Red Winter (8 page)

‘So what about this?’ She yanked the pistol from my pocket and held it up for me to see. ‘Where did you get this?’

‘I stole it. Where did you get yours?’

‘Don’t pretend you’re not a soldier.’

‘I won’t pretend,’ I said. ‘I
am
a soldier. Or I was.’

‘Only officers carry weapons like this.’ She stuffed it into her coat pocket.

‘I could say the same to you.’

Tanya raised her hand and brought the butt of her pistol down on the side of my neck. She wasn’t so fast that I didn’t see it coming, but it was as hard as I had ever been struck and I went down on one knee, pain flashing in my vision. As soon as I was down, Lyudmila knocked the hat from my head and took a fistful of my hair, yanking my head back until I was facing the sky. It was difficult to breathe with my head in that position and my throat stretched, pulling my mouth open. Tanya put the barrel of her pistol between my teeth and pressed it against my tongue.

She stared down at me, the rage clear in those cold blue eyes. I had no idea what she had been through, but if it was anything like my experiences, I could understand why the anger had risen in her. I had felt it too. Sometimes it was difficult to control, always boiling just under the surface. But now I was going to die.

I would never be able to find and protect Marianna and the boys.

‘You people are like poison. You spread death wherever you go.’ It was Lyudmila who spoke to me, and there was hate in her voice. ‘Kill him, Tanya.’

Tanya seemed to hear the contradiction in her friend’s words and she tried to push away the demon that had seized her. She withdrew the pistol, scraping the steel against my teeth. ‘Who
are
you?’ she asked.

‘I didn’t do this,’ I said. ‘This is my home. I promise you.’

Lyudmila tugged harder on my hair, and Tanya shifted as she tightened her grip on the pistol and pointed it at the bridge of my nose. ‘Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t just kill you now.’

‘What’s changed?’ I asked. ‘From before. What’s changed? You know I didn’t do this.’

‘Just kill him,’ Lyudmila said. ‘He’s Red – I can smell it – and they’re all the same. All of them.’

‘You’re wrong,’ I told her. ‘We’re not all the same.’

‘Is that your one good reason?’ asked Tanya.

‘You need a reason not to kill me?’

Tanya said nothing.

‘You lost someone?’ I asked. ‘To this Koschei?’

Tanya narrowed her eyes and glanced at Lyudmila.

‘I have lost
everyone
,’ I said. ‘Two sons. Misha is fourteen. And Pavel . . . Pavel is just twelve years old.’

Tanya brought her left hand up to steady the pistol and she touched it to my forehead.

‘And my wife,’ I said, looking her in the eye. ‘She’s missing too. Her name is Marianna.’

Tanya glanced away to the lake and then back at me again.

‘So I have
three
good reasons,’ I said. ‘Not just one. Is that enough for you?’

Tanya took a step back and lowered the pistol a fraction.

‘I want to find them,’ I told her. ‘Just like you want to find whoever it is you’re looking for. That’s why you’re here, right? You’re looking for someone?’

She let her arm drop to her side, the pistol pointing at the ground, and she wiped her other sleeve across her mouth and nose, sniffing hard. ‘Let him go.’

Lyudmila gripped harder, squeezing my hair in her fist and tugging as if she wanted to rip it out of my scalp. ‘But he’s a—’

‘Let him go, Lyuda.’

She hesitated a moment longer, then pushed my head away, throwing it forward.

I rubbed the back of my neck and stayed as I was. ‘Maybe we can help each other.’

‘We don’t need your help,’ Tanya said.

‘Perhaps I need yours.’

‘Then you’ll have to manage without it.’

‘At least help me find the others,’ I said. I had been alone in the forest for many days already, and had grown accustomed to being without company, but there was something about the prospect of heading deeper into the trees alone today that I didn’t want to face. I was afraid of what I might find there.

Tanya looked at the ground and pursed her lips as if she were thinking about it.

‘We don’t know anything about him,’ Lyudmila said. ‘Maybe he even did this.’

Tanya shook her head. ‘He didn’t. We know that.’

‘People
like
him, then. Or maybe he’s one of them.’

‘One of who? Are you talking about Koschei?’

