The Boat of a Million Years

XVII. Steel

This was not the forest of old, but there was cover aplenty for a hunter, oh, yes, and all too much quarry. First, though, Katya had open ground to cross. She went from the battered yellow brick of the Lazur Chemical Plant on her belly. The pavement beneath her was as rough, after nearly three months of war. It felt colder against her palms than did the wind on her face. Clouds and a little snow had slightly warmed the November air.

She slipped forward a meter or so at a time, stopped, peered about, before the next advance. Heaven rested heavy, hiding the sun behind its gray. Sometimes it let fall a thin white flurry for the gusts to scatter. On Katya’s left the ground sloped to the Volga. Ice floes drifted, bumped together, churned and turned on their way down its steel-hued stream. No boats dared moved among them. Scant help could come to the Russians from the east until the river froze hard. The shore opposite seemed deserted, steppe reaching, wan with winter, on and on into Asia.

To her right, beyond the railroad tracks, Mamaev Hill rose a hundred meters aloft. Its slopes were black. Shells and boots quickly beat snow into mud. She identified two or three gun emplacements. Silence brooded. The soldiers who had contested that height for weeks must be catching their breath or a few moments’ sleep, briefly brothers in exhaustion and wretchedness, before the next combat erupted.

The stillness foreboded. It was abnormal to hear no fire, anywhere, for this long a stretch. War waited—eyes and gunsights wholly upon her?

Nonsense, she snapped to herself, and moved onward.

Nevertheless, when she came in among walls, breath shuddered from a breast cage that had begun to ache.

She rose and stood crouched. These were not truly walls, after what had happened to them. Concrete blocks still Itfted sheer, but doorless doorways and glassless windows yawned on emptiness. A heap of rubble had spilled into the street.

Rifles cracked. A submachine gun chattered. A grenade popped, another, another. Shouts ripped raw. She couldn’t make out words. The sounds were un human. Her own rifle was off her shoulder and she inside the shell of a building as die first echoes died.

Boots thudded. They hit without rhythm, and too often a shard rattled from them. Whoever drew near stumbled and staggered more than he ran. Katya risked a peek around the door jamb. From behind a ruin some twenty meters south, a man lurched into the intersection of this street and the one down which he fled. He wore a Red Army uniform and helmet, but carried no weapon. Blood smeared his right hand and dripped down that leg. He stopped. She saw how he panted. He swung his head to and fro. Almost, she called to him, but checked herself. After a few seconds he continued his weaving way in the same direction, out of her view.

She brought her rifle up.

Two more men appeared, at a lope that should soon overtake him. Squarish helmets and gray-green garb proclaimed mem Germans. Either could easily have lifted his own firearm and shot the fugitive. So their officer must have told mem to bring him back for interrogation. That looked safe, a short run through an area believed to be free of life.

It had stabbed through Katya: Let the thing happen. I mustn’t compromise my mission. But she knew too well what awaited that fellow. Also, what he could tell might prove as valuable as anything she would observe.

Decision was nearly instant. Sometimes she weighed a matter for years before she settled on what to do. Sometimes she could simply wait several decades and let time wear the problem away. Yet she had not stayed alive this long by being always hesitant. At need, she leaped with the unheeding energy of youth.

She fired. A German spun on his heel and flopped bonelessly down. His companion yelled and threw himself prone. His rifle barked. He probably hadn’t seen her, but knew at once, more or less, whence that shot had come. Quick-witted. Not for the first time, the thought stirred in Katya that maybe among the invaders was one of her kind, as full of centuries and solitude as she was.

She barely noticed the thought, afar at the back of her skull. She had pulled inside straightway after shooting. A windowframe beckoned. She closed her eyes for three breaths while she considered the geometry of what she had seen. The enemy must be there. Quick, before he moves elsewhere. She stepped to the hole and squeezed trigger even as she aimed.

The butt gave her a stiff, friendly nudge. The soldier screamed. He let go his rifle and lifted his torso on hands that spread white, helpless, upon asphalt. She had gotten him in the back. Best silence him. Those yells would call his mates. She drew a bead. His face exploded.

Extraordinary marksmanship. By far the most shots in battle went wild. Comrade Zaitsev would be proud of her. She wished the German would lie still like the first, not writhe and kick and gush blood. Well, he was quiet now.

She. hadn’t time to cringe. Surety the rest understood something had gone wrong. No matter how cautious, they would find this place within minutes.

