Red Winter

by Smith, Dan

  I knew that I would do anything to bring mine home. Anything at all. Even if it meant I would burn for eternity.

  14

  My concerns about being followed had worried Lev, so we agreed to sleep in shifts. He insisted on taking the first watch, saying I was more in need of the sleep, and I accepted his offer as another kindness. So with the vodka and tobacco gone, and the state of our country lamented, I went to my bed while Lev blew out the lamp and sat at the table with his shotgun by his side.

  It was as dark as any night could be inside the smoky izba, and I settled on the straw in one of the berths and held my rifle close as if it were my lover. Beside my head, within easy reach, my revolver.

  I believed Lev was a good man, but too many people hid their true colour, so I tried to remain wary and stay awake as long as I could. The vodka had taken its effect on me, though, as had the days of travel and little sleep, and my eyes closed with almost no resistance. And when the dog climbed up onto my bunk and curled himself against my legs, I did nothing to dissuade him.

  There was a simple comfort in being with other people, sharing a meal, lying in a bed beneath a roof in the warmth, and so sleep threw herself around me.

  The wind was shrill as it rushed across the steppe, slipping over the grass and humming through the furrows. It swirled about the izba, lifting the roof and rattling the doors and windows as if all the devils and spirits had come to batter this small refuge. The trees in the copse groaned and creaked, the cantankerous crows complaining from time to time, and in that chaos of the land’s breath, I dreamed of nothing and everything.

  Images of the gaunt rider, immense on the back of his horse, raising his sword to cut me into a thousand pieces. I saw the men in the forest, crucified, hanged, and I turned away in horror when their faces became those of my sons and their eyes were empty sockets burned in the shape of a five-pointed star.

  In a moment of waking, I swore I heard wolves howling in the forest and I opened my eyes to stare at the blackness, not even the faintest hint of light, wondering where I was before I remembered Lev and Anna.

  ‘Lev?’ I spoke into the darkness.

  ‘I’m here.’

  ‘Isn’t it my turn to—’

  ‘It’s not time,’ he said. ‘Sleep, Kolya. I’ll wake you.’

  ‘But surely—’

  ‘Go to sleep,’ he repeated.

  The dog whined his alertness to the sounds outside, but I patted him and he settled, pressing against me, sharing his warmth while we listened to the wolf song, far away, mingling with the whistle of the wind and the spatter of sleet against the thatched roof. Sleep came quickly once more, and when I woke again, there was a grey light around the blankets covering the window, and Anna was shaking me, calling my name.

  ‘Kolya,’ she was saying. ‘You have to get up.’

  There was an urgency in her voice and I was moving right away, annoyed for having slept so long.

  There was no time for a slow awakening, no time for the hangover already thumping at the back of my head. Hands on my revolver, I swung my legs to the floor.

  In an instant I was alert. Prepared. Ready to fight.

  Anna took a step back and put up her hands in fear. ‘Papa told me.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Papa said to get you.’ She took another step back and turned her body away from me as if she was expecting to be hurt.

  I looked down at the revolver in my hands, the muzzle pointed at her, and it took a second for the implication of that to sink in.

  ‘No,’ I said, moving it. ‘I won’t hurt you.’

  ‘Papa said to get you,’ she repeated. ‘He saw someone.’

  ‘Saw someone?’ I said, hurrying to the window and snatching away the blanket. ‘Who? Where?’

  ‘Across the field. Where you came from.’

  The day had barely begun; there was less than an hour’s daylight in the sky, so everything had a grey hue to it. To make matters worse, the glass was uneven and distorted everything outside. In some places, the fields were magnified, in others almost impossible to see due to the grime that had collected on the window.

  ‘I don’t see anybody.’

  ‘Papa said—’

  ‘Where is he?’

  ‘With the horses.’

  ‘Get my coat,’ I said, and when I had pulled on my boots, I took it from her, leaving it unbuttoned. I put my rifle over my shoulder and hurried about, gathering my belongings, ignoring the dog that now followed at my heels. I stripped the remaining blankets away from the windows and put them in Anna’s arms, saying, ‘Hold these,’ before taking my satchel and the saddlebags I had brought in. ‘Wait here.’

