Look to the Wolves

by Look to the Wolves

  Toss-up. Either way.

  That voice again – or one like it – and others were answering.

  Turning back?

  Sounds drawing left, though.

  Continuing the way they’d come. Hoofbeats settling into that same rhythm – cantering, northward… Obviously had paused here not because they’d had any reason to think the dvukolki might be in this top end of the woods, but because this did happen to be the top end – north-east corner – of them. And as likely as not guessing that the cart over which they’d made fools of themselves earlier might have taken advantage of their absence to push on northward.

  Schelokov grumbled as they met at the dvukolki, ‘That’s our route they’ve taken – damn them…’

  Bob slid his rifle on to the seat of the dvukolki, and reached in for Mishka’s bridle. ‘If we can’t move out—’

  ‘Can’t just sit here, either.’ Schelokov pulled the magazine out of his rifle, ejected the round from the breech and caught it, slid it back into the magazine… ‘Might detour. Out that way –’ a gesture north-westward – ‘and then work round. But – long way round, and time we can’t afford to waste. Open ground too – I think… All right, if we knew they’d keep going…’

  Bob cut him short: ‘Coming back?’

  They weren’t only coming back, they were already close – too close. He’d dropped the bridle, was reaching into the cart for his rifle – uselessly, much too late, but even Mishka hadn’t heard them – until now, she certainly had now – fighting the head-rope, trying to rear against its pull – the rush of hoofbeats thunderous – out of nowhere, right on top of them.

  But – passing. Even though Mishka’s whinny might have been heard in Taganrog – they’d gone by. Gone… While having been completely off-balance through those few seconds you were still seeing it as it might have been – horsemen crashing through the trees, sabres drawn and aimed…

  ‘Christ.’ He was ashamed of his own fright, found some slight compensation in the gleam of sweat on Schelokov’s broad forehead. He slid an arm round Mishka’s neck. She was still trembling too – for her own equine reasons. He found his voice: ‘Solves the immediate problem, anyway.’

  ‘Yes.’ Schelokov picked up the bridle. Sorting it out as he moved to Mishka’s head: and getting his mental breath back, no doubt… Glancing at Bob, over her withers, almost a challenge to anyone to imagine he’d been rattled in those few seconds… ‘I’d say this is the same patrol commander, probably in a dither about the light. Hoping to pick up our tracks before dark. Possibility of snow during the night, too – he’d be anxious about that. But he’ll camp now, start looking again first thing in the morning.’

  ‘And he’ll find them, won’t he?’

  ‘Unless it does snow. Always a chance, you know.’

  ‘So tell me this. If it’s a silly question, I apologize – but why should they have this burning interest in us?’

  ‘Wheeled transport going north – the way things are up there? Entire populace migrating south, or trying to?’ He was checking over Mishka’s harness. ‘Clandestinely, what’s more, not as if we were travelling by day…’

  ‘Yes.’ Bob slung the reins back to the driving position. ‘It was a silly question.’

  ‘Anyway, let’s get going. We can start out on that fellow’s tracks. Fox him for a while, in the morning – if he’s really stupid.’

  *

  Neither of them talked much in the first hour or so. Schelokov was driving, Bob beside him with both rifles, thinking most of the time about the tracks they were leaving and which would still be there in the morning for the cavalry scouts to find and follow. There was no doubt about it, no point in wishful thinking about new snowfalls. The fact it wasn’t only their own survival that was at stake but ultimately the letuchka’s was about the worst aspect of it.

  What one needed, to supplement present efforts – as well as for anything like peace of mind – was blind faith. It wasn’t easy to acquire – or to hang on to. The fears lingered, and Schelokov’s account of what had happened to his parents coloured them. In particular, the curtain he’d drawn over precisely what they’d done to his mother: thoughts travelling from there via Nadia – the connection being only in the imagination but no less frightening for that – to this present situation, the wheeltracks which couldn’t have been any clearer if you’d been laying a trail deliberately.

  He swallowed – tasting the pipe he’d been smoking when they’d started out. Only half a pipeful at a time now, and limiting smokes to two a day. He had only what was in his pouch, the rest of it being in a tin in the canvas holdall which he’d left in the train: and he’d been sharing what he had with Schelokov, who’d had none at all.

