Red Winter

16

The mist stole the radiance of the hoarfrost on the thistles. It settled its damp and delicate fingers over everything, smothering the land in a bewildering half-light that lowered the sky and folded in around us. It gave its allegiance to no one. It favoured no colour. Just as it kept us hidden from our pursuers, so it kept them hidden from us. If they had chosen to continue after us, we had no way of knowing.

Kashtan walked on without seeming to notice, but there was nothing visible ahead of us now other than a few metres of frozen grassland. When I turned to look back, there was nothing to see behind us either. We were alone in our pocket of the world, isolated from whatever might be lurking beyond the wall of mist. Marianna would have known the name of some spirit or devil that was out there, protecting its home or punishing the wicked, but my concern was for something more human. My mind was on the seven riders and I kept us moving at a good pace, ever afraid they might appear as wraiths from the gloom.

‘You keep looking back,’ Anna said, breaking the almost lifeless calm. ‘You think they’re following.’

‘I think it’s possible.’

‘It’s all right,’ Lev said, holding her tight. ‘Don’t be scared.’

‘I’m not scared.’

‘We’ll be fine,’ I told her. ‘We’ll be in the trees soon and then we can hide our trail better.’

‘Who are they?’ Lev asked. ‘Why do they want you so much?’

‘Chekists, probably. I deserted, so they want to—’

‘But who are you that they’re so desperate to catch you? That it needs seven men? And to follow you like—’

‘I’m no one,’ I said, and it occurred to me that when we reached the trees, perhaps I should let Lev and Anna go ahead. I could stay behind and make a stand; try to pick them off from the treeline. But the men following me were well trained and experienced and I was haunted by the image of leaving Marianna and the boys without anyone to come for them. I had to keep going for their sake.

As we continued into the mist and the crushing silence ahead, I pulled my scarf up to cover my mouth. My head was never still, always moving, my eyes always searching, watching for shadows, but there was nothing. We were the only living things on that steppe. The regular crunch of horses’ hooves breaking the frost, the occasional dull clink of a bridle were the only sounds.

‘Find the way,’ I said to Kashtan. ‘Find the way, girl.’

She snorted and nodded and kept on moving.

On and on.

We saw nothing. No one. We might have been moving through a dream.

I estimated we were riding for two hours, steady but slow, when I caught sight of the forest, sinister and imposing. It was a shadow, a presence that darkened the mist and stood like an uninviting guard across our path. Coming close enough to make out the individual trees, I spotted the track just a few paces ahead of us. It was almost indistinguishable from the sea of white we had just come through. Seldom used, the ice and the frost had claimed the rutted track in the same way it had claimed everything else.

‘Well done,’ I said, bringing Kashtan to a stop when we were on the road. I looked both ways, but there was nothing to see, so I climbed down and inspected the track, walking a few steps in either direction.

‘The road to Dolinsk,’ I said when Lev dismounted and came to join me. Anna stayed close to him.

‘You think the dog’s all right?’ she asked.

I glanced back into the mist. ‘I’m sure he’s fine. He has our scent. If he wanted to, he could find us in the dark.’

On the road, there were many clear marks in the mud from horses that had passed this way, prints on either side of the track too, close to the trees, as if large numbers of animals had used this route together. Armies had been crossing this part of the country for years now and these tracks might have been here for as long as that, or they might have been fresh just a few days ago. Frozen in time as they were, myriad prints intermingling, it was almost impossible to tell.

‘Nothing recent,’ I said, seeing how the ice had formed hard in the marks and the latest frost had left its crystal calling card. If Tanya and Lyudmila had come this way, they would have kept within the forest – like me, they wanted to avoid any confrontation – but some of those prints could have been made by Koschei and his men. He could have been in this exact spot. Perhaps Marianna had even stood here; Misha or Pavel might have put their feet in the place where mine were now. I crouched and took off my glove to put my fingers onto the frozen mud as if it might somehow bring me closer to my wife and children, but there was no consolation to be taken from the hard ground.

I stood and pulled down my scarf so that I could put my face against Kashtan’s and she pushed her nose into my chest. ‘What would I do without you?’ I said, taking her reins and turning to look at the forest. ‘Come on.’

I led her forward, right to the trees, so that I could smell the damp earthiness, but something made me stop.

‘What is it?’ Lev asked. ‘What’s the matter?’

