Dan Smith - Red Winter

The tableau of death before me was as shocking as anything I had seen during the course of the war. I had grown all too aware of the appalling things that one person could do to another, but I had never seen such a variety of atrocity in once place. Most perpetrators of this kind of extermination tended to stick to a preferred method. There were those who flayed their victims while they were still alive. Others opted for crucifixion or hanging or a simple bullet to the back of the neck. Some liked to impale their victims or roll them naked in barrels punched through with nails. I had even heard of men and women forced to stand naked in the cold while water was poured over them, a few drops at a time, until they became ice statues frozen in death.

The one thing I believed these victims had in common was that they had been visited by the cruellest enforcers of Bolshevism: Chekists. The men tasked with bringing the populace into line by spreading fear in their campaign of Red Terror. That was the only conclusion I could come to, looking at the massacre before me. This was not the work of some supernatural being; this was the work of men.

I could only imagine why the perpetrators had brought their victims this deep into the forest. As far as I knew, this kind of thing was not usually kept hidden, but displayed for the world to see. After all, what use would there be for Red Terror if not to terrorise? Perhaps they had been brought here to maximise their fear. I would probably never know, but the end result was the same.

My chest burned as I drew shallow breaths. The sweat was cold on my brow, and my body trembled as the world fell away from me, spinning into the abyss. I backed away, shaking my head, and suddenly the forest was alive with noise. Everything darkened, my mind spun in confusion, and I moved away further, afraid to take my eyes from the carnage in case the bodies should rise against me for the things I had done.

I stumbled over something hidden in a tuft of grass, putting my hands out to stop myself, but there was nothing there for me to grab. I dropped my rifle as my arms wheeled in the air and I fell, collapsing into the cold grass, turning immediately, afraid to be so vulnerable. The frozen undergrowth brushed against my face as I searched on my hands and knees for my rifle.

‘Where is it?’ I said, over and over. ‘Where is it? Where is it?’

My hands pushed against something hard and cold. I recoiled in horror at the sight of a human head lost in the foliage. I turned, desperate to find my rifle, desperate to be away from here.

When my fingers finally curled round the weapon, I pushed to my feet and began to run.

I ran and ran, stumbling and faltering, the low branches tearing at my face as I passed them. I felt the breath of the dead on the back of my neck, forcing me on, always threatening to catch me, and when I finally reached Kashtan, I fumbled with her reins and climbed onto her, panic and grief and guilt and revulsion all boiling in my veins.

I kicked her hard and drove her through the forest, not daring to look back. I bent low towards her neck, an instinct to streamline myself and avoid the branches that flashed past as she wove in and out of the trees, obeying my furious commands to run faster and faster. Her hooves pounded the hard ground, and her body moved this way and that, fluid as she twisted and turned, finding the most accessible route ahead. I kept urging her on, digging my heels hard, frantic to be away from here, anxious to be in the open and to see the light of the day.

The forest floor was treacherous, though, and when Kashtan slipped, I felt a different kind of panic. Her hooves caught on something hard, a protruding tree root or a rock, and she stumbled to one side, her flanks thumping into the trunk of a nearby tree. Her cry of pain penetrated the shock that had taken control of me. I could not survive without her. I was driving her too hard.

Kashtan’s stride was uneven now, her steps faltering. I pulled back on her reins, but she felt my fear as if we were one being and she surged on through the forest. I struggled to bring her under control, speaking to her, slowing her.

‘Good girl.’ I stroked her neck. ‘It’s all right now. We’re safe.’ Once again I realised that when I was speaking to her, I was speaking to myself. ‘We’ll take it slowly now.’

I looked back, seeing the place where she had bumped the tree, then I inspected her flanks where there was a dusting of moss and bark. ‘No broken skin. That’s lucky.’ I reached back and brushed it away. ‘You’ll have a bruise, though.’

But there was a difference in her step, she dipped more to one side, and I suspected straight away that she had thrown a shoe during our race through the forest. I brought her to a halt and she stood, breathing hard, her chest expanding and relaxing, the smell of sweat oozing from her well-lathered coat. I climbed down and soothed her before lifting her left front leg.

‘We’ll have to get it looked at. Can’t go far like that.’ The shoe was missing, and as well as there being a stone lodged in her hoof, a small chunk was missing on the outer edge of the wall. If the damage worsened, it could lead to serious bruising and even lameness.

I placed her foot on the ground and looked back into the forest, turning about, searching for any signs of followers. I had that inkling once again, that something was closing in on me, and that whatever it was, I would never outrun it.

‘I’ll do what I can,’ I said, still watching, ‘but it’ll have to be quick.’

From one of the rear saddlebags I took a hoof pick and checked each of Kashtan’s hooves in turn, removing any stones and clearing the dirt from around the frog. I should have done it before I had saddled her, as well as checking her shoes, but I had been in too much of a hurry.

As I worked, I felt a constant unease, as if I were being watched.

I untied the roll of blankets from home and cut a square large enough to put round Kashtan’s damaged hoof. I secured it with a short piece of twine round her fetlock before cutting another square, this time from the small tarpaulin that acted as my rain cover when sleeping outdoors. This, too, I tied round her hoof.

‘It should do for now,’ I said, hoping it would prevent any further damage.

When that was done, I rested for a few minutes, sitting on the tarpaulin and leaning back against a tree, trying not to think about what I had left behind in the forest. Kashtan stood close and I watched her for any sign that her hoof was bothering her.

‘I don’t know where we are,’ I said to her.

Just as Babushka had told us, so Marianna had told our boys that the woodland spirits would try to lead them astray in the forest by covering their tracks so they couldn’t follow them home, or by calling to them, enticing them deeper into the trees, always at the edge of their vision, always tricking. I hadn’t needed the leshii to confuse me – I’d had my own demons to do that – but I couldn’t help looking around. Alone, it was easy to imagine that something malevolent was waiting out there, hiding just out of view.

I struggled not to think about such things. There were no rusalkas . No vengeful spirits of the dead surrounded me, preparing to descend on me from the darkness. I was alone with Kashtan. Nothing else was here.

And yet the disquiet would not leave me.

‘We need to move,’ I said to her, fishing a small compass from my satchel and tapping the dirty glass cover. ‘Need to get away from here.’ I held it out to the light so I could read it better and shook my head. ‘We’re heading in the wrong direction.’ I looked over my shoulder, then put the compass away, touching the tobacco pouch in my satchel and wishing I had enough for a cigarette. It would have helped to calm my nerves, but the half-smoked stub from Tanya lay forgotten in my pocket.