David Robbins - Last Citadel

Valentin took his time targeting the Tiger. The monster was moving and Valya had to give the proper lead. Dimitri slid across the T-34’s deck to sit beside Sasha. He wrapped his arm about the boy’s shoulders. Sasha trembled as if he were cold. Dimitri kissed the boy on a fuzzy cheek. He turned his head to the Tiger. Sasha’s thin arm nestled around Dimitri’s waist, and his head turned, too.

The General’s gun crept to the right, stopped, and fired. The roar was splendid. A corona of blasted air and dust swept up from the steppe, then returned to it tumbling. The Tiger smoked. Valya scored a direct hit on the massive tread. The Tiger jerked as though tripped and did not move. Behind it, the wedge of armor slowed and halted, unsure. Valentin fired again, splurging his waning ammunition on the Tiger, to make certain the thing was killed. The big tank disappeared in a ragged globe of fire.

The German wedge was motionless. Valentin and Pasha went into a frenzy. The General’s cannon erupted six times in under two minutes, each shell pummeling the weaker side armor of the several Mark IVs accompanying the ignited Tiger. Dimitri and Sasha thrilled and gripped each other with each report. Sasha began to cheer. Valya had torn a hole in the German assault. Dimitri looked across the battlefield and was surprised to see the entire German advance paused to consider this little, lone T-34 dug into a crater smacking them on the nose. Dimitri thought, Keep it up, Valya! Hammer them good!

But the cannon did not fire again. The turret did not pivot for another target. The ammunition was gone.

The air keened in Dimitri’s ears. In the fraction of a second left to him, he cut his gaze straight ahead, to a Tiger 250 meters away. He stared straight down the muzzle of the gigantic, smoking barrel.

The lip of the crater erupted. He was blown off the tank, Sasha was ripped from his arm. He landed beside the General’s port tread; dirt showered on him. His head pounded and his goggles were gone. All the buttons on his coveralls were missing, the pockets and chest flapped open. He staggered to his knees.

He scrabbled on all fours around the links of the General’s tracks. Haze wafted off the glacis plate. The .88 shell had pierced the crater berm and struck the frontal armor of the T-34. Dimitri had no way to know if the plating had held, if Valentin and Pasha were dead.

Sasha lay on his back on the other side of the tank. Dimitri skidded to him. The boy was unconscious, his goggles were cracked. A gash drooled blood down his brow. Dimitri lifted the boy’s head into his lap. The sky sizzled, another shell coming in. Dimitri clutched Sasha to his bare chest. He would die after all with a son in his arms.

He looked up. No explosion hit the General . The round he’d heard wasn’t coming in. It was going out.

Beyond the rim, the sounds of artillery mounted. Shells whooshed over his head, ripping down from Hill 260.8. Thunder in the earth shook under his seat in the crater. Sasha’s head wound dribbled into his thigh. His face to the sky, Dimitri tried to catch silver glimpses of the sibilant shells flashing past. The rounds tore in twos and threes, a Russian barrage concentrated to save the brave crew of the General Platov .

Three Sturmoviks broke their engagements in the mansion of sky and streaked down, trailing vapor, wings sparking cannon fire and smoke. They dove in low over the crater – zoom ! one, two, three -Dimitri listened to them attack and bank out. The Soviet fighters circled to come around again. More artillery poured down from the hill. Sasha stirred. Dimitri pinched shut the gash in Sasha’s forehead, the bleeding eased between his grubby fingers. He sat like this, marveling at the furor around him; the clash between armies right now was fought not for control of the Oboyan road, not for anything historic at all, but roared and erupted just for him and these boys he’d brought out here. This was majestic. Sasha needed to wake to see it. Dimitri squeezed the boy’s earlobe.

Sasha sputtered and sat up. Dimitri took away his hand from the boy’s head, blood seeped from the cut. Sasha drew a sharp breath and set loose wild eyes, he’d awakened expecting to be dead. Dimitri patted the boy’s leg.

‘Are you alright?’

Sasha blinked. ‘What happened?’

‘You keep trying to get yourself killed. You’re not very good at it.’

The boy touched the blood trail warming his temple. He looked at his fingertips. Dimitri pressed back a black chuckle in his breast, he did not say to the boy that they would probably both get it right before the morning was out.

The commander’s hatch lifted open. Valentin stood in the turret. He saw the two of them sitting beside the treads.

Valentin said nothing.

Behind and above Valya, more artillery shells rent invisible stripes through the air. Dimitri heard the rounds whispering over his son’s shoulder, a moment later blasting into the German advance. The three Red fighter planes tilted behind him, hung on the blue like ornaments. Valentin was a hero this minute, the hero of the Oboyan road. The exploding tableau around him would be painted as the backdrop to his portrait one day.

Dimitri stood from Sasha, trailing a hand over the boy’s shoulder before he stepped away. Sasha sat still. Dimitri swung up onto the T-34’s deck. He rose to his full height beside the turret looking over the crater’s lip. A wall of eruptions barred the Germans from coming any closer. Round after round detonated in their ranks; the rest of the enemy advance on all sides was being ignored by every gunner on Hill 260.8 and in the remaining defense bunkers along the road and by the three Soviet fighter planes who’d taken up the mission to save the gallant little T-34 that had knocked out six German tanks single-handedly, including a Tiger. The German wedge closest to the crater recoiled under the concerted Russian salvos, their tanks and infantry temporarily stymied.

Everything on the battlefield Dimitri had in his heart. Confusion, reprieve, bedlam. There would be more, Dimitri decided, standing beside his son on the brink. There would be more.

Outside the barn, the day promised to be hot. Thin tiers of light grinned in the space between the weathered wood slats. Inside the barn, the air stayed cool, there was room for the heat in the bare rafters. Daniel and Ivan lay on piles of straw, chewing pieces of it. To Katya they looked like lazy farmhands hiding from work.

The three of them were hiding. Plokhoi’s cell had dispersed for the day into this farming village ten kilometers north of Borisovka. The older men of the cell worked in the fields this morning helping villagers with their hoeing. Plokhoi himself dug potatoes and beans. The younger ones, the ones who could be spotted by roving German patrols as not belonging in civilian clothes, stayed out of sight. Plokhoi let Katya rest after her scare beside the railroad tracks. She’d been given a minute in the river, a change of clothes, and another horse.

She leaned over the rail of the stall where her new mount stood. She caressed the ear of the horse. The ear twitched under her fingers. Katya rose on tiptoe and blew into it. She whispered into the pink folds.

‘Your name now is Svetlana. That was my mother’s name. I will call you Lana.’

The horse shook its head away from her hand. Katya kept her lips close to the horse’s ear, whispering.

‘Don’t be like that, Lana.’

‘Leave the poor animal alone, Witch,’ Daniel called from his mound. ‘It’s understandable if she doesn’t like you.’

From his straw pile, Ivan laughed. The sight of Katya covered in Anna’s gore had lost its grimness and become something to joke with her about. She had risked the mission, but then saved it. She had earned some ribbing from the partisans, and some respect.