Ivan Rasskazov - The Mysteries of the Shaman Stone

“Dear hunter citizens, an enemy has attacked our Motherland! Fascist hordes ruin and burn entire cities, killing our brothers, sisters, and daughters. Our long-suffering people are being taken to Germany and driven into slavery. They spare no one, even the elderly with small children. If we do not destroy them, they will come here; they will invade your land. In this crucial moment for our Motherland, the Soviet government calls on you to defend our Motherland and help defeat the German invaders with weapons”.

This fiery speech and the newspapers these people brought with them did their job. All the tofalars who arrived enrolled in the Red Army, promising to come to the recruiting station in a week to be sent to the front. When the endiltment officer left, the most respected older hunters gathered near my father to hold the council. And then one of them remembered the ancient belief and invited everyone ready to perform this rite to do so.

“The numbers of wolves have increased, and while we fight, there will be even more of them, but everyone decides for himself,” he said. A week later, a detachment formed of tofalars was shaking in the heated goods wagon, going to the front. Dressed in the same uniform, with trimmed hair, they all looked alike. Only when it was deep night, the soldiers from other wagons heard howls at night, watching in surprise dozens of wolves running along a slowly moving locomotive. The echelon guards tried several times to shoot at them, but after a severe ban by the enlistment officer, they stopped doing this. The political instructor was the same person who came to meet with the hunters. Having formed several battalions from the Siberians of the Irkutsk region on the orders of the command, he was going with them to the front. Not understanding at first what the soldier who came to him at the stop was asking for, and then, recognizing in him the very shaman who helped him to assemble a detachment of future scout snipers, he decided to listen to him carefully.

“You know, commander,” speaking in a roundabout way and realizing that, and realizing that if he tells the truth, the communist political instructor would never believe him, my father decided to go for a trick. “Look, commander, a lot of soldiers have crosses on their chests and icons in their backpacks and nobody tries to hit the icons! Now imagine that the wolves that run after us at night are also our icons or our own kind of spirits, so please put a ban on trying to shoot them, commander. Otherwise, my soldiers (my father had sergeant insignia on the tabs) would start to get sick.

And he invited him to his wagon to take a look at the soldier who, while being a wolf, was wounded at night from a rifle. The wound was not very serious, but still he was confined to bed.

“You see, a soldier got sick, commander, because his spirit was being shot at,” my father said.

The officer shook his head and, without saying anything, went along the train. He had all kinds of freaks in his submission: Orthodox Christians, Muslims, Buryat Buddhists and now also shamans with their spirits! But according to the internal instruction, saying that political officers and commanders were not recommended to ban soldiers from worship in the war, so as not to reduce their morale, Ivan Pavlovich, seeing the head of the echelon guard, forbade shooting at wolves at night. Knowing that he was informing the secret agents about everything and to disperse any doubts, he told him:

“Captain, we have every cartridge counted, and you squander ammunition. Do wolves attack you personally or do you want to reduce the combat effectiveness of our army?” he asked.

Realizing where the enlistment officer was heading, and fearing any charges against him, the captain, up to this point pretty confident because of his ties with the Special Forces, sprang and said:

“Yes, Comrade Officer, we’ll do everything,” he said and rushed like a bullet, holding his belly, huge from stealing rations from his soldiers, while thinking to himself: the damned political instructor spoiled everything, taking away all the fun (every night this overfed, like a wild boar, security guard, taking a rifle from the watch, would shoot at the wolves running next to the steam locomotive just for amusement). And the only thing that saved the Tofalars was that he was a storekeeper before being enlisted and could not shoot at all. Having achieved cunningly what he wanted to from the enlistment officer, my father, gathering his fellow countrymen, suggested that they ask to be put in the same detachment at the front, claiming that their knowledge of the Russian language was poor.

“Otherwise, you all understand how bad it will be. We will be shot by friendly fire on the first night! And there will be no discussion! And this way, we will have twenty people who performed the rite and the same number of those who didn’t. For others, we all look alike. This will give us an opportunity to keep our secret.”

Upon arrival, the soldiers were assigned to platoons, battalions, and regiments. My father and his comrades were lucky, as a separate platoon of sniper-scouts was created especially for them, and the commander was their old acquaintance, officer Ivan Pavlovich. Over time, he learned the Tofalar secret, keeping it until the end of the war. The ability of hunters to turn into wolves at night helped to solve seemingly impossible tasks, and at war, one must always comply with an order. You can even turn into the devil, but it must be beneficial for the command. In order to understand how the Tofalars fought, I will tell you about one case. Before the offensive, Ivan Pavlovich received an order to take the prisoner not from the front line, but from the rear, located a hundred kilometers from the front line. No one asked how he would do it, giving two days for the whole operation. The command was only interested in the result. It was just not possible for a man to walk such a distance on foot and return back unnoticed with a captured prisoner. For a wolf, though, covering the distance was a matter of maybe four hours. My father and three soldiers set off on the mission. Having turned into wolves at night, five hours later they were in the city occupied by Germans. Hiding at the road guarded by a patrol that went by every hour, they began to wait for a convenient moment to attack it. They needed weapons. There was an hour left until dawn, this time was quite enough. Among them was a wolf whose father was a shepherd, and therefore he strongly resembled a large dog, which they took advantage of. Seeing the patrol from afar, the wolf sat on the side of the road and, pressing his ears against his head and making a touching face, wagged his tail, just like a dog would.

“Look, Hans, a dog! Just like my shepherd!” one German said to another.

“Come here, I’ll give you a pat,” another German said.

The wolf, wagging its tail with increasing intensity, on half-bent paws, was getting closer and closer to them. A quick jump – and sharp fangs closed on the neck of the enemy. The second German fell next, his throat cut as if with a razor. Clutching their teeth tightly over the clothes of the dead soldiers, the wolves dragged them into the bushes about twenty meters from the road. Returning to his human form, my father praised his comrade:

“Cunning stunt, eh?” he said. Everybody smiled amicably and started waiting for the needed car. The Germans are very punctual people, so, appearing exactly five minutes later, the German driver could not drive over a huge dead dog lying on the road. All attempts to go around it on a narrow road failed, and the man, getting out of the car and wrapping up his sleeves, grabbed the animal by the hair, trying to pull him out of the way. Suddenly, the hair in his hands turned into air, and he received a strong blow to the head. The last thing he saw in his life was the terrible transformation of a dog into a man! At this moment, in the passenger compartment of the car, two scouts were rounding up a clueless German colonel. Immobilizing and gagging him, they led him to the front line through the forest. Having traveled more than half the way, they decided to have a rest in the dense woods. Having pulled a gag out of the mouth of a heavily breathing Colonel, they heard his words spoken in good Russian: