Zadruga

by Margaret Pemberton

  Stephen swung himself on to the back of the fit-looking horse Peter had allocated to him and as the men around him urged their mounts into movement he did likewise.

  At the first bend in the track some instinct made him rein in and look behind him. Olga was sitting on a bench outside the farmhouse door, cleaning her rifle. She wasn’t wearing her RAF cap and in the sunlight her hair, fastened in a loose knot in the nape of her neck, was so fair as to be almost blonde.

  Sensing his gaze she raised her head and their eyes met. Impulsively he waved goodbye. There was no response. She merely returned her attention to the rifle lying across her lap and, curiously deflated, he turned away, urging his horse down the dust-blown track.

  The village was hardly deserving of the name. It consisted of a single street of white-washed, red-roofed houses, a church and a communal water pump.

  Every person they passed called out a greeting and by the time they reached the forge Stephen could see why Peter had thought it sense that Marko, Vlada and Milos accompany them.

  Black-garbed village women thrust baskets of fruit and vegetables into their grateful hands. There were presents of butter and eggs, even presents of home-brewed slivovitz.

  The warm-hearted generosity put Stephen into such good spirits that he felt almost in a holiday mood as he followed Peter into the forge. It was a mood swiftly dispelled.

  ‘A Bulgarian patrol has been reported heading in this direction,’ the blacksmith said succinctly. ‘My boy set off to tell you a half hour ago and returned when he saw you on your way here. He’s a lazy little bastard. Won’t exert himself if there’s no need.’

  Marko, Vlada and Milos turned immediately on their heels.

  ‘Where were they coming from?’ Peter demanded. ‘The south-east?’

  The blacksmith nodded.

  ‘I’ll collect the horse later,’ Peter said tersely. ‘Come on Stephen. We need to warn the others.’

  Marko, Vlada and Milos were already re-mounting their horses, much to the disappointment of the village girls clustering hopefully around the village pump.

  Peter strode across to his own horse, saying to Stephen, ‘It may only be a routine patrol, in which case all we have to do is keep our heads down. On the other hand it could be a clean-up operation. If it is, and they’re looking for us specifically, we’re going to have to give them the slip and find another base.’ He swung up into his saddle. ‘Either way, our jaunt to Mihailovich is going to be a little delayed.’

  They heard the distant, furious exchange of gunfire even before they were out of the village street.

  ‘The Bulgars!’ Vlada shouted frantically. ‘They’ve bypassed the village! They’re attacking the farm!’

  Like men demented they urged their horses onward at breakneck speed.

  Stephen could feel perspiration trickling down the back of his neck. How many men had been at the farmhouse? Eight? Nine? And how many men would be in the Bulgar patrol? He thought of Olga, sitting in the sunshine, cleaning her rifle. To anyone approaching the farm she would have made a completely unprotected target.

  ‘Faster, God damn you!’ he swore at his lathering horse. ‘Faster!’

  As they neared the farm it became obvious that the regular volleys of gunfire were now some distance from it, higher on the mountainside.

  ‘They must be chasing them off!’ Peter shouted across to Stephen.

  Stephen nodded, hoping to God that Peter was right. He wondered from which direction the Bulgars had attacked the farm. If they had attacked from the rear there was a chance that Olga had had plenty of warning. If they hadn’t … Fear gripped him. She hadn’t exchanged a single civil word with him but he knew in utter certainty that if she were to die it would affect the entire course of his life.

  The steep track levelled off just before the farm and as they careened around the last bend a blood-stained figure ran towards them.

  ‘Don’t rein in!’ Peko shouted to them as from further up the track another outburst of rifle fire cracked the air. ‘Vlatko has got them pinned down in the wood but he needs all the help he can get!’

  As they galloped headlong past him he shouted after them, ‘Joshko is dead! Tomas and Olga are wounded!’

  There was nothing Stephen could do. It was impossible to swerve around and return to the farm. Praying to God she hadn’t been too badly wounded he urged his horse up the track towards the wood.

  On its perimeter Peter signalled to them to rein in.

  ‘Spread out and keep down!’ he instructed tersely, springing from his saddle. ‘And for Christ’s sake don’t shoot any of our own!’

  At a low run they entered the wood, giving Vlatko and the others the back-up they so desperately needed. The battle was short and sharp and, from the Bulgarians’point of view, ugly. When the last rifle-shot cracked the air only one Chetnik, Lieutenant Vlatko, had been injured. All the Bulgarians were dead.

  Peter wiped the sweat from his face. ‘Strip the bodies of weapons and ammunition,’ he said to Milos and Vlada and then, to Stephen, ‘did Peko say that Joshko was dead?’

  ‘Yes, and that Tomas and Olga were wounded.’

  ‘Then get back there. See what you can do for them.’

  Even before Peter had finished speaking Stephen had turned on his heel and broken into a sprint. Cairo had sent medical supplies but they hadn’t been opened yet and he had no idea what was in them. He hoped to God there was some morphine, and he hoped even more fervently that it wouldn’t be needed.

  He didn’t waste time searching for his horse. Running and leaping he crashed down the mountainside, entering the farm from the rear. She was slumped against one of the inner doors, blood pouring from her shoulder. His first reaction was one of vast relief that it wasn’t an abdominal wound and then he saw the colour of her face.

  Swiftly he crossed the room towards her, yanking his shirt over his head and folding it into a pad to staunch the bleeding.

  ‘Can you hold it in place?’ he asked, pressing it against her shoulder.

  She nodded. ‘You need to attend to Tomas first,’ she said, white-lipped. ‘He’s more seriously injured than I am.’

  There were faint groans from outside the front doorway and reluctantly he turned away from her, grabbing one of the medical packs, ripping his way into it.

  Later, when he had done everything he could for Tomas and when he had removed the bullet from Olga’s shoulder and was cleaning the wound, he said to Peter, ‘What happens now? Are you going to be able to stay here?’

  ‘No. We’ll have to leave. We have a back-up base deeper in the mountains. I’m afraid the injured are going to find it a rough journey.’

  Stephen looked down at Olga. Her face was ashen, the skin taut across her cheekbones.

  ‘Perhaps, for Olga, the village would be a better bet,’ he suggested, feeling sick at the thought of her having to climb over treacherous terrain. ‘As a woman, her presence can easily be explained away. She can pass as someone’s visiting sister or cousin without enemy suspicions being aroused.’

  Peter nodded, seeing the sense of the suggestion. It was Olga who rejected it.

  ‘No,’ she said, her speech slightly slurred by the morphine Stephen had given her. ‘I’m not as badly hurt as Tomas and Vlatko. If they can make it up to the cave, so can I.’

  ‘Tomas and Vlatko have no choice,’ Stephen said gently. ‘Their presence in the village would immediately excite attention. Yours won’t.’

  She shook her head and the knot at the nape of her neck came loose. ‘No,’ she said again, her near-blonde hair slithering down past her shoulders. ‘You’re an Englishman. You don’t understand how tough Slav women are.’

  Stephen thought of his grandmother and aunt toiling over the icy wastes of the Albanian mountains. ‘I’m an Englishman who happens to be half-Slav,’ he said dryly, ‘and I’m well aware of how tough Slav women are.’

  Despite the horrors they had just endured Peter chuckled. ‘I take it you’re thinking of ou
r mutual grandmother?’ he said, vastly amused.

  Stephen merely grinned in answer and Olga looked from him to Stephen and then back again.

  ‘Oh,’ she said dazedly, understanding dawning. ‘Are you cousins? No-one told me,’ and then, after a little pause, ‘It doesn’t make any difference though. I’m not going down to the village!’

  Later in the day, as a grave was being dug for Joshko, Stephen established wireless contact with Cairo. When he had laboriously tapped out his message he stood by to receive an incoming signal. When it finally came and when he had decoded it, he stared down at it for a long, long time. Then, almost as ashen-faced as Olga had been, he went in search of Peter.

  He found him on the lip of the hill, looking out across the valley, deep in thought. The sun was beginning to set and the sky was flushed with warm, amber light.

  ‘This has just come through from Cairo,’ he said to him starkly, handing him the decoded message. ‘It looks as if we won’t be jaunting off to see Mihailovich after all.’

  Their eyes met and then, with deep reluctance, Peter looked down at the flimsy piece of paper. The message was brief and to the point. ‘It has been decided to discontinue all support of Mihailovich and his forces. You are to make your way south and join with Partisans. Further instructions will follow.’

  He remained silent for a long time and then he said bitterly, ‘That’s it, then. The British have deserted us and we’re on our own.’

  Stephen said only, ‘When do you plan moving the wounded up to the cave?’

  ‘Tonight. And you? When are you going to leave for the south?’

  ‘Tonight.’

  Over the distant mountain tops the amber sky was turning a blood red.

  ‘Then it’s goodbye,’ Peter said, his deep voice oddly brittle. ‘Perhaps when you’re with the Partisans you’ll meet up with Xan. Whether you do or not, we’ll all meet up again when this bloody war is over. Alexis and Zita. Xan and Zorka. Max and your father. Your mother and mine. You and me.’

  ‘You’ve missed someone out,’ Stephen said, wanting Peter to watch over her like a hawk.

  Peter’s black eyebrows flew high. ‘Who? Aunt Vitza?’

  ‘No,’ Stephen said with prophetic certainty. ‘Olga.’

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  He left with two horses, the stallion Peter had allocated to him when they had ridden down to the village and a pack horse for his supplies and bulky radio equipment. The nearest Partisan activity was to the north-west, in Montenegro, and with a map heavily marked for him by Peter and in the knowledge that he would, no doubt, be receiving further and more detailed instructions from Cairo, he set off alone into the darkness.

  As a boy he had often accompanied his Uncle Max and Xan and Peter on camping holidays in the Yugoslav mountains and the rough terrain held no terrors for him. Among his supplies were American K-rations which needed only boiling water to be reconstituted into meals and he relied on them heavily, avoiding all contact with German-riddled towns and villages.

  By the end of the first week radio signals from Cairo had supplied him with precise map references for where he was to make and had also added the laconic warning that German activity in the area was heavy.

  As he continued to ride westwards in lonely isolation he pondered long and hard on the politics of the situation in which he was embroiled. By switching support from General Mihailovich to the communists, the British government was effectively ensuring that the communists would be in a strong enough position, when the war was over, to take over control of the country. The consequences of such a take-over would be the end of Karageorgevich rule in Yugoslavia and the establishing of a socialist republic.

  He was riding uphill through a thick forest and he ducked low on his horse to avoid a rain-sodden, overhanging branch. If King Peter was exiled permanently from Yugoslavia his mother would be heart-broken. His mother, however, was no longer a citizen of Yugoslavia. Unlike his grandparents, aunt, uncle and cousins, she hadn’t had to endure a quarter of a century of Croat and Serb hatred and strife.

  Peter had told him that the deciding factor for Xan, when Xan had been making his decision as to whether or not to join forces with the Partisans, had been the fact that in Partisan ranks Croats and Serbs were fighting together against a common enemy. If, under communist rule, that sense of unity could be maintained, surely the price paid would be worth it?

  He wondered what his grandfather would think. As a Vassilovich, Alexis had never been starry-eyed about Karageorgevich rule. ‘Old King Peter and King Alexander were both fine men and scrupulously conscientious kings,’ he had told him at their last family reunion, ‘but they didn’t come from a long line of such kings. Earlier Karageorgevichs were so hotheaded as to be mentally unstable and though young King Peter isn’t unstable, he certainly doesn’t possess the same strength of character as his father or grandfather.’

  The way had become so steep that he slid from the saddle to make the going easier on his horse. As he trudged upwards between birch and pine trees he wondered how long it would be before he was able to enter Belgrade and again enjoy a lively, challenging discussion with his grandfather.

  That night, crouching beside his camp fire, he pored over his much-creased map. He was moving further and further away from Belgrade, not nearer to it, but he was moving marginally closer to Sarajevo. It lay some fifty miles to the north-east and it wasn’t beyond the realms of possibility that some time in the near future he would be able to enter it and fulfil the promise he had made to his mother.

