One of them turns and, seeing me, gives a little cry.
‘Mother of God!’
The other turns, panicked, and draws a knife, only it’s clear he doesn’t want to use it. They’re both visibly shaking with fear. I raise my hand and point at them, and they whimper and then, their nerve breaking, turn and run into the night.
But it doesn’t matter. I got a good look at them in the moonlight and it was definitely the same two who were at Belyj and Antipino. Krylenko’s friends. But why are they here? Why are they still following us?
One thing I do know. We’re leaving here, first thing, whether Lishka thinks it a good idea or not. Here we’re sitting targets, easy to find. Much too easy.
I turn as Katerina pushes open the door and looks out.
‘What’s happening?’ she asks, even as the innkeeper, Rapushka, emerges from within, his smock tucked into his breeches, a stave in his hands.
‘It was nothing. Just some wild dogs.’
Rapushka looks at me suspiciously, then shrugs and goes back inside. But Katerina is less easily fobbed off. She knows it wasn’t dogs.
‘Was it them?’ she asks, as soon as I’m back inside the room.
‘Yes. It looked like they were after the cart.’
She’s silent a moment, then. ‘We’d better go. If we wait here—’
‘I know. We’re going. First thing tomorrow.’
‘Good. But Otto …’
‘Yes?’
‘I think you need to give me a knife.’
183
I don’t like the idea of arming Katerina, and yet it makes good sense – like teaching her German, and confiding in her about Four-Oh.
Over breakfast, I tell Bakatin and Lishka about last night’s visitors, and that I want to leave Tatarinka that morning.
Lishka’s still against the idea, and offers to sleep in with the cart, but I won’t be put off. Besides, this once Bakatin agrees with me. Today’s the day he’s going home, and he says he’d feel better about it if he knew I was on the move.
I’m surprised. I thought he’d agree with Lishka. These Russians seem to make any excuse to sit on their arses and do nothing, blaming the weather for their idleness. But that’s unfair to Bakatin. Though he likes to drink and enjoy himself like the next man, he works hard, and his agreement with me impresses Lishka, who says he’ll be ready to leave by midday, once he’s sorted out a few things.
The rain has held off all night and most of the morning, but as Katerina and I step out of the inn it begins again, laced with a thin sleet that gusts into our faces.
Lishka appears an hour later, leading a tired-looking horse. I help him bring the cart out from the barn, then stand back as he yokes up. While he’s doing this, Bakatin and his sons arrive to see us off.
I embrace the big man warmly. He has been a good friend to us, and I tell him that he is welcome to visit us in Novgorod at any time – and to bring his wives. He laughs at that and scratches his big black beard, then grins. ‘Perhaps … if I’m ever that far north.’
I stand back and let him hug Katerina, who kisses his bearded cheek, then goes over and gives each of his boys a kiss and a hug. They seem embarrassed, after all, they are but peasants – sons of a river haulier – whereas she is the lady wife of a Nemets trader, and they seem conscious of that difference in status. But Katerina has no airs. She is a young Russian girl, that’s all, and she tells them she will miss them, and they wish her a safe journey to Rzhev and on to Moscow.
And so we set off, walking beside Lishka and the cart, our heads covered, our faces lowered, as we walk into the gusting rain on a grey afternoon in Tatarinka.
Three hours in, we stop and shelter in a cave, the rain outside incessant, falling in a grey unending curtain from the sky. We are soaked to the skin, and while Lishka clears a patch of ground and starts a fire, I unpack fresh clothes for Katerina. Dressed, she settles on her haunches, then looks to our guide.
‘Have you family, Lishka?’
Lishka looks up from where he’s crouched down, feeding kindling to the growing flames, a surprised, almost guilty look on his face.
‘Pardon, mistress?’
‘A wife? Children?’
‘No, mistress. I was never lucky with women.’
‘Never …’ Katerina turns and looks at me, then turns back. ‘And your parents?’
‘Dead. Long dead. The fever took them.’ He sniffs, then stares away into the past, his face bright in the glow of the fire. ‘I was only a boy. This high.’ And he raises his hand to a point two feet above the floor.
