The Flashman Papers: The Complete 12-Book Collection

by George MacDonald Fraser

  It fretted me, too, at this minute; I roused East, and then we made all fast, and I took the reins and off we slid silently south-west, past those lonely koorgans, into the icy wilderness. I had a bottle, and some bread, but nothing could warm me; I was scared, but didn’t know of what – just the silence and the unknown, I suppose. And then from somewhere far off to my right I heard it – that thin, dismal sound that is the terror of the empty steppe, unmistakable and terrifying, drifting through the vast distance: the eldritch cry of the wolf.

  The horses heard it too, and whinnied, bounding forward in fear with a stumble of hooves, until we were flying at our uttermost speed. My imagination was flying even faster; I remembered Pencherjevsky’s story of the woman who had thrown her children out when those fearful monsters got on the track of her sled, and had been executed for it, and countless other tales of sleds run down by famished packs and their occupants literally eaten alive. I daren’t look back for fear of what I might see loping over the snow behind me.

  The cry was not repeated, and after a few more miles I breathed easier; there was a twinkle of light dead ahead, and when we reached it, we found it was a moujik’s cabin, and the man himself at the door, axe in hand, glowering at us. We asked him the nearest town, and could have cried with relief when he said Yenitchi: it was only forty versts away – a couple of hours’ driving, if the beasts held up and weren’t pressed too hard. East took the reins, I climbed in behind – Valla was sleeping still, uneasily, and mumbling incoherently – and we set off on what I prayed was the last stage of our mainland journey.

  For rather more than an hour nothing happened; we drove on through the silence, I took another turn, and then I halted not far from another clump of koorgans to let East climb into the driver’s seat again. I had my foot on the runner, and he was just chuckling to the horses, when it came again – that bloodchilling wail, far closer this time, and off to the left. The horses shrieked, and the sled shot forward so fast that for a moment I was dragged along, clinging to the side by main strength, until I managed to drag myself inboard, tumbling on to the back seat. Valla was stirring, muttering sleepily, but I’d no time for her; I thrust out my head, staring fearfully across the snow, trying to pierce the dusk, but there was nothing to be seen. East was letting the horses go, and the sled was swaying with the speed – and then it came again, closer still, like the sound of a lost soul falling to hell. I heard East shouting to the horses, cracking his whip; I clutched the side, feeling the sweat pouring off me in spite of the cold.

  Still nothing, as we fairly flew along; there was another cluster of koorgans just visible in the mirk a quarter of a mile or so to our left. As I watched them – was that something moving beyond them? My heart flew to my mouth – no, they stood bleak and lonely, and I found I was panting with fear as I dashed the sweat from my eyes and peered again. Silence, save for the muffled thump of the hooves and the hissing of the runners – and there was something flitting between the last two koorgans, a low, long dark shape rushing over the snow, and another behind it, and another, speeding out now into the open, and swerving towards us.

  “Jesus!” I shrieked. “Wolves!”

  East yelled something I couldn’t hear, and the sled rocked horribly as he bore on his offside rein; then we righted, and as I gazed over the side, the hellish baying broke out almost directly behind us. There they were – five of them, gliding in our wake; I could see the leader toss up his hideous snout as he let go his evil wail, and then they put their heads down and came after us in dead silence.

  I’ve seen horror in my time, human, animal, and natural, but I don’t know much worse than that memory – those dim grey shapes bounding behind us, creeping inexorably closer, until I could make out the flat, wicked heads and the snow spurting up under their loping paws. I must have been petrified, for God knows how long I just stared at them – and then my wits came back, and I seized the nearest rug and flung it out to the side, as far as I could.

