Red Winter

25

It was almost impossible to follow Tanya’s route. Among the houses, the ground was clear of grass, packed hard and ripe for hoof prints, but there were many here already. The paths were a mosaic of prints, and though some looked fresher than others, there was no way of knowing which belonged to Tanya and Lyudmila. Their prints were lost in the throng, just as mine would be, making it more difficult for our pursuers. I had been to Dolinsk before, though, and knew the centre of the town, so that’s where I headed, thinking that Tanya would do the same thing. If she was looking for information about the man we were trying to find, the centre of the town would be the most obvious place to gather it.

The silence in Dolinsk was unnatural and troubling. The thump of Kashtan’s hooves echoed from the stone houses around us. The closeness of the buildings amplified the heavy sound of her breathing, and I watched her ears turning as she listened to her surroundings. Now I had the added benefit of Tuzik’s ears too. He had caught up with us once more and trotted ahead as if scouting the area for us.

There was a temptation to move at speed through the town, but it would be dangerous to barrel round tight corners without knowing what lay unseen beyond. Towns like Dolinsk were perfect for ambush and nightmarish to fight in. Since the uprising in Tambov last August, more and more peasants had been joining the fight. Some took up arms and fought with the peasant armies, while others remained in their hometowns and villages, waiting for units to come their way. Nowhere was free of danger and it was better to be cautious.

As we pressed on through the quiet street, I came to the older part of town where the wooden izbas were laid out in much the same way as they were in Belev, except here some of them were blackened ruins. There was no smoke, no smouldering, so it must have happened at least a few days ago, but there was a thick smell of burning in the air. Kashtan snorted and turned her ears, and I felt her reluctance to keep going. She sensed the death here as she had done in Belev.

‘It’s all right,’ I whispered to her. ‘Just keep listening.’

Some of the izbas still standing had curtains pulled across their windows, but from others faces watched without speaking. Frightened eyes followed our progress through the homes and I began to suspect that Dolinsk had already been subdued. The town was so silent and still I could hear the wind that dropped from the steppe and whistled through the paths between the houses.

Coming closer to the centre of the town, a door opened to our left and I turned, raising my revolver and aiming at the old man who stepped out.

‘We have nothing,’ he called out to me. ‘Leave us.’

A poor man, dressed in a worn jacket and threadbare trousers. He was the first civilian I had encountered since I’d met Lev and Anna. Seeing that he was unarmed, I was tempted to lower my revolver, but it could be a distraction to catch me off guard. I glanced about, looking for any sign of a rifle barrel protruding from a window, but saw nothing.

I moved so I was standing in front of Anna, almost pushing her back against Kashtan. ‘Did someone pass by here a short while ago?’ I asked.

He looked at the revolver in my hand, then leaned to one side to see Anna.

‘Have you seen anyone?’

He studied Anna, then shifted his eyes to my face. ‘Two riders,’ he said. ‘Women.’

‘Did they say anything to you?’

‘They were looking for someone,’ he said.

‘What did you tell them?’

He looked at Anna once more, but something distracted him and he backed away from the door. I didn’t take my eyes off him, but as soon as the black shape moved into my peripheral vision, I knew what had scared him.

Tuzik came close to the side of the road, just a few paces from the man’s home, and settled on his haunches, staring.

‘Tell me what you said to them and we’ll be on our way.’

The old man stepped further back into his house and began to close the door. It was odd that he would be more afraid of the dog than of me. I was pointing a revolver at him, but there was something primal about Tuzik that made the old man fearful.

‘Please,’ I said. ‘Tell me—’

‘They’re looking for someone who calls himself Koschei.’ He stood with the door half closed, one hand ready to slam it shut.

The name made me bristle. ‘What did you tell them?’

‘That I don’t know anyone called Koschei.’

‘What about Krukov?’

‘Not Krukov either, but there were some men. Came past here the day before yesterday.’

‘Into the town?’

‘No. They went past. I told those women the same thing.’

‘Soldiers?’ I studied the old man’s face. His eyes were full of defeat, his posture tired.

He shook his head. ‘Chekists maybe.’

‘How many?’

He shrugged. ‘I didn’t count them. Maybe five or six. But they had prisoners and—’

‘Prisoners? Women and children?’

‘Boys. Some women too.’

It was further confirmation of what Commander Orlov had said. Hope and relief surged in me.

