David Robbins - Last Citadel

The Tiger’s turret paused, still aimed several degrees away from them. It appeared to be admiring its kill. Dimitri had propelled the General eight hundred meters from the river. In another minute, they’d be far enough out of range to turn around and run up the hill in forward gears, faster to safety. He hit the brake.

‘Take a shot, Valya.’

His son was ready. The T-34’s turret whirred left, the gun was depressed a few degrees to the riverbank below. The one surviving Mark IV had moved behind the Tiger, like a handmaiden to the hulking queen.

Valya fired. The General shivered behind the shell. The blast kicked up a dust cloud, and Dimitri hit the gas again, not waiting for the roiled dirt to settle. Backing away, he caught a glimpse of the Tiger. It stood impassive, haze drifting off its face where the AP shell struck, unhurt and swinging its turret straight toward Dimitri.

‘Shit, shit, shit,’ Dimitri mumbled to himself. He desperately needed speed. He could spin the General around pretty fast, but fast enough?

Before he could act, another shadow grazed the ground, streaking over the crushed stalks and upturned earth. ‘Shit!’ That was all that was missing, another Stuka.

But it was not a German plane. The guns roaring at the Tiger and her attendant on the riverbank told Dimitri that this was a Sturmovik. The pilot came in low and hot, blazing away at the Tiger, lifting a veil of torn-up ground and hot metal between the General and the massive German tank. Dimitri stopped the General and spun around. Shifting gears, he heard Sasha and Medvedenko outside the tank raising their voices in an ‘Urrah!’ One last glimpse at the riverbank showed the two German tanks withdrawing. In their wake were seven dead vehicles: three Mark IVs and four T-34s. The General Platov was the sole surviving member of their squadron.

Dimitri ran the T-34 up the hill as fast as he could. Infantrymen cheered and raised their rifles when he sped past their positions, they’d watched the entire confrontation from their holes. Valentin said nothing, gave no orders to Dimitri but sat stony while the General crossed into the second Russian defense belt and hurried to an aid station at the rear.

Away from the front line, Dimitri shut the tank down. He leaped from his seat to lend a hand lowering the men off his tank. Aid workers rushed forward with stretchers. Dimitri and Pasha both put their arms up to receive little Sasha down from the turret. He yelped when Pasha took him by the arm. Sasha had been winged, his first battle wound, a bullet had nipped his left biceps. His tunic was torn and stained with blood, but his eyes were clear and his color remained that of a carrot. ‘Get that looked at,’ Dimitri told him. ‘We’ll wait. Pasha, go with him.’

The two boys followed the stretchers. Medvedenko walked up to Dimitri. The young sergeant was white-faced from his adventure down the hill. He was unshaven and unnerved.

‘Where’s Valentin?’

Dimitri jerked his thumb up at the General’s turret. Valentin had not come out yet.

Medvedenko looked at the General , it was undented. He patted the fender, as though the tank were a talisman of luck. ‘I’ve got to go find another tank and a crew’

‘Alright. We’ll see you when you get back.’

‘Tell him I said that was fucking brave.’

‘Of course.’

‘I mean it.’

Dimitri pointed behind Medvedenko to Pasha and Sasha, headed for the medical tent. ‘Tell them.’

The sergeant nodded and walked off after the two boys. He’ll get his spine back soon enough, Dimitri thought. No shame in being scared when you think you’re going to die beside a river, naked outside your tank, unmanned like that. No shame in thinking Valentin Berko is a brave man. What does Medvedenko know? Only what he sees. The General came back for him.

He gripped a handle and hoisted himself up onto the T-34’s deck. Gore from the wounded slicked the armor. The new General Platov was blooded now. It had performed well. Dimitri patted the tank’s warm turret, then stepped around the stains.

Valentin’s hatch was open. Valentin sat on his commander’s seat, his soft helmet doffed, a map spread across his lap. He lifted his eyes to the shadow falling over his hatch. He looked up into Dimitri’s face. The boy’s cheeks were filthy, black outlines marked where his goggles had been. The grit made him look older, seasoned.

Valentin lowered his eyes back to his map. He said nothing.

Dimitri could reach down and grip him by the throat, pull him up out of the tank like a salmon out of a river, he could do it, man or no man, this little Communist pissant. It felt stupid, leaning over like this, his head only one foot above Valentin’s, the two of them not speaking. Dimitri wondered, Is he mad at me? What was I supposed to do out there, wave goodbye to poor Medvedenko and his crew, wish them luck there beside the river with ten thousand Germans making ready to cross? Won’t risk three tanks for four men! What the hell does he want, how does he expect to fight this damn war? Waiting for orders, doing only what he’s told, dying on the Soviets’ schedule?

Dimitri sat on the fender, dangling tired legs. Valentin stayed inside the General , silent armor separated father and son. After several minutes, Dimitri saw Pasha and Sasha returning from the aid tent. Plucky little Sasha’s arm was wrapped in fresh white gauze. Both boys waved to Dimitri. A jaunt was in their steps, veterans now, one of them wounded. Dimitri turned to look again down into the hatch, into the pool of shadow where Valya sat, head bent over his maps.

He may not be a Cossack, this boy, he thought; the Communists may have undone that.

‘Hey,’ he said down into the hatch.

Valentin did not lift his head at the word. His hands plopped onto the map, crinkling it. ‘What.’

Dimitri squatted on his haunches, closer to the opening. ‘Medvedenko said to tell you he’d follow you into hell. Said you were his hero.’

Valentin made no response.

Dimitri reached down to pat his son’s shoulder. He climbed off the General to hear Sasha brag about his first bullet and his bandage.

Thirty-two horses stopped in the darkness when Plokhoi hauled back his reins. The leather of saddles and boots creaked and the metal jangle of rifles eased. At the head of the pack, Plokhoi spoke to one of his lieutenants posted at his side. A black mile off, across an unhindered plain of field, a village glowed with the pallid light of lanterns, winking stars, and a quarter moon.

Katya had named her partisan horse Anna, after her favorite Tolstoy novel. Anna was the name she’d given to the first pony Papa presented her when she was only ten; she figured this horse might prove to be her last in this life, so why not go out where you came in? Anna was quick and responsive to Katya’s touch, even though the animal showed little affection for her new rider. Despite the lack of nuzzling, Katya trusted this horse, and thought how quickly trust blossoms in wartime. You trust the person ducking in the hole with you, you trust the ones wearing the same uniforms, and the ones you do not know who give the orders. You may not even know their names; they share an enemy with you, and that’s all you ask in war. But in this rag-tag collection of farmers and lost soldiers she rode with tonight, she knew there was a traitor, and so trusted only Anna, the knife in her belt, and the loaded rifle across her lap.

Plokhoi turned in his saddle. The little light made the man’s deep eye sockets look empty.