Katya lifted her head, muzzy from the fall. The horses stood around her, panting and pleased, snorting and bobbing their heads. She laid a hand to the ground to roust herself, she couldn’t just lie here, no matter how much her body hurt. With a surprise that was too great to be mere relief, almost a shock at her luck, her fingers brushed on the black firing cord, running beside her to the tracks only ten meters away.
She shook her head: She needed to be clear-headed, or she would be dead in minutes. Scrambling to her feet, she crouched behind the horses. She took Anna’s muzzle and walked her and the other five horses the last steps to the rails. Holding Anna by the mane, Katya shooed the others away, smacking one on the rump to make them skitter off and grab the attention of the coming guards, leaving Anna and Katya behind at the C-3.
She pressed flat beside the rail. Fifty meters off, the guards’ flashlights glanced up at the pack running away from them, then lowered to the tracks again. Anna stood still, disguising the dark form of Katya fumbling with the wires.
Katya’s hands felt racked and unruly, her fingers rejected any fine movement. She pulled back from the blasting caps for a moment, to catch her breath and gain control of herself. Her heart beat thunderously in her ears. The guards strolled closer every second; now she could hear their voices, their boots on the gravel beside the rails, their flashlights were the brightest things under the lackluster moon and stars. Now, she thought. Or, really, never.
She leaned into the C-3, close enough to smell Ivan’s vegetable oil. She could not stop the tremble in her fingers so she let them hover above the caps, gingerly touching the wires until she found the place that had come undone. The firing cord had been pulled away from the first cap by her stumble, the stripped copper wire stuck straight up, cooperative and easy to repair if the sun were high and her hands did not quaver like a divining rod and an armed German patrol was not bearing down on her. Katya pulled her hands away again from the task. She commanded them to be still and obey. She filled her lungs with the steppe night and held it. Anna bent down to see what her rider was doing in the dirt. Katya pushed the probing muzzle away. This touch - an old and familiar feel, a horse to her hand - brought her a moment of calm and remembrance. That was all she needed.
German voices sped her hands to the wires. She grasped the loose antennae of the blasting cap, pincered the copper length of the bared firing cord in her other fingertips, and twined the wires together, two, three, four turns. She couldn’t be certain the contacts were good, but there was no more time. The first daubs of a flashlight’s beam trickled at Anna’s hooves.
Katya stood. She grabbed a handful of Anna’s mane and started to run. Anna broke into a trot. Katya hopped and bounded onto Anna’s back, tucking low to meld with the horse’s silhouette. She ducked her head and gripped the horse hard with her weary arms and legs, sliding down again to ride unseen away from the patrol.
She was less than ten meters from the rails when the C-3 blew.
Anna reared. The horse stumbled and neighed, hurt. Katya felt the blast through the animal’s muscles, Anna was lifted and smashed down by the explosion. Katya held on by instinct, not thinking to let go. Clinging to Anna’s ribs, Katya screamed. The horse seemed broken in the middle, she collapsed as two horses, the upper part wrenched in agony, the lower half still running.
Anna lost her balance in a few wild steps and crumpled over, hitting the ground on top of her. Katya tried to scramble out but her legs were trapped. The weight was too much, Katya couldn’t even kick at the horse. Anna convulsed, screaming, grinding Katya into the black dirt. Katya cringed at the agony of the shuddering animal across her thighs and ankles but couldn’t make a sound: The German patrol might hear her. She gritted her teeth and blew slow breaths. The patrol had shut off their flashlight at the blast. Through the red haze in her eyes and the injured horse’s terrified breathing, she no longer knew where the Germans were.
Struggling to sit up, she looked over Anna’s heaving side. The horse had been ripped open at the abdomen, intestines spilled on the ground and lapped across her trembling shoulder and flank. The moon stole the color of Anna’s workings, her guts were gray and pulsing, blood ran black. Tears ran down Katya’s face. Her horse was in agony. The report of the explosion had faded away now and Anna’s cries would bring the guards right to where Katya and she lay. They’d put a rifle to Anna’s head to finish the poor beast, then do the same for Katya, the trapped partisan.
Anna shivered. Her hooves crawled in the dust, not understanding what had happened, believing that the answer was to run, always the state of a horse’s mind. Katya could do nothing for her horse but to die alongside her. She lay back down, looking at Anna’s panicked eye, unblinking and beseeching, You are the rider, you can lead us away from this. Katya stroked her neck and lifted her gaze from the dying horse to the stars. Her vision had cleared, the pain in her legs had gone numb. Anna breathed fast, in deep gulps, as though she were indeed running.
Why did the C-3 go before Katya was clear? What happened? Too late, she thought, it’s too late, she would die with questions. She tried to think of Papa and Valya and the war, how would they turn out, where was Leonid? The universe of stars and moon and the years of her life focused down to a pinpoint, a single dark mote here on the ground, Katya, living her last bits second by second in the dust. Enough. To end with a horse seemed right, a horse had been the dearest thing in her life, so this was proper, it was better than an airplane, after all.
The guards spoke out of the darkness. Katya heard the metal slap of a rifle bolt. Anna answered with a nicker, an absurd last appeal to the new human voices, maybe they will be better riders. Boots crunched in the gravel. Katya sat up again.
She drew the knife from her belt sheath. She would not let the Germans finish her horse, this was the Cossack’s final responsibility. With her left hand smoothing Anna’s ears, she slid the blade deep into Anna’s throat to open an artery. The horse did not jump at the new sting. Blood flooded over Katya’s fist and the horse’s head relaxed in her hands. The wild eye closed. She lay the horse’s unsuffering crown back to the earth.
The guards approached. The tracks had been blown fifty meters from them. Partisans were near, danger lurked, so they crept forward with caution.
Katya had only a few more seconds before the darkness was not enough to hide her. Anna’s blood dripped warm and sticky in her hand. She gasped, like a woman coming up from under water, then shut her mouth. She knew what to do.
She untucked her tunic. With the knife she cut a hole in the shirt above her belly. Sitting up as far as she could, careful to make no sound, she reached for a handful of Anna’s intestines, sorting fast through the wet morass to take only the small bowels. When she had a wet gob of them in her hand, she sawed the blade of her knife through the guts, slicing a portion away. She stuffed the entrails into the hole in her tunic, like stuffing a scarecrow, leaving a length of them dangling out. With both hands, she cupped blood out of the horse’s gaping cavity, fighting a need to retch at the heat of Anna’s bowels snuggled against her own warm skin and at what she was about to do. Holding her breath to keep her stomach from pitching, she smeared the blood over her face and neck to the sickening smell of copper, she cupped more and splashed blood around the hole in her shirt and Anna’s bulging bowel. Urgency and fear carried her past what she was doing, wallowing in gore, salt blood on her tongue and matting her hair. With only seconds before the creeping Germans were near enough to discern more than a dead horse, she drove her knife into a bulging section of Anna’s large intestine. The bowel burst at the prick with a gassy pop and a stench blew out that made Katya retch; she caught the vomit halfway up her throat and fell back, eyes closed, a silent prayer on her blood-painted lips.
‘Ach,’ said one of the Germans. The voice came from about ten meters away. Their boots stopped on the gravel. ‘Was riecht so faul?’ The voice was nervous, and disgusted.
Another few wary steps.
‘Das Pferd
.’
The dead horse across Katya’s legs began to hurt her again. She kept her breathing as shallow as she could, to still her chest, to play dead. She opened her mouth and put an agonized grimace on her face. The boots left the gravel by the rails and scraped in the dirt, joining closer to the horrid mound under which Katya lay pinned. Anna’s blood began to cool on her cheeks and neck.
The flashlight clicked on. Behind her lids Katya sensed the beam play over the dead horse. The light washed over her.
‘Partisan.’
‘Ja.’
‘Sie sind nahe.’
The two guards walked in a wide circle around Anna’s carcass; behind her lids Katya watched the beam move and fall on her. The stench of the open bowel was keeping these two at bay.
‘Ach,’ one said again, ‘der Geruch.’ He cleared his throat and spat. ‘Sheisse.’
The boots halted a few meters away. The flashlight played full on Katya’s face. She needed to breathe, her chest burned. The light searched her.
‘Genug.’
A pistol cocked.
Another step was taken in the dirt.
Katya longed to scream, to sit up and scare them away, bloody ghoul, suck in a great breath and call for help, something, anything except lie here posing as dead with her last moment! A bullet was aimed at her brain. No, no, she thought, panicking without moving a muscle, no flinch marred her brow, but her body was coiled to spring up and surrender, she held it back, she was a catapult, every fiber tensed to rise up and fling her hands in the air and shout No! She fought herself, she willed her body to stay rigid as the dead.
‘Nein, Hans, nein. Partisanen. Die werdeu uns hören. Shhhh.’
The light stayed pressing across her eyes. The world was at an end inside Katya’s yellow glowing lids.
The boots near her head stepped again.
‘Ja,’ the pistol said, ‘ja, sie ist tot.’
The flashlight clicked off.
The guards’ boots moved back to the tracks, crunching again in the gravel. Katya’s body sagged with relief. She kept her eyes closed and sipped a long, greedy breath through her nose. She heard the Germans murmur, they were looking over the rail that had been severed by the blast.
She lay marveling that she was still alive. The blood coating her hands and face grew tacky, the odor of the popped intestine renewed itself in her nostrils now that she was breathing again. She could not imagine a way out of her predicament and did not waste her attention trying to figure, she waited in amazement that the clock still ticked on her life. She listened to the guards curse the partisans for the shattered rail.
One of the guards sounded as if he might puke, he made heaving noises behind a clamped mouth. The other voice went mute. Katya heard a brief scuffle on the gravel, something laid down. She kept herself still, she fought the strong urge to look, her only chance of survival was to be dead.
The bootsteps stayed near the tracks. Then, after a short silence, they tromped near her, two sets. They stopped on either side of her head. She kept the veil of a tortured death mounted on her face, the congealing horse blood began to itch. Her held breath burned in her lungs. Above her, a tongue clucked. The man standing over her sighed.