Katya dashed forth, over the rabble, up the street, past her prey. Horrible, when it was human. Of course, then it hunted you likewise. She turned left down the cross street.

The Soviet soldier had not gone far. Her ambush had been quick, while he slowed still more. In fact, he was shuffling by a wrecked tram, leaning on it. Katya wondered if he would prove such a burden that she must abandon him. She sped in pursuit. “Stop!” she cried. “I’m your help!” Her voice sounded small and hollow among the ruins, beneath die leaden sky.

He obeyed, turned around, braced himself against the metal, slumped. She drew close and halted. He was quite young, she saw, not shaven lately but with just a dark fuzz over the skin. Otherwise his face was old, pinched, white as the snowflakes that drifted about and powdered his shoulders. His eyes stared and his jaw hung slack. Shock, she realized. That hand of his was pretty badly mangled. A grenade, no doubt.

“Can you follow me?” she asked. “We’ll have to move fast.”

His left forefinger rose and wobbled in the air, as if to trace her outline. “You are a soldier,” he mumbled. “Like me. But you are a woman.”

“What of it?” Katya snapped. She took hold of his forearm and shook him. “Listen. I can’t stay. That’s death. Come along if you’re able. Do you understand? Do you want to live? Come!”

He shuddered. Breath went raggedly down his throat. “I ... can ... try.”

“Good. This way.” Katya shoved him around and forward. Turn right at the next comer, left at the next after that, put a maze between yourself and the enemy. This’dis-trict was smashed, like the city center toward which she aimed—snags, debris, choked lanes, masonry still fire-blackened in spots, a wilderness where you could shake your hunters. Despite lacking sun or shadows, she kept her sense of direction ... A growl resounded.

“Take cover!” Katya ordered. The youth joined her beneath a rusted metal sheet which stuck out of a vast heap of wreckage like an awning. A stench hung beneath, oozing from bricks, beams, broken glass, thick and sickly-sweet even in the chill. A shell or bomb must have made a direct hit, bringing this whole tenement down on everybody inside. Children, their mothers, their babushkas? No, most who couldn’t fight were evacuated early on. Likeliest it was soldiers who rotted here. Any building could become a fort when defenders fought invaders street by street. Which had these been? ... It didn’t matter, least of all to them.

Her companion retched. He must have recognized the smell. That was a hopeful sign. He was coming out of his daze.

The aircraft swept low above rooflessness. She had a glimpse of it, lean, swift, swastika on its tail, then it was gone. Reconnaissance, or what? Probably the pilot wouldn’t have noticed them, or troubled about them if he did. But you could never tell. The fascists had strafed crowds of evacuees waiting for ferries across the river. Two Soviet soldiers were game more fair.

The throbbing receded. Katya heard no other. “Let’s go,” she said.

The young man accompanied her for some paces before he exclaimed weakly, “Is this right, comrade? I think we’re headed south.”

“We are,” she told him.

“B-but, but the enemy has that part. Our people, they’re in the north end of town.”

“I know.” She took his elbow and hurried him onward. “I have my orders. Turn back if you wish. I doubt you’ll get far. Or you may come with me if you can. If you can’t, I’ll have to leave you. If you make a noise, or any kind of trouble for me, I must kill you. But I do believe it’s your only chance.”

He clenched his usable fist. “I’ll try,” he whispered. “Thank you, comrade.”

She wondered whether Zaitsev would thank her. This mission was .worth more lives than a single cripple’s. Well, sharpshooters must rely on their own judgment oftener than not. And supposing she did get this private back to his unit, her superiors needn’t know. Unless he really could tell something worthwhile—

The street ended at Krutoy Gully. On the opposite side of the ravine, buildings were equally damaged but more high and massive than here. That was where the central city began. “We have to get across,” Katya said. “No bridge. We crawl down and creep up. You go first.”

He nodded, jerkily, nevertheless a nod. Stooping, he scuttled over the open space and wriggled out of sight. She had been prepared to let him draw any fire. She hadn’t wanted a stalking horse, but there he was, and if he proved hopelessly clumsy she couldn’t let him destroy her too. Instead, he did well enough. So he’d been rather lightly shocked, and was shaking that off with the vitality of youth.

Rifle in hand, every sense honed, she followed. Dirt gritted, leafless bushes scratched. After they started up, his strength flagged. He scrabbled, slid back a way, sank together and sobbed for air. She slung her weapon and went on all fours to his side. He gave her a desperate look. “I can’t,” he wheezed. “I’m sorry. Go on.”

“We’re nearly there.” Her left hand clasped his. “Now, work, damn you, work.” She clambered backward, boot heels dug into soil, straining like a horse at a mired field gun. He set his teeth and did what he was able. It sufficed. They reached the top and found shelter by a heap of bricks. Her tunic was dank with sweat. Wind chilled her to the bone.

“Where ... are we ... bound?” coughed from him.

“This way.” They got to their feet. She herded him along, keeping them next to walls, halting at each doorway or corner to listen and peer. A couple of fighters flew sentinel well above. Their drone fell insect-faint over the desolation. She began to hear a deeper rumble, artillery. A duel somewhere out on the steppe? Mamaev remained quiet. The whole city did, it seemed, one great graveyard that waited for the thunders of doomsday.

Her destination wasn’t far. That would have been madness. She would not have been sent even this deep into the German-held sector, had she not repeatedly shown she could get about unseen as well as any commando—and, she knew, those expert killers were less expendable than she. If the recommended site proved unduly dangerous and she couldn’t quickly find a better,,she was to give up and make her way back to the Lazur.

From behind one of the trees that still lined a certain boulevard, she gazed across a bomb crater and two crumpled automobiles. The building she wanted did appear safe. It belonged to a row of tenement houses, slab-sided and barrack-like. Though in sorry shape, it rose above what was left of its neighbors, a full six floors. The windows were blind holes.

Katya pointed. “Yonder,” she told the young man. “When I signal, get over there and inside fast.” She took her binoculars from the case hung about her neck and searched for signs of enemy. Only broken panes, smudges, pockmarks came into view. Snow whirled dry on a gust that whistled. She chopped her hand downward and led the sprint. In the empty doorway she whirled about and crouched ready to fire at anything suspicious. The snow flurry had stopped. A scrap of paper tumbled along before the wind.

Flights of concrete stairs went steeply upward. Their wells were full of gloom. On the lower landings, doors blown off hinges lay in a chaos of things and dust. Above, they remained shut. On the top floor, she tried a knob. If necessary, she would shoot out the lock, but that door creaked faintly as it yielded.

Here the dimness was less. Smashed windows admitted light as well as cold. The apartment had been fairly good, two rooms plus a kitchen alcove. To be sure, the bathroom was a flight down, shared by the tenants of three floors. Concussion had cracked plaster off lath and spread chunks and powder across furniture and threadbare carpet. Rain blowing in had made a slurry, now hardened, under the sills. Mildew speckled what was left on the walls. The stains also marked drapes, bedclothes, a sofa. Blast had acted as capriciously as usual. A Stakhanovite poster clung garish and two framed photographs were likewise unfalien: a young couple at their wedding, a white-bearded Uncle Vanya who might be the grandfather of bride or groom. Three or four others had crashed. Some strewn books and magazines moldered. A small radio lay among them. A clock had gone silent on its table. Flowers in pots were brown stalks.

Apart from utensils and the like, Katya didn’t notice more personal possessions. Maybe they had been meager enough for the family to take along at evacuation. She had no wish to investigate, when she might turn up a little girl’s doll or a little boy’s bear. She could merely hope the owners had escaped, all of them.

She went through the rooms. People had slept hi both. The first faced approximately north, the second east. With the door open between them, she could scan a full half circle, springing from window to window. That vision covered a dozen streets in both directions, because most of the vicinity was a crumbled wasteland. Yet it had never occurred to the enemy either to occupy or to dynamite such a watchpost. Well, everybody got stupid now and then, especially in war. This time Soviet intelligence had spied a Nazi blindness.

Returning to the room of entry, she found the infantryman hunched on the sofa. He had taken off his helmet and outer coat. The sweat in his shirt was rank. (Well, Katya thought, I’m scarcely a rose garden myself. When did I last have a proper bath? Ages ago, that night in the forest when I went to earth in a peasant’s hut—) His hair was curly. A hint of color had risen in his face.

“Beware taking a chill, comrade,” she warned. “We’ll be here a while.” She set her rifle down and unshipped her canteen. “You must need water worse yet than I do, so you first, but don’t take much. Swish it around in your month sfore you swallow. It has to last us.”

While he did, she squatted, took his injured hand in both hers, shook her head and clicked her tongue. “Nasty,” she said. “Those bones are a mess. At least no major blood vessel was cut. I can do something for it. Hold still. This will hurt.”

