Kremlins Boxset

by K L Conger

  Inga’s eyes picked through the soldiers, looking for Taras. She caught sight of him as he strode from the stables, buckling on his sword and tying his cloak at the neck. The winter chill penetrated the morning. Inga hadn’t noticed it.

  As she jogged toward him, she became aware that her feet were cold. She’d forgotten to don her outside clogs before leaving the kitchen. As a result, her slippers had soaked through with cold, wet snow.

  Inga called Taras’s name as she neared him and he changed directions to meet her. As they reached each other, he opened his mouth to say something—some calming reassurance, no doubt—but it died on his lips when he saw her face.

  “You’ve heard.” he said quietly.

  She nodded. “It’s the Andreev estate?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you know what happened? How bad it is?”

  “No. We’re going to see.”

  “I want to come.”

  Taras’s eyes widened in surprise and what might have been amusement but for the serious set of his mouth and the worry wrinkle between his eyebrows.

  “You can’t come, Inga.”

  “Taras, this is Natalya we’re talking about—”

  He raised a hand to shush her, casting a glance at his fellow officers. Inga dropped her voice to a whisper before continuing.

  “Natalya is my sister. If she’s hurt, I need to be with her. We can bring her back and take care of her here if need be.”

  Taras shook his head, lowering his voice as well. “No. If she needs help, I’ll bring her back.”

  Inga sighed, desperate, frustrated. “Why?”

  “Because.”

  “That’s not an answer.”

  “Because maybe she’s hurt, but maybe it’s worse.” His eyes left no doubt as to what he meant.

  His meaning took Inga’s breath away. It took her an extra moment to respond. “I don’t believe that. I can’t. I have to go with you. Please.”

  He gave her a level-eyed stare for several seconds before shaking his head again. “No.” Without another word, he turned toward the stables, where the rest of the officers had mounted up. The grooms handed them reins and wished them a safe journey.

  “Taras, if you don’t take me with you, I’ll follow you on my own. Whatever these Oprichniki have done, I’ll be safer with you on the road than by myself, won’t I?”

  Taras paused when she spoke. Now he turned slowly, a dangerous look in his eye. Inga stood her ground, jutting her jaw out stubbornly. She wasn’t giving in.

  She hadn’t been discrete in asking the last question. All the officers heard her ultimatum, loud and clear. Now most of them, including Nikolai, glanced away, around at the scenery and the Russian skyline, pretending not to notice the conversation.

  “Inga,” Taras muttered, not masking the frustration in his voice.

  “Taras, I have to go.” She stepped toward him and lowered her voice again. “I don’t ask you for much. I’m asking for this. It’s Natalya.” His eyes shifted between her and the ground, considering. “I’m going one way or the other. At least with you, I’ll be safe.”

  Taras shook his head, then heaved a great sigh, letting his head fall back. He ran a hand through his hair and she knew she’d won.

  “You will do exactly as I say, when I say it, no questions. Understand? I can’t have you getting in our way, or putting yourself in danger. If you’re coming, you must promise, for your own safety.”

  Inga nodded emphatically. “Yes, yes. Of course. I understand.”

  Taras looked her up and down. “You don’t even have a coat. Or decent shoes.”

  “Here.” Yehvah's voice came from behind her. Inga didn’t realize Yehvah had followed her to the stables. Evidently, she'd heard the entire exchange. She stood several feet behind Inga, wrapped in a thick shawl.

  Yehvah removed the shawl and her clogs—she’d stopped to put on outdoor ones—and gave them to Inga. “Take these. Do as he says. Bring Natalya and her family back. We’ll care for them.”

  Inga nodded more times than necessary. Her heart pumped wildly in her chest. She embraced Yehvah briefly, then turned to where Taras had already mounted his horse. Inga approached Jasper, put her foot in the stirrup, and took Taras’s arm. He swung her up and behind him. She settled behind the saddle, on Jasper’s rump, and wrapped her arms tightly around Taras’s middle.

  Several of the officers gave her and Taras disapproving looks. She ignored them, hoping she wasn’t making Taras’s life too uncomfortable. She didn’t have time to worry about it now, though. She only cared about getting to Natalya.

