Red Winter

24

‘Did you find something?’ Anna asked as I came back to her. ‘What is it?’

I stopped and shook my head.

‘Dead people?’

I didn’t need to answer for Anna to know she was right. Instead I studied the object in my hand, turning it over to see it better in the light.

‘What’s that?’

I held it up for her to see.

‘A cigarette end?’

‘Found it over there,’ I said. ‘Behind the houses.’

‘What’s so special about it?’

‘See this?’ I said, holding it up in front of her to look at. ‘The way this is rolled with the piece of card?’ There might be a thousand, a million people who did the same thing, but I had only ever known one person to do it, and it was too much of a coincidence to find it here. Beside the overturned body. ‘I think I know who smoked this.’

‘Koschei?’ she asked.

‘No. Someone else who’s looking for him.’ And if Tanya had come this way, then it was another clue to confirm I was on the right track. But the red star had been the biggest give away. Koschei had left his mark here.

‘Who is it?’

‘Someone I met.’ It was then that I remembered the cigarette she had given me. The one I had half smoked behind the church and put into my pocket. I took it out now and smelled the end, comparing it to the smell of the one I had found here, but the two just smelled of burned cigarettes.

‘Who?’ Anna asked.

‘Two women I met in Belev. My village. They’re called Tanya and Lyudmila. I think they might have been here not long ago. The prints I found.’

‘Are they soldiers?’

‘I’m not sure.’

Tanya had been here. I was certain. She had been here recently, and she had found the bodies before moving on.

I split the cigarette and brushed the tobacco into my pouch, then replaced it in my satchel and took out the water bottle.

‘We’re getting closer,’ I said, looking back for any sign of the riders while unscrewing the cap. ‘We’ll follow these prints for now.’

‘What about Tuzik?’ Anna asked.

I rinsed my mouth and spat water onto the road. ‘He’ll catch up like always.’ I had been able to shoo him away from the bodies while I was there, but he had not left them. Short of burying them, there was nothing I could do to stop him from doing what was natural to him. He would follow us when he was ready.

I didn’t want to think about Tuzik’s meal, though, so I drank and turned my mind to Tanya and Lyudmila. It was reassuring that they had come this way – I had begun to wonder if I might have passed Koschei, or if he might have turned back towards Tambov, but the signs were clear. Something was making him press north, and I was still on his trail, probably growing closer.

I wondered what orders he might have that would make him travel away from the centre of the fighting, or if something else was driving him north, but for now it didn’t matter. The important thing was that I was still headed in the right direction. If this was the way Tanya was coming, then it was the route to finding Koschei. Her desire to find him was strong, and she might have even discovered more about him on her path from Belev. She had come from a different direction, would have found different clues. Perhaps she even knew who he was now. She, too, might have heard the name Krukov in connection with the monster she was following.

I passed the water bottle to Anna, telling her to take as much as she needed.

‘We’ll fill it up here,’ I said when she handed it back to me. I had been trained not to waste any opportunity to replenish my supplies, so I went to the barrel at the side of the nearest izba and removed the stone from the top before taking out my knife. The blade slipped under the lid, cracking the icy seal when I twisted, giving enough room for me to take hold of it with my fingertips. I dropped the lid and used the butt of my knife to break the thin layer of ice that had formed on the surface, but as the pieces began to separate, I saw that the water beneath was spoiled. Tendrils of dark algae floated and swirled in the disturbance, like they did in the still parts of the lake during the summer. Before I had time to register the strangeness of such plant life in winter, I caught sight of something else among the chunks of ice and suspended fronds.

Something beneath the surface.

Something so white it was almost glowing in the darkness.

And when I leaned closer, brushing the ice aside with the blade of my knife, I realised it was not algae that hung in the water but hair. And the whiteness was skin.

Her eyes were still open. Her mouth was stretched wide. Her arms were twisted behind her back, her body wedged in place.

He likes to drown the women.

I recoiled, dropping the canteen.

‘What is it?’ Anna asked.

I stared at the barrel as if the woman inside might push to her feet, wet hair falling about her bloated white face.

‘What’s the matter?’

Was this how Marianna would look?

‘Kolya!’

