Dan Smith - Red Winter

I turned the remaining bodies onto their backs, rolling them over and looking at their bruised faces, but I recognised none of them and it occurred to me that whoever had turned the first body had seen all they needed to see. They had moved only one of the men and left the others as they had found them. One look at the red star had been enough for them to know who had done this. They hadn’t been here to identify the victims, only the perpetrator.

Perhaps I was following more than just one trail now.

And when I turned to walk away, I saw something that confirmed my suspicions.

‘Did you find something?’ Anna asked as I came back to her. ‘What is it?’

I stopped and shook my head.

‘Dead people?’

I didn’t need to answer for Anna to know she was right. Instead I studied the object in my hand, turning it over to see it better in the light.

‘What’s that?’

I held it up for her to see.

‘A cigarette end?’

‘Found it over there,’ I said. ‘Behind the houses.’

‘What’s so special about it?’

‘See this?’ I said, holding it up in front of her to look at. ‘The way this is rolled with the piece of card?’ There might be a thousand, a million people who did the same thing, but I had only ever known one person to do it, and it was too much of a coincidence to find it here. Beside the overturned body. ‘I think I know who smoked this.’

‘Koschei?’ she asked.

‘No. Someone else who’s looking for him.’ And if Tanya had come this way, then it was another clue to confirm I was on the right track. But the red star had been the biggest give away. Koschei had left his mark here.

‘Who is it?’

‘Someone I met.’ It was then that I remembered the cigarette she had given me. The one I had half smoked behind the church and put into my pocket. I took it out now and smelled the end, comparing it to the smell of the one I had found here, but the two just smelled of burned cigarettes.

‘Who?’ Anna asked.

‘Two women I met in Belev. My village. They’re called Tanya and Lyudmila. I think they might have been here not long ago. The prints I found.’

‘Are they soldiers?’

‘I’m not sure.’

Tanya had been here. I was certain. She had been here recently, and she had found the bodies before moving on.

I split the cigarette and brushed the tobacco into my pouch, then replaced it in my satchel and took out the water bottle.

‘We’re getting closer,’ I said, looking back for any sign of the riders while unscrewing the cap. ‘We’ll follow these prints for now.’

‘What about Tuzik?’ Anna asked.

I rinsed my mouth and spat water onto the road. ‘He’ll catch up like always.’ I had been able to shoo him away from the bodies while I was there, but he had not left them. Short of burying them, there was nothing I could do to stop him from doing what was natural to him. He would follow us when he was ready.

I didn’t want to think about Tuzik’s meal, though, so I drank and turned my mind to Tanya and Lyudmila. It was reassuring that they had come this way – I had begun to wonder if I might have passed Koschei, or if he might have turned back towards Tambov, but the signs were clear. Something was making him press north, and I was still on his trail, probably growing closer.

I wondered what orders he might have that would make him travel away from the centre of the fighting, or if something else was driving him north, but for now it didn’t matter. The important thing was that I was still headed in the right direction. If this was the way Tanya was coming, then it was the route to finding Koschei. Her desire to find him was strong, and she might have even discovered more about him on her path from Belev. She had come from a different direction, would have found different clues. Perhaps she even knew who he was now. She, too, might have heard the name Krukov in connection with the monster she was following.

I passed the water bottle to Anna, telling her to take as much as she needed.

‘We’ll fill it up here,’ I said when she handed it back to me. I had been trained not to waste any opportunity to replenish my supplies, so I went to the barrel at the side of the nearest izba and removed the stone from the top before taking out my knife. The blade slipped under the lid, cracking the icy seal when I twisted, giving enough room for me to take hold of it with my fingertips. I dropped the lid and used the butt of my knife to break the thin layer of ice that had formed on the surface, but as the pieces began to separate, I saw that the water beneath was spoiled. Tendrils of dark algae floated and swirled in the disturbance, like they did in the still parts of the lake during the summer. Before I had time to register the strangeness of such plant life in winter, I caught sight of something else among the chunks of ice and suspended fronds.

Something beneath the surface.

Something so white it was almost glowing in the darkness.

And when I leaned closer, brushing the ice aside with the blade of my knife, I realised it was not algae that hung in the water but hair. And the whiteness was skin.

Her eyes were still open. Her mouth was stretched wide. Her arms were twisted behind her back, her body wedged in place.

He likes to drown the women.

I recoiled, dropping the canteen.

‘What is it?’ Anna asked.

I stared at the barrel as if the woman inside might push to her feet, wet hair falling about her bloated white face.

‘What’s the matter?’

Was this how Marianna would look?

‘Kolya!’

I turned away so I didn’t have to see that bloated face as I snatched up the lid, shoving it down on the barrel, closing the woman back in. I pushed it down hard, then lifted the rock into place and stepped away.

‘Nothing,’ I said as I retrieved the canteen. ‘It’s nothing. We need to go, that’s all. We need to go.’

We stayed on the road, seeing one or two small settlements in the distance on either side, always looking back, always scanning ahead.

‘My wife is called Marianna,’ I said.

Anna made no comment. I wasn’t even sure if she had heard me.

‘I sometimes call her Anna. The two of you almost share a name.’

‘And you’re going to keep looking for her, like Prince Ivan looked for Marya Morevna.’

‘Yes. Except I’m no prince.’

‘Is she pretty?’

I couldn’t see her face in my mind, so I closed my eyes and tried to picture her. I was bothered that I was still unable to see her. I knew she had hair the colour of winter wheat and eyes that were blue like a clear summer sky. I knew her nose was small and sharp and well formed, and that her lips were thin. I even knew that her left front tooth was chipped from the time she fell when she was seventeen, but I couldn’t see that in my mind.

‘Yes,’ I said, opening my eyes. ‘Like you.’

‘What about your sons? What are their names?’

I smiled to myself and imagined them all sitting round the table. Again, I couldn’t picture their faces, but I could feel them all together, Marianna taking care of them, making our little izba a good home. We didn’t have much, but we had enough. A house and an outbuilding. A small plot of land.

‘Misha is the oldest,’ I said. ‘Then there’s Pavel. He’s about your age.’

‘What are they like?’

‘Serious most of the time, I suppose, but not always.’ I remembered how excited and proud they’d been to show me the rabbits and fish they had caught when I was last there. ‘They like to be outside in the summer, just like my brother and I did, daring each other into the forest, hiding in the wheat, swimming in the…’ I faltered as the image of the lake came to mind and I pushed it away. ‘When we sat for a meal, there was always a lot of talk. Sometimes it was like they’d never stop.’