Dan Smith - Red Winter

‘Yes, Commander.’

The two men even managed a salute, but they didn’t ride away. We were all three heading in the same direction, so they rode either side of me, as an escort. When we came closer, I saw the tension in Tanya and Lyudmila’s faces and in their body language, but when we reached them, the soldiers each raised a hand in salute again and continued past, moving up the incline towards the cluster of trees Lyudmila had wanted to run to.

Anna stood close to Tanya and Lyudmila, but there was something about her demeanour that made her seem apart from them. They were still on horseback, while she stood in the grass, arms folded, awaiting my return. I didn’t think the women were a threat to Anna, but I still hadn’t wanted to leave her alone with them. Only now, though, did I realise how torn I had been – as if something had been taken away from me. Anna and I had not been together long, but our bond was firm and now it felt right to be with her. The strength of my feelings surprised me, and it was a great relief to be reunited with her.

Both women turned as the soldiers passed, watching the Cossacks press on, scouting the area around Dolinsk.

Tuzik had escorted me back too, and while we watched the men riding away, he went to stand close to Anna, almost pushing her over as he leaned against her and allowed her to stroke his head.

‘What did you say to them?’ Tanya eyed me with suspicion as I offered my hand to help Anna.

‘Not much.’

Anna took her place in the saddle in front of me, and Tuzik trotted away into the grass to do whatever it was he did when he was alone. When I looked over at Tanya, I saw she was waiting for an answer.

‘I told them I’m a Chekist commander and that we’re on a covert operation to find counter-revolutionaries.’

‘And they believed you?’ Lyudmila came closer. ‘Why?’

‘Why wouldn’t they? They don’t know anything about me. I could be anyone.’

‘Yes, you could be.’ Lyudmila narrowed her eyes. ‘Who are you?’

‘I’m Kolya,’ I said. ‘I already told you that.’

Tanya watched me for a few moments longer as if she was making up her mind about something.

‘I don’t trust you,’ she said.

‘And I don’t trust you,’ I told her, ‘but we’re going in the same direction, looking for the same thing, so I don’t see that we have a choice but to stick together.’

‘We should leave them behind,’ Lyudmila said. ‘We can’t travel with someone we don’t trust.’

‘I’d rather it wasn’t this way, but it is, and we have to make what we can of it.’ I looked at Tanya when I spoke. She seemed to be the leader; she was the one who made the decisions. Lyudmila was sullen and insular, but Tanya’s emotions were more heightened. If they had any information about Koschei, I wanted to know it, and if either of them could be persuaded to impart it, I believed it would be Tanya.

‘We’ll be stronger together. We can watch out for each other.’ And as I spoke my thoughts, so I was persuading myself as much as I was persuading Tanya. ‘We should share what we know about Koschei and find him together. This is not a competition between us.’

‘Tanya.’ Lyudmila lowered her voice in warning when she spoke to her comrade, and a look passed between them that reminded me of the silent exchanges that used to pass between Alek and me; the kind I had seen shared between Anna and Lev.

Tanya studied her partner for a moment, biting the inside of her lower lip with a gesture that made her look human and vulnerable. ‘I don’t know…’ she said, but I could see that she had acknowledged the benefits of us staying together.

‘Give us one reason why we should trust you,’ Lyudmila challenged me. ‘One.’

‘I’m just asking you to try. You have to see the advantages.’

‘And the disadvantages,’ Lyudmila added. ‘Like waiting for your bullet in my back.’

‘Riding ahead of me wouldn’t prevent that.’

‘Or we could kill you right now.’ Lyudmila started to raise her rifle.

‘Lyudmila!’ her comrade snapped at her, making her jolt in the saddle and turn to look at Tanya.

Tanya inclined her head towards Anna.

Lyudmila lowered her weapon. ‘The girl would be safer with us,’ she muttered.

‘If you were going to kill me, you would have done it in Belev,’ I said. ‘So I’ll give you the same reasons I gave you then. Do it for my family. For my wife, Marianna. For my sons, Misha and Pavel.’ I spoke their names clearly so they would remember them. So they would see me as a father and not just a soldier. ‘And do it for Anna,’ I said.

Lyudmila sighed and looked away.

‘All right,’ Tanya said. ‘For Anna. But I still don’t trust you. And this is only for now.’

‘Then “for now” it is,’ I replied.

We left the army behind us as they forged on to Dolinsk and we moved in the opposite direction.

‘Did they say where they were going?’ Tanya asked.

I looked back, but there was nothing behind us except the hoarfrost and the bruised sky streaked with wisps of the palest cloud. ‘Tambov. With the Whites gone, that’s their priority now.’

‘The Whites are gone?’ Tanya asked. ‘How do you know that?’

‘Pushed all the way down to Crimea,’ I said, ‘and across the sea. A man on a train told me.’

‘A train?’ Lyudmila asked. ‘What train?’

‘It’s a long story.’ I didn’t have the inclination to tell them anything. I didn’t mind the company – Alek used to say that a journey of a hundred miles was just a few steps with good company – but they wanted me to think they were holding back from me, so I intended to do the same.

‘And where did the rest of your party come from?’ Tanya looked at Anna.

When I had ridden away to speak to the Cossacks, Anna had kept her distance from Tanya and Lyudmila. I thought she might have taken to them, that, as women, she would have found them more sympathetic or more attractive somehow. I had expected her to want to be with them rather than with me, but that wasn’t the case. She had refused to join Tanya on her horse and had barely spoken to her when I wasn’t there.

‘That’s also a long story,’ I said. There was no good reason to make Anna relive what had happened to her. Tanya didn’t need to know, and she seemed to accept that. She nodded with a slow and thoughtful movement as she watched Anna, and there was a look in her face that I understood. She had children in her life too. Whether or not they were her own I didn’t know, and whether they were alive or dead I couldn’t tell, but the expression was soft and wistful, and there was sadness in her eyes. Wherever they were she missed them.

We covered some of the distance on foot, leading the animals and stopping from time to time to rest them, but other than that, we kept moving. The steppe was expansive, and none of us liked the exposure of being in the open, so we found protection in small wooded areas whenever we could.

In one such area, where we had stopped to rest and eat, I left Anna sitting with Tuzik and went to speak with Tanya, who was leaning against a tree, surveying the steppe. As before, Anna was reluctant to let me leave her side, and both she and Tuzik had tried to follow, but I told her to stay, pointing to Tanya just a few paces away and reassuring her I wouldn’t go any further.

When I was standing beside Tanya, I looked back and raised a hand to Anna. She raised hers in return, but remained sitting upright and unable to relax. I noticed that Tuzik was now between her and Lyudmila, providing a protective barrier. Whether that had been his idea or hers I could only guess.

‘We don’t have to do this, you know,’ I said to her.