I turned away so I didn’t have to see that bloated face as I snatched up the lid, shoving it down on the barrel, closing the woman back in. I pushed it down hard, then lifted the rock into place and stepped away.

‘Nothing,’ I said as I retrieved the canteen. ‘It’s nothing. We need to go, that’s all. We need to go.’

We stayed on the road, seeing one or two small settlements in the distance on either side, always looking back, always scanning ahead.

‘My wife is called Marianna,’ I said.

Anna made no comment. I wasn’t even sure if she had heard me.

‘I sometimes call her Anna. The two of you almost share a name.’

‘And you’re going to keep looking for her, like Prince Ivan looked for Marya Morevna.’

‘Yes. Except I’m no prince.’

‘Is she pretty?’

I couldn’t see her face in my mind, so I closed my eyes and tried to picture her. I was bothered that I was still unable to see her. I knew she had hair the colour of winter wheat and eyes that were blue like a clear summer sky. I knew her nose was small and sharp and well formed, and that her lips were thin. I even knew that her left front tooth was chipped from the time she fell when she was seventeen, but I couldn’t see that in my mind.

‘Yes,’ I said, opening my eyes. ‘Like you.’

‘What about your sons? What are their names?’

I smiled to myself and imagined them all sitting round the table. Again, I couldn’t picture their faces, but I could feel them all together, Marianna taking care of them, making our little izba a good home. We didn’t have much, but we had enough. A house and an outbuilding. A small plot of land.

‘Misha is the oldest,’ I said. ‘Then there’s Pavel. He’s about your age.’

‘What are they like?’

‘Serious most of the time, I suppose, but not always.’ I remembered how excited and proud they’d been to show me the rabbits and fish they had caught when I was last there. ‘They like to be outside in the summer, just like my brother and I did, daring each other into the forest, hiding in the wheat, swimming in the…’ I faltered as the image of the lake came to mind and I pushed it away. ‘When we sat for a meal, there was always a lot of talk. Sometimes it was like they’d never stop.’

‘So they’re good friends?’

‘Definitely. They look after each other too. Misha always lets Pavel have the last piece of fruit or the last pinch of sugar, and Pavel lets his brother have the best side of the bed. Misha even tried to carve a wooden horse for his brother once, like the ones my papa used to carve for me.’ I smiled at the memory of it. ‘Wasn’t so good, though,’ I laughed. ‘Marianna and I thought it looked more like a goat.’

Anna smiled and waited for me to go on.

‘They’re not perfect, though,’ I said ‘Boys are boys. They argue sometimes, just like all brothers do. Like I did with mine. They answer back too. You know, when they were younger, my wife used to clip them on the backside with a wooden spoon when they talked back.’

‘Didn’t it hurt?’

‘Probably,’ I laughed again, remembering how cross she would get if they dirtied the house or took food without asking. ‘But not too much. As they got older, though, they were too quick for her. Misha is like a wolf, the way he slips away from her. One time she chased him out into the road. It was autumn and the mud was thick and she slipped, right in front of the whole village. She was so mad… but when everyone laughed, there wasn’t anything she could do but laugh herself.’

‘Will she hit me with a wooden spoon?’

‘Of course not.’ I nudged her. ‘The spoon is only for the boys.’

It was good to think about home as a place filled with warmth and sound and life rather than the empty village I had left behind. I smiled to myself, enjoying the unexpected moment. The thoughts came to me in the way that a patch of cloud might clear on a dull day and let the sun shine through and I allowed myself to bask in them for a while as we continued along the road.

With Anna’s next words, though, the clouds reformed and closed around the gap.

‘There’s another farm.’

I scoped it with the binoculars, but it was in ruins like the last settlement. Just two deserted buildings burned to almost nothing, standing beside a single chestnut tree that had grown to lean away from the wind. In the lenses I saw the bodies hanging from the tree, twisting in the wind.

Anna was afraid to be left alone, but I didn’t want to take either her or Kashtan any closer, so we stopped a hundred metres from it and I dismounted to investigate on my own.

When I returned, I had seen more flayed hands, more branded stars, and I mounted without a word, taking Kashtan off the road and steering well clear of the farm before we came back to the road.

We were still on the right track. Koschei had been here.

