Red Winter

20

Anna called for him. She screamed for him.

‘Papa!’

It was the single most terrible thing I had ever heard.

Behind us, the soldiers continued to shoot. They didn’t know who they were shooting at or what they might hit, but they shot anyway, over and over again, their bullets peppering the forest.

‘Papa!’

Lev’s horse writhed and kicked in the undergrowth, the black hide around her shoulder glistening with the dampness of her blood. She screamed and rolled her eyes, adding to the already nightmarish sounds that enveloped us.

‘Papa!’

Kashtan tried to choose a new route to avoid the fallen animal, so I resisted her, slowing her as we approached the spot where Lev had fallen. It was the most natural thing in the world for me to want to reunite Anna with her father, but as soon as we were close enough to see him, I knew there was nothing to be gained from it. We couldn’t help Lev now, and if we stopped, we would be in greater danger from the soldiers behind us who might already be advancing into the forest.

I spurred Kashtan on and put one hand around Anna, pulling her to me as we passed the place where her father now lay.

Lev wasn’t moving.

He was on his front, his head turned at an awkward angle, his face pressed against the base of the tree he had struck. Underneath him, a fallen branch, one of its broken fingers piercing his neck just under the chin.

There was no doubt that he was dead.