Red Winter (43 page)

Tanya stumbled backwards, reeling from his blow, but Ryzhkov gripped her arm in his left hand and swung her like a rag doll, turning her so she was in front of him, obstructing my aim. He balled his fist and hit her a second time, then a third and fourth in quick succession, his knuckles pounding her face, her head lurching with each blow. When she stopped resisting, he kept Tanya between us, using her as a shield, tearing the pistol from her limp fingers.

As he did it, he gave the order to his men.

‘Kill them.’

Ryzhkov was quick and strong. He had overpowered Tanya in just a few seconds and then he was raising the weapon to point at Lyudmila, who’d barely had time to register what was happening.

But I saw no more, because by then, the three other men at the table had knocked back their chairs and come at me in one swift movement. They were quick to their feet, blocking my view and preventing me from finding a clear shot at Ryzhkov, so I shoved Oksana away from me and swivelled at the waist, redirecting my aim.

My first shot caught the man nearest to me in the hollow of his throat, the bullet passing through the soft flesh, shattering the vertebrae in his neck as the lead struck bone. His head snapped back, and his hands went to the place where the blood now drained from him. He didn’t fall immediately, but the impact unbalanced him and he stumbled, blocking the path of the second man, who bumped into him, giving me time to adjust my aim before he pushed his comrade aside and came at me. The second shot I fired hit this man in the cheek, turning his head as it tore through his face just below the cheekbone. The lead drilled up and out, taking tissue and bone with it when it burst from his skull and spun out towards the corner of the room. He straightened and toppled sideways like a felled tree, and then the third man was on me.

He was a short man, much smaller than me but quick on his feet. He stepped over his fallen comrades and put his head down, throwing his full weight at me before I had time to adjust my aim and shoot again. His shoulder hit me hard in the stomach and he wrapped his arms around me, lifting me high, then half throwing, half dropping me. My back slammed against the hard wooden floor, my grip breaking on the pistol, which skittered away across the room as a sharp pain fired like a hot iron along my spine and the breath rushed out of me.

As I went down, I caught a glimpse of Ryzhkov with Tanya’s pistol in his outstretched hand, pointed at Lyudmila’s head, but I was on my back when he shot her.

The soldier who had overpowered me didn’t take even a moment to recover. Right away he raised his fists and began hitting me, endless punches to my head, breaking my nose, clattering my teeth, smashing my ears, filling my mouth with blood. Then he put his hands to my throat and pushed his thumbs hard, trying to crush the life from me. I turned my head this way and that, raised my hands and took hold of his arms, trying to break his grip, but I hadn’t taken a full breath since hitting the floor and I was weakening. My face hurt, my back hurt, and my chest was burning. My mind was burning too, with desperation and anger and disappointment. I had let everyone down.

I had come so far, so
close
, and now I was dying.

My thoughts became less coherent. A whiteness was seeping in at the edges, threatening to envelop me like an unstoppable snowstorm. Consciousness was leaving me and there was nothing I could do about it. Maybe it was the best thing for me. Maybe it was the only way to find any peace: to simply give up. To let my arms relax, let my body be still and allow the man to crush my life away.

To leave Anna to their mercies. To abandon my wife and my sons.

‘No,’ I said. ‘No.’ This wasn’t how it was supposed to be.

I released my grip on his arms and put my hands to his face, pushing my thumbs against his eyes. In his panic, he squeezed my throat harder, turning his head this way and that, trying to stop me, but I only pushed more, feeling his eyes begin to give beneath the pressure. He gave one more concerted effort to strangle my life away before I could take his eyes, but as he did so, my thumbs slipped in towards the inside corners of his eyes, gouging deep so that my nails scraped against bone.

The soldier screamed and released me, putting his hands to his face. He was heavy and I was too weak to push him off me, but I saw my opportunity.

My only chance.

I reached down to unfasten one coat button, fingers moving quickly. No more than a second and my hand slipped inside, reaching for the knife secured there in its sheath. I pulled it out, holding it high and to the side.