He caught his breath repeatedly when she cleaned and wrapped the wounds. Thereafter she gave him a piece of chocolate. “We’ll share my rations too,” she promised. “They’re scant, but hunger is a joy set beside our real problems, no?”

The bite revived him somewhat. He managed a shaky smile. “What is your name in Heaven, you angel?” he quavered.

She checked both the windows. Nothing, except the distant cannon fire. “Me an angel?” she replied meanwhile with a grin. “What kind of Communist are you?”

“I’m not a Party member,” he said humbly. “I should have joined, my rather wanted me to, but— Well, after the war.”

She put a chair in front of him and settled down. There was no sense in constantly staring ouU She’d hear any important movement, as quiet as things were. A glance every few minutes would serve. “What are you, then?” she asked.

“Pyotr Sergeyevitch Kulikov, private, Sixty-Second Army.”

A tingle passed through her spine. She whistled softly. “Kulikov! What a perfectly splendid omen.”

“Eh? Oh ... oh, yes. Kutikovo. Where Dmitri Donskoi smote the Mongols.” He sighed. “But that was ... six hundred years ago, almost.”

“True.” I remember how we rejoiced when the news reached our village. “And we aren’t supposed to believe in omens any longer, are we?” She leaned forward, interested. “So you know the exact date of that battle, do you?” Even now, exhausted, in pain, penned up to wait for possible death. “You sound educated.”

“My family in Moscow is. I hope someday to become a professor of classics.” He tried to straighten. His voice took on a ghost of resonance. “But who and what are you, my rescuer?”

“Ekaterina Borisovna Tazurina.” The latest of my names, my serf-created identities.

“A woman soldier—”

“We exist, you know.” She mastered her annoyance. “I was a partisan before the fighting swept me here. Then they put me in uniform—not that mat’s likely to make any difference if the Germans catch me—and when I’d passed Lieutenant Zaitsev’s course, they raised me to sergeant because a sharpshooter needs some freedom of action.”

Pyotr’s eyes widened. They had heard about Zaitsev from end to end of the Soviet Union. “This must be a special mission for you, not just sniping.”

Katya nodded. “Word came from Pavlov’s House. Do you know what I mean?”

“Of course. A building hereabouts, right in among the Germans, that Sergeant Pavlov and a few heroes have held since—the end of September, hasn’t it been?”

She forgave him repeating the obvious. He was hurt, bewildered, and oh, how young. “They maintain communication with us,” she explained. “Certain things they’ve noticed give reason to believe the enemy plans a major thrust into our end of town. No, I wasn’t told what things, no need for me to hear, but I was sent to watch from this point and report whatever I see.”

“And you happened to pass by when— Incredible luck for me.” Tears welled. “But my poor friends.”

“What happened?”

“Our squad went on patrol. My unit’s currently in a block of detached houses well south of Mamaev. We didn’t expect trouble, as quiet as it’s gotten.” Pyotr drew an uneven breath. “But all at once it was shooting and screaming and— My comrades dropped, right and left. I think I was the last one alive after ... a few minutes. And with this hand. What could I do but run?”

“How many Germans? Where did they come from? How were they equipped?”

“I c-couldn’t tell. Everything went too fast.” He sank his face into his left palm and shuddered. “Too terrible.”

She gnawed her lip, angry. “If you’re with the Sixty-Second, you’ve had months of combat experience. The enemy drove you back from—Ostrov, was it? All the way across the plain to here. And still you couldn’t pay attention to what was going on around you.”

He braced himself. “I can, can try to remember.”

“That’s better. Take your time. Unless something dislodges us first, we’ll be sitting where we are till we’ve seen what headquarters ought to know about. Whatever that may be.”

She checked the windows, came back, sat down again before him, took his good hand. Now that he was out of immediate danger, nature wanted him to sleep and sleep and sleep, but that couldn’t be- allowed. What he had suffered wasn’t overpoweringly severe, he was young and healthy, and when she spoke soothingly she saw how her femaleness helped rouse him.

Fragment by fragment, a half-coherent story emerged. It appeared the Germans had been reconnoitering. Their force was small, but superior to the Russian squad. Knowing themselves to be in hostile territory, they had kept totally alert and seen an opportunity to ambush Pyotr’s group. Yes, clearly they wanted prisoners to take back. Katya knew a grim hope that he was in fact the single survivor.