Kashtan moved on at a steady pace for another hour, and apart from the occasional fresh, clear print in the frozen mud, we had the road to ourselves. Anna and I hardly said a word to one another – both of us were consumed by our own thoughts – and we travelled in silence but for the thump of Kashtan’s hooves, the regular rhythm of her breath and the creak and clink of tack.

There was almost no distinction in the landscape of this part of the steppe. The road ahead and behind were the same. The land to either side of us was untouched grass with the occasional field in the distance to east or west, but nothing distinct, and for a long time, the horizon remained unchanged. We saw one other farm, at least a kilometre east of the track, and with the lenses, I watched a single farmer working in the field.

‘Are you going to go closer?’ There was tension in Anna’s voice.

‘No.’ I was convinced I was heading in the right direction and was sure I would learn more when we reached Dolinsk, so we continued until we reached the top of a rise that looked down at the steppe before us. From here, there was an unbroken sea of frost, with only a hint of forest on the horizon. The road snaked away to our right, cutting down the slope and disappearing in the whitened grass.

‘Is that where we’re going?’ Anna asked.

‘Dolinsk,’ I said.

In the middle distance, perhaps eight or ten kilometres away, the town settled in the bowl of the shallow valley. Larger than Belev, Dolinsk had grown in a different way. In the centre of the town stood the traditional izbas, but they were surrounded by other buildings built from stone and, at the far edge, the blue dome of a modest church.

Remaining in the saddle, I pulled the heavy binoculars from my saddlebag and scanned the steppe beyond. In the magnification, I spotted two dark smudges on the road, moving away from me, directly towards Dolinsk.

‘That’s them,’ I said under my breath.

‘Who?’

‘The people I told you about – Tanya and Lyudmila.’

‘Can I see?’

I put the strap over her neck and let her take the binoculars.

‘How can you tell it’s them? It just looks like dots to me. Or lines.’

‘It’s them,’ I said. ‘I’m sure of it.’

‘What if you’re wrong, though? What if it’s someone else? Koschei…’

‘If it was him, there would be more of them. No, I’m sure it’s Tanya.’ It had to be them.

‘What’s she like?’ Anna asked.

‘Who?’

‘Tanya.’

‘I don’t really know.’ I took the binoculars and watched the two figures for a while, seeing their steady progress, then swung them across to study the steppe on either side of them. Over to the right, there was a shine in the grass and thistles; a trail of bent and broken stems suggesting a larger number of horses had passed either up or down the rise, but without being close enough to see which way the stalks were lying, it was impossible to know which. I wondered if it could be the remnants of Koschei’s progress, or something else, but it had been at least a few days ago, judging by the way the grass had started to spring back.

‘Do they know where Koschei is?’ She couldn’t speak his name without a slight tremble in her voice.

‘I don’t know. Maybe.’

‘So are we going after them?’

‘Not yet.’ I rummaged in one of the saddlebags behind me, taking out a piece of salo I’d found in Belev. The thin layer of fat coating the smoked ham had started to yellow and it didn’t smell fresh. It would be better than a lot of the things I’d eaten on my journey to Belev, but it would be nothing compared to the meal I had eaten with Lev and Anna. I cut a corner from it and handed it to Anna. ‘You haven’t eaten since… Take it. You need to keep well.’

She looked at it, shaking her head, but took it between finger and thumb as if it might be dangerous.

‘Eat.’

She nibbled the tiniest piece and chewed it slowly. I smiled at her and took another bite as I glanced back at the horizon behind us. We had been lucky so far, but I didn’t know how long it would last. The men following me were well trained, battle-hardened and driven. They would push on as much as they could, and I found myself touching the chotki once more, hoping, praying that our tricks to cover our progress had worked.

Kashtan moved off the road as we ate, finding a patch of good grass and lowering her head to graze. The movement tugged the reins, pulling at my arm, but she had done enough to earn it. She had worked hard and the least I could do was allow her to eat. It would keep up her strength.

‘Tuzik’s coming,’ Anna said.

He was trotting along the road, nose to the ground, swerving from side to side as he took the multitude of scents from the dirt.

‘He must like us.’

