by Smith, Dan
Lev was fitting the throatlatch when Anna shouted back to us. ‘They’re coming,’ she said. ‘I see them.’
‘How many?’ I asked, jogging to the door and looking out.
‘Three.’
‘We have to go,’ I said to Lev, seeing three riders in the distance. Not much more than dots on the horizon, made hazy by the mist. ‘You ready?’
‘Let me get my shotgun,’ he said, but I held him back, closing the door and telling him to leave it. There was nothing they needed. Nothing that was worth dying for.
‘Just mount up,’ I said, as I ran to the back of the barn and pulled open the rear door. If we left that way, it would make us invisible from the direction of the advancing riders. We wouldn’t be able to hide our tracks across the steppe behind us, but at least it would earn us a little extra time if they didn’t see us leave. By the time the riders arrived, we would have reached the plateau I spotted earlier. They would probably approach slowly, watching for an ambush, and they would spend a while investigating the farm before discovering our trail. With a bit of luck, we would be in the trees beyond the plateau by then and we could better hide our tracks.
‘Hurry,’ I said, coming back to help Anna onto the horse. I lifted her up and Lev held her as she swung her leg over so she was sitting in front of him. ‘Go.’ I shooed them out of the barn, taking Kashtan’s reins and leading her outside before I shut the door behind us. ‘Come on. Quick.’ I continued to shout commands at them, feeling my nervousness increase with the added responsibility they brought.
I yanked open the back gate and ushered everyone through before closing it behind us and climbing onto Kashtan’s back.
‘As fast as you can,’ I shouted, kicking my heels into Kashtan and holding tight as she broke into a gallop without further persuasion. Like always, she was in tune with my emotions and my needs, and she responded exactly as required.
We raced across the field, Lev and Anna riding well and in close pursuit, and when we passed the dog for a second time, I looked back at him, seeing him change direction and follow once again.
On the other side of the furrowed field, there were patches of hawthorn and elderberry and places where the brambles had grown wild, but Kashtan avoided them, pressing on across the steppe until we came to the rise almost without me having noticed. I brought her to a stop and turned to look back at the farm in the distance, but it was no more than a dark smudge now, made indistinguishable by the trees around it. If I hadn’t known it was there, I would not have spotted it from this angle.
‘Are you both all right?’ I asked as Lev came to a halt beside us.
‘Fine.’ He was out of breath, and his skin was as flushed as Anna’s, both of them almost glowing in the grey and white that surrounded us.
‘Do you have scarfs? You should cover your faces.’
‘We only have what you see,’ Lev said. ‘Everything else is at the farm. We’re lucky to have coats and hats.’
‘Anna’s cap isn’t enough,’ I said.
‘It’s all we have.’ There was a hint of resentment in Lev’s tone.
‘I’m sorry,’ I told him. ‘I’m sorry I ever came to the farm. I’ve dragged you into this now and . . .’
Lev blinked long and hard, shaking his head. ‘No. I should be thanking you for coming back. We were already in this. Everybody is. You didn’t have to come back for us.’
‘We should keep moving,’ I said. ‘We’re not safe yet.’
I leaned down and patted Kashtan’s neck. ‘Well done.’ I praised my friend and encouraged her to find a good route to pick her way to the top of the rise. In places, it was almost sheer, while in others, the gradient was gentle and easy to navigate, and when we were at the top, we were perhaps ten metres above the part of the steppe we had just ridden across.
The top of the ridge was busy with a confused tangle of twigs and thorns, but we found a way through, coming out onto a steppe that rose into the distance where the forest erupted from its soil once more. Somewhere close to those trees, the road from Belev snaked its way to Dolinsk, and that was where I intended to head next – to follow Tanya and Lyudmila; to find Koschei. There was something I wanted to see, though, before moving on. I needed to assess the scale of what followed in our wake, so I dismounted, knowing we were out of sight from the farm.