A scouting mission was a strong indication of a major attack hi the works. She wondered if she ought to consider that this information fulfilled her task, and return with it at once. Of course, when the squad failed to report, the officer who dispatched it would guess the truth; but that might not be for a considerable time. No, probably the story wasn’t worth as much as tile possibility of her gaining more important knowledge here.

Send Pyotr? If he didn’t make it, the Red Army wouldn’t have lost much. Unless he blundered into captivity. Could he hold out a while under torture, or would his broken body betray him into betraying her? It wasn’t a chance she wanted to take. Nor was it fair to him.

Helping him summon forth what his whole being cried out to forget—that wrought a curious intimacy. In the end, while they shared water and bread, he asked shyly, “Are you from hereabouts, Katya Borisovna?”

“No. Far to the southwest,” she answered.

“I thought so. You speak excellent Russian, but the accent— Though it isn’t quite Little Russian either, I think.”

“You’ve a sharp ear.” Impulse seized her. Why not? It was no secret. “I’m a Kazak.”

He started. Water spluttered from his lips. He wiped them, a clumsy, shaken gesture, and said, “A Cossack? But you, you’re well educated yourself, I can hear that, and—”

She laughed. “Come, now. We’re not a race of horse barbarians.”

“I know—”

“Our schooling is actually better than average. Or used to be.” The ray of mirth vanished behind winter clouds. “Before the Revolution, most of us were fanners, fishers, mer-“chants, traders who went far into Siberia. We did have our special institutions, yes, our special ways.” Low: “Our kind of freedom.”

That was why I drifted toward them after I ceased teaching embroidery at the cloister school in Kiev. That is why I have been with them and of them, almost from their beginnings, these four hundred years. A scrambling together of folk from Europe and Asia, down along the great rivers and over the unbounded steppes of the South, armed against Tatar and Turk, presently carrying war to those ancient foes. But mainly we were smallholders, we were a free people. Yes, women also, not as free as men but vastly more than they had come to be everywhere else. I was always a person in my own right, possessed of my own rights, and it was never very hard to start a new life in another tribe when I had been too long in one.

“I know. But— Forgive me,” Pyotr blurted. “Here you are, a Soviet soldier, a patriot. I heard that, well, that Cossacks have gone over to the fascists wholesale.”

“Some did,” Katya admitted starkly. “Not most. Believe me, not most. Not after what we saw.”

At first we had no knowledge. The commissars told us to flee. We stayed fast. They pleaded with us. They told us what horror Hitler wreaks wherever his hordes go. “Your newest lie,” we jeered. Then the German tanks rolled over our horizon, and we learned that for once the commissars had spoken truth. It didn’t happen only to us, either. The war threw me together with people from the whole Soviet Ukraine, not Cossacks, ordinary Little Russians, little people driven to such despair that they fight side by side with the Communists.

Even so, yes, true, thousands and thousands of men have joined the Germans as workers or soldiers. They see them as liberators.

“After all,” she went on hastily, “it’s in our tradition to resist invaders and rise against tyrants.”

The Lithuanians were far away, they mostly left us alone and were content with the name of overlords. But the Polish kings goaded us into revolt, over and over. Mazeppa welcomed the Great Russians in and was made a prince of the Ukraine, but soon he found himself in league with the Swedes, hoping they might set us free. We finally made our peace with the Tsars, their yoke was not unbearably heavy any more; but later the Bolsheviks took power.

Pyotr frowned. “I’ve read about those Cossack rebellions.”

Katya winced. Three centuries fell from her, and she stood again in her village when men—neighbors, friends, two sons of hers—galloped in after riding with Chmielnicki and shouted their boasts. Every Catholic or Uniate priest they or the serfs caught, they hanged in front of his altar alongside a pig and a Jew. “Barbaric times,” she said. “The Germans have no such excuse.”

“And the traitors have less yet.”

Traitors? Vasili the gentle blacksmith, Stefan the laugh-terful, Fyodor the fair who was a grandson of hers and didn’t know it— How many millions of dead there they seeking to avenge? The forgotten ones, the obliterated ones, but she remembered, she could still see starvation shrivel the flesh and dim the eyes, children of hers had died in her arms; Stalin’s creatures shot her man Mikhail, whom she loved as much as the ageless can love any mortal, shot him down like a dog when he tried to take for his family some of the grain they were shipping out in cram-full freight trains; he was lucky, though, he didn’t go on another kind of train, off to Siberia; she had met a few, a few, who came back; they had no teeth and spoke very little and worked like machines; and always you went in fear. Katya could not hold herself in. She must cry, “They had their reasons!”