‘Maybe,’ I said, taking a sip from my canteen. The water was icy cold and washed away the greasy taste of the salo, but it made me think of the woman in the barrel.

‘Why else would he follow us?’

I gave the canteen to her, glad she hadn’t seen that horrible whiteness beneath the water. ‘Maybe he doesn’t have anywhere else to go.’

Anna wiped the mouth of it with her gloved palm. ‘He could have stayed at the train. There were people there.’ She tipped back her head and took a sip.

‘True.’

‘So I think it’s because he likes us. Likes you.’

‘Me?’

‘He can see that you’re nice.’

‘Come on,’ I said, replacing the cap. ‘Let’s get moving.’

We followed the women’s tracks, always looking, always aware. I stopped from time to time to scan the surroundings with the binoculars, but never for long. There was a constant fear of danger here, just as there had been in the forest, but this was different. In there, it was the imaginary that played on my mind. It was the shadows and the creak of the trees in the wind. It was the dark fingers of the forest that inspired a more primeval fear. Out here on the steppe, it was the sharpshooter’s bullet that concerned me, the scouts of an approaching unit, and I was growing more and more conscious of the riders who might be following. While I was pleased to have caught up with Tanya and Lyudmila, and hoped they might have more information about the man we were following, I was concerned that the devils on our heels may catch up too.

The women had reached the part of the steppe that levelled out towards Dolinsk and they had split up, moving in opposite directions to investigate the outskirts of the town before they went in. There was a chance that Koschei was still there, or perhaps some other army had garrisoned the town for its own purposes, although there was no immediate evidence of that.

Spying the women in the distance, I watched them trot away from each other and approach the town. They looked as if they knew what they were doing and I was reminded of how well they worked together. If I had been down there with my brother, we might have used the same tactic to approach Dolinsk.

I moved the binoculars up to study the town. We were closer now, everything was clearer in the lenses, and the buildings were better magnified. The stone homes at the edge closest to me were sturdy and standing intact, but some of them were in ruins, perhaps struck by stray artillery fire as if the town had been caught in the crossfire between two forces. There were wooden izbas that were little more than blackened piles of charred logs.

‘Looks like they had some bad luck,’ I said.

‘Was it Koschei?’ Anna asked. ‘Has he been here?’

‘He’s not responsible for all the bad in the world.’

‘But those farms…’

‘This looks different… bigger. I think there were a lot of men here. Some kind of battle, but it must have happened a while ago, judging by the way it’s been cleared up.’

Anna tensed in front of me and sat up straight in the saddle. ‘There’s something there.’ She raised a hand and pointed into the distance. ‘Further away.’

Kashtan snorted and shifted beneath me again, eager to move on, but I held her steady.

‘Where?’ I narrowed my eyes.

‘There.’ Anna gestured with her small, gloved hand, stretching her arm further as if it might help. ‘Something in the distance. Behind the town.’

‘You have good eyes,’ I said, raising the binoculars to look at the horizon. ‘Is that… ?’

Beyond Dolinsk, the steppe stretched into the distance, the expanse of frosted fields broken by solitary trees standing guard, and at the limit of my vision, where the fields met the pale winter sky, there was movement on the horizon. Dark, indistinct patches coming into view.

I focused on Tanya and Lyudmila once again, judging their distance from Dolinsk. They were almost there, coming back towards each other as if they had decided the town was safe, riding side by side as they made their final approach. They wouldn’t be able to see beyond the roofs now. They had no idea that something was coming.

Looking back at the horizon, it was difficult to know for sure what I was looking at, but I could make a good guess. It was shadowy and ill defined, but it was growing, lengthening like a snake uncoiling itself from an unseen lair beyond the horizon.

‘That looks like a column to me,’ I said. ‘What do you think? You’re the one with the good eyes.’ I held the binoculars in front of Anna and let her take them.

‘Soldiers?’ she asked. ‘Looks like… lots of soldiers.’

Kashtan took a step forward, her ears turning, listening.

‘Soldiers,’ I agreed, taking the binoculars.

I estimated the column might be ten kilometres away, but it was difficult to be sure. They weren’t moving quickly, but they were fast enough for me to see the line growing as it marched down into the bowl of the steppe, straight towards Dolinsk. Longer and longer it grew, wider and wider.

