Red Winter

43

Anna and I returned to the edge of the forest. We went to the place where the sisters lay side by side, and we buried the rings and the tobacco pouch in the hardening soil.

I put my arm around Anna’s shoulders and we stood side by side for a moment, neither of us speaking. I felt her breathing falter, coming in short gasps and I knew the tears were for her father. For me, there were no tears, but my heart was heavy with thoughts of my brother and Lev, and of the two women who had no one to mourn them but us.

Coming back to the barn, I led Kashtan out into the cold. She was eager to leave that place, but I had one last task for her.

‘I’m sorry,’ I told her, ‘but I need you to do this for me. You’re much stronger than I am.’

Anna helped me with the age-worn harness we found. Kashtan was not unaccustomed to pulling a load – she had pulled tachanka machine-gun carriages before – but this cart was loaded with the dead and she baulked as soon as we brought her close enough to smell the blood. Her muscles flexed and bulged under her taut chestnut coat as she backed away, but between us, Anna and I managed to keep her calm.

Anna had hitched a cart before, so she helped me hook up Kashtan while Tuzik sat on the ice and watched.

‘It’s not far,’ I told Kashtan once we were ready. ‘Just away from the house, that’s all.’

Kashtan nuzzled at me and complied, as if telling me it was only this once, then Anna and I walked either side of her as we led her into the field. As soon as the cart was a safe distance from the house, I unfastened the harness and we led her back to the outbuilding, where we resaddled her and prepared her for the journey ahead.

I took from Tanya and Lyudmila’s supplies whatever I thought we would need and put Lyudmila’s rifle across my back.

‘We’ll leave the rest for Oksana and the others,’ I told Anna. ‘They’ll need it now.’ Without their son’s protection, they were as susceptible as anyone else to the terrors of the war.

‘What about the other horses?’ she asked.

‘Can you ride well?’

‘Yes.’

‘Then choose one and we’ll leave the other. It’ll only slow us down if we have to lead it.’ I had a fleeting memory of leaving my brother’s horse behind, but brushed it away and took out my tobacco pouch to roll a thin cigarette from the remnants I had found in Tanya and Lyudmila’s belongings. I put it between my swollen lips and mounted up, feeling good to be on Kashtan’s back. It meant we were, at least, moving again, leaving this place behind.

Anna inspected the other two animals, going to each one and rubbing its nose, looking over the tack before she decided which she was going to take.

‘Are you sure you can manage that horse?’ I asked, as she pulled herself into Tanya’s saddle.

She shifted, turned the animal towards the door and looked at me.

‘Of course you can,’ I said.

‘Do you know what its name is?’ she asked.

I shook my head. ‘We’ll have to think of one.’

Anna and I crossed the yard, Tuzik trotting behind, and passed through into the field without looking back at the izba. We stopped when we reached the cart and I leaned down to dust away the frost in a small place at the back of it – just enough for me to strike a match against the coarse wood. As I blew the first lungful of smoke into the early morning air, I touched the tiny flame to the straw that covered the men and waited for it to take hold. The fire needed no encouragement to devour the dry strands, and once the flame had grown, it spread and spread, catching on the men’s clothes, dancing over their bodies. Black smoke, with sparks glowing and spitting in its heart, was snagged by the breeze and whipped low to the ground, thinning, moving over the field like a grey snake. Beyond it, over the distant farm, the low winter sun poured light through cloud and smoke and fire, reddening and casting a crimson glow across the yard and the field beyond, where the frost glistened red as if each crystal had been formed with the blood of men.

And in that unearthly hue, a shape began to form.