Katerina steps closer, then kneels, facing him across the fire. ‘What did you do?’
Lishka shrugs. ‘What could I do? I found a master. I worked. I earned my crust. And in time I became my own master. But I could never stay too long in any one place. That’s why I became a haulier. To escape all that.’ He looks up at Katerina again and smiles. ‘Something to eat, mistress?’
Lishka brings bacon and cabbage and bread and a skillet pan, and in a little while we eat while outside the rain falls endlessly.
We stay there in the warm and dry for the rest of the afternoon and as night falls and as the rain hasn’t stopped, we decide to stay there until the morning.
Katerina and I make our bed from furs and cloaks on one side of the cart, Lishka and the horse on the other. Sleep comes easy, but halfway through the night I’m woken.
I’m only half awake at first, still following the thread of a dream, and then I realise that there’s movement in the cave. In the glow from the fire’s embers, I can see faint shadows moving on the far side of the cart. At first I think it’s Lishka, got up to piss, only I realise it can’t be, because I can hear Lishka snoring. I turn and look beside me. Katerina is still there, on her back, asleep.
The horse snorts restlessly. A moment later a twig snaps.
That’s it. The sound that woke me.
I reach under the cloak for my knife, then slowly, careful not to make a noise, I slip from beneath the covers and lift myself up into a position where I can peek over the cart without being seen.
For a long time I stay there, motionless, watching and listening for something from the back of the cave. But there’s nothing. Either I imagined it, or it was something very small – a nocturnal beast of some kind. Relaxing, I go round the cart and look about me. No. There’s nothing. Only Lishka and the horse.
Relieved, I go over to the entrance and stand there, peering out into the moonlit night.
The rain has stopped and in the silvered light the surrounding forest seems newly fashioned, like on the very first day of creation. The overhanging branches sparkle with raindrops, while the moon seems to wink back at me from a hundred tiny pools among the trees. Overhead the stars blaze down from a black velvet sky. It’s beautiful, and for that one brief moment its beauty pierces me, touching my soul, the way Katerina does whenever she looks at me. And I realise that I have fallen in love with this land, so different from my own.
I’m about to go back to bed when I see him suddenly, standing among the trees about fifty yards away, to my left. He’s looking straight at me: a tall man with almost silver hair. A man my own height and build. His presence there, so still and silent, chills me. For the briefest moment he watches me, then, with a casualness that speaks volumes, he turns and walks away.
I strain to follow him with my eyes, but in a moment I have lost him among the tangle of tree trunks; either that, or the ground there slopes down out of sight. Whichever, he has gone, as effectively as if he’d disappeared. Which makes me wonder.
I go back to the cart and, reaching underneath, get out the Kolbe, then sit on a rock in the entrance, keeping guard. It’s here that Katerina finds me, just before the dawn.
‘Otto? What is it?’
‘We had a visitor. In the night.’
‘Those men again.’
‘No. A different one. One we’ve not seen before. I think he may have been in the cave at some point.’
She turns and looks behind her, fearful suddenly. Our plan to leave Tatarinka doesn’t seem so clever now.
‘We should move on,’ she says. ‘Quickly. Try and lose them.’
‘You think that likely? It won’t be hard for them to track us with the cart. We can’t move fast, and the deep ruts it leaves could be followed by a blind man. No. We’ll just have to watch our backs and hope.’
‘Backs?’ Lishka says, coming out from behind the cart. ‘What’s this about watching our backs?’
‘We had a visitor,’ Katerina explains. ‘Otto saw him.’
Lishka narrows his eyes. ‘You want to go back?’
‘No,’ I answer, slipping the Kolbe away, out of sight. ‘But we take greater care from now on, and we take turns to watch at night.’
‘Do you know these people?’ Lishka asks.
‘Not the one I saw. I’ve never seen him before. But he was some way distant and, despite the moon, it wasn’t easy to pick out what he looked like. His face was in shadow. But I know it wasn’t one of the other two who were skulking about in Tatarinka.’