I told Lev to stay and rest for a moment, and Kashtan wandered a few paces away, nuzzling the frost, searching for grass, while I went back to the undergrowth, finding a gap and lying down on my stomach. Crystals showered me as I pulled myself through, some finding their way down the back of my neck, but I ignored them and kept moving to the edge of the outcrop. From this elevated position, there was a clear view of the steppe, the farm and the land beyond it.
With the naked eye, it would have been impossible to see the men approaching the farm, but with the binoculars, the shapes were visible on the steppe between the distant forest and the field I had first seen yesterday.
Seven of them, approaching the farm in a line.
I shivered as I watched them, but I was not afraid now as I had been before. In the forest, there had been a sense of the unknown, but now I had confirmation. I was being followed, and that was easier to deal with than not knowing. My concerns were no longer washed in the shadow, and though I was still fearful of being caught, of failing Marianna and the boys and Lev and Anna, those seven riders were men. And men could be outsmarted, or confronted and killed if necessary.
They must have set out at first light; they couldn’t have navigated the dense forest at night, and they were tracking me, which would have been too difficult in the dark. But they had gained ground faster than I had anticipated.
I put the lenses to my eyes again, propping myself on my elbows and watching the figures coming closer to the farm. It was impossible to see them as anything other than riders, and I would have liked to know exactly who they were.
Which of my former comrades had betrayed me?
If I knew that, then perhaps I could face them. I was armed, skilled, and had a good position here on the ridge, but if they were seven men with the skills I had, then a confrontation might not swing in my favour. I would be of no use to Marianna and the boys if I was lying dead in the hoarfrost, waiting for the snow to bury me, and I had Lev and Anna to think about now, waiting just a stone’s throw behind me.
My life would be easier without them and the responsibility I had for them, but it would be poorer in other ways and I was glad they were here. As I watched those seven riders inch across the steppe, I knew I had done the right thing. The men following me would be well armed and expecting trouble – some of them would even be hoping for trouble, as I had once done. They might hardly even have needed an excuse to murder Lev and Anna.
The rider at the centre rode slightly ahead of the others and was the first to reach the gate, but the others were soon alongside him so that all seven riders were in a line facing the yard.
From here to there was a frozen sea of glittering hoarfrost on the thistle and feathergrass and shrubs of the wild steppe. With the wind dying, the mist was thickening, changing the light, threatening to shroud the landscape in a dense cover, and it was impossible even to tell what colour the horses were. They were just dark smudges. The men were faceless shadows and that made them all the more frightening.
As if on command, the men dismounted and came over the fence into the yard. Four broke off to one side, heading to the barn, while the remaining three made their way towards the house.
Having seen enough, I lowered the binoculars, but something caught my eye, making me raise them once more. In the near distance, there was movement on the steppe, a dark shape moving in our trail.
The dog, I said to myself. He’s persistent.
I watched him for a few seconds, nose to the ground; then I crawled back through the undergrowth and returned to Lev, brushing the ice from my clothes.
‘Seven men,’ I told him.
‘Seven? My God, who are you that
they need seven men?’
‘It won’t take them long to find our trail. With a bit of luck, they won’t come after us straight away.’ I looked around. ‘This mist is getting thick and they won’t want to lose our trail out here. If they stray off it in the mist, they’ll waste time finding it again, but if they stay at the farm . . . well, the trail isn’t going anywhere. If it was me, I’d rest.’
I couldn’t be certain, though. Whoever they were, they had been following me for a while now, at least since Belev, and that meant they were good trackers. They would have to be resilient too: the route I took through the forest hadn’t been easy and I’d worked hard to disguise my trail. It was possible that they wouldn’t stop; that they wouldn’t risk losing me.
I didn’t want to tell Lev that, though. I didn’t want to scare him and Anna.
‘So you think they’ll stay at the farm?’
‘They’ll be tired. Their animals too. They must be tough to have followed me this far, but it’s no fun sleeping in the forest every night. It gets tiring. They’ll be glad of a fire and something warm to eat, just like I was. I think they’ll rest.’
‘Are you sure?’ Anna asked, watching me closely.