  THE FEELING OF FOREBODING in Taras’s chest became overwhelming as he and the other officers rode in silence through the streets of Moscow. Even Inga seemed to sense their muted urgency and kept silent. He wished he could have found a way to make her stay behind, but when she decided to be rock-stubborn, he found himself at a loss. She'd been right: he didn’t want her wandering the streets of Moscow alone. It was too dangerous. Nikolai rode his horse directly behind Taras’s, his protectiveness palpable.

  Only the earliest risers walked the streets when they passed through the Kremlin gate. By the time they reached the outskirts of the city, it began to pulse and bustle.

  The stirring faded behind them as they neared the Andreev estate. The sky lightened by degrees as they went. The sun would not show itself this morning. The light wriggled bleakly through thick cloud cover. The clouds were not dark, but by tonight they would be. They filled with snow as Taras and his fellow soldiers headed north.

  The wall enclosing the Andreev estate came into view. When Taras saw the main gates, his pulse quickened. Inga let out a soft gasp and he rested a hand on her knee. Not only did the heavy iron gates stand open, which would have been strange anyway so early in the morning, they were...broken came to mind, but didn't seem adequate. One of them hung askew, its bottom hinge warped unnaturally, its top hinge completely severed. The other gate bent so severely inward that it no longer brushed the ground. It creaked back and forth in the soft, chilly morning breeze, as though made of reeds rather than metal.

  Several of the soldiers exchanged glances. The space between the two damaged gates would only allow a single rider through at one time. Without a word, they rode single file through the shattered entrance, not touching the gates by unspoken consent. The sight that greeted them sent cold bile into Taras’s stomach. He knew it would loom in his nightmares until he became an old man, helpless and once again afraid of the dark.

  The silence prodded at him physically, with ice cubes rather than hot pincers. Hell must be a lonely and isolated place.

  A great deal of snow remained on the ground from a recent storm. Other than the well-traveled roads, more than a foot of white powder blanketed most of the countryside. Little remained inside the Andreev estate anymore. Taras never realized before that blood could melt snow.

  Corpses and pieces of corpses lay everywhere in the courtyard. Blood stained every stone surface and when the horses stepped on the grass, it squelched while blood pooled around the hooves. The first soldiers through the gate walked their horses to the middle of the courtyard and dismounted. Silently, they took their horses’ bridles and led them further in. Walking without stepping on bodies proved impossible.

  Taras couldn’t have spoken if he’d wanted to. His throat constricted so far, drawing breath became a chore. So this was what the Oprichniki did. This is what Ivan’s elite force trained to do. The Oprichniki prided themselves on rooting out traitors. If there had been disloyalty at the Andreev estate, surely it hadn’t spread to the entire household. Yet, the entire estate paid the price. Even the dogs and horses lay in pieces.

  Taras dismounted, looking up at Inga as she surveyed the ruin. She appeared about how he felt—dazed, disjointed, as though walking through an opaque dream. He wished for her sake, rather than believed, Natalya to be alive. He wished with his mind and hoped with his heart, but in his soul he felt only death.

  Helping
Inga dismount, he took her hand in the unnatural silence, and they joined the others, walking slowly through the grounds.

  The bodies lay roughly clustered according to gender and age. Most of the women—teenagers and older—were in one place. All lay naked and bleeding from every orifice they possessed, including eyes and ears on many. The Oprichniki forcibly had their way, in the worst possible sense. Each woman looked like she’d been brutalized by a hundred or more men.

  Taras didn’t think many of the women could have survived the gauntlet of rape, yet obviously some did, because other injuries on a few showed they’d been killed afterward. Some had been clubbed in the back of the head. Others lay with arrows protruding from breast and belly. Still others looked to have been lit aflame. Their corpses resembled dried out firewood that had seen several fire pits, but remained intact.

  Taras steered Inga away from the women. Yet, no less-gruesome sight existed. Most of the men had been stripped naked as well. They'd not been sexually abused like the women, but that didn’t mean they'd escaped torture. The intact ones were covered with cuts, burns, and other marks Taras couldn’t identify. Many had been skinned, dismembered, lit on fire, or simply beaten until their bodies became one massive bruise.

