Cauldron of Blood (4 page)

The
Cossack’s body shook violently with almost unbearable agony. Schulze held on for all he was worth. The Cossack twisted left and right, sending the snow flying in white rain. Schulze felt his hot blood soaking down his fingers, along his hand and down into his sleeve but still he did not let go.

Below
him the Russian, his face purple, his eyes rolling crazily in his tortured face, mouth gaping and gasping for air, tried with the last of his strength to tear away those terrible fingers. But Schulze was stronger. ‘
Die
,
you
bastard
...
DIE
!’ he cursed through gritted teeth, the sweat pouring down his brick-red face in spite of that freezing cold. ‘FOR CHRISSAKE DIE...’

Finally
the Cossack’s body went limp. Schulze held on another moment, no longer able to bear those terrible eyes staring up at him accusingly, knowing that the Russian was choking to death in his own blood.

Only
when the second Russian slammed into his back, did he realize the danger he was in. He let go and rolled around straight under the hooves of the nervous whinnying horses. The Russian came after him, ignoring the danger the excited horses presented. A stallion reared up on its hindlegs, eyes wild with fear, hooves flailing. Schulze dodged them, just in time. The Russian was not so fortunate. The flying hooves caught him in the face. Something snapped like a dry twig underfoot in a hot summer. He reeled back screaming, his face a mass of blood.

Schulze
did not wait for a second invitation. As the man lay whimpering on the floor, his hands pressed to his bloody face, he scrambled to his feet. A quick breath and his cruelly-nailed dice-breaker smashed down hard, heel first, into the man’s face. His head clicked to one side; he was unconscious — or dead.

‘
Come on, Sarge!’ Someone gasped. It was the Bavarian, scratch-marks disfiguring the whole left side of his face, but his bayonet was red with blood and Schulze did not have to ask how his little battle had gone.

‘
Untether the horses!’ he gasped, stepping over the prostrate Russian to slash at the ropes which held the excited twitching stallion.

In
an instant it was gone, mane streaming, galloping madly across the snowy waste, determined to get away from these strange creatures, who had filled its nostrils with the smell of blood.

Now
the rest of the Wotan troopers came running heavily out of the trees and were doing the same, slashing and hacking at the tethers with their bayonets and trench knives, while Matz and the Butcher covered them, lying full length in the snow, weapons directed at the
kolhoz
.

‘
Tempo
...
tempo
....’ Schulze gasped, cutting another horse free and with a mighty slap on its gleaming steaming rump sending it off after the others, which were now streaming across the steppe everywhere. ‘It won ‘t be long...’

The
chatter of Matz’s machine pistol drowned the rest of his exhortation. He swung round and stared at the long low building. The first Cossacks were pouring out of the door, packed with the bodies of the cannibals, flinging themselves instantly into the snow and beginning to return Matz’s fire.

‘One more minute!’ Schulze bellowed above the snap-and-crackle of the new small-arms battle. ‘I want every damned nag let loose. Come on, get the lead out of yer asses!’

He
flung himself down into the snow next to Butcher and Matz and in the same instant fired a wild burst from his own m.p. He saw the slugs stitch a patter of white to the front of the prostrate Cossacks, each slug striking up a little flurry of snow.

‘
We won’t be able to hold them for more than five minutes, Matzi!’ he gasped, ducking as a sudden volley of Russian bullets cut the branches above their heads, showering them with snow. ‘Take off now with the Golden Pheasant.’

‘
Why don’t we leave the fat shit? It’s no good to us. Only a burden, Schulzi.’

‘
A golden pheasant is always good for something. You never know,’ Schulze cried, squeezing his trigger again, and thus in the midst of battle made the decision which one day would save their lives. ‘Now off with you!’

Matz
argued no more. ‘All right, fat-guts, let’s put some pepper in our pants and make wind.’

Next
moment they were running blindly to the west, followed by the rest of the Wotan troopers, who had now released the last of the Cossack horses, plunging through the knee-deep snow towards a dark sky, which waited for them in grey snow-heavy, anticipation.

Schulze
gave them exactly five minutes, firing quick accurate bursts every time it looked as if the Cossacks might rise and charge the woods. Then, flinging his last grenade and catching a glimpse of the angry bearded face of the giant who led them, rising to his feet and waving his sabre ordering the charge, he and the Butcher were up too and pelting after the others....

SIX

Stolidly, strung out in a long line, they plodded through that vast empty landscape like the last men alive in this world — a trail of insignificant ants across that blinding white carpet. But if it was empty, still that enormous steppe breathed hostility, awesome and brooding.

The
temperature was well below zero and it was unearthly cold. Time and time again an icy wind would race across that limitless plain and lash a million razor-sharp snow particles against their emaciated young faces, thrashing them so cruelly that they cried out loud with pain.

