Last Citadel - [World War II 03] (16 page)

Dimitri knew he could not make them into more. But if he and Valya were going to fight alongside these boys, they were going to
think
they were more. Or they would all die, because few die alone in a tank.

‘My father Konstantin was the best swordsman in the Kuban. Did you know a real Cossack sword has no hilt to protect the hand? Do you know why?’

No, they shrugged.

Dimitri cut his eyes to Valentin on the tank. ‘Tell us, Sergeant. About the Cossack sword.’

Valentin ran fingers over his pate. The stubble of his short hair made a fizzing noise. Dimitri held up an open hand, to say please.

Valentin cleared his throat. So needless, Dimitri thought, to be uncomfortable talking to men who may well save your life in the next week. Embrace them, Valya, he urged silently, these are spirits, children like you. Valentin gave the answer, continuing to scratch his head.

‘It… um… it’s not made for dueling. It’s made for striking from horseback.’

‘Exactly. And Pasha, Sasha, I will tell you right now with the pride of a father that your sergeant Berko there was the finest swordsman in all the Kuban when he was your age. Just eighteen, and a champion
dzhigitovka!
In our village, the streets are wide and there’s a great central square. That is where we hold our war games. On Sundays and holidays, the streets are lined with saplings, set thirty feet apart. On top of the trees are clay pots. The test, you see, is to gallop full bore between the trees and cut the pots with your sword. And Valentin there… well, your sergeant there, he was the best. Slashing back and forth, boys, he was a sight! A champion!’

Pasha looked up at Valentin. ‘Did you cut them off, like cutting off heads?’

Valentin appeared impatient, not with the query so much as his own past, before he became a sergeant for the Soviets. Watching his son fidget, Dimitri recalled the day when young Valya came to him and said he was going to join the army. ‘Wonderful,’ he had said, ‘we’ll go together. Yes! We’ll be in the cavalry’ And Valentin answered him, ‘No, I want to join the tanks.’ The tanks! The metal horses, slow and stupid beasts, with a cannon and armor and dials where there ought to be a pounding heart and lungs and a life under your rear, not a hard seat and a stubborn clutch. A tank instead of a horse. A Soviet instead of a champion son. Dimitri listened to Valentin’s response to the boy Pasha, and thought, He sounds like a stinking Romanov up there high on his tank.

‘No, Private… no. A Cossack does not cut off heads.’

‘But…’ Pasha seemed to want to be scared, to hear of heads rolling by the dozens on the Cossack battlefield.

‘Only poor Cossacks cut off heads, Pashinka,’ Dimitri said. ‘Not your sergeant. He practiced hard and became a master of the many different saber cuts from horseback.’

‘You mean there’s more than… ?’ Pasha drew a finger under his neck.

‘Yes, yes.’ Dimitri got to his knees and made a blade of his open hand. ‘There’s the one straight down on the shoulder to take off an arm.’ He hacked at Pasha, who laughed. Sasha beside him giggled. ‘There’s this one, to cut open his guts. One across the hip…’ With each description Dimitri sliced at the two boys to make them laugh and understand they were more than numbers now, they were clan with him and, yes, the sergeant.

Dimitri sat back and glanced again up to Valentin. His son smiled thinly at his father’s antics. Alright, the smile said, enough. We are who we are, Father. So, enough. Dimitri sighed, and held up a hand for more of their attention.

‘The life of every Cossack relies on two things. First, his fellow Cossacks. He must be willing to die and kill for them, to never betray their trust. The second is his horse. The bond between rider and horse goes deeper than words. It is instinct and devotion. And do you know who was the best rider in my village?’

It was Valentin who gave the answer. ‘Katerina.’

Dimitri turned to beam at Valentin.

‘My daughter Katya. She was a champion, too. There was nothing she couldn’t do on the back of a horse. She could leap across a stream and lean down from the saddle to take a drink.’

‘No,’ whispered red Sasha.

‘Yes,’ Dimitri breathed back.

‘Where is Katya now?’ Sasha asked.

‘She’s a Night Witch. You’ve heard of the Night Witches?’

‘Yes!’ Pasha blurted. ‘My mother used to tell us the Night Witches would come if we…’

‘Pasha.’

‘Yes?’

‘Your mother used to frighten you a lot, didn’t she?’

‘Yes. Well… urn…’

‘Were you as bad a child as all that?’

Sasha laughed first, then Valentin and Dimitri. Pasha took a jabbing elbow from the quiet hull gunner and chuckled, too.

‘Katya’s a pilot,’ Valentin explained, ‘my sister is a night bomber.’

‘Oh.’ Pasha blushed enough to be orange in the lantern shine.

Dimitri asked, ‘Now, do you boys want to become Cossacks?’

Sasha’s eyes went wide. ‘Is that something you can do? Can you do that?’ He turned to his mate Pasha, but the thick boy shook his head, skeptical. ‘No,’ he said, ‘Dima’s playing with us again. We won’t be real Cossacks. It’s a game.’

Dimitri kept still, embedding his gaze into Pasha’s eyes.

‘It’s no game.’

Skinny Sasha jutted his nose at Dimitri. ‘Yes. Make me a Cossack.’

Dimitri waited for Pasha’s face to change. The loader looked up at his sergeant. Valentin nodded to him.

Pasha said, ‘Me, too.’