Then I drew on all the strength I had left and thrust it into the soldier’s neck.

His body stiffened, his screaming stopped, and when I pulled the knife free for a second attack, blood arced high and wide, and I plunged it into him once more. This time it was as if I had let the air out of a balloon. His entire body relaxed and he slipped sideways, life evaporating into the warmth of the
izba
.

I lay on my back as the whiteness began to recede. I opened my mouth wide and gulped at the air, feeling the pain returning to my neck and face. I became aware of someone shouting, but everything was confused, the sounds dull and echoing. Sergei, I think, the old man shouting, ‘Grigori.’ I tried to remember who ‘Grigori’ was, my mind sluggish, taking too long to connect the name to Ryzhkov. Then a woman was shouting too. No,
screaming
. Oksana, or perhaps the old woman, I couldn’t tell which, the voices melting into the pounding and ringing that already filled my head. But I heard no children’s voices. No sound from Anna.

Anna. The name repeated in my mind and I was filled with a sudden dread. I needed to see her, to know that she was all right.

I brought my knees up and tried to push onto my elbows, but I was weak and my muscles burned. Nothing worked as it should. My arms trembled. The pain in my back intensified; my chest ached; my vision blurred; my hearing was muted. My body was fighting to recover from the punishment it had just taken and I trembled as I willed myself to move first one arm, then the other, and when I finally managed to prop myself up and look towards the door, I saw neither Tanya nor Lyudmila.

Close to me, the bodies of three men lay sprawled on the floor, but beyond them, by the door, I saw only Ryzhkov standing with Tanya’s pistol at his side, his face glistening with sweat and dotted with flecks of blood. His shoulders were hunched the way Tuzik’s hunched when he was issuing a warning or about to attack. His head was dropped so that his chin was almost touching his chest and he was staring at me.

Ryzhkov did not have the gaunt and bony figure of Koschei the Deathless. He did not have the long beard or the sword at his side, but he did have the crazed and savage look in his eyes.

When he raised the pistol and shook his head, I lifted one arm in a useless but natural gesture.

‘Please,’ I tried to say.

And he hesitated.

His eyes shifted to focus on something behind me just as a shot cracked, dull and flat and undramatic to my damaged ears. Ryzhkov flinched, but the bullet missed by a hand’s width, burying itself in the wall beside the front door.

A shadow of surprise and confusion crossed his face, and he twitched again as another shot followed immediately after the first, this one striking the wall on the other side of him. Then he scowled and started to adjust the aim of the pistol away from me, to point at whoever had demanded his attention, but his movement was never finished.

Third and fourth shots came in quick succession, one of them finding its mark, and Ryzhkov lurched when the bullet struck him. He bent at the waist as if punched and took a step back to steady himself. His arms dropped as if suddenly heavy and Tanya’s weapon slipped from his fingers.

I saw my chance for life. Whoever had fired those shots had given me precious seconds. I pushed harder with my shaking arms, summoning what little strength I had left to turn onto my front so I could struggle to my feet, and in that movement, I caught a glimpse of what was behind me.

Everything had happened so quickly that no one had moved much. The few seconds it had taken for the violence to play out were barely enough for them to do much more than watch in horror. Oksana was still beside the
pich
, her children still out of sight, but the old woman was closer, as if she had tried to come across the room. What she thought she might achieve, I couldn’t tell, but Sergei had both hands on her, gripping her upper arms as he held her back. There was no need for that now, though, because they were all motionless and silent.

The old woman was staring at her son, horrified, but both Sergei and Oksana were looking at the far end of the room.

Anna was sitting with her back to the wall, arms outstretched. Her small hands still clutching my revolver. Her fingers still working the trigger, firing on empty cylinders.

Koschei was not dead.

He was in pain. He was losing his lifeblood onto the floor of his own home, but he was not dead.

‘Where is my wife?’ I mumbled as I struggled to my feet, fighting the dizziness. I felt drunk, as if I had lost control of my muscles. Nothing worked the way it should. ‘Where are my sons?’

