Red Winter (25 page)

On one occasion, the dog growled, an ugly sound deep in his throat, and I sat up straight, gripping the revolver, widening my eyes, trying to see into the misty gloom, but the night was silent except for the creak of a bough or the rattle of a falling twig. Something small scurried in the darkness, a quick scampering of tiny feet, and the dog growled again, so I put my hand on his head and rubbed his soft fur.

‘Good boy,’ I whispered, ‘but it’s just a rabbit or something. Nothing more than that.’

Anna stirred beside me. ‘Are you awake?’

‘Yes.’

She said nothing for a while and then, ‘What’s going to happen to me?’

‘I’ll keep you safe.’

‘But . . . later.’

‘I’ll keep you safe,’ I said again. ‘For as long as you want.’

‘I wish Papa was here.’

‘So do I.’ I had liked Lev, he was warm and kind-spirited. He and I would have become good friends in a time when friends were a rarity.

‘Thank you for saving the dog,’ she said.

‘We should give him a name.’

‘Like what?’

‘I’m no good at thinking of things like that.’ Marianna would have chosen a good name. Perhaps a character from one of her
skazkas
. ‘We had a cat when I was a boy. Well, it was my brother’s really. Vaska.’

‘It was called Vaska?’ Anna turned to look up at me and I put my arm around her.

‘Mm-hmm. He was beautiful. Black as soot and so quiet you’d step on him before you realised he was there. He knew how to catch a mouse too. Mama used to hate him leaving those things on the step and she used to shout at Alek – that’s my brother – so that you could hear her from the other end of the village. Papa said he was so ashamed when he heard her yelling that he’d have to leave the village and never come back.’ I smiled to myself.

‘Where’s your brother now?’

‘Gone,’ I said, disappointed not to dwell longer on the memory.

‘And the cat?’

‘Who knows. He went missing a long time ago, but I always thought he’d be fine. He knew how to survive – he was half wild anyway. Mama said he probably moved in with some witch out there in the forest.’ I looked down at Anna when I said it, hoping I hadn’t scared her.

‘Is Vaska a good name for a dog?’

‘I don’t know. Probably not. I don’t know any good names for a dog. Anyway, maybe he already has one.’

‘He can’t tell us what it is, though,’ she said.

‘Maybe we should just call him Dog. It’s easy to remember.’

Anna didn’t comment, so we sat without speaking, all three of us pressed together between the roots of the tree. The breeze picked up, swaying the branches overhead, creaking the primeval boughs and moaning as it vibrated the brushwood. Kashtan nickered and snorted, and the dog lifted his head to listen, a short whine escaping him as he pushed harder against me. None of us wanted to be so far from comfort.

The wind swept the clouds from the sky, revealing a half-moon and allowing its light to flood into the forest. It filtered through the twisted fingers above us, and I looked down at Anna beside me, her face small and pale, moonlight glittering in her eyes.

‘You think you can walk some more?’ I asked.

‘Yes.’

I was glad to be moving again. I was tired, but I wanted to press on towards Dolinsk and hoped I would find some clue as to where Koschei had gone. I didn’t know why he was heading north; most of the Cheka units in this area would be heading towards Tambov rather than away from it. Like Commander Orlov, their orders would be to crush the rebellion, and yet Tanya and Lyudmila had said that Koschei was heading north. Always north. I hoped that was still the case; that he hadn’t turned in a different direction, leaving us to follow a false trail. I needed to find some civilisation now, some way of knowing if I was still heading the right way.

As we moved, I reflected on Commander Orlov’s words, seeing how his eyes had been opened to the chaos, just as mine had. His escape had been on a different path from the one I intended to take, but his words had put an idea in my head; one that showed me a hint of what my future might be. To find somewhere quiet, a place where the eyes of the world might overlook me. Before that could happen, though, I had to escape my pursuers and find Marianna and the boys. As Orlov had said, they were the most important thing now, and without them I was nothing but the soldier I no longer wanted to be. Father and husband were the roles I saw in my new future, but it was the soldier who could make them happen.

