Chapter Fifteen

About 2am, Alex was woken by someone moving about in the next carriage. He looked around and in the dim light he could see that Ardeth wasn't in his bed. He assumed that he couldn't sleep again. Getting up, he walked into the other carriage to see what he was doing.
He was surprised with what he saw, Ardeth was dressed and had on all his swords and was just getting some of the knives that we in the crate by the grenades. He jumped when Alex spoke.

"Ardeth what are you doing?"

"Shhh…I am going to see if I can get any of the children away from that group that have settled over the hill for the night. Obviously it is not for their health that they have stopped but because the guards are tired"

"You can't go alone and Emile said it would be near impossible to get any of them away without risking their or our lives. Come on, we'll get some from the camps on the way"

"No, I am doing this now, if you want to come, then do so but if not, please go back to bed. I will be fine"

Alex knew that Ardeth would not change his mind, so he told him to wait there while he got dressed. Ardeth nodded and told him not to be long. After getting dressed Alex went and roused two of the other men and told them what they were doing.

"He is mad, he will get killed or get us all killed. He must be stopped" whispered one of the men.

"It is no good, he will go with or without us, I would prefer it if you came with us. If there is any way of getting the children away from there, we will need you to explain to the adults"

The men agreed after a fashion and followed Alex into the carriage where Ardeth was waiting. They should have told the other people but thought it would be best to go alone, it might be safer if they were caught. However, Alex left a note for Evy, just in case.

"You are stubborn Ardeth and we do not agree with what you are doing. But we will come with you, just to cover your back" said Pierre.

They crept out of the train and onto the track, then crawled under it to the other side. Then they crawled across the embankment and up the hill to the top, so that they could see exactly where the people were. The Germans had got them in small groups at about hundred yard intervals, with only one guard to each group. They didn't need any more, the people were too weak to ever attempt to overpower the guard and anyway, they would be dead as soon as they moved.

"Look, there is a group right in front of us, the guard looks asleep. I will see to him" said Ardeth.

He crawled down the hill, through the undergrowth and with a knife, killed the guard where he lay. Then the others came down the hill and Pierre moved over to where the people were. He was there for about ten minutes before coming back to the others.

"Most of the adults are either dead or dying, either from hunger and torture or from typhoid. The children are not much better. I have explained to them what we are here for and that we cannot take them but we can take the children. They will talk between themselves, I have to go back in a few minutes and get their answer. We can't just take them, they would create a fuss."

"What if they say no?" asked Alex.

"Then we will have to think of something else and leave them to their fate. It is too dangerous to just snatch the children. We would have the whole guard patrol down on us"
A few minutes later, Pierre went back to the group and got their answer, all the while keeping a look out for any German soldiers that might be walking round just keeping an eye on everything. They weren't too bothered about the prisoners really, if they died, it would be one less for them to shoot along the way.

"Well, what do you want to do?" he asked one of the men.

"We have agreed to let you take them. All of us are going to be dead soon, we are too weak to fight this disease. But if one of our children can survive this war, we will die happier" said the man.

"Okay, get them all over this side of the group, as quietly as you can, then we will take them, one by one up the hill and over to the train which is about a quarter of a mile away. We will look after them and try and make sure that they survive"

He took one of the children with him and then sent Alex down to get the others, one by one. It took them about half an hour to get twenty children over the hill and onto the train. By this time Evy has seen the note and told the others. Emile was fuming.

"He will get us all killed, there is no way that the people will let their children go as easily as…what is that?"

He ran to the door with a gun ready to use if necessary. Pierre came through the door first with one of the children, followed by the others. Evy and two the men took the children through to the other carriage. Ardeth was the last to come on board, he carried a baby of about five months old.

"You lot are out of your minds, you could have been killed…"

"But we got some of them" replied Pierre "Twenty I think, some are ill with typhoid though, we will have to isolate them from the others. There was no trouble whatsoever, the guards are not interested, the one we killed was asleep"
"Okay, okay, but next time please ask me first. We will leave as soon as the column has left in the morning" he said.

"No" said Ardeth.

"What do you mean no, we have to leave to get to the camp" replied Emile.

"There are other children in those groups, if we can get them, we won't have to go to the camps."

"He does have a point" replied Pierre "The man I spoke to said that there were about seventy-five children altogether in the march. We never intended to take more than about a hundred back to Egypt. We could do it, then just take the train back to Romania"

Emile paced the floor, going over what the two men had said. It was going to be light in about three hours, and then they would have to leave, one direction or the other. Evy came back with Father Shandor, the children were with the other members of the group and they had heard what was being said.

"Let us look at it logically" said Father Shandor "You have spoken to the man, he will no doubt have passed the message on that someone is here to get the children out. We could be back in Romania in the same time as it took us to get this far. That way we don't get to far into occupied territory."

