Martin.
And again we heard sighs coming from the mountain. Now and again a twig crackled in the fire. I took a sip from a fresh brew of hot tea. All around, beyond the rocky ramparts, darkness was sinking into the forest. My old uniform on the fire had stopped stinking. It didn’t stink for long.
‘He’ll let us know when we have to blow him up,’ said Martin.
‘You what?’ I said, spilling tea all over my nice new clobber and scalding myself into the bargain.
‘We’ll blow him up with dynamite. So he stays up here for ever,’ Martin tried to explain.
‘So his hero’s body can’t never fall into enemy hands,’ said Karel.
‘So his hero’s grave may kindle new resistance,’ said Mikušinec.
‘That was the Commander’s instructions,’ said Martin.
‘That’s right,’ Dýha yawned. ‘Our final mission, lads.’
‘Yep,’ someone else said.
Only after the sighs from inside the mountain had abated did we wrap ourselves variously in blankets and groundsheets, sitting or lying around the meagre flames of the fire, as if we wanted to protect it with our bodies from the damp and dark of the forest beyond the boulders all around our post.
I wondered about the watch rota, but no-one had said anything. Mikušinec was repacking his backpack. He too was about to head for the Legion.
‘You haven’t got much with you,’ I said for the sake of something to say.
‘They’ll give us everything in the Legion,’ Mikušinec replied. ‘The main thing is to get as far as the first port.’
‘Where’s that?’ I asked, though I didn’t want to go.
‘On the edge of Bohemia,’ said Mikušinec, ‘by the sea.’
‘Right. And where’s Páta?’ I asked, and Dýha said, ‘He refuses to budge from Siřem cemetery. Likes the peace and quiet, he says.’
‘Right,’ I said again, and, even though as a saboteur I ought to have known, I asked him where Još’s gypsy hut was, because that’s exactly where I wanted to go once things were finished with on the crag, and Dýha told me.
‘It’s still odd, you know,’ he went on.
‘What?’
‘Chata and Bajza and the other gippos tracked down their kid brothers, and are said to have carried out a raid on a children’s camp to take them back to their shack. While we,’ he propped himself up on one elbow and looked at me, ‘we cared sod all about our longshirts.’
‘That’s right,’ I said, and in my mind’s eye I could see the little mugs of the little lads, and I could see their feet, bare or in battered old boots, their white shirts flapping around their ankles. I thought of the longshirts screaming in fear without the nuns, and padding around within the darkened walls of the Home from Home… I would sometimes remember them wandering around even during breaks in the fighting, if I heard tiny birds scrabbling about in the trees of Chapman Forest, and once, when I spotted some abandoned toys in one of the pockets of resistance that we smashed to smithereens, it crossed my mind that I could pick up the odd soft toy for the longshirts, but I had no idea where the little ones had gone.
‘Gypsies,’ said Dýha. ‘Gypsies don’t wage war on anyone,’ he said, yawning.
Then I heard Mikušinec laughing quietly. He’d already snuggled down, wrapped up in blankets. ‘That bear was so funny… me and Dýha here were in the forest and suddenly this bear! Made us jump, it did! And the bear gets up on its hind legs and sticks its paw out! Ha, ha! He were a performing bear, Ilya. You’ve never seen anything like it!’
‘That’s right,’ Dýha mumbled, ‘and he made you jump too!’
‘Hey, Ilya,’ said Mikušinec, sounding very sleepy, and suddenly I found it strange, all those years we used to chat together just like this in the older boys’ dormitory, and I’d barely become a Bandit again, and it would all be over with on Fell Crag. Ah well… ‘Ilya, kid, you noticed anything odd?’
‘Like what?’
‘You know, down in the forest. Like something’s happened in the forest, man. Looks like the animals have done a bunk.’
‘I haven’t been in the forest much.’
‘Right.’
Then Dýha chortled, ‘Anybody would take fright at a bear. Anyone! But Mikuš here, he got kicked by a rabbit. Funny, eh? Ha, ha!’
Mikušinec was suddenly wide awake and said, ‘But it was huge! A giant rabbit, man,’ and he went on about rabbits the size of dogs that got up on their hind legs and tore through the camp when he was on sentry duty, and one of them gave him an almighty kick. It did!
Me and Dýha laughed until we howled, and Mikušinec said the giant rabbit that kicked him had a tiny little rabbit in its belly, and Dýha said, ‘Now you’re talking bollocks!’ and I was watching the clouds as they crossed the sky, passing over the moon, which was dripping light. I was nearly asleep, but I still asked Dýha, ‘What about sentries?’ and he just mumbled that I could forget it. The Russians wouldn’t venture into the forest. They were still scared of the Commander.