David Robbins - Last Citadel

She stroked her horse’s muzzle. ‘We have a job to do, girl,’ she whispered.

Katya swung herself up onto Anna, bareback.

‘What are you doing?’ Daniel asked her.

‘I’ll be back,’ she said. ‘Wait as long as you can.’

Katya kicked Anna with a heel to turn her out of the bushes. Daniel and Ivan stepped away and faded in a second behind her under the sound of the six horses cantering in the open. Katya clung to Anna’s mane, tugging left or right in play with her boots to lead her clever little horse and the following pack across the hundred-yard plain, to the rails.

Her instincts were right. The partisan horses were unaccustomed to being ridden alone, they’d always traveled in the band of men, never less than in a small group. Tonight, even without tack, they collected tight around Katya and Anna. Their run made no human noise, there was nothing of leather or metal about them in the darkness, they were just a tiny herd of spooked and naked horses that had jumped some fence, frightened by the blast a minute ago.

She rode low, hugging Anna’s neck. She’d been the best bareback rider in her village, better than Papa even. Valya had no peer with a saber but she could always outride him. Anna snorted, excited to be in the lead like this, her rider so close as to be part of her.

Katya kept her head inside Anna’s flying mane. She sent her eyes up the tracks, seeking to spot the guards somewhere in the night. Where were they? The tracks were fifty meters away, another twenty seconds.

A flashlight popped on, a white sword swinging at the sound of the hooves. Katya slid to her left, away from the patrol, down Anna’s midsection. She squeezed both arms hard around the horse’s neck. In straining fists she clutched the mane and flattened herself to Anna’s galloping ribs. When she was a girl she could pick a fallen hat off the ground at full gallop. The horse running alongside bumped against Katya and loosened her grip, nearly knocking her off. Katya gritted her teeth. Her arms and knees burned, Anna’s breath and the other horses’ snorting nostrils and whipping legs filled her senses, blending with the pain in her muscles. Between Anna’s pounding hooves the ground flashed, lit by the sweeping flashlight. The light stayed on the running horses for seconds, then moved away. Katya used most of the strength she had left to hoist herself up just enough to glance over Anna’s bounding back, up the tracks. The flashlight remained on, but had returned its gaze down to the tracks. The two-man German patrol was headed back this way

She kept Anna running straight, cuing the horse with pressure on her neck. The other partisan mounts jostled her, her grip waned in her horse’s mane, her calves and hips burned. Every ache from the crash of the U-2 came back to scream under her skin to let go! Katya growled deep in her throat, a savage sound of will and terror and anger.

She could hold on no longer. Her hands were slipping from Anna’s neck, her legs unwrapped and Katya began to slide off. Smart Anna sensed her rider’s release and slowed. Katya’s boots dragged, then her fanny and shoulder hit the dirt, and she was down. She skidded, biting back a grunt in the kicking dust. Anna galloped unleashed in a small circle, then came back, leading the others to where she’d dumped her rider.

Katya lifted her head, muzzy from the fall. The horses stood around her, panting and pleased, snorting and bobbing their heads. She laid a hand to the ground to roust herself, she couldn’t just lie here, no matter how much her body hurt. With a surprise that was too great to be mere relief, almost a shock at her luck, her fingers brushed on the black firing cord, running beside her to the tracks only ten meters away.

She shook her head: She needed to be clear-headed, or she would be dead in minutes. Scrambling to her feet, she crouched behind the horses. She took Anna’s muzzle and walked her and the other five horses the last steps to the rails. Holding Anna by the mane, Katya shooed the others away, smacking one on the rump to make them skitter off and grab the attention of the coming guards, leaving Anna and Katya behind at the C-3.

She pressed flat beside the rail. Fifty meters off, the guards’ flashlights glanced up at the pack running away from them, then lowered to the tracks again. Anna stood still, disguising the dark form of Katya fumbling with the wires.

Katya’s hands felt racked and unruly, her fingers rejected any fine movement. She pulled back from the blasting caps for a moment, to catch her breath and gain control of herself. Her heart beat thunderously in her ears. The guards strolled closer every second; now she could hear their voices, their boots on the gravel beside the rails, their flashlights were the brightest things under the lackluster moon and stars. Now, she thought. Or, really, never.

She leaned into the C-3, close enough to smell Ivan’s vegetable oil. She could not stop the tremble in her fingers so she let them hover above the caps, gingerly touching the wires until she found the place that had come undone. The firing cord had been pulled away from the first cap by her stumble, the stripped copper wire stuck straight up, cooperative and easy to repair if the sun were high and her hands did not quaver like a divining rod and an armed German patrol was not bearing down on her. Katya pulled her hands away again from the task. She commanded them to be still and obey. She filled her lungs with the steppe night and held it. Anna bent down to see what her rider was doing in the dirt. Katya pushed the probing muzzle away. This touch – an old and familiar feel, a horse to her hand – brought her a moment of calm and remembrance. That was all she needed.

German voices sped her hands to the wires. She grasped the loose antennae of the blasting cap, pincered the copper length of the bared firing cord in her other fingertips, and twined the wires together, two, three, four turns. She couldn’t be certain the contacts were good, but there was no more time. The first daubs of a flashlight’s beam trickled at Anna’s hooves.

Katya stood. She grabbed a handful of Anna’s mane and started to run. Anna broke into a trot. Katya hopped and bounded onto Anna’s back, tucking low to meld with the horse’s silhouette. She ducked her head and gripped the horse hard with her weary arms and legs, sliding down again to ride unseen away from the patrol.

She was less than ten meters from the rails when the C-3 blew.

Anna reared. The horse stumbled and neighed, hurt. Katya felt the blast through the animal’s muscles, Anna was lifted and smashed down by the explosion. Katya held on by instinct, not thinking to let go. Clinging to Anna’s ribs, Katya screamed. The horse seemed broken in the middle, she collapsed as two horses, the upper part wrenched in agony, the lower half still running.

Anna lost her balance in a few wild steps and crumpled over, hitting the ground on top of her. Katya tried to scramble out but her legs were trapped. The weight was too much, Katya couldn’t even kick at the horse. Anna convulsed, screaming, grinding Katya into the black dirt. Katya cringed at the agony of the shuddering animal across her thighs and ankles but couldn’t make a sound: The German patrol might hear her. She gritted her teeth and blew slow breaths. The patrol had shut off their flashlight at the blast. Through the red haze in her eyes and the injured horse’s terrified breathing, she no longer knew where the Germans were.

Struggling to sit up, she looked over Anna’s heaving side. The horse had been ripped open at the abdomen, intestines spilled on the ground and lapped across her trembling shoulder and flank. The moon stole the color of Anna’s workings, her guts were gray and pulsing, blood ran black. Tears ran down Katya’s face. Her horse was in agony. The report of the explosion had faded away now and Anna’s cries would bring the guards right to where Katya and she lay. They’d put a rifle to Anna’s head to finish the poor beast, then do the same for Katya, the trapped partisan.