  Wolves howled mournfully, somewhere behind them. Impossible to guess how far behind. Close enough to have upset Mishka, that was for sure… Schelokov was calming her, or trying to: then calling over his shoulder into the darkness, ‘Damn you, go feast on Bolsheviks!’ To Mishka again: ‘Steady, old girl, steady! They’re not after you, you scrawny beast… But wouldn’t they love it if you turned us over… Eh, Bob?’

  ‘I dare say… Boris, listen—’

  ‘That’s my girl…’ Turning back to him: ‘Huh?’

  ‘I’ve been thinking. Seems to me that as things are now we can’t win. Either they catch up with us, or if they don’t we could be leading them to the letuchka. So I’d say we’ve got to try something of the kind we were talking about before.’

  ‘Well… In principle, I agree with you. But – you do realize, I suppose, there’d be no guarantees attached?’

  ‘We mightn’t get away with it, you mean.’

  ‘What I mean is we might end up dead. Especially if – you may not have considered this – we may well have a larger force after us now. If those were only a scouting party – with the main force wherever they’ve camped?’

  ‘D’you think that’s likely?’

  ‘It’s certainly not unlikely.’

  ‘But still a perfectly good chance—’

  ‘We’d have no chance. Imagine it – half a platoon, say – eighteen men against two?’

  ‘But it might still be that small party. I think we’ve got to take a chance on it. Because otherwise – unless there’s some alternative – if you’ve any better ideas?’

  ‘No. Only miracles. An immediate heavy snowfall, or if they gave up, turned back at the boundary of the area they’re expected to police.’

  ‘No alternative, then.’

  ‘There isn’t, that I can see.’ His breath plumed in the black, frosted night. ‘So let’s look at the practical aspects. Where, when and how… Where is easy – wherever we find ourselves in the morning. I don’t have any detailed memory of the topography, but we can pick our ground when we come to it. When – the answer to that is any time after dawn. Their initiative, of course – all we can do is be ready for them. In the morning sometime is a safe enough bet – they won’t be hanging back and waiting for it to snow, you see… Then, how – well, would you feel happy with some such arrangement as we prepared this morning – parking the dvukolki as a lure, setting an ambush?’

  ‘You’re the soldier, Boris.’

  ‘I dare say we can improve on details, here or there.

  One for instance is that I think Mishka should be tethered much farther away from where we camp. Don’t want her warning them.’ He added, ‘Taking her chances, of course, as far as those creatures are concerned.’

  Pausing again; listening to a renewal of the wolves’ chorus. Further away, though, this time. He’d shortened rein, ready to cope with Mishka’s playing up again, but she’d decided to let it go… ‘Bob, here’s a fresh line of thinking for you. Looking beyond the fight itself – if we’re going to do this, and on the whole I agree, we have to – I think it might be a good idea to continue from there on without the dvukolki.’

  ‘Leave it there?’

  ‘Hide it somewhere – not there, exactly, but in the area – and go on
on foot. Because even if – especially if all we’re up against is our little troop of scouts – and we make a real job of it – well, others coming after them will be looking for a horse and cart, won’t they?’

  ‘Others coming after them? Then what have we achieved?’

  ‘We’d have stopped the close pursuit, Bob. Stopped it literally dead. Isn’t this how you envisage it? Then if we shed this cart – well, we disappear…’

  *

  ‘What about Mishka, when we dump the cart?’

  Bob had driven for about three hours, then half an hour ago Schelokov, who’d had a good sleep during that time, had taken over again. There were scatterings of trees here, not forest but its outskirts, and they were steering the dvukolki through them whenever possible. Less in any hope of hiding the tracks than to look as if that was what they’d been trying to do. Schelokov yawned loudly – looking up at the sky and the first signs of dawn, then murmuring as if he hadn’t heard that question, ‘Better get into forest soon. Very soon.’ His head turned. ‘What? Something about Mishka, you said?’

  ‘What’ll we do with her, when we dump the dvukolki?’

  ‘Oh. Well.’ Another yawn… ‘What do you think?’

  ‘We can’t just leave her, so the obvious thing is take her with us. Although I suppose tracks are an issue, even without the cart… But if any of the letuchka people needs to ride, we might be glad we’d brought her.’

  ‘That is – a point…’

  ‘Also if we decide to pick up the dvukolki again—’

  ‘Not unless it’s snowing day and night by then. As it’s turned out, you were damn right when you said maybe it wasn’t so clever.’ He was angling left, to pass through a copse of leafless birch. ‘Although mind you, if the snow had kept up…’

  ‘Made better progress than we’d have done on foot, surely?’

  ‘We’ve also achieved the honour—’ Schelokov jerked a thumb back over his shoulder – ‘of an escort of cavalry.’

  Bob had glanced back involuntarily…

  ‘Not that close… Having their breakfast now, I’d guess. Or just had it, saddling up… Tell you one thing, we’re not leaving any tracks here, to speak of.’

  ‘Well – let’s not lose them—’

  ‘Don’t worry… Are you any good with a rifle, Bob?’

  ‘Oh, I – manage.’

  ‘You’ll need to do more than that.’

  ‘As it happens I’m quite competent. What about you – with your shoulder?’

  ‘It’s mended now. No problem.’

  ‘I’ve noticed you don’t use that left arm much.’

  ‘I’m right-handed.’ He glanced round. It was light enough now to distinguish features, at point-blank range. He shrugged. ‘All right, so I rest it when I can.’

  ‘Does your jaw hurt still?’

  ‘Would, if I had to hold a rifle on that side. Lucky I don’t… Bob – there. See? Not bad timing after all, eh?’ He was pointing ahead and slightly to the left, to forest-edge standing solid, jet-black in the familiar beginnings of the pre-dawn glow, with a hazy, mist-like foreground leading up to it and a grey sheen overhead. Five minutes ago that grey had been funereal black, allowing no differentiation between sky and forest.

  Schelokov shifted on his seat: an adjustment less to the beginnings of a new day than to the tenth hour on a hard plank bench… ‘Half a mile, roughly. Then the hard work starts.’ Flipping the reins: ‘Come on you old she-goat… Bob, the whip’s behind you there…’

  *

  In the grey early-morning light and the forest’s gloom the camp-fire’s orange glow was the only splash of colour. Setting this scene had been hard work: fast work too, with daylight growing rapidly and no time to waste. Schelokov had set the fire and got it going while Bob had taken Mishka with a bale of fodder to a tree a hundred yards away, then hurried back to pitch the tent. They were about five hundred yards inside the forest, in a clearing of sorts, an area of sparser growth with a diameter of about sixty-or seventy-five yards. They’d parked the dvukolki in the centre, and he’d put the tent up ten yards north-east of it. The fire was about the same distance northwest – due west of the tent. So the three points formed an equilateral triangle with its apex downward, marked by the dvukolki.

  They’d also prepared hides for themselves, one west of the dvukolki and the other – Schelokov’s – east, each fifty paces from it. Bob’s paces, in his seaboots. From either hide only a few trees impeded the view across the clearing, and all the surroundings of the dvukolki – behind which a man might conceivably take shelter – were open to crossfire from one hide or the other.

  The rifles were in the hides, with their sights set to fifty yards. This happened to be the lowest setting, and was also the optimum range at which they expected to be shooting, the way the scene had been set. Schelokov swore the sights had been zero’d recently and could be trusted.

  Bob joined him at the fire.

  ‘They’ll be on their way, by now.’

  ‘Should be.’ The Russian’s eyes gleamed in the fire’s glow as he looked up. ‘What d’you want for breakfast?’

  ‘Whatever we’ve got. But water for Mishka’s a priority.’

  ‘Well. This is about ready.’ His fire, he meant. He’d been patiently feeding it with bits of fallen timber and then fir-cones, building its centre to a solid red nucleus of heat. The cones glowed almost like coal. He reached for the big pot now with its contents of packed snow, and set it down on the stones, which were in the fire itself. ‘That’ll be for her Highness, then. What about corned beef?’

  ‘Again?’

