Dan Smith - Red Winter

‘Stop,’ I hissed at her. ‘You’ll—’

When she hit it a second time, the glass cracked, hair-thin fractures spreading like opening fingers across the pane.

‘Stop!’ Tanya went to her, scrambling across the floor, keeping low, putting her arms around Lyudmila and pulling her to the floor.

Outside, the dark shapes remained still, silhouetted against the soft whiteness of the fresh snow. It was undisturbed. A perfect covering in the yard that bore not a print. Not a sign that anybody had been there.

Lyudmila pushed Tanya away, rifles clattering where they fell, and then the two women were sitting on the floor, a few paces apart, staring at one another, knowing there was nothing to be gained from fighting each other.

‘We have to stay calm,’ Tanya was saying. ‘Please, Lyuda. We have to stay calm.’

‘Like you did in the barn?’

‘That was a mistake,’ Tanya said. ‘My temper got the better of me.’

‘Then let it again.’

‘No.’

‘Why?’ she asked. ‘We have to shoot them and get out of here.’

‘There are children,’ Tanya said. ‘Children.’

‘But—’

‘ Children , Lyuda. Isn’t that what this is all about? The children? And if there’s any way to get them out alive, we have to find it. We can’t let those…’ Tanya shook her head and looked to the back of the room. ‘We can’t let those people out there do… what they did to me and you. We can’t be responsible for that. I can’t be responsible for that.’

With no lamp, I couldn’t see Tanya’s face, but her sobbing and the strain in her voice relayed the desperation well enough.

Lyudmila said nothing, but she crawled to her comrade and put her arms around her in as firm a show of solidarity and love as I had ever seen.

I watched them find comfort in each other, rocking together in the darkness, like children afraid of the forest terrors, and I turned my mind to other things. I ran through a thousand possibilities for the soldiers’ actions, mulling them over, dismissing them, reassessing them and dismissing them again. Nothing made any sense, but I had the feeling that the answer to the Chekists’ hesitation was right in front of us, hiding in plain sight.

‘You think they’re waiting for something?’ I thought aloud. ‘Reinforcements?’ It was possible they had found out who I was and had chosen to wait for more men, but I could think of no way how they would have found out. I had only given my first name to Sergei, and even if they did know who I was, a single grenade would clear the izba in one easy throw.

The women had separated now, Lyudmila returning to her post by the window. Tanya remained where she was, but now she shifted to make herself more comfortable. She sniffed and wiped her coat sleeve across her eyes, then reached for her rifle. She made no apology for her actions or for those of her comrade. She made no attempt to offer an explanation. Instead she reverted to the thing that had kept her moving ever forwards in the hunt for Krukov. She went back to thinking like a soldier. Like a commander.

‘Maybe they’re conscripts,’ she said. ‘Maybe they don’t know what to do.’

The change in her impressed me. The way she could switch from one thing to another, it was as if the past few minutes had never happened. I wondered which was the real Tanya, but I didn’t insult her by asking if she was all right. She and Lyudmila were thinking straight again and that was all that mattered. We each had our burdens, things that tugged us towards our own madness, but we had to stay strong.

‘Conscripts?’ I said. ‘Without a commander? I don’t think so.’ I edged back from the window and stretched my cramping legs out in front of me. ‘It has to be something else. Keep watching.’

I crawled to the heavy wooden table that lay on its side, top towards the front of the house. We had turned it over when we came in, knowing it would give us some protection from the bullets of the men outside. We could shoot from the windows and retreat behind its solid shield if necessary, providing as good cover for us as the brick front of the space above the pich was for Oksana’s children. For now, though, the only person behind it was Anna.

‘Are they going to kill us?’ she asked, as I slipped in beside her.

‘No.’ It was a lie and Anna knew it. I had no idea what the men were going to do or what they were waiting for.

‘I’m scared,’ she said.

‘Me too, but we’ll find a way out of this.’

Anna looked at me with expectation, as if she thought I was going to divulge a foolproof plan for our escape, but I had nothing to tell her.

‘You know, she’s not a witch,’ I said, looking over at Sergei and his wife.

The old woman was sitting on one of the chairs that had been at the table. Her husband sat beside her with his hands on her forearm. Oksana sat on a third chair, all of them at the back of the room, arranged round the base of the ladder to the top of the pich where the children were hiding. It was odd that they had chosen not to avoid the soldiers’ guns by taking cover behind the table with Anna, but were sitting as if protecting the children from us .

‘I know that,’ Anna said. ‘There’s no such thing as witches.’

‘No.’

‘But there’s worse things, aren’t there? There are things much worse than witches.’

‘Yes, there are.’ And maybe I was one of them. Those men outside instilled the same fear that I had instilled in people. If Anna knew who I was, what I was, would she be afraid of me ?

Anna sat up and crossed her legs. ‘Maybe they were just scared,’ she whispered.

‘Hmm?’

‘The old woman. Maybe she was afraid not to tell them we were here. Afraid of what would happen if they found out.’

‘You could be right.’ But I was sure it wasn’t her fear of the Chekists that had made the old woman inform. It was more likely to be her patriotism. The way she acted when we ate with them – clipping sentences, covering things up, silencing the boy, Nikolai, when he mentioned his father – and then she had been prepared to close the door on Oksana, to leave her out in the cold to face the Chekists alone. She wouldn’t have done that unless she didn’t care about Oksana or… or unless she thought she wouldn’t be in any danger.

Tanya came and crouched beside me. She leaned close and spoke into my ear. ‘I need to talk to you.’

‘Then talk.’

‘Over here.’

There was concern in her voice; something was bothering her. She wanted to speak to me where the others wouldn’t hear, but we needed to watch the old woman. Neither of us trusted her, and she had made it clear what she thought of us, so we couldn’t risk letting her out of our sight. Lyudmila’s attention was focused on the windows, watching the men outside.

‘They can’t hear us,’ I said, ‘and we can trust Anna to keep a secret, can’t we?’

‘Of course.’ Anna sat up a little straighter, displaying the importance she felt at being included.

‘All right. I’ve been thinking about why they haven’t done anything…’

‘Me too.’

‘…and the only thing that makes any sense is that there’s something important inside this house,’ Tanya said. ‘That’s why they’re just sitting out there. They’re trying to decide what to do.’

‘Or maybe they made some sort of agreement with these people?’ I gestured at Oksana and the others.

‘Agreements can be broken,’ Tanya said, ‘but if there’s something here they want…’

‘Something important.’ I nodded, glancing around the room. ‘But what? It would have to be something that can’t withstand bullets, otherwise they’d kill us and come in to get it.’