Pyotr gaped at her. “What?” He rumbled through his mind. “Well, yes, kulaks.”

“Free farmers, whose land that they had from then- fathers was torn from them, and they herded onto kolkhozes like slaves.” Promptly: “That was how they felt, you understand.”

“I don’t mean the honest peasants,” he said. “I mean the kulaks, the rich landowners.”

“I never met any, and I traveled rather widely. Some were prosperous, yes, because they farmed wisely and worked hard.”

“Well, I—I don’t want to offend you, Katya, you of all people, but you can’t have traveled as much as you think. It was before your time, anyway.” Pyotr shook his head. “No doubt many of them meant well. But the old capitalist regime had blinded them. They resisted, they defied the law.”

“Until they were starved to death.”

“Ah, yes, the famine. A tragic ... accident?” He ventured a smile. “We’re not supposed to call it an act of God.”

“I said—No matter.” I said they were starved to death. The harvests never failed. The state simply took everything from us. That brought us at last to submission. “I only wanted to say that many Ukrainians feel they have a grievance.” They never quite gave up hope. In their hearts., they resist yet.

Indignation flashed. “They are stupid!”

Katya sighed. “They certainly made a bad mistake, those who went over to the Nazis.”

God help me, I might have myself. If Hitler had been willing, no, if he had been able to treat us as human beings, he would have had us all. This day he would hold Moscow, Leningrad, Novosibirsk; Stalin would cower among his gulags in the farthest comer of Siberia, or be a refugee with the Americans. But no, the fascists burned, raped, slew, tortured, they dashed out the brains of babies and laughed while they machine-gunned children, women, the old, the unarmed, they bayoneted for sport, they racked prisoners apart or doused them with gasoline and set them alight, oh, it sickens me to think of them in holy Kiev!

“You knew what was right, and did it,” Pyotr said softly. “You are braver than I.”

She wondered if fear of the NKVD had kept him from deserting. She had seen the corpses the Green Hats left along the roads by the thousands, for a warning.

“What made you join the partisans?” he asked.

“The Germans occupied our village. They tried to recruit men from among us, and killed those who refused. My husband refused.”

“Katya, Katya!”

“Luckily, we were newly married and had no children.” I was rather newly arrived there, bearing a fresh name. That has grown difficult under the Communists. I have to search out slovenly officials. But they are common enough. Poor Ilya. He was so glad, so proud of his bride. We could have been happy together for as long as nature allowed.

“Luckily?” Pyotr knuckled fresh tears. “Regardless, you were very brave.”

“I am used to looking after myself.”

“As young as you are?” he marveled.

She couldn’t help smiling. “I’m older than I look.” Rising: “Time for another survey.”

“Why don’t we each take a window?” he suggested. “We could watch almost without a break. I feel much better. Thanks to you,” he ended adoringly.

“Well, we could—“ Thunder grumbled. “Hold! Artillery! Stay where you are.”

She sped to the north room. Early winter dusk was falling, the wreckage gone vague among shadows, but Mamaev still bulked clear against the sky. Fire flickered there. The crashing waxed, widely about. “Our half-truce is over,” she muttered when she came back to look east. “The big guns are busy.”

He stood at the middle of the floor, his features hard to see in the quickly thickening murk but his voice uncertain. “Did the enemy begin it?”

Katya nodded. “I think so. The start of whatever they have planned. Now we earn our pay, I hope.”

“Really?” The question trembled.

“If we can get some idea of what is going on. How I wish we had a moon tonight.” She chuckled dryly. “But I wouldn’t expect the Germans to pick their weather to oblige us. Keep quiet.”

She shuttled between windows. Dark deepened. Thin snow on untrafficked streets was slightly helpful to eyes and night glasses. The cannonade mounted.

Abruptly breath hissed between her teeth. She risked leaning out for a better view. Cold fell around her like a cloak.

“What is it?” Pyotr tried to whisper.

“Hush, I told you!” She strained to be sure. Black blots on the next street over from this, headed straight north... A hunter could interpret traces for a soldier. Those were perhaps a hundred men, afoot, therefore infantry, but they dragged several carte on which rested faintly sheening shapes that must be mortars ...

They passed. She lowered her glasses and groped through the apartment till she found Pyotr. He had sat down, maybe in his weariness he had fallen asleep, but he sprang to his feet when she touched him.

