Dan Smith - Red Winter

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.’

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.’