  ‘It’ll be different today. The bread’s rock-hard.’

  ‘Why not cut up the beef and let the fat soak into the bread, heat it all up together?’

  ‘Well – why not. Take a little while, of course.’

  ‘Personally, I could wait. Especially if I had some tea. If there’s time—’

  ‘If there’s time.’ He shrugged. ‘All right. Tea now, Boeuf Cowan later.’

  Bob had laughed: remembering Sam Scott saying something about tomfoolery easing the strain. Tomfoolery wasn’t exactly Schelokov’s stockin-trade.

  *

  Mishka had had her drink and Schelokov had made tea, Bob taking his mug of it back to where he was doing his listening out.

  They’d be coming at their own pace, he guessed. Knowing they’d be covering the ground a lot faster than any cart would. And no doubt confident that they’d have it all their own way.

  They would, too – if there was a crowd of them. Visualizing them as they might appear at this moment – a double file, trotting in the dvukolki’s easy-to-see, north-leading tracks. Eighteen or twenty riders, say, rested by a sound night’s sleep and with a good hot breakfast in their bellies: forward units of a currently victorious army, full of the esprit that comes from battles fought and won.

  Or – the small scouting team. Please, let it be just those five?

  He drained his mug of black tea, and went back to Schelokov at the fire.

  ‘They’re a long time coming.’

  ‘They must have realized by now that we hole-up for the daylight hours. Might even be giving us time to get to sleep.’

  He smiled, squatting down on the other side of the fire. ‘Starting as stupid, they’re becoming craftier every minute.’

  ‘Made one mistake, that’s all.’

  ‘I sincerely hope this isn’t one.’

  ‘So do I.’ Reaching over for the mug. ‘But it’s the right thing we’re doing, Bob, the only thing we can do. If it goes wrong, don’t blame yourself.’

  ‘If it goes wrong, for God’s sake—’

  ‘All right – all right…’

  A longish pause, then. Listening, hearing nothing.

  ‘What you said just now, Boris Vasil’ich, about them reckoning to find us asleep – they will assume we’re in the tent, obviously. So it wouldn’t do to have any cooking in progress, would it?’

  ‘If you’re te
lling me you’re hungry—’

  ‘No, I’m not. Not telling you, I mean – it’s a fact, but I can wait. If you can.’

  ‘I was going to suggest we might have a slice of the corned beef cold, to be going on with.’

  ‘Well—’

  ‘Could be quite a long wait, otherwise.’ He tossed a few cones into the fire. He’d collected a mound of them. ‘Another thing, Bob, is we’ll be busy afterwards, won’t we.’

  Busy clearing up, he meant. Something of a euphemism, when one thought of what it might involve. He got up. ‘A zakuska’s a good idea, anyway. Give me a shout?’

  It wouldn’t take long to open a tin and cut out two rations of beef, but the fire itself and Schelokov’s occasional movements made a certain amount of noise, and anyway he didn’t want to spend too long away from his listening-out position, which was in the direction from which one expected them to come, and no further than this from his own hide. He glanced around before going back there. The tent looked natural enough. He’d put some gear in it – not much, but a corner of the groundsheet showed at anything like close range, and if a flap blew aside – or was moved with the toe of a boot, for instance – you’d see bedding. The fire looked about right too; from the circle of ash and unburnt ends of branches you wouldn’t doubt that it had been left to burn down.

  Mishka wasn’t in view from here. The closer-standing trees outside the clearing made a barrier that was impenetrable to sight from any distance.

  But none of these preparations, he thought as he passed the dvukolki, its shafts tilted skyward by the weight of gear and fodder in the back, would make any difference to the outcome if there were eighteen or twenty men on their way here instead of five.

  You could have spun a coin. Heads they didn’t stand much of a chance, tails you didn’t stand any at all. The stakes being one’s own life and Schelokov’s and – ultimately – hers.

  Please God. Because if her life did not depend on what happened here, the whole effort was futile, it would mean you’d come too late.

  He sat down, with his back against a tree. Same one he’d leant against before. He’d been moving rather frequently between here and the fire, he realized, because moving around was easier than sitting still.