Siberian Red

the south fork will bring us safely into China.’ Tarnowski slapped him on the back. ‘All you have to think about is how you’ll spend the Ostyaks’ share of the gold!’
    Within minutes, they were on the move again.
    The sun was out now, blazing so harshly off the snow that the men placed their hands over their eyes, peeping like terrified children through the cracks between their fingers.
    Whirlwinds of snow, solemn and graceful, wandered across their path.
    Not long afterwards, they found themselves in the shadow of a cliff. Beyond it, on the other side of the tracks, lay the frozen pond Tarnowski had been searching for the previous night.
    ‘This is the place!’ shouted Tarnowski. ‘I told you it was here.’
    All of them broke into a run, floundering out across the pond. After crashing through a forest of tall reeds, they entered a clearing where Tarnowski and Lavrenov immediately kicked aside the covering of snow and began scraping at the ground. But the soil was frozen solid. The crates might as well have been encased in stone.
    Tarnowski sat back, wiping the sweat from his forehead. ‘It’s no use. We’ll have to make a fire to soften the ground. We buried shovels on top of the crates. If we can get to those, it won’t take long to get the gold out of the ground.’
    ‘The smoke will be visible,’ said Pekkala.
    ‘We can’t afford to wait for dark,’ replied Kolchak. ‘Everything must happen now.’
    After gathering fallen branches, they heaped deadfall over the place where the crates had been buried. Using scrolls of birch bark peeled from the nearby trees, they soon had a fire burning. Then they stood back, watching nervously as the smoke climbed up into the sky.
    *
     
    Looking like a creature sculpted from ice and soot, Gramotin wandered through the forest. The trees seemed to be closing in on him. I’ve been out here too long, he thought. I think I am losing my mind.
    In the distance, Gramotin saw what he thought at first was a cloud drifting in from the east, but soon he realised it was smoke. Why they would have stopped and made a new camp again so soon after leaving the old one, Gramotin had no idea. They must think no one is following them, he told himself. And to light a fire in broad daylight struck Gramotin as an arrogance which could not go unpunished. Encouraged, he pressed on, the weight of his rifle and ammunition bandolier dragging on his shoulder blades.
    Later, when he paused to catch his breath, he noticed a pack of wolves skulking among the trees, their fur a greyish purple haze against the maze of birches. A jolt of fear passed through him, but he choked it down. Hoping they would keep their distance, he quickened his pace. After that, whenever Gramotin stopped, the wolves stopped. When he moved on, they followed. Each time, the gap between him and the wolves grew smaller.
    An image barged into Gramotin’s head of his old platoon, lying strewn and half-devoured on the ground. A blinding anger flared inside him. He unshouldered his rifle, hooked his left arm through the leather strap and braced his hand against the forward stock. Closing his left eye, he squinted down the notches of the gunsight and picked out the lead wolf. At this range, he thought, even a lousy shot like me can’t miss. To calm himself before pulling the trigger, Gramotin breathed in the comforting smell of armoury oil sunk into the wooden stock and the familiar metallic reek of gunpowder from the breech of the Mosin-Nagant.
    But then Gramotin hesitated, knowing that the men he was pursuing would be close enough to hear the gunfire. Even though the group had split up, they still outnumbered him. His only chance would be to catch them by surprise. Slowly, he lowered the gun. When the notched sights of the rifle slid away from the wolf’s face, Gramotin realised the animal was staring right at him. It seemed to be mocking the Sergeant’s presence, as if daring him to pull the trigger.
    Gramotin reshouldered his gun and moved on.
    Soon afterwards, as he rounded a bend in the tracks, a cliff rose up to his left. To his right, across a frozen pond, the smoke he had seen earlier was rising through the forest canopy. Leaving the path of the railroad, Gramotin scrabbled up the sloping ground beside the cliff until he reached a clearing near the precipice. Then he got down on his belly and crawled the rest of the way, dragging his rifle by its strap. From here, the footprints of the Comitati were clearly