  He folded the map and put it away. Sarajevo could wait. A more immediate priority was making contact with the Partisans. According to radio signals from Cairo he was within days, perhaps even hours, of doing so. He took a billy-can of boiling water off the fire and emptied a packet of dried soup from his K-rations into it. He hoped that once he was with the Partisans, not only would his diet become a little more interesting, but also that he would see some action against the enemy.

  When he settled into his sleeping bag he lay awake for a long time, thinking of the battles that were to come; of his parents and sister in London; his family in Belgrade; and last but no means least, of Olga.

  He was woken by a brutal kick to his legs and a savage enquiry as to his identity. The enquiry was mercifully in Serbo-Croat and not German or Bulgarian but he was appalled at not having woken instinctively minutes earlier. Three men were standing over him, their rifles pointed at his chest. They were dressed in a mixture of civilian and captured enemy clothing, the only item common to all of them being grey side caps embossed with a red star.

  ‘I’m a British officer,’ he said succinctly, scrambling to his feet as the rifles were lowered. He repeated the phrase in English to make his point and then, reverting to Serbo-Croat he asked, ‘Are you Partisans?’

  There were wide grins and the rifles were slung back over their shoulders.

  ‘We are,’ one of them said. ‘And are you the British liaison officer we have been told to expect?’

  ‘Most likely,’ Stephen said with an answering grin, grateful for Cairo’s efficiency.

  ‘We’ve been told that when you arrive you will arrange with your headquarters that supplies are sent to us,’ the self-appointed spokesman of the group said as his companions began to peer beneath the tarpaulin covering the transmission and receiving sets. ‘Our commanding officer, Major Kechko, has been anxious for your safety. My name is Lieutenant Stefanovich. I am a Croat. My companions’names are Yelich and Velebit. They are Serbs.’

  ‘I’m Captain Fielding,’ Stephen said, shaking his hand. ‘How near are we to your headquarters, Lieutenant?’

  ‘Four miles, five,’ Lieutenant Stefanovich said with a shrug of his shoulders and then, reading Stephen’s mind, ‘We have time for coffee. Do you have coffee?’

  ‘I have ersatz coffee.’

  Lieutenant Stefanovich looked puzzled.

  ‘It’s a substitute for coffee. It’s not very good but it’s be
tter than nothing.’

  Lieutenant Stefanovich grinned. ‘Then we’ll have ersatz, Captain Fielding. It will be a luxury.’

  The Partisans were all on foot and later, walking alongside them, his horse and pack-horse following on a leading-rein, he asked curiously, ‘Are you seeing much fighting? I’ve hardly been able to move these last few days for enemy patrols.’

  ‘The Germans are trying to encircle the area,’ Lieutenant Stefanovich said grimly. ‘It is Major Kechko’s intention, now that you have joined us, to make a break northwards over Mount Durmitor and into Bosnia. The main body of our army are already on the mountain. We will meet up with it and, as soon as conditions allow, the Allies will send us weapons and arms.’

  Stephen didn’t demur. His orders from Cairo were to liaise fully with the Partisans and to arrange landing-grounds where supplies could be dropped to them.

  ‘You will not need to speak in Serbo-Croat to Major Kechko,’ Lieutenant Stefanovich said with undisguised pride. ‘Many years ago Major Kechko lived in London and he speaks English fluently. He is looking forward to meeting you very much, Captain Fielding.’

  Stephen was intrigued. His parents had always kept open house for Yugoslavs visiting London and though the name Kechko meant nothing to him it wasn’t beyond the realms of possibility that the major had once been a guest at his parents’Chelsea home.

  Once out of the forest they had magnificent views of a spectacular mountain range. The peaks rose like dragon’s teeth their barren flanks, silver in the morning sunshine, gashed by cruel-looking ravines.

  ‘The mountain in the middle is Mount Durmitor,’ the young man who had been introduced to him as Yelich, said a little shyly. ‘Mount Durmitor is one of Yugoslavia’s highest mountains.’

  ‘It’s also where Tito and the main body of our army are at the present moment,’ Lieutenant Stefanovich said informatively, adding with dry humour, ‘I hope you have a good head for heights, Captain Fielding!’