Siberian Red

extinction. He would tear their world to pieces, rather than let them go free.
    At last, the exhaustion of the day began to overtake him. As Pekkala’s eyes drooped shut, the last thing he saw was a gust of sparks from the fire, skittering away across the snow as if some phantom blacksmith were hammering hot steel upon an anvil.
    *
     
    All night, Gramotin marched through the forest.
    It was no longer snowing. The moon appeared through shredded clouds, filling the forest with blue shadows.
    When the candle burned out in Gramotin’s lantern, he threw it away and pressed on, following the blurred furrows of the Ostyak sledges, which he found that he could see by moonlight.
    As Gramotin scrambled through the drifts, his energy began to fade. From his pocket, he removed a paika ration he had taken from the kitchen the day before. Gnawing into the tough, gritty bread, he felt guilty. The truth was, although Gramotin stole these rations all the time, normally he never actually ate them. Instead, he would give them out to those convicts whose conduct irritated him less than usual on that particular day.
    Gramotin’s reasons for handing out the bread were complicated, even to himself. In his years as a sergeant of the guards at Borodok, he had learned that the best way to rule effectively over the prisoners was to be known as a man who could, on occasion, exhibit faint signs of humanity, instead of living as a sadist every minute of his life. These acts of generosity, small as they were, gave the inmates of Borodok hope that if they did as they were told, they might, as a bare possibility, receive treatment slightly less than barbaric.
    Ruling over the guards was a more complicated proposition. Kindness did not work on them. They were like a pack of dogs who would obey Gramotin as long as they felt he was more dangerous than they were. The minute they saw any weakness in him, they would either close in for the kill, or else abandon him completely, as they had done back on the road.
    It was the first time they had ever challenged his authority. Clearly, they did not expect him to return, or else they would never have taken such a risk. Gramotin knew that the only way to win back their respect was to do the one thing they refused to do themselves.
    The fact that he might become lost did not bother Gramotin. Neither did he dwell upon the fact that the Comitati would probably butcher him when he finally caught up with their group. The only thing Gramotin cared about now, as he stumbled onward into the darkness, was his reputation.
    *
     
    Sedov was having a dream.
    In it he was a child again, reliving the moment when his mother caught him hiding in the woodshed and eating a pot of home-made plum jam which he had stolen from the cupboard. The theft had been spontaneous and the young Sedov realised only once he got to his hiding place that he had nothing with which to eat the jam. So he used his fingers, which soon became a sticky mass of tentacles.
    From the pocket of her apron, his mother whipped out the large handkerchief which she always kept ready for such occasions, licked at it ferociously and advanced upon him saying, ‘You mucky boy!’
    Sedov winced while his mother scraped away the jam stains around the corner of his mouth.
    ‘Who is going to want that jam,’ she shouted, ‘after you have been sticking your dirty hands in it?’
    ‘Some other mucky boy, I suppose.’
    Now, in this dream, Sedov was back in the woodshed and his mother was scrubbing away at his face with her coarse spit-dampened handkerchief. ‘Stop it!’ he protested. ‘I can wipe my own face!’
    Waking with a shudder, Sedov was amazed to find himself still breathing.
    It was morning. The sun had come out, glistening on the ice-sheathed branches of the trees.
    A large dog was standing right in front of him. It had been licking his face. It had a shiny black nose and a long, narrow muzzle which was white around the sides and brown along the top. Its ears were thickly furred and set well back on its head. It was the eyes which most impressed Sedov. They were a warm yellow-brown and looked intelligent.
    The dog seemed as startled as Sedov. It jumped back and growled at him from a safe distance.
    Sedov noticed three more dogs lurking about at the edge of the clearing. Then it dawned on him that these were not dogs at all. They were wolves.
    ‘Mother of God,’ he whispered to himself.
    The wolf, whose raspy tongue had translated in Sedov’s