  Circular vats, larger in circumference than Taras stood tall, sat in the center of the courtyard. Some contained water, others oil. Taras walked right by several of the oil vats. The fires under them had long since gone out. Heat still came off the liquid. Flayed bodies floated in it. The stench was unbearable. Taras would never forget the smell of fried human flesh. A few paces to his right, Nikolai squatted and emptied his stomach.

  Taras and Inga passed two water barrels. One held still, dirty water. Taras didn’t ponder on what the chunks floating in it might be. Ice chunks floated in the other. The cold morning air would not allow the ice to melt any time soon. As they passed, Inga stopped and leaned her hands on the barrel of ice water, staring into it. After a moment, she shut her eyes and pressed a hand to her stomach.

  Taras understood. The lack of gore in the water was a respite from the rest of their surroundings, and Inga waited there for several minutes, obviously trying to control her breathing. He put his hands on her shoulders, wanting to tell her to wait there and rest a minute—he wanted to talk to Nikolai—but couldn’t make his voice work.

  Instead, he squeezed her shoulders gently, then moved past her. Stepping up behind Nikolai, he still didn’t trust his voice, so he put a hand on his friend’s shoulder. Nikolai turned. Taras didn’t know what he'd been about to say, but it left his lips when his eyes fell on what Nikolai stared at on the ground.

  “Nikolai,” Taras forced his voice out. It sounded like the whisper of a croak. “What is that?”

  “Only a pile of flesh, now. Nothing more.”

  “What was it?” Taras thought he understood, but he couldn’t make his mind believe what his eyes saw.

  “What do you think?” Nikolai kept his voice low, the conversation only between them.

  “It’s a...it’s a...Nikolai, how does that happen to a...baby?” Taras tried to swallow the bile in his throat. It refused to be pushed down. It bubbled there, threatening to erupt if he breathed wrong.

  “The two barrels Inga is standing at. One has ice in it. The other has the remnants of a fire underneath. One held ice water, the other boiling water. They dunk the child into first one and then the other, again and again, until the skin falls off.”

  Following Nikolai’s example, Taras squatted down and emptied his stomach.

  The Russians moved through the estate like ghosts of their former selves, unable to close their eyes to what happened, unable to turn away or speak.

  Inga looked no different, and it frightened Taras. He took her hand and pulled her along behind him, staying close to Nikolai. She allowed him to lead her, offering neither resistance nor conversation. She walked close enough to him that he hoped she kept her eyes on his back, though something told him she took in everything he did.

  Young children, too old to be called babies any longer, had been held by the ankles, their skulls bashed against trees or the stone walls of the manor, until nothing remained of their heads behind their faces.

  A man Nikolai identified as Aleksy Andreev, the patriarch of the household, had been tied to a spit and slowly roasted over a bonfire. Many of the bodies lay in so many pieces, they could not be identified.

  The manor, once a beautiful, affluent wooden structure, had been burnt to the ground. Only a few chunks of wall remained standing. Inside were the charred remains of several corpses, and the skeletons of household possessions. All the structures—the stables, the slaughterhouse, the servants’ quarters—were reduced to charred rubble.

  The Oprichniki killed everyone, burned everything, and rode merrily away before sunrise.

  Taras glanced down. A man, or what remained of him, lay in a pool of watered-down blood. The man was all in one piece—at least, his appendages remained intact—but not one vestige of his skin remained. It had all been removed. Thick ropes of crimson muscle covered him from head to toe. His face looked a ruin of mushy red meat. Inga stood three steps behind Taras, her vacant eyes running over the grounds. Taras squatted down to examine the corpse more closely. What fascinated Ivan so in this unnatural state of things? In this unspeakable brutality? This impenetrable death?

  A sudden rush of air came from the corpse’s mouth. The eyes flew open and the hand shot out to clutch Taras’s wrist.

  Taras made no sound as he jumped back, nearly knocking Inga over and landing on his backside. The terror of the thing crushed the voice right out of his throat and, with it, the air from his lungs. Surely some sort of hell spawn must possess the dead man. For how could a man with no skin still be alive?

