Sabres in the Snow

Chapter Thirteen

Some of the huts still smouldered as the cossacks rode into what was left of Ridanski.

The snow, which had stopped falling during the night, was now coming down even more thickly and Namarov realised that Kleiser’s trail might well be obscured so he swiftly despatched Petrovski and five other riders to tail the fleeing SS unit. They had orders to report back to him when they had found the Germans.

But now, riding slowly through the narrow lanes between gutted shells of houses, the cossacks had other things on their minds. The bodies of comrades who had fallen the previous day had been stacked up in the middle of the village, along with their horses and burned. A huge blackened pile of scorched flesh the only testament to their existance. There were still thin wisps of grey smoke rising from the funeral pyre. The blood had frozen and been covered by fresh falls of snow as had most of the burned-out huts. German corpses had been left where they fell and many now lay in rigored poses, lying in the snow like useless mannequins.

The only building which had not been burned was the church and it was towards that sturdy-looking edifice that Namarov now led a group of his men, Kuragin and Boniak amongst them.

The doors were slightly open and Namarov dismounted, walking towards them.

Kuragin was close behind and he recoiled as he saw what lay beyond the solid wooden barrier.

“Oh God,” murmured the major, walking inside. He coughed, trying to fight back the nausea he felt rising within him. The stench inside the church was appalling. A rank, fetid odour of blood, excrement and vomit.

Kuragin and Rostov joined their superior inside the building, which had been transformed into a charnel house.

Scattered all over the floor, piled three deep in places, were the bodies of the villagers. Men, women and children who had once peopled the little village now lay in blood-spattered heaps. Some had even been hung from the beams and they twisted gently in the breeze which swept in when Namarov opened the doors. The walls and floor were splashed with blood, particularly the floor, which felt spongy where so much of the crimson liquid had soaked into the wood.

Namarov stood gazing at the scene of slaughter for long seconds then he knelt and lifted the head of the nearest corpse. It was a woman in her thirties. There was a single bullet hole in the nape of her neck and her eyes, still bulging open, seemed to stare at the major. He moved to another corpse, an old man. He too had been neck-shot. As had the next. And the next.

Further down the church the bodies were riddled with bullet holes and he recognised the spent cartridge cases from MP40s. Obviously the SS had tired of their favourite past-time and decided to finish the job quickly with automatic weapons. A woman lay on her back, a small child still clutched in her arms. Both were drilled through with at least a dozen holes and a thick puddle of congealed blood had spread out around them. Gobbets of intestine and sticky lumps of brain matter were clinging to the walls like obscene decorations where six people had been lined up and then cut down. An empty magazine lay next to one body, almost unrecognisable due to the damage done to it and Namarov realised with disgust that the entire 32-round magazine had been fired into just one corpse.

Kuragin was checking the bodies, looking at people he had seen alive just twenty-four hours earlier, now mangled beyond belief by the fury of close-range gunshots. He lifted the heads of many corpses, seeing people he had known well in life and his despair was tinged with something like disgust and also hatred, both for Kleiser and himself. The knowledge that he had allowed his comrades to ride into a trap hurt him as much as having to search through the mounds of bodies.

“Kuragin.”

He recognised the voice as Namarov’s.

“Your family. Are they here?” the major asked.

The big cossack swallowed hard, not knowing whether Kleiser had kept his side of the bargain or not. He wondered if the next face he looked into would be that of his wife or one of his daughters.

They were not amongst the other corpses.

“They’re not here,” he said, his voice a mixture of relief and foreboding and he was not slow to catch the glance which Namarov shot him.

The major nodded, almost as if a suspicion had been confirmed, then he turned and walked out of the church. Kuragin and some of the others lingered, looking once more at the bullet-torn bodies as if doubting the truth of what they saw. It was all Boniak could do to prevent himself vomiting.

“Take a good look, son,” said Rostov. “That’s how the Germans fight wars.” He too stalked off.

But the lad had seen this kind of thing before and at much closer quarters. He had seen his own parents killed in this manner, he had seen bodies burned, men hung, neck-shot… The thoughts trailed off until just one word, one name remained in his consciousness. A word which had become synonymous with slaughter such as this.

Kleiser.

He spoke that hated name aloud, gazing once more at the carnage inside the church, then he turned and joined his companions who were outside in the square.

“Do we bury them?” asked Rostov, hooking a thumb over his shoulder in the direction of the church.

Namarov shook his head.

“We move on.”

No-one protested.

“We’ve got to find Kleiser, that’s the only thing that matters now,” added the major. “Petrovski will be reporting back as soon as he sights the bastard.”

“And then what?” Rostov wanted to know.

Namarov shrugged.

“We attack him and just hope that we don’t run into any more traps.”

“Do you still seriously believe that what happened yesterday was the result of betrayal?” There was a harsh note of disbelief in the squadron commander’s voice.

“Until I know otherwise, I must think so. We must all be prepared.” The major looked at those around him and, for long moments, his eyes fastened on Kuragin who held the stare for as long as he could then rode off to find his squadron. Rostov did likewise.

Within a matter of minutes, the cossacks were moving away from what had once been Ridanski.

Kuragin felt tired. He had slept little the previous night and now he almost nodded off as his horse made steady progress through the snow which was still falling like chill confetti. Behind him, his squadron plodded along wearily, many of them still wounded from the engagement with the SS troops. Those who had grown beards looked as if they had been attacked by some maniac with a whitewash brush, the snow sticking to the thick, unwashed growths of hair. Kuragin rummaged in his pocket and produced a hip flask. He pulled the top off with his teeth and took a hefty pull from the flask, allowing the fiery liquid to burn its way to his stomach.

He rode alone, ahead of his men, as did all the squadron leaders. To his right he could see Rostov, the pipe gripped between his teeth. Ahead of him, Namarov.

Kuragin was beginning to suspect that his superior realised he was the one to blame for the incident in the village the day before and Kuragin felt, once again, that peculiar ambivalence within himself. He could not allow his family to die, they came before everything. He would give his own life for them but he had, by his bargain with Kleiser, probably doomed most of his colleagues to death. Twenty-seven of them already lay back in the smoking ruins of the village and he wondered how many more would have to die before the matter resolved itself. If, indeed, it did. What, he wondered, would happen if he were killed? With no-one to supply him information, Kleiser would have no more use for Olga and the two girls. If Kuragin died, then so too would his family. The thought made him shudder and he took another long pull from the flask.

Maybe his family was already dead and Kleiser was just stringing him along. Perhaps they were back there in Ridanski, their bodies hidden somewhere. Or they might have been hung after the SS left the village. He shuddered to think that he might come across them dangling from the next tree.

Thoughts tumbled through his mind, never settling long enough for him to contemplate and he sought solace in the hip flask once more.

Rostov chewed irritably on the stem of his pipe. It had gone out a while ago and he had no more tobacco to fill it with but he kept it in his mouth more out of habit than anything else. Like Kuragin, he too would glance back every now and then at his squadron. His eyes settled on Boniak. The lad was now in the front rank and Rostov marvelled at the change in the boy since they had first discovered him so long ago. He looked along the line, his mind pondering over one question. Was Namarov right about them having a traitor in their midst? And, if so, who the hell was it? What would they have to gain by betrayal? He shook his head, trying to push the questions to the back of his mind. He had no answers anyway. He looked up and saw the major riding at the head of the leading squadron. Rostov had a fierce respect for the man and, during the two years they had ridden together, he had not yet known the major to be wrong in questions of strategy or tactics. But, was he wrong with his theory about the traitor?

Up until the incident at Ridanski church, Namarov had merely been suspicious about Kuragin. The fact that his colleague’s family was not amongst the victims had convinced him, beyond any shadow of a doubt, that the big man was the one who had betrayed them. The major was angry with himself for not having seen the problems earler. The night Kuragin had pleaded with him not to attack Ridanski, it should have alerted him to something then. But, even he had not thought that the big man’s love for his wife and children would be great enough to sacrifice the entire unit for. But, Namarov thought with a shudder, had there been a few more SS men, then all of the cossacks might well be lying back there on that huge funeral pyre. He glanced behind him and saw Kuragin swigging from the hip flask. The major exhaled deeply, his breath clouding in the cold, snow-flecked air. So, the traitor was Kuragin. One of his most trusted friends for longer than he could remember. What the hell was he going to do?

He was still pondering the answer to that question when he caught sight of three horsemen approaching through the veil of mist and snow. Dark, wraith-like shapes in the swirling elements, they bore down on the cossacks with thunderous speed and Namarov held up a hand to halt his unit. He stood up in the saddle, trying to get a better look at the approaching cavalrymen. They were riding hard down a sharp slope and he could see that one of them was holding a sabre aloft, swinging it round and round above his head.

The men were fifty yards away when he recognised the leading horseman as Petrovski.

The cossack and his two colleagues reined to a halt beside the major. Petrovski was breathless, as if he and his companions had ridden a long distance at great speed. The horses too were panting, heads lowered.

“We’ve found Kleiser,” said the cossack.

“Where?” asked Namarov.

“About seven or eight miles North of here.”

“Still on the move?”

“No. I think they’ve stopped for the night. I left Barchev and Lato to watch them. If there’s any sign of movement one of them will let us know.”

“What’s the terrain like?” Namarov wanted to know.

“They’ve got their backs to a ridge, the rest is covered by trees. There’s only one way in,” Petrovski told him.

Namarov nodded.

“Did you see any civilians with them?” he asked.

Petrovski looked puzzled.

“No, why?” he asked.

Namarov waved the enquiry away.

“Come on,” he said. “I want to reach their positions before nightfall.”

Led by Petrovski and the other two outriders, the cossacks rode off to the appointed position, and more than one of them felt a tingle of fear run up his spine as, above them, the sky darkened.

It seemed to be an omen.