‘Did you see them?’ I pressed him, trying to stay focused. ‘What did they look like?’

The door opened wider now and an old woman came out to stand close beside him. She was bundled thick with clothes, like Galina had been, with a scarf tied tight about her head. ‘Devils,’ she shouted at me. ‘You’re all devils, bringing your guns and your bloodshed. Killing old men and dragging children away to fight. You see that?’ She pointed to the izba opposite, burned to the ground, almost nothing left. ‘My sister lived there.’

I sighed and lowered the pistol. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘What good is “sorry”?’ she said. ‘Can I eat it? Will it keep me warm? Will it give me my sister back? Will it bring my neighbour’s son home and resurrect her husband from the dead?’

I turned my eyes to the ground in shame.

When I looked back at the old woman, she had spotted Anna behind me and was staring at her as if seeing a child for the first time.

‘Is he yours?’ she asked, taking a step closer. She was unafraid of both Tuzik and the pistol.

I turned my body, an unconscious movement to protect Anna. ‘Yes.’

The old woman shuffled closer still, coming out onto the road and pushing past me to get to Anna. ‘A girl? I thought you were a boy.’ She reached out to put her bony hand on Anna’s cheek. ‘Beautiful,’ she said. ‘Beautiful.’

I felt Anna flinch from her and I had to stop myself from warning the old woman away. She meant no harm.

‘Look after her,’ she said to me. ‘Keep her close. Safe.’

‘I will.’

She stood with her arm out, her fingers still on Anna’s cheek, and her lips moved as if she were whispering some kind of prayer or incantation, then she nodded and turned to shuffle towards the izba. She struggled up the step and went inside without looking back.

Anna didn’t relax even when the old woman was gone, but she didn’t cower behind me either. She stood straight as a broom handle and lifted her chin as she stood by my side.

‘Which way did they take the prisoners?’ I asked the old man.

He thought for a while, his watery eyes watching me, then he raised his arm and pointed north. ‘There were others too.’

‘Other soldiers?’

He nodded. ‘The day before the ones with the prisoners. Fewer, but they could have been Chekists too.’

I wondered if they were the ones that Lev and Anna had seen. Perhaps Koschei had split his unit, one group riding on ahead while the second brought the prisoners. It would be the second group that Commander Orlov had seen, the same group that Stanislav Dotsenko had been with. It was beginning to make some sense, but I wondered why Koschei wouldn’t stay as a complete unit. What was it that was drawing him north in such a hurry?

Always that question. Why north?

‘They went past?’ I asked. ‘Without coming into the town?’

He nodded.

‘Did you see what they looked like?’

‘No.’

It had been too much to hope for. It didn’t make a great deal of difference if I confirmed that Krukov and Koschei were the same man, but it would settle the question in my mind. It would tell me what Stanislav had meant when he said that I was responsible for his creation.

‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘I’m looking for—’

‘I don’t want to know.’ The old man held up a hand and shook his head. ‘Don’t tell me.’ He began to close the door. ‘What I don’t know can’t hurt me,’ he mumbled as he shuffled after his wife.

‘There’s an army coming,’ I called after him. ‘From the north. They’ll be here within the hour.’

‘We have nothing to give them. Nothing they would want. And there’s nothing more they could do to us.’

‘I’m sorry.’ I glanced along the street once more, thinking about the army I had seen on the horizon. ‘Within the hour,’ I said, turning back to the old man. ‘They’ll be here soon.’

But he had already closed the door.

For a moment it was as if the old man had shut me away from the rest of the world, rather than shutting himself in his own house. He understood there was nothing he could do.

They had no one here to defend them. All those people who had gone away to fight for this cause or that cause had, in effect, deserted them. They were of no use when they were fighting in a field far from here, leaving their families unprotected, as I had done. That had been my desertion, not my escape from the army.

I stared at the closed door, not seeing the timbers or the cracks but seeing what was happening to our country. While trying to unify itself, it was tearing itself apart, and I could find nothing honourable or just in that. As long as men like Koschei were permitted to commit the crimes that he perpetrated, our country was no better now than it had been before the revolution. We had only swapped one kind of tyranny for another. And I had been a part of it.

We moved on, knowing there was nothing I could do to change the course of these people’s lives. I could only ride on and hope for them. The new machine was in motion, and now that the Whites were gone, the Green and Blue and Black would soon fall under the red flag.