Stanislav’s comrade had said something, however, that troubled me. I had tried to put it out of mind, but it scratched at my subconscious, from somewhere beyond coherent thought, and I couldn’t help returning to it over and over again. He had said that Nikolai Levitsky made Koschei, that
I
had made him. I contemplated on how that was possible and the only explanation that came to me was linked to the name Commander Orlov had given me. Or rather, a name he had mentioned.

Krukov.

If any man I knew bore any resemblance to Koschei, it was Krukov, and if it was he who had murdered the old men of Belev and taken the women and children away, then Stanislav might have been right. Perhaps I
was
responsible for him in some way. And perhaps the men of Belev would still be alive if Alek and I had not deserted. We had been in the same unit as Krukov and would have steered him away from Belev without him even coming close to it.

That was a notion that wrapped itself round my heart and squeezed hard. That I could be to blame for my family’s fate was beyond anything I could live with. If I discovered it to be true, and if my family lost their lives because of it, would I want to take the path that Commander Orlov had chosen?

But when I looked at Anna, I knew I had another responsibility. I could no longer choose the path that was best for me; I had to take the one that was best for both of us.

When morning finally broke, the low sun was bright and good. It was as welcome as any morning had ever been, and though its light lacked heat, there was enough for it to burn away what was left of the mist. Our spirits were lifted even further when we came to the edge of the forest and stepped out into the open. There was a greater chance of being seen, and we would be easier to follow, but it was a relief to be away from the forest once more, and we would move quicker, taking us further from our pursuers and closer to our goal.

Kashtan’s pleasure was clear; she liked the forest even less than I did. It was an unnatural place to her, primordial and full of hidden threat, and she was happiest where she could see approaching danger and where there was space for her to run. When we climbed into the saddle, she needed no more encouragement than a quick nudge for her to race out into the steppe. She thundered through the hoarfrost, scattering the ice dust, and there was a great sense of freedom in her movement. The air was clear, as fresh as I had ever known it, and I couldn’t help smiling at the joy of that moment. In those brief minutes, everything was forgotten and I knew that Anna felt it too.

As Kashtan began to tire, she slowed to a trot and Anna turned to me. She wasn’t smiling – happiness was still beyond her – but something had lightened in her.

‘What about the dog?’ she asked, looking back at the trees. They were some way behind us now, and I wished it was as easy to put other things behind us. How simple life would be if we could forget the things in our past.

‘He’ll catch up,’ I said. ‘He did last time.’

‘We should call him Tuzik. Mama said that if she had a dog, she would call it that. She said it was a good name for a dog.’

‘Tuzik.’ I nodded. ‘It
is
a good name.’

With little available cover, we stayed close to the road, and when Anna asked if we shouldn’t try to cover our tracks, I explained that it would be easy to follow us in the open, whichever route we took, so we might as well take the most direct one. At least on the road, our prints could mingle with the many others. I didn’t need to tell her that if the riders had been able to follow us through the night, they would see us almost as soon as they came out of the trees, but I knew she hoped, as I did, that they had not. We had been able to travel a good distance during the night, but it would have been impossible for anyone to track us.

Around midday, we came into a small village, just six houses set back to one side of the road. The
izbas
were in various states of ruin, but none of them was untouched by fire. We had watched from a distance, seeing nothing moving and decided it was safe to approach.

‘Horse droppings,’ I said, pointing to dung scattered on the road in front of the houses. ‘Looks quite fresh.’ I dismounted and went to look at it, moving it with the toe of my boot. It was still soft, a little damp, and a smell came off it too. ‘There are tracks here. Maybe a couple of horses.’ I squatted to study the hard ground, seeing marks where the frost had been disturbed and the mud pressed into hoof prints and boot prints. ‘People too. Someone’s been here recently.’ I looked up at what was left of the buildings. ‘Maybe just this morning.’

Neither of us said it, but we were both thinking the same thing.

Koschei.

By now Tuzik had caught up with us, and he sniffed the dung, then trailed around the front of the
izba
, testing everything, spending some time around the base of an intact water barrel to one side of the shattered ruin. It was the kind of barrel peasants used to store water brought from the river, or to collect fresh rainwater. Tuzik cocked his leg to mark the base of it, then caught scent of something else and hurried out of sight, nose to the ground.

