Last Citadel - [World War II 03] (54 page)

‘You’re back,’ the woman said.

Filip nodded. His wide brim bobbed, shading his face.

‘Leave him alone, Filip Filipovich,’ the woman said. ‘He’s your brother.’

The
starosta
made no notice of her words.

‘He’s frightened, Filip Filipovich,’ she said.

The elder lifted his eyes from the woman. He goaded his horse toward her and the three women beside her, women Katya decided were her sisters. The aprons parted and Filip rode past without another glance downward. Katya followed.

The morning street raised dust under their hooves. The northern horizon was quiet now, the sounds of the battle raging did not reach the village. Vorskla was no longer just ten kilometers from the front, the Germans had pushed the Soviet lines far back. How far, Katya did not know. But it was a bad thing that she did not hear the fighting.

Every movement in the village stopped when they rode past. The few men straightened in the fields to look over the tops of stalks and grasses, they looked like scarecrows in white billowy blouses. Women continued to gravitate toward each other, pressing shoulders and hips, whispers to ears. Filip rode to a small blue house. Its eaves were festooned with white gingerbread and shutters. Filip stopped in front of the porch. Neighbor women came on their stoops to watch and cluck. Katya saw her first child in this village. A boy, very dirty, gripped a woman’s skirt and pulled it in front of him, a naive shield. Filip did not dismount. He waited, his horse shifted, the rifle on Filip’s back creaked, the leather and harness rattled.

The door to the house stood open, the day was going to grow hot. Inside, the house was full of shadows. Filip stared straight ahead, some duel of wills going on with the brother inside. The man’s a coward, Katya thought. He’s a collaborator. Enough.

She slid off her horse and hit the ground walking. Before she’d taken two steps, the pistol was in her hand and cocked.

‘Nikolai!’ the
starosta
called to his brother. Katya halted.

Inside the house, footsteps dragged on the boards. A man emerged from the shadowed rooms. Katya stood in the full steppe sun and it took a moment for her to realize what she saw standing on the rickety porch.

Filip’s twin.

The two old men shared the same nose, lean stature, gray grimness, everything that brothers born seconds apart can share. But in a moment Katya saw what they did not have in common. This brother was weak. Filip would truly kill him one day.

Filip spoke. ‘You’re coming with us.’

The twin eyed his brother with a wary grimace. ‘I’m no fighter. You’re the fighter.’

Katya kept herself in check. She almost spoke for Filip Filipovich, she almost said to this brother, ‘And you’re the traitor. Now get on a fucking horse.’

‘Katya. Get the others.’

Filip did not look away from Nikolai. The eyes of the two were ensnared, the brothers’ glares tangled like snakes across the dusty road. Katya tucked the pistol into her belt. She swung to her saddle and turned for the hill where the others waited with the prisoner and an extra mount. Riding away, she saw over her shoulder Nikolai turn and go back inside his house. Filip stayed in his saddle, staring after his brother, his face obscured under the big felt hat.

* * * *

July 10

0800 hours

three kilometers west of Kazatskoe

The partisans, Breit the prisoner, and Nikolai the traitor rode through an eerie peace. They took their horses and the empty mount into the open, across fallow fields and wide vales of grass. The sun stood at its highest and the horses walked on their own shadows. Nothing impeded the riders’ vision for many kilometers, the land sprawled even and untended. The riders were far from the fighting here and the day appeared normal, sunny and quiet. Katya was lulled for a little while by the sounds of hooves in dirt, men in saddles, and the gold of warmth on her skin.

None of the men spoke. Filip rode in front, leading his twin brother to Kazatskoe. Daniel and Ivan came next, riding on either side of the German. Breit kept his mouth shut since Josef had clouted him, and he rode better, too, wanting no more attention for himself. Good, Katya thought, she had enough to worry about. Josef came at the rear. She turned to look at him from time to time to be sure the man was still there, separate and grim.

She cued her horse ahead of Daniel, Breit, and Ivan. She passed Nikolai. The brother’s head was down, as though riding to his gallows. She sidled up next to Filip. The
starosta
did not turn his head.

‘Are you angry with me, Filip?’

‘Yes. I don’t want to do this.’

Katya leaned from her saddle to touch the old man’s forearm. ‘I know.’

‘He’s my brother.’

Now Filip swiveled his face to her. His eyes glistened.

‘It’s easy, Witch, when he’s not right here behind me. It’s easy to talk about how I’ll do this and that. But I understand him. Better than anybody.’

His long nose was sharper than any feature of the landscape. His eyes were fixed on nothing Katya could see with him.

‘I’m sorry, Filip Filipovich.’

The
starosta
nodded, his big brim dipped.

‘We were all so hungry, Witch. I’m sure you don’t understand that kind of hunger. The Germans gave us food because Nikolai helped them. They stopped punishing our village, stopped taking our men. Nikolai saved us. I ate the food. I lived in my house. I’m as bad as him. I won’t judge him.’