Tautness keened within her. “Germans bound for Kratoy Gully,” she said into his ear. “Got to be, on that route. If they wanted to go fight near the hill, they’d1 be headed westerly and I might never have seen them.”

“What ... do they intend?”

“I don’t know, but I can guess. It’s surely part of a general offensive against our sector. The cannon—and maybe armor, attacking from the side—those should hold our people’s attention. Meanwhile yonder detachment establishes itself in the ravine. It has the makings of a strongpoint. Our headquarters was in Tsaritsa Gorge, farther south, till the Germans took it, at heavy cost. If they take and hold the Kratoy, why, troops can scramble straight through it, or their engineers might throw a new bridge across.”

“Do you mean we could lose the whole city?”

“Oh, that alone won’t do it.” We have our orders, directly from Stalin. Here, at this place he renamed in his own honor, here we stand. We die if need be, but the enemy shall not pass one centimeter beyond us. “Every little thing counts, though. It would surely cost us hundreds of lives. This is what I came for. Now I go back and tell.”

She felt him shiver. “We go!”

A dead man’s hand clenched around her throat. She swallowed twice before she could say: “Not together. It’s too important. This whole district will be aswarm. I’ll have all I can do to get through alive, and I’m experienced. You must try by yourself. Wait here till—tomorrow night?—till it looks safer.”

Between her hands, he straightened. “No. My comrades are fighting. I ran away once. Not again.”

“What use will you be, with that wound of yours?”

“I can carry ammunition. Or—Katya, you might not make it. I might, by sheer luck, and let them know.” He laughed, or sobbed. “A tiny, tiny chance, but who can say for certain?”

“Oh, God. You idiot.”

“Every little thing counts, you said.”

Yes, each scrap thrown into the furnace, it does become part of the steel. “I mustn’t delay, Pyotr. Give me, well, half an hour till you start, so I can get clear. Count to, uh—”

“I know some old songs and about how long they take. I’ll sing them in my head. While I think of you, Katya.”

“Here.” She undid objects and tossed them on the sofa. “Food, water. You’ll need strength. No, I insist; I’m not injured. God keep you, lad, you—you Russian.”

“We’ll meet again. Won’t we1? Say we will!”

Instead, she cast her arms about him and laid her mouth on his. Just for a minute. Just for a memory.

She stepped back. He stood. His breath went like flaws of wind in the dark (springtime wind?) amidst the hammering of the guns. “Do be careful,” she said. Taking up her rifle, she felt her way to the door.

And down the stairs. And into the streets.

Tanks roared somewhere on her left. Would the Germans mount a night attack? Likelier a feint. But she was no strategist, merely a sharpshooter. Flashes etched skeletal buildings against a reddened sky. She felt the racket through her bootsoles. Hers was simply to deliver a message.

Or to survive? What had she to do with the cruel follies of mortals? Why was she here?

“Well, you see, Pyotr, dear, I am a Russian too.”

A park, a piece of openness between these jagged walls, glimmered white before her. A solitary tree was left, the rest were stumps and splinters around a crater. She skirted it, keeping to shadows. Likewise would she skirt the ravine, and be most cautious when she came to the railroad tracks that led to the Lazur. She must arrive with her word.

She doubted Pyotr would. Well, if not, he’d stop a bullet or two that might otherwise have gone into somebody more effective. If somehow he kept alive—Maria of the mercies, let him, help him!—of course they’d never see each other, or hear, or anything. Suppose two grams of dust are whirled together for a moment when a storm runs over the steppe. Will it bring them back?

Certainly never her to him. She would be changing identities again before long. Whenever the Four Horsemen rode across the world, they opened easy ways for doing that. She could not have stayed much more with the Cossacks anyhow.

But first—

The guns boomed louder. Given the news she bore, the Soviet artillery would take aim at Kratoy Gully. It would blast the Germans out of there before they could dig in. That would be that, while the war went on.

Work, you guns. Bring down the wrath of Dazhbog and Perun, of St. Yuri the dragonslayer and St. Alexander Nev-sky. Here we stand. The thing that bestrides all Europe shall come no farther than us. If we fight in the name of a monster, that makes no difference. And we don’t really. Once this Stalingrad was Tsaritsyn. It can become something else someday in the future. But good for now to think that we hold fast in the City of Steel.

We will endure, and prevail, and abide the day of our freedom.