Dan Smith - Red Winter

‘You look like a soldier to me,’ Anna said, closing her fist round the nails. ‘Is that what you are?’

‘Sh.’ Lev shook his head and spoke to her in a quiet tone. ‘Don’t ask questions.’

‘He looks like a soldier,’ she said under her breath. Then, ‘You look like a soldier.’ Staring at me. Defiant.

‘Do I?’

‘You have a gun.’

‘Anna.’ Lev cast her a sideways glance. ‘Angel, don’t—’

‘It’s all right,’ I told him, then turned to his daughter. ‘Lots of people have guns. Too many people. Your father has a gun.’

‘For shooting pheasants,’ she said. ‘And crows on the crops.’

‘But not these crops, eh?’ I said. ‘Because these ones are not yours.’

Anna shrugged. ‘They are now. No one else wants them. No one else was here apart from—’

‘We found it empty,’ Lev said, glancing up at his daughter, and I saw a connection between them as if they could communicate their thoughts to one another with just a look. ‘It was a good place to stay.’

I watched them, wondering what they were hiding from me, what they had done. Something Lev wasn’t proud of, from the look of him. ‘Empty, eh? Lucky for you,’ I said. ‘Maybe not so lucky for whoever lived here before.’

Lev nodded and tapped his daughter’s hand so she opened it for him to take another nail.

‘Are you a deserter?’ Anna asked.

‘What do you know about deserters?’

‘Nothing,’ Lev replied for her, and another look passed between them. This was one of warning, though – I could see that right away. She was outspoken and he didn’t want it to bring them trouble. ‘We don’t know anything about anything.’

‘It’s the safest way,’ I agreed, smiling at Anna to reassure her I meant no harm. I opened the door a touch and looked out again. It was almost dark now and the distant trees were little more than a dark smudge on the horizon.

‘I know they get shot,’ she said. ‘Or hanged.’

‘Anna.’ Lev shook his head at her as he tapped her hand harder than necessary and took another nail.

‘We saw someone hanged,’ she said, ignoring him.

‘Where?’ I asked, pushing the door shut and turning to face them.

‘A farm we passed.’

‘Just one person?’

She shook her head. ‘Two. And they had stars right here.’ She tapped her own forehead, right in the centre. ‘We even saw—’

‘That’s enough,’ Lev told her.

‘No, that’s not enough,’ I said, raising my voice, making both Lev and the dog look up in surprise. ‘Did you say “stars”? Here?’ I stepped closer to her and touched my forehead just like Anna had done.

The girl’s whole body tensed and she backed away from me, moving nearer to her father.

‘Did you say “stars”?’ I repeated, taking another step.

‘Yes,’ Lev said, dropping Kashtan’s hoof and moving in front of his daughter. He held the driving hammer tight in his right hand. ‘You’re frightening her.’

‘Like they were branded?’

‘What?’

‘Did it look like they had been branded? Burned? The hanged—’

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I suppose so, yes.’

I made a calming gesture with my hands and tried to relax. I took a deep breath and nodded. ‘All right. Good. I’m sorry, Anna. Sorry if I scared you.’ I took a step back and spoke to the girl. ‘I’m sorry, but it’s important you and your papa tell me everything you saw.’ I tried to keep my voice even and looked at Lev. ‘Please. When was it?’

‘It was days ago.’ Lev put out his left hand to bring Anna further behind him. ‘I don’t know where it was, what the place was called.’

Lev’s chest rose and fell, his body having begun to prepare itself for defence. His brow glistened with sweat, and his eyes were wide, reflecting the lamplight, his fist tight round the driving hammer. When he spoke, saying, ‘South,’ his tongue clicked in a dry mouth.

‘Carry on working,’ I said, thinking it might help him to relax, give him something else to concentrate on. ‘Tell me when you’re ready, but I need to know.’

I moved to stand beside the door, giving him plenty of space, showing him I meant no harm, and he watched me for a long while before he crouched and put his arms around Anna. He whispered something in her ear and she nodded and hugged him in return, all the while keeping her eyes on me. When they broke apart, she stepped back and Lev picked up Kashtan’s hoof once more, gripping it between his knees as he returned to work.

He took nails from Anna, one by one, hammering the shoe in place then he nipped away the nail ends that protruded.

‘We’d been travelling a while,’ he said after some time. ‘We saw a farm much like this one but closer to the road.’ He took a rasp and filed the nail ends flat as he spoke. ‘There were men there. With horses.’

‘Soldiers?’

‘We weren’t close, but… probably.’

‘Chekists?’

‘Maybe.’

‘You didn’t see their faces?’ I wondered if it was the same men who had been in Belev. The branding was the same – the red star. I had never seen it before, never heard of anyone doing such a thing, so I was sure it was the same man. Perhaps Lev and Anna had seen Koschei.

He shook his head.

It had been too much to hope for. ‘How many were there?’

‘I don’t remember. Maybe as many as ten.’

‘What were they doing?’

‘Leaving. They were mounting up when we saw them, so we let them ride away. We thought…’ He rasped around Kashtan’s hoof, smoothing the edges to match the shoe. ‘We thought we might find something to eat there. That they might have left something.’

‘Did they have anyone with them?’ Having not found any women or children in the forest, I was hoping that he had taken them with him. Tanya said Koschei liked to drown the women, but I had to believe there was a chance for Marianna, and when villages were attacked in the way Belev had been, people were often taken away.

‘You mean prisoners?’ Lev asked.

‘Yes.’

Boys of any age could be indoctrinated and taught to fight, or they could be sent to labour camps to work. Women and girls were also forced to work and fight, but men at war had other uses for them. I could only hope my family had been taken for labour. If that were the case, I could still find them. I could still bring them home.

Lev shook his head, saying, ‘No. Nothing like that,’ and a little of my hope fell away. Maybe Koschei took no prisoners. I tried not to believe that Tanya was right, that Marianna was at the bottom of the lake, and I began to regret my flight from the woods. Koschei had taken the men into the trees beyond the village to torture and execute them. Perhaps he had done the same to the boys. I should have searched further, hunted deeper, and I despaired at the thought of my boys lying out there in the decaying leaves on the floor of the dying forest. I looked to the door, seeing through it and beyond to the forest, considering whether or not I should go back, but Koschei was ahead of me and I was growing certain that there were men following me. I had covered my tracks, but I had to consider that it might not have been enough.

There was no point going back to look for the dead. I had to go on, look for the living, and cling to the smallest hope.

‘How long ago was this?’ I asked.

‘I don’t know. A week maybe. There was nothing at the farm for us, and when I saw them hanging, we moved on.’ He returned to his work. ‘We’ve seen some strange things. One village was empty. No one there at all. After that, we kept away from the villages and towns. Until we found this place.’

‘Belev?’ I said.

‘Hmm?’

‘Was the village called Belev? The empty one?’