‘What was he like?’
‘Tall. My height and build. Silver-haired. He seemed … calm. Not afraid of me at all.’
Lishka shrugs. ‘I’ve not heard of such a one. Not in these parts, anyway.’
And then – from nowhere – it strikes me. Shit! He didn’t have a beard. The bastard didn’t have a beard!
184
I say nothing to Lishka, but at the first chance I get, I take Katerina aside and discuss the matter of the missing beard with her. All the Russians of this age have beards, so the figure I saw, I’m certain, was a time agent. But ours or theirs?
Whichever, it means that I’ve caused ripples, and that could prove a problem. I was hoping to make this journey anonymously – at least, as anonymously as I could while being tracked every second from Four-Oh.
I am extra alert the next few days, as we journey through that rough, heavily wooded terrain, but there’s no further sign of our pursuers. Lishka knows his stuff, and eventually brings us out into a valley that runs from west to east. I can see from the deeply scored ravine that there was once a proper river here, back in the Ice Age, but now it’s little more than a stream. We walk alongside, the cart swaying and dipping with the path, the old horse happier now that we’re out in the sunlight.
It’s late morning when we stop to eat. It hasn’t rained for a full day now, nor have we had any further sign of our pursuers. But that’s not to say that they aren’t there, biding their time – waiting until the ‘sorcerer’ drops his guard.
Katerina’s morning sickness has grown worse these last few days, her nausea lasting well into the afternoon. If I could jump back to Four-Oh I could get her something for it, but as it is she has to do what women have done through the ages: grit her teeth and persevere. But I feel for her. She seems so miserable sometimes.
‘How far is it to the shore of the lake?’ I ask Lishka as I help him to make a fire.
‘Three days. I thought we might stop at Sychevka first.’
‘Sychevka?’ The place isn’t marked on the map Ernst had drawn up for me.
‘It’s at the southern foot of the lake. We can rest there overnight. Get feed for the horse.’
I sit back on my heels and think about that, then shake my head. ‘No.’
‘No?’ Lishka’s surprised.
‘We avoid it. Press on.’
‘But we need food.’
‘I’ll hunt for food. The horse can graze.’
‘I don’t understand. If you’re afraid of an attack …’
It’s true. They are as likely to attack us in the wilds – more likely, probably – than in a village. But my instinct is to avoid all centres of habitation. I don’t know why, but I feel safer out here, paradoxical as that seems. Maybe it’s the thought of being caught inside a building. Of being trapped. Out here we can always run.
Lishka stares into the fire a moment and then shrugs. ‘If that’s what you want.’
‘It’s what I want.’
As it is, we have to pass right by Sychevka. The valley opens out into the lake and Sychevka sits in the gap.
No one’s about. The huts look deserted. And while the rain might explain that, I don’t like the feel of the place, and so we keep to the left, following the rocks closely, until Sychevka is behind us.
I’m beginning to relax a little when, rounding a rocky promontory, we come in sight of a boat, out on the lake. There are two men in it, fishing, and for a time they don’t notice us. Then one of them spies us and, nudging the other, points in our direction. Almost at once, they’ve pulled in their nets and are rowing hard, back towards the village.
It doesn’t look good, and I ask Lishka if there is some way we can get away from the shore, but he doesn’t think so. It’s only because it’s so stony here that we can pull the cart. If we go further inland we’ll hit mud again and the cart will get bogged down.
Nor can we hurry much. The old horse is doing its very best, drawing a load which at times seems beyond it, especially on slopes, where Lishka and I have to give it a hand.
But now I sense danger and, making Lishka stop, I scramble under the cart and get out both the weapons. They ought to be enough, but if not, Katerina has her knife and Lishka his stave.
I look to Lishka a moment, wondering if he was in on this. Whether he told them, maybe, that he would bring us out to Sychevka. It would make sense of why they’ve not attacked us before now. Only I’ve come to trust old Lishka, and I don’t believe for a moment that he’d make that kind of deal.
I look to Katerina. ‘We may have to fight.’
She nods nervously, then, bravely, gives me a smile.
