“There’s a weapon up there for you. Perhaps God will show you how to use it.” Aarne winced as if he regretted sounding so cynical. “Just because I don’t believe in him doesn’t mean he can’t help you. No?” He rolled his eyes, then added, a consolation, “This is for you, too.”

He was holding out a silver flask. Hugo grasped it in one outsized mitten. “Gin? Vodka?”

“No. Drink it when you need courage. Take small sips.”

“Is it whiskey? I don’t drink much—”

“And don’t drink until after you’ve started fighting.”

Hugo stared at the mysterious potion. “But why—?”

“Please go up the stairs. There’s no time.”

“When this is over …” Hugo began. He had desires he could hardly name, even to himself, feelings that embarrassed him. Not just that he was defending real, lonely, beautiful women, but… “Perhaps we can—”

“We’ll talk of Paris, of course,” Aarne interrupted. “Go.” He touched Hugo’s arm.

Hugo readjusted his rifle, and ducked under the archway. There was a clatter as Aarne shut and locked the door behind him. The sound froze Hugo in place.

Aarne’s muffled voice came through the door. “You’re not walking up the stairs.”

“You locked the door.”

“Would you rather I leave it unlocked?”

Grudgingly, Hugo returned to walking up the staircase, a cochlea of stone stairs winding around a pillar. The light was dim, less a solid glow than many adjoining slivers, beams thrown off a prism. Soon Hugo realized the illumination came from an ingenious series of slits in the great stone walls, which captured and refracted the incandescence of the snow.

The top room of the tower was squat and wide, with rafters in which there were dozens of old bird’s nests. Facing the courtyard were narrow windows running floor to roofline, and oak flooring littered with hay bales. There was a medieval slit of a window, and a man was standing in front of it.

Hugo threw himself to the ground, face-first, colliding with hay dirt. He groped for the bayonet on the Springfield, spitting bristles out of his mouth. Looking up, sensing a curious lack of motion, he regarded the man in the room again.

Frozen in place, one arm over his head as if about to throw a pineapple grenade, feet seemingly too large for the pint-sized body. And flat. Hugo could see him in silhouette, and as he stood, he realized it was a cardboard cutout of a man. Drawing closer, he brushed at his dirty sleeves and tugged at the leather strap for his rifle, asserting dignity.

When he was three paces away, he lit a match, the better to see what he was looking at. There was a quick flare of light that he sheltered so that no one outside in the snow could see it. And then the features were revealed. Hugo was standing next to a standee of Charlie Chaplin.