  I went out first, startling a pair of magpies that was sitting on the fence, the dog following me out into the yard. I ignored the flurry of black and white, and scanned the horizon beyond the field but saw no one.

  I beckoned Anna out, telling her to hurry. ‘The barn,’ I said. ‘Quick.’

  She ran ahead of me, small and afraid, clutching my blankets, and I spent a few more seconds looking into the distance, then followed, skidding on the ice that had formed during the night.

  In the barn, Lev had already saddled Kashtan and prepared her for me to leave.

  ‘What did you see?’ I asked as I ran in.

  Lev took the blankets from Anna and spread them into my tarpaulin. ‘A man on the horizon,’ he said. ‘The same direction you came from.’

  ‘Alone?’

  ‘Yes.’ He folded and rolled the blankets as I secured my saddlebags.

  ‘On horseback?’

  Lev lifted the roll onto Kashtan. ‘I came to check on the horses and there he was.’

  ‘How far?’

  ‘As far as he could be. Any further and I wouldn’t have seen him.’

  ‘And you’re sure it was just one rider?’

  ‘That’s all I saw, but there could be more.’

  ‘Why didn’t you wake me last night?’ I asked. ‘We were going to share the watch.’

  ‘You needed the sleep more than I did.’

  I ran a hand across my face, feeling the growth of my beard. ‘You should come with me.’

  Lev shook his head. ‘Whoever it was, they could have seen me. If we’re not here, they’ll come after us, think we’ve got something to run from.’

  ‘Maybe you have,’ I said. Running was no life for a child, but if the rider on the horizon was hunting me, then he could be a Chekist, and who knew what might be in store for Lev and Anna? ‘You should come with me.’

  ‘We’re just a poor farmer and his daughter,’ Lev said. ‘They’ll leave us alone. If it’s you they want . . .’ He shrugged.

  I tried to convince myself that Lev was right. Whoever he had seen, they were coming after me.

  ‘Maybe they won’t even stop,’ I said, thinking I would be much faster without them. If I took them with me, it might cost Marianna and the boys their lives. ‘They won’t want to waste time, lose my trail.’

  ‘Exactly,’ Lev replied. ‘We’ll tell them you gave us no choice. That you threatened Anna.’

  I nodded, allowing him to persuade me it was the right thing to do, knowing it would be too dangerous for them to come with me. Where I was going, I foresaw only blood and death.

  ‘I hope you have found the peace you’re looking for,’ I said to Lev, holding out my hand. It was what he wanted – for me to go and for him and his daughter to be left in peace. It was what a part of me wanted too – to be free from any bonds or responsibilities, to leave them right now and continue my search unhindered by anyone else.

  But my eyes met with Anna’s and something about it didn’t feel right.

  ‘And I hope you do too,’ Lev replied, ignoring the hand and putting his arms around me. ‘Perhaps we’ll meet again, Kolya,’ he said into the fur of my hat as he embraced me. ‘When all of this is over.’

  With the sense that I was abandoning this man and his child, I returned the embrace, enjoying the friendship
but hating the other, darker feelings that plagued me.

  ‘When they come, leave the shotgun above the pich,’ I said, as I put my foot in the stirrup. ‘Keep the dog calm and tell them I forced you to . . .’ Kashtan pressed herself towards me, eager to be out ‘ . . . to give me a bed for the night. I ate your food, drank your vodka and threatened to kill you. You’re lucky to be alive.’ I pushed up and swung my leg across, looking down at the teacher and his daughter. ‘Give them whatever they want.’

  ‘Come,’ Lev said, jogging to the back of the barn. ‘This way they won’t see you leave.’ He drew back the bolt on the rear door and pushed it outwards before beckoning me with both hands.

  ‘Lev Andreyevich Filatov,’ he said, as I passed him. ‘That’s my name. Will you remember it?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Kashtan stepped out, the dog following as if he intended to go wherever I went. Anna ran alongside, coming out into the cold air and crossing to the fence at the far side of the rear yard. When she opened the back gate, I stopped to look down at her.