‘What’s he found?’ Anna asked.

‘Probably a rabbit,’ I told her. ‘Wait here.’

‘Don’t leave me alone, Kolya.’

‘I’ll be right where you can see me. I’m not going anywhere. Just stay on Kashtan, and if anything happens, you know how to ride her, right?’

Anna nodded.

‘Then stay here.’ I pulled the revolver from my pocket and went into the ruin of the first house.

All that remained was the north wall and the
pich
; everything else had crumbled in the heat of the fire. I took a blackened stick and poked in the ashes, looking for anything that might be of use, but found nothing. I raised a hand to Anna, letting her know everything was all right, then I moved on to the next house, but this one was as ruined as the last.

‘There’s nothing here,’ I called to Anna.

‘Can we go, then?’ She didn’t like it when we stopped. It was as if she were more aware of our pursuers than I was. Even now, as she spoke to me, her eyes kept going to the horizon behind us, looking for the seven riders. But, for now they were nowhere to be seen.

‘Not yet.’

If Koschei had been here, there would be something to confirm it.

So I told Anna I would check the rest of the houses and moved on to each one, raking through the debris to find some sign, but it wasn’t until I ventured into the yard at the back of the last
izba
that I found what I was looking for.

Tuzik had already discovered the bodies and was licking blood from the back of one man’s head. He looked more like a wolf than ever when he was standing over those corpses. I stopped, wondering how he would react to me. I didn’t blame him for what was instinctive, but I couldn’t let him continue, not while I was here, so I slapped my hands together and kicked him in the ribs when he displayed a reluctance to leave. However much wolf he had in him, he had lived with humans long enough to know what a kick meant, so he yelped and skulked away, averse to losing a meal.

There were four bodies lying in the frost, and while the cold made it difficult to tell how long they had been here, I had seen enough dead men to estimate that it had been no more than a few days. Each of them was naked from the waist up, and each of them with the skin flayed from both hands. I could only imagine the terror they must have felt waiting for their turn to be tortured, the pain they would have endured when the skin was peeled away. The perpetrators would have been high on their power and bloodlust while they carried it out. Perhaps drinking to heighten their enjoyment.

Tuzik sat a few paces away, watching as I stood over the bodies.

The flaying reminded me of what I had seen in Belev, but such an act was not unknown elsewhere. Although my instinct told me Koschei had been here, this kind of atrocity did not necessarily point to him. I had seen things like it before when I had still been fighting. It was an effective way to persuade men to confess to almost anything, and it acted as a good deterrent from anti-Soviet activities when witnessed. It was the kind of act that had made me want to leave the army and return home.

However, the loss of skin had not been the cause of death for these men. One of them had suffered the same fate as Galina’s husband, while the other three had been shot using a common method of execution for Cheka units. A single bullet fired downwards into the back of the neck was an effective and economical means of despatching large numbers of prisoners. Two of them were lying face down, side by side, but the last body was lying face up, dry, dead eyes staring at the sky, and it was clear this was not the way he had been left by his killers. Whoever had shot him had left him face down like the others, but someone had turned him over. The blood on the ground beside him and the imprint in the frost told me that much.

The man must have been in his fifties when he died, maybe a little younger. He had been a working man, from the look of his complexion, weather-beaten and old beyond his years, so it was difficult to be sure of his age. His beard was thick, but his torso was thin and pale, his ribs visible. His skin was marked all over with bruises, indicating that he had been beaten as well as skinned before he was shot. And in the centre of his chest, an angry red burn in the shape of a five-pointed star. The same star I had seen in Belev, and the same star Lev and Anna had seen.

‘Koschei,’ I whispered.

I turned the remaining bodies onto their backs, rolling them over and looking at their bruised faces, but I recognised none of them and it occurred to me that whoever had turned the first body had seen all they needed to see. They had moved only one of the men and left the others as they had found them. One look at the red star had been enough for them to know who had done this. They hadn’t been here to identify the victims, only the perpetrator.