‘What do you know about him?’ Tanya turned her attention on me, the fire relighting in her eyes. ‘Where is he? You know his real name?’

‘No,’ I said, getting to my feet. ‘I don’t . . . Galina told me about him. She said he—’

‘Who’s Galina?’ Tanya asked. ‘Where is she now?’

I picked up my hat. ‘There was an old woman here last night, one of the villagers. I knew her. She was a friend of my mother. Galina. She said someone called Koschei did this and I thought . . . I thought she was confused. I thought . . .’ I looked across at the old man’s body. ‘This was her husband, Sasha. Now I have to look for the others –’ I swallowed hard ‘– and I’m afraid of what I’ll find.’

‘Where is this old woman? I want to talk to her.’

‘Galina?’ I ran a hand through my hair and pulled on my hat, staring out at the lake. ‘She went into the water. Drowned herself.’

‘Drowned
herself
?’ Lyudmila asked.

‘Yes.’ When I looked at them, I saw the way the women watched me, something like suspicion in their eyes. ‘It’s the truth,’ I said. ‘Her husband dead, the others gone . . . I tried to stop her, but it’s what she wanted. I
knew
her. She was my mother’s friend.’

‘But you let her go?’

‘It’s what she wanted. To be with the others.’

‘With the others?’ Tanya said, and she and Lyudmila glanced at one another, then they both looked out at the water. For a while neither of them said anything. All three of us were alone in that moment; each of us retreated into our own thoughts.

‘He likes to drown the women,’ Tanya said in a quiet voice. ‘Koschei. I’m sorry.’

It took a moment for her words to register. As she spoke them, they were just sounds without meaning, but as they unravelled in my mind, they brought a numbness, a crushing white weight bearing down on me.

He likes to drown the women
.

The words repeated like an echo of themselves and I saw Galina entering the lake, breaking the thin ice, disrobing, sinking and disappearing. Before she went under, though, she turned and looked at me and I saw that it wasn’t Galina. It was Marianna’s face that looked back at me from the water. Then she was gone, sinking, falling among the reeds and the dark unknown at the bottom of the lake.

‘—about Koschei?’ One of the women was speaking but the voice was like a distant whisper. An unimportant inconvenience. All that mattered was Marianna, and I began walking, moving towards the lake. It came to me that she might still be in there, moving gently in the depths with the other women, their faces white and bloated. Like my own mother, the lake had taken her in its watery embrace.

I repeated her name as I approached the water, saying it over and over, feeling the tightness of my heart and the overwhelming need to be with my wife.

The forest was no longer there. The wind stopped. The crows vanished. Nothing existed anymore. Only me, the lake and Marianna.

He likes to drown the women
.

I was almost at the water’s edge when hands gripped my arms and pulled me back.

‘There’s nothing you can do,’ Tanya was saying. ‘I’m sorry.’

I fought against her for a moment, stumbling back and falling so that I was sitting, looking out at the lake as if I had come to watch it on a warm spring afternoon.

‘There’s nothing you can do,’ Tanya said again.

‘You think she’s in there? Marianna?’

‘Maybe it was different here,’ Tanya said. ‘Maybe . . .’ but she didn’t finish. There was nothing she could say to change what had or hadn’t happened, and there was nothing I could do to find Marianna. If she was in the depths of the lake, she was gone for ever.

I pulled my coat tight against the cold.

‘Did the old woman tell you what he looks like? What’s his real name?’ Lyudmila spoke to me, but I kept my eyes on Tanya as I shook my head.

‘She said nothing at all?’ Lyudmila asked.

‘Nothing.’ I looked out at the lake again and wished the world were different. ‘I have to look for the others now.’

For a moment there was no sound but those that should be there: the sigh of the breeze in the trees; the gentle lapping of the water at the bank; the trickle of the river flowing into the lake.

‘Will you come with me?’ I asked. ‘To find the others?’

Tanya turned to the forest and raised her eyes to the treetops. ‘There’s nothing in there for me,’ she said. ‘All that matters is finding Koschei.’

‘Maybe he’s still there,’ Lyudmila suggested.

‘No, he’ll be long gone.’

‘And when you find him?’ I asked.

‘I’m going to kill him.’