Finally Emile agreed and they decided that Father Shandor and Evy, plus three of the men would stay with the train, while the others went and got the rest of the children. First they got the man who they had spoke to, to go with them and explain to the others what was going on. He told them that the word had been passed around already and the children were being got ready to leave.

"We will have to go to each group of people, do you know how many groups there are?" asked Emile.

"There are ten groups, there are always ten groups, that way the soldiers have only about fifty people to watch and we are so weak, he wouldn't have a problem any more. We have given up on life now, don't worry about us, my friends"

"So how many guards would there be here?"

"I have seen fifteen soldiers, that is all, one for each group and the rest at the front of the column."

They took him with them, he was stronger than some of the others and didn't have the disease, plus he had no-one from his family left, he didn't care if he got killed helping them.

"Please just worry about the children, leave us some knives and things and we will see to the guards and either take our chances or make our own way to the camp. There are not many of them and we will bid our time, we might do it tonight or tomorrow night, but we will get away, don't worry"

"We will do it your way" said Ardeth "We will leave you some bread and water, we will leave it on the other side of the hill."

After that they got on with the task of getting the children back to the train. Everything was going well, until one of the soldiers saw what was going on. He fired his rifle into the air and then all hell broke loose.
They were on the last group but one and suddenly bullets were flying everywhere as the guards tried to kill whoever moved.

"Grab the children and run" shouted Emile "We will try and hold them off"

Ardeth and Alex ran with some of the children up the hill, shots rang out and two of the children fell. Alex checked them and found that they were dead, suddenly he felt a burning pain in his arm as a bullet hit him.

"Run…go on…get out of here" he shouted.

He used his good arm and fired at the soldiers, killing two of them. The other men were doing better and killed another five. Then one of the soldiers shouted.

"We surrender, stop firing" he shouted dropping his gun.

Within minutes, the rest of the soldiers, about five of them, were being held at gunpoint by the people. They would deal with them later.

"We will be okay now, I hope. Go on get out of here, take the children back to your country. Maybe one day, we may meet again"

Ardeth gave him a piece of paper that said where the children would be after the war.

"If any of you get through this, you will find them here" he said.

They thanked all the men for helping their children and then watched them go over the hill. The food was brought down and they watched them share it out as they left. Alex was waiting at the train for the others, his gun still aimed and then he saw them walking back. He saw Ardeth run towards him and then nothing.

"ALEX…." shouted Ardeth.

He saw the younger man, leaning against the train, with his gun raised as he came down the hill, then he saw the gun lower and the man grab his other arm. He guessed he had been shot and ran to him, just as he passed out. Carrying him onto the train, Ardeth and Emile laid him on one of the beds.

"It is only a flesh wound. We'll clean it up and then he can rest. He will be fine in the morning"

Evy would sit with him till he woke up and then let him rest. Ardeth spoke to Father Shandor.

"How many did we get after all?"

"There are sixty-eight children on board and Emile is starting the engine up and in a couple of hours we will be off. We did well tonight and saved ourselves a lot of problems by not going to the camp. Sometimes your stubborn behavior pays off" he said with a smile. "They are all sleeping I think and the men are looking after them. They will need feeding and looking after with more care for a while but I think they will be fine"

Suddenly Emile came in followed by six of the adults from the group. The others looked puzzled and thought that they might have changed their minds about the children.

"These people want to go with us. They are the strongest and have not got typhoid and think that it would be a good idea if the children had people they knew with them. What do you think?"

"I think it would be a great idea, but why only six?"

"There are one hundred and fifty people left now and most of them are too weak to travel or are too ill. The rest are too old. Josef, the man you spoke to, picked us to go with the children as we haven't been prisoners for that long and are the strongest. Would you let us come with you?"

Father Shandor said it would perfectly okay for them to go and were they sure that no-one else wanted to come. Somehow they would take them if they wanted to go. But the man of the group said no, that this was their decision.

An hour later the train moved off, back the way it had come and they would be in Szeged in about a day and then they would be fairly safe at the monastery.

"I feel sorry about the others being left behind" said Evy "Surely we could have brought them with us"

"No, if most of them are too ill because of typhoid, then we could spread it even further. We have a few cases with the children but they are not too bad and should be well in a few days. Those people know the score and that is why the six were chosen to go with us"

"We had to make sacrifices mum" said Alex.

"What are you doing up, you should be resting" she said.

"I'm fine, it aches a bit but it will soon heal. We did well tonight, just think of the children we have got, they will live through this now. Those people knew they couldn't come when they gave up the children in the first place. I am sure a lot of them will survive and come looking for us one day. Come on, let's get something to eat and go home"