‘There’s a lot of them,’ I whispered. ‘A small army.’ If they rode into Dolinsk, they would run straight into Tanya and Lyudmila. ‘I wonder what colour they are.’

‘Does it matter?’ Anna asked.

I packed the binoculars back into the saddlebag. ‘You ready to hold on to your cap, Anna?’

She reached up and tugged it down hard.

‘How about you, Tuzik?’ He was lying in the grass with his chin between his paws. ‘You ready for a good run?’

‘Are we going to go fast?’ Anna looked back at me.

‘Yes, we are. Hold tight.’

I spurred Kashtan into a trot and then pushed her into a gallop. She didn’t need too much encouragement, and she was surefooted as she thundered through the grass, hooves pounding the frozen dirt.

I leaned forward and kept low, holding tight to the reins and pressing Anna lower to Kashtan’s neck. I had to get to Tanya. She and Lyudmila would not have seen the army; they would enter Dolinsk thinking it safe. Perhaps even the people of Dolinsk, as many or few as they were, would not spot the advancing soldiers until it was too late for them to do anything. There was a chance the army meant them no harm, but it was unlikely that such a large body of fighters would pass the town without stopping to strip it clean of food and provisions.

There was little I could do for the town or its inhabitants other than warn them, but I had to get Tanya and Lyudmila away. They might have information I needed.

I urged Kashtan faster, feeling the cold air biting at my face and the tears streaming from the corners of my eyes. My kit rattled and jangled, Kashtan’s breathing resounded about me, and I felt every step she took. At first, Tuzik kept up, his long legs a black blur, but he tired quickly at that pace and soon fell behind.

‘Come on, girl,’ I shouted as we raced down into the bottom of the steppe, squinting to see the dark shapes ahead that were Tanya and Lyudmila.

Kashtan gave everything she had. She was sweating hard despite the cold, her breath steaming.

By the time Tanya and Lyudmila were out of sight among the houses, Kashtan began to slow. She had done everything she could, so I let her drop to a walking pace. We had gained good ground, though, and as we reached the bottom of the valley, the houses and buildings of Dolinsk grew in front of us, stretching outwards to replace the steppe beyond. Those solitary trees and the approaching soldiers were now obscured, and all that was visible were the stone houses, the izbas and the pale blue church dome at the far end of town.

I reached back and fumbled a rag from my kit, passing it to Anna, saying, ‘Dry her neck. It’s freezing out here.’

Anna was used to horses. She wiped the sweat from Kashtan’s coat without complaint as we pressed on, and I saw the care she took with it, rubbing the cloth along the horse’s neck, careful to move with direction of her coat.

We had reached the outskirts of Dolinsk by the time she had finished and I put the rag away, telling Anna to take the reins for a moment. She barely had to do anything – Kashtan was following the road – but Anna was confident to do as I asked, keeping us moving towards the town. I took off my gloves and dug the revolver from my pocket. I held it behind Anna’s back, pointing out into the fields as I opened the cylinder and checked the load. The rifle would have been better – it had a shortened barrel that made it good for use from horseback – but I had given it to Lev and now it was in the hands of the men who had caught him.

‘Are we in danger?’ Anna asked when she realised what I was doing.

‘I just want to be ready,’ I told her. I didn’t know who was in the town, who might have seen us approaching.

Satisfied the revolver was in good working condition, I tucked it into my belt, keeping it close to hand, and stuffed my gloves into my pocket. It wasn’t so cold yet that it would freeze my fingers, and gloved hands would be a hindrance if I needed to use the weapon.

Reaching the edge of town, I took the reins back from Anna and dismounted. ‘We’ll walk from here.’

Had I been alone, I would have ridden through Dolinsk. Kashtan would have given me an advantage of height and speed if ambushed, but Anna’s presence made things more complicated. If we remained on horseback, Anna in front, she would bear the brunt of any attack from ahead, and if we changed positions, she would be in the line of fire from behind. I considered leaving her on the outskirts, but didn’t want her to be alone and knew she would object.

‘Stay between me and Kashtan,’ I said, as I tugged the revolver from my belt. ‘Do whatever I tell you.’