Dan Smith - Red Winter

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.

As Kashtan took us on, deeper and deeper into the mist, time passing almost unnoticed, the sound of something alien arose in the distance.

A clatter and clank of metal. The hiss of steam and the thunder of rolling wheels.

It resonated through the trees, an unnatural and intrusive discord in the wilderness.

Anna gripped her father tighter and he, in turn, released the reins with one hand so that he could put his other hand on hers for reassurance.

He looked across at me, opening his mouth to speak but flinching as a shrill scream cut through the cold air, snatching away his words.

His horse lurched beneath him, her legs locking for a moment, jerking Lev and Anna forwards before she backed away, head turning from side to side, searching for sight of the danger she could hear. Her muscles flexed, and she turned in a tight circle, desperate to escape the unnatural sound. She snorted hard, her breath coming in great clouds of steam.

‘Whoa.’ Lev calmed her, stroked her neck while the scream faded to an echo and then to nothing, allowing the rhythmic clatter and clank to rise from behind and threaten to fill our world.

I had not forgotten that the railway line cut through the road between Belev and Dolinsk, bypassing both towns so that any passenger was oblivious even to their existence. I had seen the trains many times before. It was always something of an attraction, almost as if it were from another world. The great metal beast that steamed through the forest, scattering the snow in winter. Sometimes they were immense, and as boys, Alek and I would count the seconds it took for the wagons to roll past. We would put our hands on our ears as the ground shook, and laugh at the exhilaration of being close to something so large and powerful.

But I did not feel the same exhilaration now as I heard the familiar sounds of approach. It grew louder, the squeal of metal on metal cutting into the quiet of the forest.

‘A train,’ I reassured Anna. ‘Just a train.’

‘Which direction is that coming from?’ Lev asked, raising his voice and turning his head to catch the sound. It was disorientating here among the trees. Everything looked the same from every angle, and the sound seemed to wrap round us as if it came from everywhere at once.

Anna pushed tighter against her father, eyes wide at the approaching sound, and Kashtan moved her ears, searching for the source of it.

‘Keep going,’ I told her. ‘Don’t be nervous.’ She had seen trains before, but here it was just a terrible noise somewhere out of sight. And it is always the unseen that holds the most fear.

We moved on as the sound grew louder, and when I spotted the track in a shallow cutting between the trees a few metres ahead of us, we dismounted and brought the horses into the shadow of a thick-trunked ash to hide us from the train as it passed. I considered forcing Kashtan to lie down, but thought the effort and discomfort to her were not worth it. The train would be here and gone in just a few seconds, so the trees would be adequate cover.

As the train approached, though, it seemed to be travelling slowly, and when it finally broke from the mist with a swirl of steam, I knew it was slowing down.

I let Kashtan rest her chin on my shoulder and I wrapped my hand round her muzzle to hold her tight as it came closer. She moved against me, snorting with anxiety, but I calmed her and glanced at Lev, who was doing the same. With his other hand, he held his daughter close to him. He was half turning her head, pulling her face into his chest as if trying to protect her, but despite a hint of fear, there was also a spark of curiosity and excitement in her eyes.

The metal beast passed by at walking pace, travelling south on the line, giving us a clear view of the armoured engine at the front, its lights winking in the mist, the red star on its nose grimy yet still unmissable.

When that symbol of the revolution led the war machine from the gloom, it stood as a stark reminder of what I had once followed. I had marched under a banner with such a symbol on it, I had worn the red star on my uniform, and more recently, I had seen it turned to a different purpose: to burn its mark into skin, searing flesh as if it were a calling card. I had once associated that symbol with a better life for people like Marianna and the boys, like Lev and Anna, but now it was something to revile and hate.