Last Citadel

‘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?

‘Yes,’ she said without intending. ‘Yes,’ she said, needing it to be so.

‘Good for you,’ said Daniel from behind the German. He spit out the weed and climbed down to pluck a new one. He looked up at Katya. He seemed wounded somehow by her smile.

Josef and Nikolai were gone no more than thirty minutes. They returned across the long field; at a distance they rode on shimmers from the heat. Katya wanted to ride to them but Ivan stopped her. ‘We wait,’ he said, ‘like we were told.’

The two came slowly, no need for haste and attention. Josef rode behind Nikolai, who kept his head down, the match to his brother Filip.

When they were close, the twins did not look at each other.

‘There’s a house on the western edge of the village,’ Josef said. ‘I couldn’t get a look inside the windows. But there are two guards. The hiwi says the guards were there a couple of days ago when he was taken to that house.’

‘He’s in there,’ Nikolai said.

Katya’s heart gripped. There was a pilot in that house. Was it Leonid?

‘What are we going to do?’ Daniel asked, standing beside his saddle.

‘Wait until dark?’

‘No,’ Josef decided, scratching deep into his beard. ‘The village is mostly deserted. There’s maybe two dozen Germans spread out, staying out of the sun. If we go in after curfew and we’re spotted, we’re definitely partisans. I say now, while there’s only the two guards.’