David Robbins - Last Citadel

‘You’re the interpreter. You were here three days ago. I’m a nurse. We’ll get inside and I’ll start counting. Even if it’s not Leonid in there, we’re going to get the pilot out. Just move when I move.’

‘Yes, Witch. I hope it’s your pilot.’

Katya felt the twinge of both sides of this coin, that it would not be Leonid lying beaten in that blue house, scared that it would be.

‘We can do this,’ Filip said, squeezing her hand before letting go.

They rode up the last of the street. A curl of smoke issued from the porch of the house, a guard sat there on the steps smoking, his machine pistol lay across his lap. He peered at them across the sunny day. They did not dismount, staying in their saddles until the guard rose and donned his helmet. He took a few steps into the lane. He did not toss away the cigarette but kept it between the fingers he slipped around his weapon.

‘Ja? Was ist lost’

Filip answered in German. He indicated himself, then Katya. She held up the loaf of bread, feeling the heft of this guard’s life inside it. Another guard appeared around the corner of the house. He called to the one in the street. They waved to each other with lackluster motions, dulled by the heat and boring duty. The second guard eyed the two riders and went back to his station at the rear of the little house. The soldier in the street barked at them to come down and tie up their horses. He returned the cigarette to his lips and waited.

Filip and Katya dismounted. Katya felt as though the point of the knife inside the bread were held to her own innards. Filip was intent and silent. They tied the horses to the porch railing. Katya stroked Lana before moving away, to compose herself.

The guard climbed the steps. Filip went second, Katya, with the loaf tucked under her arm, came last. She walked across the threshold and began the count. One . The reek that assaulted her inside was unmistakably human.

The room was bare, stripped down to the wood floors and plaster walls. A single chair, stiff-backed and old, stood in the center. Katya knew the chair in an instant for what it was, like this house, it was an innocent thing become wicked. Two , she thought.

Leonid lay curled in the far right corner.

Katya heard herself gasp. She flicked her eyes to the guard, but Filip covered the sound with conversation and the guard made no reaction to her. Three .

She reined herself in tight, she knew she would dash across the room to him if she did not. Four . Leonid did not open his eyes, he lay motionless with his wrists between his knees. She approached him, holding the bread out now like a gift, to keep both her hands full so she would not cradle him. She knelt beside him. She set the loaf on the floor. Nine . Leonid’s face was bruised and swollen, dark and straining the skin, the brutal fruit of his interrogations. Had Nikolai stood here asking the questions in Russian while this was done? She glanced back to Filip and saw him staring down at Leonid, wondering the same. The guard asked Filip a question. Even in a foreign tongue Katya could tell Filip’s reply was terse. Eighteen .

She stroked Leonid’s hair, to gentle him awake. His hair was matted, filthy. His ear was crusted brown from blood, probably a burst eardrum. His body stank with the biting tart of urine. Katya pressed her hand harder to his forehead. His eyelids flickered. Twenty-seven .

She did not say his name, the guard would catch that. She murmured, ‘Lie still. It’s me, we’re here for you. Pretend to be unconscious. Can you walk?’

Leonid’s head bobbed one tremor under her hand.

‘Be ready,’ she said.

Thirty-five.

Katya’s heart beat like an engine when she took up the bread and rose from the floor. She turned to Filip and the guard. The soldier smiled at her. She resisted any urge to determine anything about this German, his age, skin tone, his own smells of cigarette and summer wool. She returned his smile and looked only at his hands on his machine pistol. She counted Forty . Filip faded behind the guard.

She walked forward. The chair in the middle of the room stood in her path to the guard. She envisioned Leonid in it, tied to it. She held out the loaf, hiding the opened end behind her palm.

‘Would you like a piece of bread?’

Forty-five.

The guard slung both his elbows over his machine pistol hanging across his waist. He nodded at the bread, yes, he would like some. And you shall have it, thought Katya.

Fifty-two.

She tore away a portion of the bread, keeping the opened end facing her breast. The guard reached for the offered chunk. The black metal haft of the knife was there, ready for her fingers. She dug her hand into the crust, as though to pull for the soldier another hunk. Filip slipped closer behind him. She did not look into the guard’s face as the man brought the bread up to his mouth.

Sixty.

She closed her hand around the knife’s haft, buried in the cool spongy bread. She took a step toward the guard, to have her momentum driving forward. She let her mind flee for one beat to Leonid in the corner behind her, to the purple of his lips and sockets, his stench, mentally touching him like she had touched the horse outside, for calm and power. The gray of a German uniform was one stride away, crumbs tumbled down the buttons. The knife was held tight in her hand. She kept her eyes fixed to the guard’s chest, to the spot above the dangling gun, beneath the crumbs, at the heart.

Katya plunged the dagger deep above a pocket on the tunic. The German’s hands tried to rise but Filip pinned his arms at the elbows. The haft of the knife shook with the violence of the guard’s reaction, the man’s throat was plugged by a swallow of bread, he choked out a cry, the knife handle jerked loose from her grip. She was shocked by this because she thought she’d held it with all her might, believed she’d stabbed the blade into the man’s working heart as hard as she could, but the German still stood, wrestling in Filip’s old grasp, he did not go down, the knife stuck in his chest, not dead. He made another strangled cry, bucking in Filip’s arms, twisting back and forth, left and right. Filip strained to hold him. Katya followed the handle with seeking and urgent hands, to catch it and draw it out to shove it in again, to cut the man’s throat if she had to, but Filip could not hold him still and the haft evaded her, she struggled at the guard’s chest to grab the knife and could not.

The guard coughed out the gob of bread, the wad hit Katya. He screamed. One of his hands broke from Filip’s clench. He fumbled to lift the machine pistol. The knife handle, slick with blood, slipped through her fingers again. Where was Josef? Where were the others?

Panic jettisoned into her blood. Filip lost his grasp, the guard reeled back a step from her, knocking over the chair. Filip tried again to control the frenzied guard but was thrown off. The soldier had both hands on his gun now. The knife protruded from his chest like the key to a mad wind-up doll.

The soldier twisted away from her, badly out of balance but keeping his feet. He juggled the barrel of the gun to raise it at Filip. The old man jumped sideways and the quick burst from the machine pistol hit him in the hip. Filip went down yelling. Staggering, the guard turned his head for Katya. He licked blood off his lips. The machine pistol wavered to find her.

She would not die motionless. She hurled herself at the guard.

A strong hand snared her from behind. She was stopped and flung aside.

Leonid flashed past her, another mad doll, this one broken and filthy but infuriated. He was on the guard in a single long step, shoving the machine pistol down with one hand. He grabbed the haft of the knife with his other fist and plucked the blade from the guard’s chest with a strength born out of fury, then hacked it into the German two, three, four more times, in and out, dicing the man’s heart until the guard’s knees were on the floor, and again Leonid drove in the knife.