  As one beast they swerved, and were on it in a twinkling, tearing it among them. Only for a second, and then they were after us again – probably all the fiercer for being fooled. I grabbed another rug and hurled it, and this time they never even broke stride, but shot past it, closing in on the sled until they were a bare twenty paces behind, and I could see their open jaws – I’ve never been able to look an Alsatian in the face since – and delude myself that I could even make out their glittering eyes. I’d have given my right arm, then, for the feel of my faithful old Adams in my grip – “You wouldn’t run so fast with a forty-four bullet in you, damn you!” I yelled at them – and they came streaking up, while the horses screamed with fear and tore ahead, widening the gap for about ten blessed seconds. I was cursing and scrabbling in the back looking for something else to throw – a bottle, that was no use, but by George, if I smashed one at the bottom it might serve as a weapon when the last moment came and they were ravening over the tailboard – in desperation I seized a loaf (we’d finished the ham) and hurled it at the nearest of them, and I am here to tell you that wolves don’t eat bread – they don’t even bloody well look at it, for that matter. I heard East roaring something, and cracking his whip like a madman, and God help me, I could see the eyes behind us now, glaring in those viciously pointed heads, with their open jaws and gleaming teeth, and the vapour panting out between them. The leader was a bare five yards behind, bounding along like some hound of hell; I grabbed another rug, balled it, prayed, and flung it at him, and for one joyous moment it enveloped him; he stumbled, recovered, and came on again, and East sang out from the box to hold tight. The sled rocked, and we were shooting along between high snow banks on either side, with those five devils barely a leap from us – and suddenly they were falling back, slackening their lope, and I couldn’t believe my eyes, and then a cabin flashed by on the right, and then another, with beautiful, wonderful light in its windows, and the five awful shapes were fading into the gloom, and we were gliding up a street, between rows of cottages on either side, and as East brought the sled slowly to a halt I collapsed, half-done, on the seat. Valla, I remember, muttered something and turned over in her rugs.

  You would not think much of Yenitchi, I dare say, or its single mean street, but to me Piccadilly itself couldn’t have looked better. It was five minutes before I crawled out, and East and I faced the curious stares of the folk coming out of the cabins; the horses were hanging in their traces, and we had no difficulty in convincing them that we needed a change. There was a post-station at the end of the street, beside a bridge, and a drunk postmaster who, after much swearing and cajoling, was induced to produce a couple of fairly flea-bitten brutes; East wondered if we should rest for a few hours, and go on with our own nags refreshed, but I said no – let’s be off while the going’s good. So when we had got some few items of bread and sausages and cheese from the postmaster’s wife, and a couple of female garments for Valla to wear when she woke up, we put the new beasts to and prepared to take the road again.

  It was a dismal prospect. Beyond the bridge, which spanned a frozen canal, we could see the Arrow of Arabat, a long, bleak tongue of snow-covered land running south like a huge railway embankment into the Azov Sea. The sea proper, which was frozen – at least as far out as we could see – lay to the left; on the right of the causeway lies a stinking inland lagoon, called the Sivache, which is many miles wide in places, but narrows down as you proceed along the Arrow, until it peters away altogether where the causeway reaches Arabat, on the eastern end of the Crimea. The lagoon seems to be too foul to freeze entirely, even in a Russian winter, and the stench from it would poison an elephant.

  We were just preparing to set off, when Valla woke up, and after we had told her where she was, and reassured her that all was well, and she had wept a little, and I’d helped her out discreetly to answer a call of nature – well, she’d been asleep for the best of twenty-four hours – we decided after all to have a caulk before setting out again. East and I were both pretty done, bu
t I wouldn’t allow more than two hours’ rest – having got this far, I’d no wish to linger. We had some food, and now Valla was beginning to come to properly, and wanted to know where we were taking her.

  “We’re going back to our own army,” I told her. “We must take you with us – we can’t leave you here, and you’ll be well cared for. I believe your father is all right – we saw him and his Cossacks escaping as we drove away – and I know he would wish us to see you safe, and there’s nowhere better than where we’re going, d’you see?”

  It served, after a deal of questioning and answering; whether she was still under the influence of the laudanum or not, I wasn’t certain, but she seemed content enough, in a sleepy sort of way, so we plied her with nips of brandy to keep out the cold – she refused outright the clothes we had got, and stayed curled up in her rugs – and being a Russian girl, she was ready to drink all we offered her.

