Шон Хатсон - Sabres in the Snow

The cossacks, by this time, were very close to the source of the smoke and Namarov raised a hand for them to slow their pace. A canter became a trot and then a walk as the leading squadron approached the outskirts of what had once been a village.

“Oh God,” murmured the major.

What the village was called no-one knew. It was little more than fifty small dwellings all of which seemed to be ablaze, the thick black smoke rising mournfully, gathering over the scene of destruction like a shroud. There were bodies everywhere, scattered across snow which was splashed bright-red with blood. Some lay half-in, half-out of blazing buildings, the corpses devoured by the flames with the same enthusiasm they displayed in destroying the huts themselves.

The cossacks formed a column once more as they passed slowly through the remains of the village.

There were several bodies piled up in the centre of a clearing and, even from a distance, Namarov could see that they had been neck-shot. Trees which grew thinly around the village had been used as gallows. A dozen of so bodies dangled from the branches, twisting slowly in the wind. More than half were women, one had been stripped first, her skin now blue and mottled.

Boniak shuddered as he ran his eyes over the carnage. It had an appalling familiarity about it. He saw a small child slumped against a tree, a single bullet hole in the back of her neck, the skin round the hole was black, indicating that the muzzle of the pistol had actually been touching the flesh when it was fired.

There were more tyre tracks in the village itself and many footprints. The outline of heavy boots. Spent cartridge cases littered the snow like so much brass confetti. Cinders drifted through the air, mingling with the flakes of snow.

And, everywhere, there was blood; frozen like red water around the bodies of the men women and children who had once people this tiny village.

Namarov dismounted and walked slowly amongst the bodies, kneeling beside one every so often, sometimes inspecting their injuries. Kuragin joined him, lifting the body of a child in his powerful arms. A single bullet had been fired through her forehead, blasting away much of the back of her head as it exited. Her eyes, now glazed and frozen, almost opaque, were bright-blue and they seemed to fix the cossack in a hypnotic stare. He gently laid her down again, next to a man who had been virtually decapitated-such was the ferocity with which his throat had been cut.

Bodies lay beside burning huts, machine-gunned in lines. Neck-shot bodies were sprawled in almost regimented ranks.

In one place, two children had been tied to a tree and shot through the nape of the neck. A man dangled from one of the branches, his blackened tongue protruding from his mouth, the spittle frozen on his lips.

“ This is war?” muttered the major, shaking his head.

“Most of them seem to have been neck-shot,” said Kuragin. “SS?” It was a statement more than a question.

Nemarov nodded slowly.

They were joined by Rostov who was puffing on his pipe. He looked down at a body which lay nearby, the top half ablaze.

“Fucking animals,” he grunted.

“Do we bury them?” Kuragin asked.

“No,” said Namarov. “It would take too long. If we keep moving we might catch up with them.”

“They’ve got a good three hours’ start on us,” Rostov protested.

“We follow,” said Namarov, flatly.

Elsewhere in the village, the cossacks were dismounting, walking almost dazedly through the carnage, Boniak amongst them. He knelt beside a young boy, not much older than himself, who had been shot twice in the stomach. The boy was clutching an icon in one rigored hand but, as Boniak reached forward to touch it, the boy’s hand moved.

“Major,” shouted the youth and Namarov came running. Kuragin and Rostov followed, now joined by half-a-dozen other cossacks.

“This one is still alive,” Boniak called, supporting the boy’s head with his left hand. The dying youth opened his eyes a fraction and gazed up at Boniak who wiped some blood from the wounded youngster’s mouth with his glove.

Namarov and the others arrived and gathered round.

“Who did this to your village?” asked the major, running an appraising eye over the wounded Russian.

“SS,” the boy groaned and the effort of speaking seemed to renew his pain and, when he coughed, a purple coloured froth formed on his lips.

“How long ago?” the major wanted to know.

Boniak continued to support the boy’s head as he spoke, more blood and sputum spilling from his mouth.

“Two hours,” he gasped. “Scar.”

“What?” said Namarov, puzzled.

“A man with a scar. SS.”

Boniak looked up at his superior.

“Kleiser,” he said.

“What did this man look like?” the major wanted to know.

The boy was already dead. Boniak lowered his body back onto the snow and got to his feet. “Kleiser and his men did this,” he rasped. “We’re close enough to them, we could catch up if we rode hard.”

Namarov shook his head.

“Why not?” Boniak demanded.

“I’m not pushing the horses too hard in these conditions,” the major told him.

“But he’ll escape.”

“Then let him,” said the major, turning his back on the youth.

“So he can burn and kill again,” Boniak roared after him. “Is that what you want? Doesn’t it matter to you how many more Russians he kills?”

Namarov spun round, the sabre slicing air as he drew it, pressing the tip under Boniak’s chin.

“You’ll have your revenge,” he said softly, his voice low but full of power. “We’ll find Kleiser eventually. But he’s not the only German on the Eastern Front.” He pressed the point just that bit harder into the flesh beneath the boy’s chin. “And if you ever speak to me like that again, I’ll cut your head off.” He withdrew the sabre, sheathed it and walked off.

Boniak gently rubbed the place where the sword had touched him, his initial anger subsiding somewhat as the truth of his superior’s words came home to him. He watched as the other cossacks remounted their horses then he too walked back to his mount and swung himself up into the saddle. Petrovski smiled at him.

“You’re very eager to get killed,” said the older man.

Boniak was puzzled.

“First you want to take on Kleiser, then you decide to tell Namarov how to run his war.”

“ His war,” said the youth. “You make it sound personal.”

“It is,” the cossack told him.

They rode on and, within fifteen minutes, the village was just a plume of drifting smoke in the distance. Snow was already beginning to cover the bodies and, as the wind grew stronger, the tracks of Kleiser’s convoy gradually disappeared until the trail became impossible to follow.

“We’ve lost him, Major,” said Amassova.

Namarov nodded thoughtfully.

“For now,” he said, softly.

The cossacks rode on either side of the long line of T-34s which rolled inexorably along the road towards the largest bridge over the Grut river. Between the huge metal juggernauts, Russian infantry, dressed in white camouflage overalls marched briskly. To the rear came lorries carrying more men, some dragging 45mm cannon. Russian infantrymen hauled Maxims and Sokolov machine guns through the snow on their trolleys. Other men dragged 12.7mm DShKs [1] Machine-Gun along on sleds. Many of the gunners wore ammunition belts across their chests, others carried metal boxes full of bullets which rattled noisily as they walked.

Boniak guessed that there must be somewhere in the region of a thousand men in the column.

The cossacks had met them about thirty minutes ago and after a hasty conference with the officers in command, Namarov had agreed to help the regular troops, who had been detailed to take the bridge over the Grut. Part of an advance guard designed to leave the way open for a larger unit about ten miles behind. Intelligence reports, Namarov had been told, had pinpointed a strong force of Germans around the Grut bridge and the Colonel in command, a fat man named Gornik, was worried that the Wehrmacht troops may have blown the bridge up already. However, as the column of regular army and cossacks drew closer, he saw that the Germans had decided to stand and fight.