He ignored me, head down, searching around him for a weapon. He turned on the spot, looking for the pistol he had dropped.

A part of me wanted to go to Anna. I wanted to comfort her and make her feel secure. I wanted to hold her and thank her for my life, but I knew that the only way for her to be safe was to eliminate the threat to her. I had to reach Ryzhkov before he could arm himself again. He had information I needed. I had to make him tell me.

‘Where are they?’ I took a stumbling step toward him, putting my hands out, reaching for anything to hold on to. ‘Where did you take them?’

I was slow, but some of my strength was coming back. My neck was throbbing and my face aching. Pain fired up my back, exploding from the base of my spine with every step, but I had something to drive me on, something to numb the pain for me.

I had Koschei. Right in front of me.

As I took another step, he looked up at me and stared. His face was white, the spots of Tanya’s blood standing out against his skin. He was hunched, both hands crossed over his stomach, but there was nothing he could do to stop his slow death. Anna’s bullet had cut into him just above the belt, and while his blood emptied from him, so his ruptured insides were poisoning him. His life was ebbing away.

‘It’s over now,’ I said. ‘Just tell me where they are.’

‘No,’ he managed. ‘It’s not over yet.’ He looked down at the knife in my hand, then scanned the floor one last time before raising his eyes to meet mine. He knew I was recovering now, regaining my strength, but there was a defiance in him, a refusal to accept his situation. He was Koschei. The Deathless One. He could not be killed.

But nor could he kill. Without a weapon he was defenceless against me and there were few options left for him. He could try to arm himself before I managed to cross the room and get round the table. He could wait for me to come to him, to force the information I needed from him. Or he could run. The bullet had weakened him, but he was a strong man. If he could make it to the darkness of the field or forest, he might have a chance.

And that is what he did.

He turned and fled.

He was faster than I had expected, quick on his feet for a man who had been shot, and by the time I had taken another faltering step, he was out of the door.

‘No.’ I felt my desperation grow now. ‘No.’ I was determined that he shouldn’t escape. He knew where my sons were. He knew what had happened to Marianna. I needed to know. I couldn’t let him get away.

No sooner than I had taken another step, I heard a terrible screeching, like something from a child’s nightmare. I half turned, cringing, to see that the old woman had broken from her husband’s grip and was coming at me, wailing like a demon, arms outstretched, gnarled fingers hooked into claws. She let out a terrible shrieking that made me want to reel in horror, and I had a flash of the image that I’d conjured in the forest – of the
rusalka
coming at me, hungry for vengeance.

I put out my hand, bracing myself to meet her.

She hit me as hard as she could, her chest colliding with my outstretched hand, striking me with more strength than I had anticipated. Weak as I was, she pushed me back against the table, which squealed as it scraped across the floor.

Then she was raking and clawing and screaming, her rotten nails scratching my cheeks, ripping into my skin, trying to find my eyes as she wailed like a vengeful nightmare.

Leaning back, supported by the table, I raised my arms to protect myself and lifted one leg, planting my foot against her pelvis and shoving. I didn’t have much strength in me, but she was light and I kicked her away hard enough to knock her off her feet, not stopping to see what happened to her. I had controlled her and that was enough. I was single-minded now.

Koschei was escaping.

Bent at the waist and leaving a trail of red spots in the snow, Ryzhkov had reached the barn and had lifted the latch. The door was now swinging open. He had seen the horses when he came up from the nearby farm, and that was what he wanted. That was how he intended to escape.

‘Where are they?’ I shouted, but the words were muffled, as if my mouth were stuffed with cotton.

Ryzhkov didn’t stop. He didn’t even register that he had heard me.

‘
Where are they?
’

As I blundered into the yard, Ryzhkov pulled the barn door wide and began to make his way inside, but already the horses were agitated by the commotion inside the
izba
. Now they smelled the blood and death on Ryzhkov and it sent them into turmoil, desperate to escape.

Tanya’s horse came out first, brushing past him as it trotted into the yard, snorting and swishing its tail. Its ears were back flat and it tossed its head as it searched for safety.