The Mission

The Romanian's brains spray all over Sabine's injured form.

COMBAT IS OVER

Before Swann shoots and takes down the wild man, the Romanian brutalizes Sabine with another pair of vicious sword strokes. She ends up on the ground at the end of the melee, bleeding and badly injured, but conscious. She groans and retches when brains spray in her face...

Irish crosses immediately to the felled woman, crouching to see if she’s alright:

"She’s alive!" he tells the others, relief in his voice. "Bloody hell. I hope they’ve got squads a little more put together than us lot." he laughs, letting the adrenaline and worry seep out.

"We nearly got done in by a hungry Romanian farmer. Thought you lot were the best of the best?

They only sent me along so we’d have one good looking one in the group."

Dan frowns at Irish and quickly kneels next to their prone injured compatriot. "We need to get Sabine fixed up. She's looking pale. Need to stop the bleeding."

"Dan, do what you can, she should have plenty of supplies in her medical bag."

Swann replaces the two rounds in his revolver and moves back to the only obvious exit, the way the swordsman came from and take up watch while Dan tries to put Sabine back together.

The partially collapsed doorway the insane Romanian came through leads to a six-metre passageway coming to an abrupt halt at a pile of rubble and fallen masonry. Several steps leading upwards can be made out at the base of the pile, the obvious route worn by many feet crossing over top of the pile.

On the ground, Sabine is shuddering from the shock of her injuries, but she directs the soldier to her medical bag and offers advice to Dan as best she can while he cleans and bandages the deep wound to her shoulder. Bones have likely been broken, she knows, but there's no time to stop and properly diagnose her injury.

Eventually she's back on her feet, but it's not hard to tell that a stiff breeze would blow the woman over. It's an injury that would normally require hospitalization, but... they have a mission. Onward they go.

Dan looks at the rubble and the steps and turns to Sabine. "Are you going to be able to navigate those steps okay? I can lend a hand if you need one."

Dan had a lot of respect for the woman. She was one tough cookie. He couldn't imagine what kind of pain she was in.

As independent as Sabine is, as she always wants to be -- now is not the time to be prideful. She nods graciously at the American, accepting whatever help he'll offer when the way forward isn't clear.

Swann will advance to the top of the pile and peer over.

Irish will stick to the rear. While it seemed likely that another attack would come from ahead, they couldn’t discount the possibility that another villager was waiting to pounce from some crevice somewhere.

"We better hope theres another way out. She’ll never climb that rope. I’d have to strap you to my back, Sister."

Dan sticks next to Sabine very concerned about her wounds and broken bones. "There's got to be more than one way out of here. What do you see, James?"

His mind starts envisioning ways to climb the rope with Sabine if it comes to that. He's pretty adept at finding atypical solutions to problems with whatever material or tools he can find at hand

The path over the pile leads to a shaft downward, where the sounds of mining begins to pick up again. Looking over the pit, you see the workers, dirty but dressed like the people from the village, mining hard rock and putting small blue crystals into a bucket. They have a couple of lanterns, but it is mostly dark down there. There is no way out for them, but there is a rope ladder bunched up at the top.

You surmise that the Nazis lowered the workers down, and will retrieve them at shift end.

"Don't worry about me," Sabine says when there's talk about how hard it will be for her to go back the way they came. "I'll manage, somehow."

When they spy the villagers-turned miners, a determined look crosses her face and she makes for the rope ladder, meaning to cast it into the mine to allow the townsfolk a means of escape...

Seeing the townsfolk below and Sabine's pained but determined motion, Swann, being the closest to the rope ladder tosses it down.

Turning to look back at the others, "Dead end, let's get out of this hole and get moving before anyone comes to check on the villagers."

"Should we try to get one of them’s attention? See if they are all, you know… like that last bastard."

They didn’t need a few dozen zombies closing in on all sides.

"No wait," Dan says to James. "Yeah, we should, Irish. Find out what we can and then scarper."

"Pssst, hello." Dan tries to attract the attention of one of the miners. "Hello there! You, hello!"

Irish readies his weapon, preparing to take the brunt of an attack, should another of them turn out to be violent.

"Aye! Better to find out now instead of at take-off, isn’t it?"