  ‘I hope you find Koschei,’ she said.

  ‘I will. And . . . look after each other. Be safe.’

  ‘What’s your name?’ Lev asked, coming to put his arm around his daughter’s shoulder. ‘Who are you really?’

  ‘It’s better you don’t know,’ I told him. ‘If you did, you’d wish you hadn’t asked.’

  15

  There was no sign of the rider as I took Kashtan from the barn and headed across the field. Before us, last night’s rain and sleet had frozen in the furrows, lying like glass between the turnip leaves. Beyond that, the plain stretched on with only the slightest undulation in the near distance, but further away, perhaps two kilometres, the land rose in a sharp and rocky eruption where the steppe changed level on a new plateau. Above it, the air was muddled by a thin mist.

  I glanced down at the dog running with us. ‘You stay here too,’ I said to him. ‘You can’t keep up with us.’ Then I put my heels into Kashtan’s ribs and she responded straight away, trotting through the turnips, reaching the sea of grass and thistle in just a few minutes. Here, the plants were laden with the hoarfrost, their stalks and leaves weighted and feathered with the shining crystals. I glanced back at our wake, knowing there was no way of hiding our progress. Whoever the riders were – for I found it hard to believe there could be only one – they would find my trail with ease. They had managed to track me through the forest despite my efforts, so this trail would offer no challenge.

  The only advantage I had now was speed. Kashtan was rested and fresh. She had slept and eaten well and felt like a new animal. My pursuers would be tired from their night in the forest. The cold would be gnawing at them just as it was gnawing at their horses.

  I pulled a scarf over my mouth and spurred Kashtan into a gallop, hoping the cold night had not darkened my pursuers’ tempers or else Lev and Anna would bear the brunt of it. I leaned into her, watching her head bobbing, her mane rippling, as we rushed past the clusters of trees that stood like sentinels, leaning away from the prevailing wind, unclothed and stark against the clear sky and the glistening grass. The cold wind was hard on me, like riding through something more solid than air, and I narrowed my eyes, feeling the tears squeezing out and freezing in the creases in my skin.

  As I moved with Kashtan, confident to let her race on and choose the best route ahead, I began to wonder if I should have brought Lev and Anna with me. If anything happened to them, it would lay on my conscience, but I told myself I had my own family to consider, and they had to come first. Lev and Anna would slow me down, giving my hunters time to make ground, and if something happened to me, Marianna and the boys would have no one to come for them. They would be left alone to their fate, just as Lev and Anna were now left alone to theirs. I’d had to choose between my own family and another.

  A teacher and a little girl.

  And if the people who were coming to their place of refuge knew who I was – if they were men who had learned of my attempted deception and had followed me from the village where Alek and I had left our uniforms – then they were hunters of men. They were torturers and murderers. Violent individuals charged with the dispersal of terror. Not unlike the men I was following; the men who had taken the peasants of Belev into the forest and . . .

  I pulled back on Kashtan’s reins and called to her, telling her to slow down. I rose in the saddle and twisted to look back at the farm. There was no sign of Lev and Anna, but they would be there, waiting for the approach of the devils. I knew now, just as I had known when I left, that they were not safe. I had done a terrible thing. Though I had tried to ignore it, I had known that if the men following me were the kind I expected them to be, they would not ride past and leave Lev and Anna alone. They would execute them for their collusion with a counter-revolutionary. A deserter. They would show no mercy. They would do what they had probably done a hundred times. They would kill and burn.

  I had left them to die.

  The seconds passed like hours as these things went through my mind. The cold air clawed at my throat, and the ice crackled around my eyes. I felt the ghost of Lev’s embrace and saw Anna looking up at me that last time.

  ‘We have to go back,’ I said to Kashtan, and though I could hardly believe I was going to do it, I felt a great joy in it. They would make me slow. They would be a responsibility I didn’t need, but I couldn’t leave them. I couldn’t go on to find my own family knowing I had left another behind to die.

  I turned Kashtan and gave her the spur, pushing her hard so that we raced through the hoarfrost. The wind was cruel in my eyes as I watched for any sign of the rider Lev had seen, but so far, there was nothing.