By
now their faces were shining with ice and every breath seemed like the blade of a sharp knife stabbing at their lungs. But while their upper bodies froze, their legs burnt with the sheer agony of every fresh step, lifting the snow-heavy boot from the white mire, placing it down, and forcing it to move yet another miserable half-metre. Indeed, it was only the iron discipline of the Wotan which kept them going and the efforts of Corporal Matz and Sergeant Schulze.

Matz
at the head of the column, supporting a semi-conscious Golden Pheasant for half the time, and Schulze bringing up the rear, seemed inexhaustible. Bullying, striking, cajoling, joking, pleading, the two of them kept the rest moving, ordering them not to swallow the hard snow to satisfy their raging thirst, dragging those who slumped down into the snow to their feet and kicking them on their way, carrying the weapon of some sobbing youth who moaned he could go on no longer, watching the tears freeze like pearls on the boy’s sunken face.

Thus
they struggled west, finding their way across this cruel endless landscape the best they could: green moss on the trunks of a group of birches indicating north, a sudden glimpse of the sun, a cold pale yellow ball sliding momentarily from behind the leaden clouds, and a quick estimate of where south lay by means of Schulze’s watch, acting as an emergency compass; a line of regularly bent trees on a ridge-line, an indication where north lay, for from there came the prevailing wind. On and on. Ever westwards.

The
Butcher, the most powerful man, apart from Schulze, in the whole force, husbanded his strength. Head tucked into his collar against the biting wind, his eyes narrowed to slits so that he did not have to see the wildly swaying young men all around him, he did what old heads always did in situations like this: he formed mental pictures of other and better times in order to forget the miserable present.

At
first it was women. Blondes with enormous breasts, clad in black stockings, who reclined lasciviously on silken sheets, exposing their well-rounded charms and secret places to him in complete, seductive abandon. Red-heads, wild with passion, their bodies covered with sweat as he pumped them full of his salami, whimpering and giving little screams of pleasure, ripping their nails along the length of his back in their ecstasy. Brunettes, dark eyes full of strange promises, who refused to let him touch them, but who indulged him in all kinds of wild-slow unknown perversions....

But
then the Butcher’s stomach started to rumble, and he forgot the women. Now he kept himself going by thinking of food: great steaming mounds of
sauerkraut
and huge red pig’s knuckles, heavy with yellow fat; heaped plates of boiled potatoes, surrounded by metres of succulent juicy
wurst
, cauldrons full of thick green pea-soup, in which swam whole sides of salt bacon....

His
eyes virtually closed against the icy wind, his stomach rolling enormously, he sniffed, the delightful visions forgotten now. He could smell something: something that had that sweet-sour odour of charred food. There was no mistaking it. It was the smell of the bottom of the great cauldrons they had used in his days as an apprentice butcher, to boil down the poorer quality pork after they slaughtered the pigs on Monday. Invariably the stuff got burnt.

He
opened his eyes, big nose twitching like that of a blood-hound attempting to scent a fugitive. He surveyed the blind-white plain, stopping in his tracks to do so, so excited at the thought that there might be food close at hand that he forgot the rest.

‘
What’s up with you?’ Schulze grunted, coming level with him. ‘You look as if yer gonna shoot yer wad in a mo.’

The
Butcher did not answer, his eyes sweeping the horizon, following the hills to his right around to the group of stark-black skeletal trees to his immediate front.

‘
Well, come on,’ Schulze snarled angrily, digging him in the ribs. ‘Piss or get off the pot! What’s up?’

‘
Look,’ the Butcher exclaimed in sudden excitement. ‘Over there!’

He
pointed a gloved hand that shook slightly at the trees. A faint black trail of smoke was rising above them, caught immediately by the wind as soon as it cleared the protection of the trees and dispersed at once.

‘
Smoke,’ Schulze said.

‘
Food!’ the Butcher croaked, suddenly hoarse with excitement.

‘
Food? How do you know that, you greedy chowhound?’ Schulze rasped angrily.

The
Butcher grasped him by the lapels and as big as Schulze was the other man nearly swung him off his feet, he was so excited. ‘I know, Schulze, because I can smell it! I can smell, it, do you hear!
There’s
grub
over
there
....’

It
was a small convoy, a couple of halftracks, three tractors and a truck, black against the melted snow, which dripped in sad monotony. The thin smoke still drifted into the sky, although it must have been hours since the vehicles were surprised by the bombers which had destroyed them.

‘
Ours?’ the Golden Pheasant queried in a small voice, for he like the rest of the men standing on the ridge-line looking down at the wrecked trucks and the dead bodies scattered all around them, was awed and somehow depressed by the sight, as if he had never seen a dead soldier in his life before.

