Red Winter

19

The commander stopped a few paces from the bottom step, standing in the sea of wounded men, and looked up at me, aiming his pistol. ‘Come down.’

My only choice was to go back to Commander Orlov. It was he who had let me go, and so he might do it again, but there was a chance he would change his mind. When he sent me away, we were alone, with no one to know his actions, but when others were involved, he might not be so ready to do the same. Even a man like him could be accused as an enemy of the Bolsheviks, which was why he hadn’t disobeyed the order to dump his wounded and return to Tambov. On the other hand, when I had just left him, he was a broken, dying man. Perhaps he had reached the end of his allegiance. Maybe he would release us anyway. He was our only hope.

‘Please,’ I said, holding out my hands. ‘Come and talk to Commander Orlov. He—’

‘You’re no doctor,’ the commander said, sending a wave of interest flowing among the wounded men behind him. ‘Who the hell are you?’

‘Please. Come and talk to Commander Orlov. He’ll tell you—’

‘Get down.’

I stood for a moment, looking at him, wondering what was the best course of action, but there weren’t many options open to me. It would be easy for him to shoot, and he wouldn’t need much more reason than my failure to obey. I would have to comply for now.

But as I put my feet on the ground, so the first voice spoke among the soldiers.

‘Doctor?’ It was impossible to tell who said it: there were hundreds of men lying or sitting on the trackside.

‘He’s a doctor?’ A different voice this time. ‘Please. Help me.’

‘Get down here, now,’ the commander ordered.

‘Did someone say “doctor”?’ More voices joined the chorus. ‘Where? Where’s the doctor?’

The men around the commander’s feet were the ones in the worst condition, left closest to the train to avoid carrying them too far, but the men further back were more able and a ripple of movement broke through them. A few began to struggle to their feet, some saying, ‘Over here, Doctor. Over here,’ and more and more of them called for me, adding their voices to the discord as they stood and began to shuffle towards me.

‘Stay back, everyone,’ the commander said without taking his eyes off me. ‘Sit down. Stay where you are.’

Two or three of the other able-bodied soldiers were coming to the commander’s aid, pushing into the gathering crowd, telling the men to get back. They forced some of them away, shoving them against other men, so they were falling over one another, but already the hope of treatment had lodged itself in the minds of the wounded men. Commander Orlov said that they had been promised doctors and now they thought the promise was being fulfilled, so they stood and they came, joining the growing mob of injured men coming towards me, jostling each other, surging around the guards, approaching the place where the commander and I stood.

‘Back!’ he shouted, but the men paid him no attention. They were dying. Their comrades were dying. They were in pain. They wanted help. And so they shambled on, swarming around the guards who tried to stop them, hemming them in, crushing them with the force of their number.

The commander came closer to me, stepping over the dying, keeping the pistol level, saying, ‘Get back on the train.’

But the first of the wounded men had already reached us. This young soldier wore a bandage at an angle round his head, covering one eye, and he forced his way past the commander, reaching out his hands to touch me, to beg me to help him. Just behind him, another man pushed through, this one holding a bloodied arm to his chest, and then others shoved in from all sides. Men horded about us, bloody and dazed and sick, so that we were surrounded by them, in danger of being crushed by them, the commander becoming frantic as he tried to turn me and force me back onto the train. At the top of the steps, one of the guards had come out to see what was happening, and as I looked up at him, a sound came from within the carriage that stopped everything.

A single, muffled gunshot.

It was as if someone had frozen time. Nobody moved. Nobody spoke. We stood in the mist, our minds cleared by that single report, and for a brief few heartbeats, no one thought of anything else. Except for me. Because I knew who had fired that shot, and I knew that Commander Orlov had taken his leave of the war.

I seized the distraction, grabbing the commander’s pistol and twisting it from his grip with my right hand while slamming my left elbow into his jaw as hard as I could. His legs buckled underneath him, and as he dropped, I pushed him hard into the crowd of wounded men. He looked at me in surprise as he staggered backwards, putting out his arms for balance, but he only succeeded in taking more men down with him. The soldiers behind him were weak with injury and provided no support at all, falling into others, pushing the whole crowd back, smothering the guards who had come to the commander’s aid.

As they collapsed onto one another, I identified the clearest route and began pushing my way through the men. Hands clawed at me and I dropped the commander’s pistol as they grabbed at my coat, snatched at my arms, tried to grasp my legs, and I shoved and kicked and slapped them away as I broke through.

Some of the men called for me, shouting, ‘Doctor, please,’ but I had to get away from this hell.

Bursting free from the clutching hands, stumbling away from the men, I raced towards Lev and Anna.

Only one of the guards remained with them, but he was confused by the surge of bodies in front of him, everybody desperate to follow me, and I was on him before he could react. I grabbed him by the front of his coat and used all my strength to turn and throw him back into the crowd.

‘Get on your horse,’ I shouted to Lev and Anna, who were struck dumb by what they were witnessing. Although Lev had moved to stand in front of his daughter, he watched in horror, as if hypnotised by the crowd of walking dead that surged towards us.

‘Get on your horse,’ I shouted again, snapping him out of his trance as I came to his side. ‘Now.’

‘Yes,’ he said, gripping Anna with one hand and turning to his horse. ‘Yes.’

Every second was valuable now. The wounded men were closer, and the guards were recovering, preparing their weapons.

Kashtan had begun to retreat from the advancing horde, but Lev’s horse was terrified. Her eyes were wide, her teeth bared and her ears pinned back. Her hindquarters were tensed, the muscles knotting under her coat, and she tried to bolt. The reins jerked in Lev’s hand and he tried to keep hold of them, losing his footing and stumbling as the leather tore from his grip.

Seeing her father’s struggle and watching the advancing horde of men, Anna backed away, wanting to be with her father. She saw him as her protector, but he was preoccupied with taking control of his horse and she didn’t know what to do. Her distress was clear, her mouth opening and closing, her head turning from side to side as she looked for a way out.

I knew Lev would struggle to settle his horse and climb onto her, and with Anna to consider, it would be even more difficult for him, so I went straight to her, sweeping her off the ground and swinging her high, lifting her onto Kashtan.

‘Papa!’ she called out to him, struggling against me, reaching out as if she would be able to touch him. ‘Papa!’

Lev spun round when he heard her cry, his face contorted with panic.

‘I’ve got her,’ I told him, and when he saw that she was safe with me, he shouted to us, saying, ‘Go!’ then turned back to the horse that was trying to escape the mayhem.

Anna squirmed in the saddle, still leaning out towards Lev, still shouting for him, saying, ‘Papa! Papa!’ Her voice rose in pitch as she became more and more afraid for him.

I held her tight with one hand to keep her from slipping out of the saddle, controlling Kashtan with the other.

‘Stay there,’ I pleaded with Anna as I encouraged Kashtan to turn. ‘There’s nothing you can do. He’ll be fine. He’s coming. Don’t worry.’

Kashtan knew me like we were part of one another and she responded well to my instruction, turning to face into the forest, no longer staring into the mob of soldiers. She prepared to run.

With only himself to consider, Lev managed to grasp the reins of his own horse and hold her steady enough to climb up, the animal rearing as the men surged around us. The horse’s actions deterred the wounded soldiers for a moment, giving Lev a chance to spur his animal on towards the trees, but then they were coming forward again, so I kicked the man closest to me, pushing others away, clearing enough space for me to put my foot in the stirrup.

Kashtan didn’t wait any longer. She was forging into the undergrowth, just behind Lev’s horse, even as I was swinging myself up into the saddle.

I held Anna tight, feeling the tension in her, hearing her sobs as I glanced back to see the commander standing in the crowd, holding a rifle to his shoulder. Further along the train, other soldiers were also raising weapons. The commander leaned this way, then that, trying to find a shot at us, but he was frustrated by the men obscuring his line of sight, and when he finally chose to fire, his bullet struck one of his own soldiers from behind. The man’s head snapped forward and he went down as the gunshot echoed in the mist, but the commander didn’t stop. He worked the bolt and fired again, his second shot crackling into the undergrowth to one side as Kashtan carried us away.

And then we were out of sight, among the trees, running from the barrage of gunfire that erupted behind us.

Bullets ripped through the brushwood. They sang in the air, whistled and whined, thudded as they tore into the trees, powdering bark and ice. The sound of the shooting was accompanied by the shouts of the soldiers, the calls of help from the wounded, and then a single long blast from the train’s whistle as a call to arms for all men.

I gripped Kashtan’s reins with both hands, leaning into Anna to press myself against her and stop her from falling. She, in turn, had taken fistfuls of Kashtan’s mane and was holding tight. We thumped together with every step Kashtan took.

Lev’s horse crashed through the forest ahead of us. She was out of control, bumping into low-hanging branches, her hind legs throwing up broken twigs and dead leaves as she careered among the dark trunks. Lev was bent low, leaning right down along her neck to protect himself from the tree limbs that whipped and snatched at him, and I could see he was trying to calm the horse, pulling the reins hard, but to no effect.

I spurred Kashtan on, thinking I might be able to catch up with Lev, somehow help to bring his horse under control, but as we came closer, a bullet smacked into the horse’s right shoulder with a loud slap. The animal let out an awful scream as her front legs twisted beneath her, then she crumpled to her knees, her head going down as she skidded forwards, throwing Lev from the saddle.

Lev was in the air for less than a second before he hit a frosted tree, crashing through a low branch, striking the trunk and showering a white cloud of ice around him.

His body was limp when it hit the ground.