‘I can’t be sure of anything.’ Kashtan’s saddle creaked as I climbed up. ‘That’s why we need to keep moving; get as far ahead as we can. We have to try to lose them.’
16
The mist stole the radiance of the hoarfrost on the thistles. It settled its damp and delicate fingers over everything, smothering the land in a bewildering half-light that lowered the sky and folded in around us. It gave its allegiance to no one. It favoured no colour. Just as it kept us hidden from our pursuers, so it kept them hidden from us. If they had chosen to continue after us, we had no way of knowing.
Kashtan walked on without seeming to notice, but there was nothing visible ahead of us now other than a few metres of frozen grassland. When I turned to look back, there was nothing to see behind us either. We were alone in our pocket of the world, isolated from whatever might be lurking beyond the wall of mist. Marianna would have known the name of some spirit or devil that was out there, protecting its home or punishing the wicked, but my concern was for something more human. My mind was on the seven riders and I kept us moving at a good pace, ever afraid they might appear as wraiths from the gloom.
‘You keep looking back,’ Anna said, breaking the almost lifeless calm. ‘You think they’re following.’
‘I think it’s possible.’
‘It’s all right,’ Lev said, holding her tight. ‘Don’t be scared.’
‘I’m not scared.’
‘We’ll be fine,’ I told her. ‘We’ll be in the trees soon and then we can hide our trail better.’
‘Who are they?’ Lev asked. ‘Why do they want you so much?’
‘Chekists, probably. I deserted, so they want to—’
‘But who are you that they’re so desperate to catch you? That it needs seven men? And to follow you like—’
‘I’m no one,’ I said, and it occurred to me that when we reached the trees, perhaps I should let Lev and Anna go ahead. I could stay behind and make a stand; try to pick them off from the treeline. But the men following me were well trained and experienced and I was haunted by the image of leaving Marianna and the boys without anyone to come for them. I had to keep going for their sake.
As we continued into the mist and the crushing silence ahead, I pulled my scarf up to cover my mouth. My head was never still, always moving, my eyes always searching, watching for shadows, but there was nothing. We were the only living things on that steppe. The regular crunch of horses’ hooves breaking the frost, the occasional dull clink of a bridle were the only sounds.
‘Find the way,’ I said to Kashtan. ‘Find the way, girl.’
She snorted and nodded and kept on moving.
On and on.
We saw nothing. No one. We might have been moving through a dream.
I estimated we were riding for two hours, steady but slow, when I caught sight of the forest, sinister and imposing. It was a shadow, a presence that darkened the mist and stood like an uninviting guard across our path. Coming close enough to make out the individual trees, I spotted the track just a few paces ahead of us. It was almost indistinguishable from the sea of white we had just come through. Seldom used, the ice and the frost had claimed the rutted track in the same way it had claimed everything else.
‘Well done,’ I said, bringing Kashtan to a stop when we were on the road. I looked both ways, but there was nothing to see, so I climbed down and inspected the track, walking a few steps in either direction.
‘The road to Dolinsk,’ I said when Lev dismounted and came to join me. Anna stayed close to him.
‘You think the dog’s all right?’ she asked.
I glanced back into the mist. ‘I’m sure he’s fine. He has our scent. If he wanted to, he could find us in the dark.’
On the road, there were many clear marks in the mud from horses that had passed this way, prints on either side of the track too, close to the trees, as if large numbers of animals had used this route together. Armies had been crossing this part of the country for years now and these tracks might have been here for as long as that, or they might have been fresh just a few days ago. Frozen in time as they were, myriad prints intermingling, it was almost impossible to tell.
‘Nothing recent,’ I said, seeing how the ice had formed hard in the marks and the latest frost had left its crystal calling card. If Tanya and Lyudmila had come this way, they would have kept within the forest – like me, they wanted to avoid any confrontation – but some of those prints could have been made by Koschei and his men. He could have been in this exact spot. Perhaps Marianna had even stood here; Misha or Pavel might have put their feet in the place where mine were now. I crouched and took off my glove to put my fingers onto the frozen mud as if it might somehow bring me closer to my wife and children, but there was no consolation to be taken from the hard ground.