  “If she’s half-tight, so much the better,” says I to East. “Distressing, of course, but she’ll be less liable to give the game away if we run into trouble.”

  “It is terrible for her – to be subjected to this nightmare,” says he. “But that was a noble lie you told, about her father – I wanted to shake your hand on that, old boy.” And he wrung it then and there. “I still think I must be dreaming,” says he. “This incredible country, and you and I – and this dear girl – fleeing for our lives! But we are nearly home, old fellow – a bare sixty miles to Arabat, and then eight hours at most will see us at Sevastopol, God willing. Will you pray with me, Flashman, for our deliverance?”

  I wasn’t crawling about in the snow, not for him or anyone, but I stood while he mumped away with his hands folded, beseeching the Lord that we might quit ourselves like men, or something equally useful, and then we climbed in and took our forty winks. Valla was dozing, and the brandy bottle was half-empty – if ever they start the Little White Ribboners in Russia, all the members will have to be boys, for they’ll never get the women to take the pledge.

  The rest did me little good. The scare we’d had from the wolves, and the perils ahead, had my nerves jangling like fiddle-strings, and after a bare hour of uneasy dozing I roused East and said we should be moving. The moon was up by now, so we should have light enough to ensure we didn’t stray from the causeway; I took the driver’s seat, and we slid away over the bridge and out on to the Arrow of Arabat.

  For the first few miles it was quite wide, and as I kept to the eastern side there was a great expanse of hummocky snow to my right. But then the causeway gradually narrowed to perhaps half a mile, so that it was like driving along a very broad raised road, with the ground falling away sharply on either side to the snow-covered frozen waters of Azov and the Sivache lagoon; the salty charnel reek was awful, and even the horses didn’t like it, tossing their heads and pulling awkwardly, so that I had to look sharp to manage them. We passed two empty post-stations, East and I exchanging at each one, and after about four hours he took the reins for what we hoped would be the last spell into Arabat.

  I climbed into the back of the sled and made all the fastenings secure as we started off again, and was preparing to curl up on the back seat when Valla stirred sleepily in the darkness, murmuring “Harr-ee?” as she stretched restlessly in her pile of furs on the floor. I knelt down beside her and took her hand, but when I spoke to her she just mumbled and turned over; the laudanum and brandy still had her pretty well foxed, and there was no sense to be got out of her. It struck me she might be conscious enough to enjoy some company, though, so I slipped a hand beneath the furs and encountered warm, plump flesh; the touch of it sent the blood pumping in my head.

  “Valla, my love,” I whispered, just to be respectable; I could smell the sweet musky perfume of her skin, even over the brandy. I stroked her belly, and she moaned softly, and when I felt upwards and cupped her breast she turned towards me, her lips wet against my cheek. I was shaking as I put my mouth on hers, and then in a trice I was under the rugs, wallowing away like a sailor on shore leave, and half-drunk as she was she clung to me passionately. It was an astonishing business, for the furs were crackling with electricity, shocking me into unprecedented efforts – I thought I knew everything in the galloping line, but I’ll swear there’s no more alarming way of doing it than under a pile of skins in a sled skimming through the freezing Russian night; it’s like performing on a bed of fire-crackers.

  Engrossing as the novelty was, it was also exhausting, and I must have dozed off afterwards with Valla purring in her unconsciousness beside me. And then I became dimly conscious that the sled was slowing down, and gliding to a halt; I sat up, wondering what the blazes was wrong, buttoning myself hastily, and then I heard East jump down. I stuck my head out; he was standing by the sled, his head cocked, listening.

  “Hush!” says he, sharply. “Do you hear anything?”

  It crossed my mind that he’d overheard the heaving and crackling of my contortions with Valla, but his next words drove that idea out of my head, and implanted a new and disturbing one.

  “Behind us,” says he. “Listen!”