‘It’ll be okay,’ I say. ‘We’ll get through. Trust me.’
But the words have no sooner left my mouth than I feel a thud to the back of my head and the world goes black.
I come to an instant later, my ears ringing, nausea overwhelming me. I’m slumped against the cart, steadying myself with one hand, Beside me, on the ground, is the piece of rock that hit me. My head hurts like blazes. There’s a hot, throbbing pain at the back of my skull and a wetness. My vision swims.
There’s a sudden awful braying and yelping, as of wild animals, and then the first of them are upon us.
I look up, alarmed, as one of them tries to skewer Katerina with what looks like a butcher’s knife. But she’s too fast for him and jerks aside. Lishka, meanwhile, has met the charge of another of them full on, thrusting his stave into the man’s face, then bringing it down hard into the fallen man’s stomach.
I haul myself up, even as Katerina ducks under her attacker’s swipe and plunges her knife deep into his guts. The fierceness in her face astonishes me. But I’ve no time to watch her. Two of them now target me, one with a long curved knife, the other with a woodman’s axe. I’ve lost the guns and have only my hands now to defend me, but it’s enough. I straight punch the swordsman even as he seeks to cleave me from head to toe, breaking his nose, then turn and kick away the right leg of the axeman.
And almost faint from the sudden pain in my head.
I stagger back, knowing that others are coming, that we’re outnumbered heavily and that my best chance – the guns – has gone. As the axeman scrambles up and grips his weapon anew, I place my hand against my chest, preparing to jump. Only even as I do, I am knocked sideways, out of the way, as Lishka charges through and, with a vicious swing, takes the axeman’s remaining teeth out.
Lishka is laughing now, enjoying himself. As another of them rushes him, he trips them and, with a deft turn I’d not have believed him capable of, smacks him across the back of the head as he sprawls.
Katerina is also thriving in the fight. She’s cut another of them badly, and as a third attacker seeks to grab her hair and pull her down, she swings round under his arm and stabs him in the thorax. He gives a gurgling scream and falls away.
But now things turn. A
s I get up yet again, I sense someone behind me and, turning, find myself facing one of the two who’d followed me to Tatarinka. Before I’ve time to lift my arm, he swings his club, and only poor judgement on his part makes him miss my head. Yet he tumbles into me and brings me down again. Getting up, I see that Lishka has been hit. He’s holding his bloodied head and staggering. Looking just beyond him I see the culprit – a young boy, barely a man – bending to find another rock for his slingshot. As my own attacker tries to get up and grab me, I thrust an elbow viciously into his face, then – ignoring the aching pulse in my head, the great sheets of blood-hot pain that wash through my whole body – I get to my feet again and, half-jogging, head towards the sling-thrower.
He looks up as I overshadow him, just in time to get my boot full in his face. But as I turn, swaying now, almost spent, I hear Katerina cry out, and feel my heart ripped from me. She’s down, and even as I watch, some bastard sticks her a second time with a knife.
I bellow and, finding reserves from somewhere, run at her attacker, stooping briefly to pick up an axe. As the man turns, surprised, I bring it down savagely and he falls back, an astonished look on his face, a line of blood running from where the blade of the axe is embedded in his forehead. Dead.
That seems to do it. The rest of them – three or four at most – flee from us, even though it’s clear we’re on our last legs and easy pickings. But I’m barely conscious of that. Stooping down, I try and lift Katerina, groaning at the sight of her injuries. The whole right side of her upper body is covered in blood, and her face is ash pale, her eyes closed, the eyelids fluttering.
‘No! Urd help me, no!’
I turn my head, looking about me, then half-carry, half-drag her over to the cart, where, cutting through the securing straps, I search through the load until I find the medical kit I’ve packed at the very bottom. Then, on my hands and knees beside her, I cut into her bodice, tearing at it with quick, almost desperate movements. As it comes away, I wince. There are two stab wounds, and though neither are in critical areas – through the heart or lungs – they’re both deep and she has clearly lost a lot of blood.
The Ocean of Time Page 10