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One of the burly farmers who had flanked her earlier, the bearded one the size of a tree, sprinted to his side as if he too realised the cottage was a lost cause and this was now a matter of life and death.
‘I’m going up!’ Rafe gestured to the broken window above, hoping the ominously smoking wisteria trunks beneath it would take his weight. ‘That is their only way out.’
The farmer nodded and without arguing used all his brute strength to boost Rafe halfway up the trellis, and he hoisted himself the rest while the ancient, heated branches groaned around him.
‘Sophie!’ He tumbled into the smoky room in his haste to get to her, his lungs instantly rebelling at the acrid, hot air which filled them. ‘Sophie!’
Like her, he sucked in a chest full of air from the window then ran towards the glowing landing, stopping short of the door as she stumbled back through it, coughing and fighting for breath.
He caught her as she collapsed against him, her limp hand wafting away from the advancing sea of flames snaking up the staircase. ‘Back room...can’t open door.’
He half walked her, half dragged her to the window, and when she tried to fight him to get back to her aunt, he shook his head.
‘I’ll get her!’ He pushed her towards the window. Thankfully, the burly farmer had organised a circle of villagers who all stood waiting with a blanket stretched between them to catch her. ‘You need to get out now!’
‘No!’ The whites of her eyes wide, she clutched at his shirt trying to fight him off. ‘I’m not leaving without her!’
‘Oh, yes, you are!’ He hoisted her into his arms and wrestled her onto the windowsill, and she fought him every step of the way.
‘Let go of me!’
Blasted woman was going to be the death of him! Literally.
It took all his strength to unpeel her clawed fingers from himself and then the window frame, and with one almighty push he managed to send her tumbling to safety. As the blanket collapsed around her like a cocoon, Rafe filled his coughing lungs again, then dashed back to the door.
The smoke from the staircase was thick and black here, stinging his eyes and clogging the back of his throat with soot, but he pushed onwards, using one outstretched palm to guide his way and his other arm as a shield against the smoke, then plunged onto the landing in the direction she had pointed.
He hit the door with a thud, then scrambled to find the handle and open the thing—but only a sliver. Something was blocking it from the inside.
Something big and heavy and unyielding.
Using his shoulder as a battering ram, Rafe bashed his body against it repeatedly, managing to move it barely an inch at a time until it finally gave enough for him to squeeze inside. He lunged towards the dark silhouette of what he hoped was the bed, then groped for an eternity around what felt like heavy curtain while he battled his way in.
When his fingers touched something unmistakably human, he dragged the old lady towards him, then flung himself over her as part of the ceiling crashed down, missing them both by inches.
As Rafe coughed out the cloud of shattered plaster which seemed to have coated his lungs, the remaining beams above creaked and rumbled as they warped within the carcass of the roof, and he knew he had scant minutes—perhaps seconds—to get out.
It took everything he had left to gather the old woman’s lifeless body into his arms and haul her off the mattress, then to drag the dead weight of her backwards over the splintered, smoking carnage which now littered the floor.
What was left of the staircase had transformed into a fiery pit which threatened to swallow the landing whole—but still he ploughed on. His only hope the single broken window to freedom. The only way out.
With one last heave he dragged the body in his arms towards it.
Six feet.
Five feet.
Four...
There was a noise. A terrifying, rumbling, wood-splitting sound that caused blind panic before something hard and heavy hit him across the back, knocking the last precious air out of his body as it crushed him.
His lungs were on fire.
His ribs refused to move.
Every airless breath futile as his constricted chest heaved in desperation and his head spun. He saw the face of the bearded tree man at the window as he fell to the floor. Heard shouts and then a crash as something else collapsed. Felt pain.
Searing pain.