  The skinless man reached out a glistening red arm. He’d lain on his back but now attempted to turn over and crawl on his belly. His eyes were the most terrifying sight Taras ever beheld. He thought they might have been blue once. Now the whites had turned completely red and the blood extended across the irises, making them a deep, sinister shade of purple.

  The man managed to turn partially. The air wheezed out of him in a steady stream, and he went still again. Taras’s entire body trembled. He shifted his eyes from the sight. Nikolai stood beside him, his eyes on the corpse. Several soldiers stopped to watch the scene unfold. Above him, Inga watched too, hands clasped over her mouth in horror, shoulders twitching involuntarily.

  Taras rose shakily to his feet, wanting to wrap his arms around her. Before he could turn, Nikolai grabbed his forearm.

  Nikolai gazed at Inga for a long moment, then pointedly at Taras. Taras frowned, confused. Then Nikolai’s eyes shifted significantly down to the ground. Taras followed his gaze, and his breath caught in his lungs.

  The corpse of a beautiful, raven-haired woman lay there. The state of her body suggested a high degree of torture. Unlike the skinless man, Natalya lay mercifully still.

  Taras put a hand over his mouth before he could stop himself, then ran it roughly down his jaw. Inga couldn’t see this. If Natalya was dead, her husband and son must be as well. If Taras turned around too quickly, Inga would know something was wrong. She always read his emotions in his face. He would guide her gently back the way they’d come, get her on the horse and take her out of here. Later he would find the words to tell her Natalya was gone. At least she wouldn’t see it.

  He understood now that no one had survived. Except Anatoly. From what he’d been told, Anatoly hid underground in a hut. The huts were set aflame like the other structures, but the Oprichniki thought Anatoly’s vacant, so they hadn’t waited around to see it burn to ashes. Anatoly staggered out of the burning structure and remained hidden for several hours amidst the shadows and acrid smoke generated by the fire. When he finally stumbled into the palace, he'd been wheezing and coughing.

  His survival was mere chance. If they’d found him, he would have been killed as savagely as the others. Surely Anatoly hadn't been
the only one to hide. All the rest now roamed the afterlife.

  Taras walked slowly toward Inga. She still stood near the water barrels, eyes fixed on the skinless corpse. If she shifted her gaze a scant inch to the left, she would see her friend. Taras glanced behind him to see Nikolai take an inconspicuous step to his right, so he stood in front of Natalya’s blood-blackened face. If Inga looked now, she would only see a naked body from the neck down. There were enough in plain sight that she wouldn’t be able to tell one from the next.

  When he stood in front of her, Taras put his hands on her elbows. He kept his gaze down, schooling it as best he could before raising it to meet hers. “Inga,” he said softly. “Come with me.”

  Her eyes widened slightly in surprise. She said nothing, but her eyes asked a thousand questions.

  “Let’s go.”

  “Why?” Her voice, clear and daintily feminine, sounded out of place in this nightmare wasteland.

  “I’ve seen enough. We’ve all seen enough. Let’s go.”

  She shook her head. “I have to find Natalya.”

  Taras couldn’t meet her gaze. Tears pooled in his eyes and he realized he wouldn’t be able to hide the truth from her.

  “Inga, what you find...it won’t be your friend. It will only be an empty shell—”

  Her chest heaved, voice growing higher. “She might still be alive—”

  “No.” He hadn’t meant it to come out so harshly. Because it did, she understood the truth from it.

  Her gaze shifted behind him, to Nikolai, taking in his stance and placement. Inga was too shrewd to be fooled by Nikolai’s forced nonchalance. Her eyes scanned a short horizontal line. She had to be eyeing the corpse. Tears bubbled up in her eyes and spilled over her cheeks. Her voice became a tortured whisper. “Is that her?”

  Taras didn't answer. She dove around him. The sudden motion took him by surprise, and he whirled to catch her, to keep her from running toward Nikolai. “Inga!” he hissed, throwing his arms around her from behind and anchoring her to the spot.