‘It’s safer for us in there, out of sight –’ I glanced at Kashtan and put a hand to her cheek ‘– but…’ Staring into the misty gloom between the crowded trunks, I was reminded of the horrors I had witnessed among the trees close to Belev. The blood and burned flesh, and the sense of something terrible lying in wait for me. ‘We’ll stay out here a while longer,’ I said, turning north and following the treeline. For now we would use the weather as our friend; we could enter the forest later, when there was no other choice.

I glanced down at the multitude of hoof and boot and cart prints in the ground at our feet. ‘Stay in these tracks. It shouldn’t be long before they freeze over like all the others. It’ll make us harder to follow.’

So we went on, heads down, using the forest and the road as our guide. With poor visibility it was difficult to estimate how far behind us Belev was, and how far ahead Dolinsk lay, but at least we were heading north again, following the trail Koschei had taken. Assuming Tanya and Lyudmila had been telling the truth.

We curved east and then west, cutting between more pockets of forest so that at times we were flanked on either side by the dark sentinels of oak and birch and maple and spruce. I checked my compass from time to time, knowing the more direct route to Dolinsk would be straight through the trees, so as soon as they began to thin out, we entered the forest.

The mist still drifted among the contorted trunks and twisted branches, but behind us, it had thinned and I stopped to raise the binoculars to my eyes and scan the steppe. The farm was far behind us now, as if it had never existed, but I half expected seven dark smudges to appear, hazy and indistinct. I wished I could see through the mist, know how far away they were, see what course of action they had chosen, but all I could do was guess.

Guess and keep moving.

‘Are they coming?’ Anna asked. ‘Can you see anything?’

‘Nothing yet –’ I lowered the lenses ‘– but we should go into the woods now.’

‘Let me see.’ Lev reached out for the field glasses and I let him take them.

‘What about the dog?’ Anna asked. ‘Any sign of him?’

‘No,’ I said. ‘Sorry.’

‘Could they follow him?’ Lev scanned the distance. ‘Could he lead them to us?’

‘They don’t need him to lead them across the steppe – our trail is clear enough – and they can move much faster than him. My guess is… if he’s still following us, and they are too, then he’d be a long way behind those riders by now. He looked half starved to me; he’ll be slow.’

‘But if they lose our trail, they could wait for him to catch up and take our scent.’

‘They could – if he hasn’t given up or exhausted himself. Anyway, there are ways to muddle our tracks once we’re in the trees, make it hard for them.’

‘Is that what you did before?’ Lev asked.

‘They’re good trackers,’ I admitted, ‘but we’ll confuse them. It will be easier to do that with two horses.’ They had followed me this far, though, and I was beginning to wonder if I could ever lose them.

Lev handed the binoculars back to me and put his hand on my shoulder. ‘We’ll be fine, then.’ He forced a smile.

‘Of course we will.’

And with that, we turned and entered the shadow of the forest.

The trees were tight together on the edge of the wood, brought closer by the shrubs and bushes, which grew in twisted thickets between them, but once we were inside, they separated to a comfortable distance apart. They were too close for a horse-drawn sled or cart, but fine for a single rider. Once we moved past the treeline, the bracken and undergrowth thinned out, making our progress easier, so we mounted up and let Kashtan find the way, steering her on a different course from time to time, doubling back on ourselves, avoiding areas where we might displace the vegetation or leave visible prints. We separated at times, creating different trails, confused signs, clearing away the horses’ dung when they dropped it, and when we found a small stream, we used it as our path for a while, breaking our scent and hiding our tracks.

As Kashtan took us on, deeper and deeper into the mist, time passing almost unnoticed, the sound of something alien arose in the distance.

A clatter and clank of metal. The hiss of steam and the thunder of rolling wheels.

It resonated through the trees, an unnatural and intrusive discord in the wilderness.

Anna gripped her father tighter and he, in turn, released the reins with one hand so that he could put his other hand on hers for reassurance.

He looked across at me, opening his mouth to speak but flinching as a shrill scream cut through the cold air, snatching away his words.

His horse lurched beneath him, her legs locking for a moment, jerking Lev and Anna forwards before she backed away, head turning from side to side, searching for sight of the danger she could hear. Her muscles flexed, and she turned in a tight circle, desperate to escape the unnatural sound. She snorted hard, her breath coming in great clouds of steam.

‘Whoa.’ Lev calmed her, stroked her neck while the scream faded to an echo and then to nothing, allowing the rhythmic clatter and clank to rise from behind and threaten to fill our world.