They walked away, going to their horses and mounting up.

‘Which way will you go?’ I asked as they came back towards the path.

‘North,’ Tanya said, stopping her horse and looking down at me. ‘So far we’ve been following him north. What’s the next town from here?’

‘Dolinsk.’

‘Anything else?’

‘A few villages between here and there. Farms. Nothing else.’

Tanya considered me for a long moment then pulled my revolver from her pocket and dropped it on the ground beside me. ‘Good luck, Kolya,’ she said.

I didn’t turn to watch them leave. I stayed where I was, staring out at the lake, dreading what I would find deeper in the forest.

So it was that I went to my family home for the last time, crossing the bridge and walking the lonely road through the village. I found myself at my own front door, acting only on instinct as I went into the darkness within. I didn’t have a coherent plan in mind, but took a basket from the shelf at the far end of the room and collected every scrap of food I could find. In the drawer, I found a good knife that went into the basket, along with the food, a handful of matches wrapped in a cloth, candles and a single spoon. I collected the saddlebag I had brought from the outbuilding and threw it over my shoulder before picking up the blankets that had covered me during the night. Arms full, I walked back to the front door and pulled it wide, but something stopped me and I stood like that, with my back to the room, the door open to the cold.

I needed a reminder.

Of Marianna. Of Misha and Pavel. Of everything I was leaving behind and everything I had once been. Something was beginning and I had to prepare for it in the right way.

Closing the door, I put everything on the floor beside it and went through to the bedroom. I picked up Marianna’s
chotki
and wrapped it round my right wrist, tucking it into my sleeve, mouthing the words ‘Have mercy on me, the sinner’, just as Marianna would have done. Then I vowed to find my family, no matter what it took. And when I had found them, alive or dead, I would follow Tanya’s path to Koschei and I would kill him.

‘Nothing will stand in my way,’ I whispered.

Taking the small icon from the wall above the table and putting it in my satchel, I returned to the kitchen and sat down just as Marianna would have wanted. This was the traditional way. It was bad luck to go on a journey without sitting for a moment. Marianna made me do it every time I left to go anywhere and I had always come back.

I was anxious that Tanya and Lyudmila would already be off the road and hidden in the forest – they were my best lead to Koschei and I didn’t want to lose them – but I would take this time. It was the kind of superstition I used to tease Marianna about, but it had served me well enough until now. My parents had always done it, my grandparents too. Marianna said it was to trick the evil spirits into thinking the travellers had decided to stay, but whatever the reason for the tradition, I could spare a few moments if it was going to bring me luck.

I sat at the table and closed my eyes, and that simple act helped me to relax and rearrange my thoughts.

I focused first on Marianna and the boys. I touched the
chotki
on my wrist and prayed that they were not dead, as my worst fears tried to suggest, but that they were somehow safe and would stay that way until I reached them. I pictured each of them in my mind as best as I could. It was difficult, though, to hold an image of their faces in my thoughts. I focused instead on the quiet sound of Marianna’s understated laughter. I wrapped myself in the way I had felt the last time we had been together in our bed, her naked skin against mine. I remembered the way she scolded me for bringing dirty boots into the house and how I laughed when she broke up the boys’ squabbling by chasing them with a wooden spoon. I breathed deep and recalled the smell of Pavel’s hair, the smoothness of his cheeks, the brightness of his grin, the seriousness of Misha’s furrowed brow and the delight in my eldest son’s eyes when he first pulled a fish from the lake. I remembered my brother too, how he had been before the war, not as I had seen him this morning when throwing the cold dirt over his face. I remembered him as he was when we were boys and we ventured deeper into the forest than we were allowed, and the time when he was fifteen and stole vodka, which he drank until he was sick.

Then my thoughts turned to the darkness that had smothered this village.

For me, he was a shadow. Galina had called him Koschei the Deathless. She had put a knife in him and it had done him no harm, but the Deathless One was no more real than One-Eyed Likho, and no one is immune to the blade of a knife. She must have made a mistake.

Anyone can die. I had seen that often enough.

Even in the
skazka
, Koschei had a weakness. This one would have one too, and once I knew what had happened to my wife and sons, I would be sure to find it.