I stood and pulled down my scarf so that I could put my face against Kashtan’s and she pushed her nose into my chest. ‘What would I do without you?’ I said, taking her reins and turning to look at the forest. ‘Come on.’
I led her forward, right to the trees, so that I could smell the damp earthiness, but something made me stop.
‘What is it?’ Lev asked. ‘What’s the matter?’
‘It’s safer for us in there, out of sight –’ I glanced at Kashtan and put a hand to her cheek ‘– but . . .’ Staring into the misty gloom between the crowded trunks, I was reminded of the horrors I had witnessed among the trees close to Belev. The blood and burned flesh, and the sense of something terrible lying in wait for me. ‘We’ll stay out here a while longer,’ I said, turning north and following the treeline. For now we would use the weather as our friend; we could enter the forest later, when there was no other choice.
I glanced down at the multitude of hoof and boot and cart prints in the ground at our feet. ‘Stay in these tracks. It shouldn’t be long before they freeze over like all the others. It’ll make us harder to follow.’
So we went on, heads down, using the forest and the road as our guide. With poor visibility it was difficult to estimate how far behind us Belev was, and how far ahead Dolinsk lay, but at least we were heading north again, following the trail Koschei had taken. Assuming Tanya and Lyudmila had been telling the truth.
We curved east and then west, cutting between more pockets of forest so that at times we were flanked on either side by the dark sentinels of oak and birch and maple and spruce. I checked my compass from time to time, knowing the more direct route to Dolinsk would be straight through the trees, so as soon as they began to thin out, we entered the forest.
The mist still drifted among the contorted trunks and twisted branches, but behind us, it had thinned and I stopped to raise the binoculars to my eyes and scan the steppe. The farm was far behind us now, as if it had never existed, but I half expected seven
dark smudges to appear, hazy and indistinct. I wished I could see through the mist, know how far away they were, see what course of action they had chosen, but all I could do was guess.
Guess and keep moving.
‘Are they coming?’ Anna asked. ‘Can you see anything?’
‘Nothing yet –’ I lowered the lenses ‘– but we should go into the woods now.’
‘Let me see.’ Lev reached out for the field glasses and I let him take them.
‘What about the dog?’ Anna asked. ‘Any sign of him?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘Sorry.’
‘Could they follow him?’ Lev scanned the distance. ‘Could he lead them to us?’
‘They don’t need him to lead them across the steppe – our trail is clear enough – and they can move much faster than him. My guess is . . . if he’s still following us, and they are too, then he’d be a long way behind those riders by now. He looked half starved to me; he’ll be slow.’
‘But if they lose our trail, they could wait for him to catch up and take our scent.’
‘They could – if he hasn’t given up or exhausted himself. Anyway, there are ways to muddle our tracks once we’re in the trees, make it hard for them.’
‘Is that what you did before?’ Lev asked.
‘They’re good trackers,’ I admitted, ‘but we’ll confuse them. It will be easier to do that with two horses.’ They had followed me this far, though, and I was beginning to wonder if I could ever lose them.
Lev handed the binoculars back to me and put his hand on my shoulder. ‘We’ll be fine, then.’ He forced a smile.
‘Of course we will.’
And with that, we turned and entered the shadow of the forest.
The trees were tight together on the edge of the wood, brought closer by the shrubs and bushes, which grew in twisted thickets between them, but once we were inside, they separated to a comfortable distance apart. They were too close for a horse-drawn sled or cart, but fine for a single rider. Once we moved past the treeline, the bracken and undergrowth thinned out, making our progress easier, so we mounted up and let Kashtan find the way, steering her on a different course from time to time, doubling back on ourselves, avoiding areas where we might displace the vegetation or leave visible prints. We separated at times, creating different trails, confused signs, clearing away the horses’ dung when they dropped it, and when we found a small stream, we used it as our path for a while, breaking our scent and hiding our tracks.