‘
Yes,’ Schulze answered tonelessly, taking his eyes off the ghastly tableau to his immediate right: charred bodies heaped together indiscriminately, a clawlike hand held upright by the frost, a pair of unblinking resentful eyes, a bloody stump of what had once been a leg. ‘The poor shits must have been making it west when they got hit. Probably Popov
Stormovik
dive-bombers.’

There
was a heavy silence, broken a few moments later by the Butcher saying, hardly able to control his voice, ‘But there’s grub down there, Schulze.’

The
big sergeant repressed a curse of anger. Of course, the big greedy swine was right. Food was the most important thing now; it would give them the energy the men desperately needed to keep going across this terrible freezing waste. ‘Matz, post a couple of sentries up here. The rest of you, follow me. We’re going down.’

Led
by the Butcher, who sniffed the air like a dog scenting a juicy piece of meat, they slithered down the slope eagerly, half up to their waists in deep snow at times and commenced the ghastly business of searching the wrecked halftracks and other vehicles, even turning out the pockets of the stiff, hard-as-wood corpses in their burning desire for food.

But
it was Butcher who found what had caused the smell which had first attracted his attention. Thrusting aside the dead driver of one of the tractors, his body ripped open from chin to abdomen, the frozen viscera, a dull red-grey, swollen out of the tremendous hole in the corpse’s stomach like a gigantic sea-anemone, sniffing eagerly all the time, he discovered what he sought. A huge pile of
blutwurst
, that had swelled up and burst in the tremendous heat generated by the bombs which had destroyed the little convoy, and which was still bubbling with the last of the warmth, spreading its delightful odour throughout the shattered wagon the tractor had been towing.

Greedily,
all discipline forgotten now, the starving men dipped their dirty frozen paws into the gooey red-black mess and swallowed it with cries of delight, their eyes gleaming with sudden animation, as if they were in that state of mind when one might as well laugh as cry.

Schulze
’s mood was too sombre to be attracted by the thought of food, although he was as famished as the rest. It was thus buried in his gloomy thoughts, his gaze fixed on a group of young soldiers, faces set waxeningly in looks of eternal fear, that Matz approached him with his suggestion. ‘Schulzi, I’ve been thinking.’

  ‘
Don’t,’ Schulze answered, without turning, still wondering why teenage German lads like the ones opposite had to die out here in this goddam nameless piece of Russia. For what? ‘Yer know it ain’t good for you.’

Matz
punched him in the upper arm. ‘Knock it off, pisspot,’ he said angrily. ‘I’ve got an idea for getting us out of this mess. I’m stinking sick of hoofing it on my two legs.’

‘
One
in your case, remember, you little peg-legged cripple.’ Schulze turned suddenly. ‘What did you say?’ he asked, animation in his eyes abruptly.

‘
A way of getting out of here without walking.’

‘
How?’ Schulze was very alert now.

‘
Those tractors – there ‘s three of them.’

‘
Piss up my sleeve, I know that!’ Schulze exploded. ‘I can count up to ten, you know.’

‘
Yeah, as long as yer’ve got yer two paws to do it with. But listen. They’re beat up, of course I know that. But those tractors are tougher than the halftracks. They’re made to stand up to a lot worse treatment. If with a bit of luck—’

‘
Cannibalize ’em?’ Schulze cut in excitedly.

‘
Yes.’

‘
Little man,’ Schulze roared in delight, ‘as soon as I get my divorce, I’ll marry you. Come on, let’s have a look at the ugly shits.’

‘
No, first let’s check the fuel situation. What’s the good of trying to get them moving again, if there’s no diesel for them. Come on.’

Five
minutes later, still ignored by the others, stuffing themselves with black-red goo, or lighting the stubs of cigarettes they had taken from the corpses and puffing out the first blue streams of smoke, choking and coughing as they savoured their first cigarettes for nearly a week, they knew they had enough diesel. Unlike the gasoline which one of the halftracks had been transporting, it had not been ignited by the fires caused by the Russian bombs. There were at least two hundred litres of it left.

Schulze
pushed back his fur cap and whistled softly. ‘Holy strawsack, Matzi, with that amount of fuel, I could get the lot of us back to the knocking shops in Saint Pauli!’

‘
Sure you could, Schulzi, if everything depended on just how big yer cake-hole was. But it don’t depend on that. Now everything depends on whether we can build those three cripples back up into one half-ways driveable vehicle!’

‘
How right you are!’ Schulze cupped his hands round his mouth and bellowed with all his strength. ‘All right, you shitty asparagus Tarzans, come on down from the trees now! We’ve got work to do.’ His face broke into a tremendous grin. ‘Lads, we’ve got the wheels again!’

‘
WHEELS
!’ the cry went from mouth to mouth. ‘
WHEELS
...
WHEELS
...’ echoing up and out of that valley of death, on and on, seeming to go on for ever.   ‘
WHEELS
...’