Katya looked into the sky, her former battlefield, and thought of the danger she’d met up there in the past year. She and all the warriors, on air and ground and sea, they forgot. They were young and they bled, they gathered the war to themselves like their own hell and they did not see this old man and his old twin brother, how war does not always come in a different uniform or bursts of flame but may come as your brother, your village, your own soul. What can war not break? Nothing, if it can break a family. She blinked at a sudden tear. She turned her cheek away from Filip, to let it dry in the breeze before she spoke.

‘Is he there, do you think? The pilot?’ She kept to herself that his name was Leonid, she hid in her breast who the pilot was to her.

Filip sighed and considered. ‘Yes. Nikolai said he was there three days ago. With so much going on at the front, I doubt there’s been time to take him anywhere else.’

‘Did you ask him if he knew the pilot’s name?’

‘He doesn’t. Nikolai asked… other questions for the Germans.’

‘What did he look like?’

‘Average. Brown hair. Slender.’

‘What color eyes? Does your brother remember?’

‘His eyes were too swollen to see their color, Witch.’

She envisioned this. Leonid, she thought. God, Leonid. She asked, ‘What will happen if we don’t get to him?’

‘He’ll be taken back to Germany as a slave. Or shot.’

The
starosta
said all this without emotion. He almost relished making these dire descriptions and the prediction, dispensing for Katya some pain to counterweight his own agony. He’d guessed the rescue of the pilot meant more to the Witch than freeing a downed Soviet flyer. Katya said nothing more. Filip was entitled. She’d brought him out here, to face his twin and save Leonid, for her own purposes. She pulled in her reins and let Filip ride past, then came Nikolai, the same man made twice, their hurt borne on two horses. Daniel and Ivan with the prisoner caught up to her.

‘Collaborator,’ Ivan sneered loud enough for Nikolai to hear. Daniel added nothing. Ivan jerked his head at Breit. ‘At least this son of a bitch wears a uniform. He won a medal.’

They rode for another hour, skirting Tomarovka on their right. They cloaked themselves in the safety of the open, riding as innocuous peasants. From a distance they’d look smudged and humble, posing no danger. Besides, the Germans were not on the lookout for partisans during the daylight hours. The night was when the partisans struck.

At 0915 hours the village of Kazatskoe appeared, an oasis of farm buildings in an expanse of greens and brown. From her saddle five kilometers away, the village appeared to Katya something dreamy and liquid, standing in a pool of shimmering heat mirage against the earth. Three silos rose as centurions, the rest of the village hunkered around them, homes and outbuildings. Five days ago when the battle started, this place was only four kilometers from the front lines. Now it was a drained place, intact but emptied. The Germans had billeted here, fortified the little town, then moved north with their attack. They left silence, like a spoiled well. There should be tractors, she thought, there should be a blacksmith’s anvil clanging through this heat, laundry snapping on lines. The war was here in the ghosts of sound.

Josef trotted forward.

‘You all stay here,’ he ordered with his sunken-eyed intensity. The riders stopped.

Nikolai did not turn his horse, he fixed his eyes on Kazatskoe and his back on Filip.

‘
Hiwi
.’ Josef snarled the curse name for collaborators at the rear of Nikolai’s head. ‘Turn around,
hiwi.’’

Nikolai made no move to comply. Big Ivan grunted. He wheeled his mount beside the twin and snatched the reins to bring Nikolai around to face Josef. The prisoner Breit gritted his teeth, he knew already that Josef was no one to ignore. Filip could not watch. He hung his head and the brim of his hat again covered his eyes.

‘The
hiwi
will take me into the town,’ Josef said. ‘We’ll find the house where the pilot is. Then we’ll come back and decide what to do.
Hiwi
.’

‘Yes.’ Nikolai answered with a quaver in his chin, like a man answering a judge, or the Reaper.

‘Know now I will kill you the instant you do anything other than what I tell you.’

‘I know.’

‘If you take me to any house but the one the pilot is in, you won’t come back from that village.’

Nikolai rested his eyes on black Josef. Seconds passed in the crackling quiet field. The twin seemed to soothe, a man finally at his destined place, at his gallows.

‘Yes,’ answered Nikolai.

Josef swung in his saddle to face Breit.

‘Nazi. If you twitch the wrong way, Daniel will shoot you out of the saddle. Tell him, Filip Filipovich.’

Josef swung his horse now to Katya.

‘Witch,’ he said, ‘I’ll find your pilot for you.’

Katya was stunned. Josef tipped his hat brim to her and turned. Nikolai fell in and the two rode toward Kazatskoe.

She watched them go, amazed at the turn in Josef. She trusted what he’d said.

Ivan nestled his horse beside Katya, gazing off at Kazatskoe with her. Daniel was restive. He dropped from his saddle to grab a stem of grass, then climbed back up to chew on the blade. He settled behind the German, as though measuring Breit for a bullet. Filip sat his horse alone, head slumped away from the hot world. The four of them waited like this under the sun, sweating and without shade.

‘I hope we find him,’ Ivan said. ‘Is this pilot your lover?’

Katya was uneasy with the question. ‘Lover.’ It was a term from peacetime, when girls and boys paired off like that, not when they were forced to spend years away from home - changing and hardening years - not when they died by the hundreds and thousands every day. And there was Filip, lonely and hating being here, a man who’d claimed he would murder his brother. Could Katya have a boyfriend in front of poor Filip?