  There was a thickening mist that obscured the trees on the distant horizon, but I could still see a little way beyond the farm to the empty steppe. If the rider had been an advance scout, he would have returned for the rest of his party. He must have seen Lev and thought it might be me, preparing an ambush for them. He knew who I was and would not want to approach alone. Or perhaps they had split up to follow my confused trail through the forest and he was waiting for the others to catch up. Whatever the reason, I was glad for it, and I lifted my eyes to the sky and prayed once more to the God I had never trusted.

  I asked Him to find us more time, to slow the riders down, and if He didn’t help, then to hell with Him. I would deal with it myself.

  Halfway back, Kashtan’s hooves pounding, I spotted the dog following the flattened path of our trail. He had stopped, ears pricked and neck stretched, his whole body alert.

  ‘Wrong way, dog,’ I shouted as we reached him, forcing him to leap out of our way. ‘We left something behind.’

  He turned his head as he watched us pass; then he was behind us and out of sight.

  Kashtan felt my urgency and she didn’t let up, crossing the field at a gallop. She was probably glad for the chance to run without the restriction of the forest she’d had to cope with so much these past days.

  Once across the field, she cleared the fence in an easy jump, and then her hooves were thumping on the compacted dirt of the yard and I was shouting for Lev and the girl.

  ‘Come out,’ I called as Kashtan turned in a circle, snorting with excitement. ‘It’s me. Kolya.’

  I took Kashtan towards the rear of the barn and dismounted as Lev and Anna came out of the farmhouse. I pulled open the barn door and took Kashtan inside.

  ‘What’s going on?’ Lev asked, running in behind me. ‘I thought you—’

  ‘Close the door. You have to come with me,’ I said, grabbing tack from an armature on the wall. ‘Get this on your horse. Now.’ I thrust the saddle into his arms and went to Anna. ‘I want you to go to the door and open it just enough to look out, do you understand?’

  She nodded.

  ‘Good. Now, it’s important you don’t go outside. Just open it a crack – enough to watch the horizon – and if you see anyone there, let me know straight away, all right?’

>   Anna nodded again and ran to the door.

  ‘What the hell is this, Kolya?’ Lev asked when I returned to him. He kept his voice quiet so as not to alarm Anna, but I could hear the edge in it. He worked as he spoke, lifting the saddle onto the horse’s back, setting it in the right position over the pad that was already in place.

  ‘Is she fast?’ I asked. ‘Your horse.’

  ‘Fast enough for what?’

  ‘You were wrong,’ I told him, taking the front cinch. ‘What you said about just being a peasant and his daughter. If the man you saw was one of the men I think are following me . . .’ I pulled the cinch tight under the horse’s belly and looked up at him. ‘If he was one of them, there will be more. And they won’t be forgiving. You helped me. You could die for that.’

  Lev stopped what he was doing and stared at me. ‘Who are you?’

  ‘Keep working,’ I told him. ‘Get the bridle on.’

  He didn’t move right away. Something was going through his mind, and I was sure I knew what it was. He was thinking about how I had left them, knowing what might happen to them.

  ‘The bridle,’ I said, looking up. ‘We don’t have time for—’

  It was Anna who brought it, hurrying back from the door and snatching up the bridle as she came. She thrust it into her father’s hands, saying, ‘We’ll be all right, Papa.’

  ‘Yes, we will,’ I told her.

  ‘Kolya came back to help us,’ she said.

  ‘Right. Now get back there and keep watch. And you need to get that bridle on. Quickly.’

  As Anna returned to the door, Lev did as I asked, putting the bit between the horse’s teeth and slipping the bridle over her head.

  ‘I’m sorry. I told myself you’d be all right.’ I bent to take the rear cinch and fasten it. ‘I listened to what you said and let myself believe you were right.’

  ‘What changed?’ The horse resisted the bridle as if she felt the tension in us, but Lev held her steady.

  ‘I had time to think about it,’ I said, standing and checking the saddle was firm. ‘And I realised you were wrong. I was wrong. I’m sorry. Sorry for putting you in danger.’