  I scrambled out on to the snow, and we stood there, in the silent moonlight, straining our ears. At first there was nothing but the gentle sigh of the wind, the restless movement of the horses, and our own hearts thumping in the stillness – and then? Was there the tiniest murmur from somewhere back on the causeway, an indistinct but regular sound, softly up and down, up and down? I felt the hairs rise on my neck – it couldn’t be wolves, not here, but what was it, then? We stared back along the causeway; it was very narrow now, only a couple of hundred yards across, but we had just come on to a stretch where it began to swerve gently towards the east, and it was difficult to make out anything in the gloom beyond the bend about a quarter of a mile behind us. Snow was falling gently, brushing our faces.

  “I thought I heard …” Scud said slowly. “But perhaps I was wrong.”

  “Whatever it is, or isn’t, there’s no sense waiting here for it!” says I. “How far d’you reckon we are from Arabat?”

  “Six miles, perhaps – surely not much more. Once there, we should be all right. According to that book of mine, there are little hills and gullies beyond the town, and we can lose ourselves in ’em if we want to, so …”

  “The devil with dallying here, then!” cries I, in a fine stew. “Why the deuce are we wasting time, man? Let’s be off from this blasted place, where there’s nowhere to hide! Up on the box with you!”

  “You’re right, of course,” says he. “I just … Hark, though! what’s that?”

  I listened, gulping – and there was a sound, a sound that I knew all too well. Very faintly, somewhere behind us, there was a gentle but now distinct drumming, and a tiny tinkling with it. There were horsemen on the causeway!

  “Quick!” I shouted. “They’re after us! Hurry, man – move those horses!”

  He tumbled up on to the box, and as I swung myself on to the runner-mounting he cracked his whip and we slid forward across the snow. I clung to the side of the sled, peering back fearfully through the thin snow-fall, trying to make out if anything was showing beyond the bend in the causeway. We increased speed, and with the hiss of the runners it was impossible to listen for that frightening tell-tale sound.

  “It may be just other travellers some distance back!” cries Scud from the box. “No one could be pursuing us!”

  “Travellers at this time of night?” says I. “For God’s sake, man, hurry those beasts!”

  We were gathering speed now, cracking along at a good clip, and I was just about to swing myself under the cover – but I paused for another look back along the causeway, and what I saw nearly made me loose my hold. Very dimly through the falling flakes, I could just make out the causeway bend, and there, moving out on to the straight on this side of it, was a dark, indistinct mass – too big and irregular to be anything like a sled. And then the moonlight caught a score of twinkling slivers in the gloom, and I yelled at East in panic:
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br />   “It’s cavalry – horsemen! They’re after us, man!”

  At the same time they must have seen us, for a muffled cry reached my ears, and now I could see the mass was indeed made up of separate pieces – a whole troop of them, coming on at a steady hand-gallop, and even as I watched they lengthened their stride, closing the distance. East was flogging at the horses, and the sled swayed and shuddered as we tore along – were they gaining on us? I clung there, trying to measure the distance, but I couldn’t be sure; perhaps terror was colouring my judgment, making me see what I wanted to see, but so far as I could judge it looked as though we were holding our own for the moment.

  “Faster!” I bawled to East. “Faster, man, or they’ll have us!”

  If only the bloody ass hadn’t halted to listen – if only we hadn’t wasted that precious hour dozing at Yenitchi! I couldn’t begin to guess who these people were, or how they had got after us – but there they were, scudding along behind as fast as they could ride – four hundred yards, five hundred? Maybe five or more – I couldn’t see whether they were hussars or dragoons or what, but I had a feeling they were heavies. Pray God they might be! I swung under the covers and threw myself on to the back seat, peering out through the window-flap. No, they weren’t closing the distance – not yet. They were fanned out on the causeway as far as they could – good riding, that, for in column the rear files would have been ploughing into the churned snow of the men in front. Trust Russian cavalry to know about that.

  But if they weren’t gaining, they weren’t dropping back, either. There was nothing in it – it’s a queer thing, but where a horseman can easily overhaul a coach, or even a racing phaeton, a good sled on firm snow is another matter entirely. A horse with a load on his back makes heavy weather in snow, but unladen they can spank a sled along at nearly full gallop.