A call - a loud, raspy whisper - issued from down the tracks. ‘Was ist los? Giht’s was?’
The one who’d sighed answered. ‘Nein, nein. Alles klar. Es giht ein totes Pferd.’
Katya trembled inside her frozen flesh. This was not the voice of either of the guards. This man was older.
The set of boots on the other side of Katya’s death pose made a nauseated sound, ‘Pfew.’ In Russian, the voice whispered, ‘Leave her.’
The old one murmured, ‘No. We can carry her.’
‘She stinks.’
Katya’s fear did not release easily. She recognized these voices, but cracked her eyes slowly, just enough to peer out under her lashes, to stay dead.
She saw boots. Russian boots. And there were jackets and dark civilian shirts, and yes! Filip, and nasty Josef. They’d come!
Katya gulped a deep breath and fought to sit up.
The two leaped away from her, old Filip staggered backward and fell to his knees, crossing himself and muttering to Christ. Josef recovered first, he stepped to her and without a word dug his hands under Anna’s spine to raise the horse off her.
‘Come on, old man,’ he growled at the starosta.
‘Witch?’ old Filip mumbled, still on his knees.
Katya turned to Filip, knowing how ghastly she must look. ‘Filip, help me get up.’
Josef grunted again, ‘Old man.’
Filip helped Josef heft the horse from Katya’s legs. Katya plucked the dangling intestine from her ripped shirt and tossed it aside, callous now for Anna’s death, her sorrow dismissed by the thrill of reprieve. She sucked down air and thought it sweet, blessed it, felt the honey of her own blood rush back into her feet, then reached up for Josef’s hand to stand on her own. Only minutes had passed since the C-3 exploded, that was all, and she had lived a lifetime in them, and a death. She wanted to hug both men, even Josef.
The two left her wobbling while they went to the tracks to collect the German guards. The blown rail was curled in the air like a beckoning steel finger. Josef and Filip hoisted one man to his feet, he’d been unconscious until Josef kicked him to wake him. The soldier’s hands had been tied and his mouth stuffed with a sock. In the moonlight Katya saw the shock on his face, his pupils wide and white at her standing before him, a blood-covered zombie partisan. The other guard did not rise. His throat was slit. The gash was gaping enough in his neck for Katya to see it from where she stood, blood had poured and pooled in the crannies of the gravel and across rail ties. Katya felt nothing at the sight.
Josef held his knife to the bound German’s throat and gripped him under the elbow. He led the soldier away into the hundred open meters between them and cover. The prisoner walked off with his eyes fixed on Katya.
‘Sei still,’ Filip hissed to him, and drew a index finger under his own chin to make sure the German understood that Josef would kill him if he made a sound.
Filip took Katya under the arm. Together they hurried away behind Josef and the prisoner back to the trees.
‘Where are the horses?’ she asked.
‘Ivan and Daniel got them. They’re waiting. You had a close call, Witch. You scared me so bad I almost filled my britches. Well done. Are you alright?’
She ached down to her marrow, not just from the fall of her horse but from the tempest of fear in her veins; it had withdrawn, but not without leaving its mark in her.
‘Yes.’
Limping across the dark ground on Filip’s arm, she prepared herself for her return to life, to the war and Plokhoi’s partisans, this long night and tomorrow’s day, and her place in it all. Why did the C-3 go off before she was clear? Where was Leonid? Who was the traitor?
How does old Filip know German?
She asked him.
He answered out of breath, lugging her across the open ground. They were almost to the shrubs. Katya spotted the outlines of Ivan and Daniel saddling the remaining horses.
‘My mother was a Sudeten Slav,’ the old man replied. ‘My six brothers and I grew up speaking German.’
‘Did all your brothers come with you to Plokhoi?’
‘Yes.’ The starosta hesitated. ‘All but one.’
‘Where is he?’
‘He stayed in the village. He’s… he’s not welcome.’
Katya slowed, even before reaching the safety of the copse and the other partisans.
‘Why, Filip?’
The starosta’s whisper vented through tight lips, baring shame. ‘Nikolai works for the Nazis. He’s an interpreter. For their interrogations. One day the village… No, my brothers and I, we’ll put a stop to it.’
Katya tugged Filip to a halt. This was a calamity in the old man’s family, a collaborator. She saw shame on Filip’s face, but could not pause for it. She needed to
ask something fast, outside the hearing of the others. Of all the partisans, she knew Filip was not the spy.
‘Did he ever question downed Soviet pilots?’
Filip cocked his weathered head at this. ‘Yes. Why?’
A prayer raced through Katya’s heart. ‘Did Nikolai ever travel to Tomarovka?’
‘Last week. They came and took him to Kazatskoe, three kilometers away’
Her heart cartwheeled at this news. Before she could explain, Daniel and Ivan tramped out of the bushes to them. Katya whispered to Filip, ‘Please, don’t tell anybody about this. Talk to me alone. Filip, please.’
Last Citadel Page 27
