Dan Smith - Red Winter

Lyudmila, the woman with the rifle, had followed us into the cemetery with her weapon in one hand and the axe in the other. I removed my coat and jacket, took the axe from her and began to break the earth beside Mama and Papa, swinging the heavy tool backwards and forwards, backwards and forwards.

As I worked and the women watched, the sky blackened, and when a rumbling cracked in the distance, Tanya looked across at her comrade. ‘Thunder?’

‘Or artillery?’

‘Thunder,’ I told them. ‘Just thunder.’

By the time I had shovelled out the loose soil and dug a grave deep enough for my brother, the first of the sleet began to fall. Down and down.

Thick and cold, it pelted us, so Tanya and Lyudmila went to the overhang at the back of the church and sheltered from the worst of it, while I struggled to put Alek in the ground. Their sympathy did not stretch as far as allowing themselves to be soaked, but I would have done the same. Cold and wet was no way to be at this time of year, and if they were going back out there, on the road, it could mean a long, slow death.

The black dirt loosened into a dark rain as I threw it over my brother, showering across his lifeless body, and I watched as he disappeared from the world. The patter of the soil on his body was the saddest sound I had ever heard, and the hardest shovelful was the one that hid his face. It settled into his nostrils, his eyes, on his lips and across his pale skin. And then Alek was gone.

I put on my jacket and picked up my coat and satchel, walking back through the crosses and memorials towards the women.

‘I’ve nothing to mark his grave,’ I said, as the sleet fell around me.

‘That can’t be helped,’ Tanya replied.

I nodded and stopped to stare at the place where I had buried my brother. He was gone now, but would always be with me.

‘Now I’ll show you what you want to see,’ I said, turning from the grave and walking away without looking back. ‘Then I’m going to find my wife and sons.’ Perhaps I would have to bury them too.

I had entered the church before Tanya called after me, but I didn’t stop. I had done my duty to my brother now, and I wanted to get back to the lake, to the forest, to follow the call of the crows. I had delayed too long already.

‘Hold on,’ Tanya said, following behind me.

I passed through the church, putting on my coat, and was close to the front door when Tanya came alongside me, walking quickly.

‘What do you mean about finding your wife and sons?’

I continued out into the empty road.

‘What did you mean?’ she asked again.

‘Come with me if you want to see.’

Tanya said nothing, but she fell back a few paces, walking behind me.

Last night, the mist had washed over the bridge and lay across the path and undergrowth like forest spirits waiting to form, but now the wisps had vanished and all that remained were patches of frost and the hardening sleet. It crunched under our boots as we tramped to the far end of the village towards the footbridge.

The crows. They were still here, calling their bleak cries to the morning. From time to time their cawing became more agitated, and some would rise into the air over the trees beyond the lake, then they would settle once more and the sky would be still.

Tanya and I stopped at the mouth of the bridge and waited for Lyudmila to bring the horses.

‘They look tired,’ I said, as she came from the back of the church and led them along the road towards us.

‘They’re tough enough,’ Tanya replied.

‘And the bridge won’t take their weight.’

‘It won’t have to.’

When Lyudmila caught up with us, Tanya took the reins of one of the horses, holding them out to the side so the animal could negotiate the river while she used the bridge.

‘After you,’ she said to me, so I crossed the bridge with the women following, and the horses splashed through the icy water beside us.

We took the narrow path beyond, the branches reaching across on either side as if trying to touch us. It was less ghostly now than it had been last night, but there was something impersonal and unfeeling about it. As if we didn’t belong here.

The horses came without complaint, the water dripping from their bellies as we went on into the forest, the soft thump of their hooves on the lonely path. There were tracks there, below the frost, the coming and going of many feet, but there was no telling how long they had been there.

I knew what to expect when we came out into the clearing by the lake, but it still stopped me in my tracks.

The sight of Galina’s husband lying dead on the grass was even starker than I remembered it. It had been softened by the moonlight, but now it was hard and cold and cruel. I was no stranger to the vile things that one man can do to another, but something about this made my flesh crawl. Perhaps because I had known this man.

He had been a part of my life.

The body lay in the centre of the clearing, surrounded only by the last red leaves of autumn, now frosted and glittering with the touch of winter. There was no mistaking the separation of his head now, his face turned towards us. And there was something I hadn’t noticed last night. The angry mark in the centre of the old man’s forehead that I thought was caused by the attention of crows was not a random and jagged wound. Just above his eyebrows, and regular in design, the wound could only have been a burn.

In the shape of a five-pointed star.

Tanya came to a stop behind me and took a short breath. ‘Koschei,’ she said.

The name was like a nail driven into my chest and I turned to watch her staring at the headless man. ‘What did you say?’

Tanya’s eyes didn’t move. She was frozen in place by the scene, her whole body rigid.

‘Did she say, “Koschei”?’ I realised that perhaps Galina hadn’t been as confused as I had thought, and it dawned on me that whoever had done this, whoever had killed the old woman’s husband, really was calling himself Koschei, just as Galina had insisted. Whether he had taken the name for anonymity or notoriety I couldn’t tell, but it was a name that unsettled and disturbed. Koschei the Deathless was a hateful and cruel symbol of evil.

Tanya’s horse stepped back, shying away from the grim tableau, so she released her grip on the reins, and while the animal moved away towards the lake, Tanya took a few slow steps across the frosted clearing until she was standing over Galina’s husband. She stopped, turning her head to look away at the trees, and set her expression firm before looking back at the dead man, studying him.

‘What do you know about Koschei?’ I asked her. My voice was out of place in the quiet solitude of the forest.

Tanya said nothing, so I turned to Lyudmila behind me. There was a watery glaze to her eyes, but it wasn’t the cold that was bringing the tears.

‘You’ve seen this before?’ I asked. ‘This burn?’

She took a few steps forward, coming to stand beside me. ‘More than once. Where are the others?’

I looked back without thinking, raising my eyes to the naked treetops on the other side of the lake. If there were others, that was where they would be. Where the crows had congregated.

I was almost too afraid to go there.

‘What do you know about Koschei?’ I asked again. ‘Who is he?’

Lyudmila shook her head. ‘Where were you when this happened?’

‘Not here,’ I said. ‘I came home last night and this is what I found.’

The sound of footsteps made me turn to see Tanya coming back to us.

‘So you came just last night?’ Lyudmila asked. ‘And the village was empty?’

‘Yes. But you know that. You said you were watching me.’