The boots near her head stepped again.
‘ Ja,’ the pistol said, ‘ ja, sie ist tot.’
The flashlight clicked off.
The guards’ boots moved back to the tracks, crunching again in the gravel. Katya’s body sagged with relief. She kept her eyes closed and sipped a long, greedy breath through her nose. She heard the Germans murmur, they were looking over the rail that had been severed by the blast.
She lay marveling that she was still alive. The blood coating her hands and face grew tacky, the odor of the popped intestine renewed itself in her nostrils now that she was breathing again. She could not imagine a way out of her predicament and did not waste her attention trying to figure, she waited in amazement that the clock still ticked on her life. She listened to the guards curse the partisans for the shattered rail.
One of the guards sounded as if he might puke, he made heaving noises behind a clamped mouth. The other voice went mute. Katya heard a brief scuffle on the gravel, something laid down. She kept herself still, she fought the strong urge to look, her only chance of survival was to be dead.
The bootsteps stayed near the tracks. Then, after a short silence, they tromped near her, two sets. They stopped on either side of her head.
She kept the veil of a tortured death mounted on her face, the congealing horse blood began to itch. Her held breath burned in her lungs. Above her, a tongue clucked. The man standing over her sighed.
A call - a loud, raspy whisper - issued from down the tracks. ‘ Was ist los? Giht’s was?’
The one who’d sighed answered. ‘ Nein, nein. Alles klar. Es giht ein totes Pferd.’
Katya trembled inside her frozen flesh. This was not the voice of either of the guards. This man was older.
The set of boots on the other side of Katya’s death pose made a nauseated sound, ‘Pfew.’ In Russian, the voice whispered, ‘Leave her.’
The old one murmured, ‘No. We can carry her.’
‘She stinks.’
Katya’s fear did not release easily. She recognized these voices, but cracked her eyes slowly, just enough to peer out under her lashes, to stay dead.
She saw boots. Russian boots. And there were jackets and dark civilian shirts, and yes! Filip, and nasty Josef. They’d come!
Katya gulped a deep breath and fought to sit up.
The two leaped away from her, old Filip staggered backward and fell to his knees, crossing himself and muttering to Christ. Josef recovered first, he stepped to her and without a word dug his hands under Anna’s spine to raise the horse off her.
‘Come on, old man,’ he growled at the starosta.
‘Witch?’ old Filip mumbled, still on his knees.
Katya turned to Filip, knowing how ghastly she must look. ‘Filip, help me get up.’
Josef grunted again, ‘Old man.’
Filip helped Josef heft the horse from Katya’s legs. Katya plucked the dangling intestine from her ripped shirt and tossed it aside, callous now for Anna’s death, her sorrow dismissed by the thrill of reprieve. She sucked down air and thought it sweet, blessed it, felt the honey of her own blood rush back into her feet, then reached up for Josef’s hand to stand on her own. Only minutes had passed since the C-3 exploded, that was all, and she had lived a lifetime in them, and a death. She wanted to hug both men, even Josef.
The two left her wobbling while they went to the tracks to collect the German guards. The blown rail was curled in the air like a beckoning steel finger. Josef and Filip hoisted one man to his feet, he’d been unconscious until Josef kicked him to wake him. The soldier’s hands had been tied and his mouth stuffed with a sock. In the moonlight Katya saw the shock on his face, his pupils wide and white at her standing before him, a blood-covered zombie partisan. The other guard did not rise. His throat was slit. The gash was gaping enough in his neck for Katya to see it from where she stood, blood had poured and pooled in the crannies of the gravel and across rail ties. Katya felt nothing at the sight.
Josef held his knife to the bound German’s throat and gripped him under the elbow. He led the soldier away into the hundred open meters between them and cover. The prisoner walked off with his eyes fixed on Katya.
‘ Sei still,’ Filip hissed to him, and drew a index finger under his own chin to make sure the German understood that Josef would kill him if he made a sound.
Filip took Katya under the arm. Together they hurried away behind Josef and the prisoner back to the trees.
‘Where are the horses?’ she asked.
‘Ivan and Daniel got them. They’re waiting. You had a close call, Witch. You scared me so bad I almost filled my britches. Well done. Are you alright?’
She ached down to her marrow, not just from the fall of her horse but from the tempest of fear in her veins; it had withdrawn, but not without leaving its mark in her.
‘Yes.’
Limping across the dark ground on Filip’s arm, she prepared herself for her return to life, to the war and Plokhoi’s partisans, this long night and tomorrow’s day, and her place in it all. Why did the C-3 go off before she was clear? Where was Leonid? Who was the traitor?
How does old Filip know German?
She asked him.
He answered out of breath, lugging her across the open ground. They were almost to the shrubs. Katya spotted the outlines of Ivan and Daniel saddling the remaining horses.
‘My mother was a Sudeten Slav,’ the old man replied. ‘My six brothers and I grew up speaking German.’
‘Did all your brothers come with you to Plokhoi?’
‘Yes.’ The starosta hesitated. ‘All but one.’
‘Where is he?’
‘He stayed in the village. He’s… he’s not welcome.’
Katya slowed, even before reaching the safety of the copse and the other partisans.
‘Why, Filip?’
The starosta’s whisper vented through tight lips, baring shame.
‘Nikolai works for the Nazis. He’s an interpreter. For their interrogations.
One day the village… No, my brothers and I, we’ll put a stop to it.’
Katya tugged Filip to a halt. This was a calamity in the old man’s family, a collaborator. She saw shame on Filip’s face, but could not pause for it. She needed to ask something fast, outside the hearing of the others.
Of all the partisans, she knew Filip was not the spy.
‘Did he ever question downed Soviet pilots?’
Filip cocked his weathered head at this. ‘Yes. Why?’
A prayer raced through Katya’s heart. ‘Did Nikolai ever travel to Tomarovka?’
‘Last week. They came and took him to Kazatskoe, three kilometers away’
Her heart cartwheeled at this news. Before she could explain, Daniel and Ivan tramped out of the bushes to them. Katya whispered to Filip,
‘Please, don’t tell anybody about this. Talk to me alone. Filip, please.’