‘Listen,’ Dimitri said. ‘You’ve got to know the history first. This is the story of the Cossacks. Centuries ago, Russia was different than it is today. Before the Soviets. In the long time of the Tsars. Russia was a collection of little kingdoms, ruled by boyars and landlords. The people were either rich aristocrats or poor peasants and serfs. But there was one place where the gentry didn’t run things. My homeland, Ukraine. Even its name tells you how free it was: ‘
Borderland
.’ During this time, Ukraine was a giant and unsettled country, a wild land. There was room to roam, there were fish and grainlands, grasses for cattle and sheep and horses. The first Cossacks were criminals. These were men who wanted their freedom enough to risk their lives to get it. They were running from the law. Or they were sentries from some landlord’s army, who got tired of manning a post and fighting someone else’s battles and ran away. The first Cossack was an escaped serf. Or he might have been some highborn who screwed the wrong peasant girl or stole another lord’s land and came to avoid scandal or being hung. He might have been a Greek or a Turk looking for adventure. Whoever he was, boys, whatever he was running from, his trouble was not going to follow him into Ukraine. He got a clean slate. And while the Russian state to the north and east was getting more and more civilized and tamed, Ukraine stayed without masters. It was a place for the common man, for bandits and fugitives, vagabonds and slaves to remake their lives. These men who skulked into Ukraine became farmers and trappers. They settled the land and raised their families. Everyone was equal.’

Pasha and Sasha watched him, spellbound; with his hands, Dimitri carved for them Ukraine out of the air, made pistols out of his fingers for the bandits, whips across the backs of the serfs, and open, clear fields with sweeps of his palm.

Sasha raised a hand like a schoolboy to ask a question.

‘How did the Cossacks learn to fight?’

‘A good question, Pashinka. The plains of Ukraine were not empty when the first Cossacks came. Hordes of Mohammedan tribesman roamed there. So the Cossacks were forced to band together. They learned from their battles with the Mohammedans, who were wonderful horsemen. The Cossacks borrowed the best of what they saw and soon became even better riders and warriors. But even when the Cossacks found themselves coming together for survival, they maintained their love for
kazak
, their freedom. They asked little from those who wished to join them. Only three things does a Cossack have in common with all other Cossacks. Three questions, and you have to answer yes to each. Are you ready?’

The two boys hesitated. Dimitri was tickled at the gravity he’d created in them.

‘Yes,’ both uttered.

Dimitri’s legs were tired, his knees griped. But this part of the rite had to be done standing.

‘Alright, get up.’

Valentin stayed in his place on the tank.

When Pasha and Sasha were on their feet, Dimitri asked, ‘Do you want to become Cossacks?’

Both nodded.

‘Say so,’ Dimitri prodded.

‘Yes!’ they said, a bit too loud. Dimitri kept a serious demeanor though he wanted to grin.

‘Good, good. Hold it down, lads. Next question. Will you die if you must for another member of your clan, and for your freedom?’

‘Yes.’ The two boys stood shoulder to shoulder. Dimitri watched them press closer to each other.

And last. Do you believe in God?’

The two boys Pasha and Sasha answered well. ‘Yes. I do. Yes.’

‘Good. Bend your knees. Let’s pray’

Dimitri dropped to his knees on the tank-crushed grass. Pasha and Sasha knelt with him. Dimitri did not glance up at his son. He didn’t want to know if Valentin was praying or simply watching with his Soviet disdain. Dimitri said a silent prayer for the lives of these two youths he’d been given. He asked God to only take them if they were greatly needed to win the battle. Let them stay Cossacks as long as they can, God, let them be free on the earth. But if You cannot, let them be free in heaven. He asked also for God to protect Valya and Katya. He did not ask for himself.

One of the boys said Amen,’ finished with his prayer. Dimitri ended his and lifted his head before he realized the Amen’ was Valentin’s. He stood, Pasha and Sasha scrambled to their feet. Dimitri stepped to his son’s perch on the
General
and patted Valya’s knee. Valya was maddening this way. Dimitri could never be comfortable with his frustration or his pride in the boy. He did not know Valya at all.

‘This,’ he said to the loader and the hull gunner, newly minted Cossacks, ‘is your
hetman
. He is your sergeant and your tank commander, but he is your Cossack leader, too. You’ll do everything he orders. Is this understood?’

Valentin slid down from the tank.

‘Are we done?’

Dimitri itched to backhand the boy for the sudden swings he caused in Dimitri’s chest.

At that moment - because, thought Dimitri, there is a God and He listens and once in a while even if you don’t ask He answers - a convoy of panel trucks rumbled up through the dark, headlamps jouncing over the ruts in the field cut by the company of heavy tanks. In the beds of the trucks, lit by the lights of the vehicles in line behind, jostled crowds of old men holding up bottles, and women. Dimitri saw fiddles, an accordion, and even a clarinet.

He recognized her voice. Just Sonya called out for him.

He moved to his son and lapped his arm across the boy’s shoulder.

‘Yes, Sergeant. We’re done. Excuse me.’

Dimitri grabbed his two new charges by their lapels and tugged them away from the lantern, telling them they had an additional duty as Cossacks to perform. They must each take a girl.

‘Dima, is this another game?’ Pasha asked, lagging at the end of Dimitri’s arm.

‘Yes,’ Dimitri told him, ‘and Cossacks play it well. Come.’

* * * *

CHAPTER 7