Kalinka had discovered the special fear of wolves. Everyone has it. It’s a fear that goes right back to the time when man lived in caves and painted horses on the walls by firelight and very sensibly avoided the forests and open steppe at night.
Taras stared hard into the darkness; every fiber of his being was on guard against imminent attack. Temüjin clopped the hard snow with one hoof, ready to smash a wolf’s skull if that was what was required, while Börte patrolled in a circle around Kalinka.
“I can’t see anything,” she whispered. “Have they gone?”
The next second, three, or perhaps four, wolves arrived at a sprint from opposite directions with the same object in mind: to catch the girl by the throat and then hang on long enough to bring her down and kill her, at which point they estimated that the dog and the horses would have no choice but to abandon her body.
With jaws bared viciously, the first wolf—a big male—launched himself like a streak of snarling gray lightning at the girl, only to be met by a perfectly judged double kick from Temüjin as both the stallion’s rear hooves lashed out in unison and connected very solidly with the wolf’s body; the hapless animal flew through the air with an injured yelp and landed somewhere in the darkness, whereupon Temüjin gave immediate chase with the intention of trampling the wolf to death. But although badly stunned, the wolf still had sufficient presence of mind to pick himself up and run away as quickly as he could.
The second wolf—a female—fared even worse than her mate, for it was not Kalinka’s throat that ended up being gripped in a pair of powerful jaws but the wolf’s own, as hundreds of years’ breeding in the big white wolfhound suddenly came to the fore. With a loud snap, Taras caught the animal expertly as she sprang at the girl and, holding the wolf tightly, shook her hard, several times, as if she were no bigger than a rat. He might have held on to her, too, but for the fact that Börte bit the wolf on one back leg and then the other, which was so painful and made the wolf writhe so much that she twisted herself free and limped quickly away before the horse or the dog could bite her again.
Temüjin snapped his jaws shut on an ear and then a tail, and in the darkness, something gray and furry let out an agonized yelp; he lashed out behind him with his rear hooves and felt a dull thud as they connected with the wolf he had just bitten.
Breathlessly, Taras and the two Przewalski’s turned one way and then the other, instinctively searching for more wolves; the dog barked loudly, as if challenging any others to come forward and pit themselves against dog and wild horse, but there was none. Sensing victory, Temüjin rose up on his hind legs and cycled his front hooves in the air; at the same time, he let out a loud neigh that was nothing short of triumphant.
When the second wolf had attacked, Kalinka had ducked down abruptly and then slipped on the snow; for the few seconds it had lasted, she had watched the fight lying down, as she thought it best to stay out of the way.
She was still lying there now, and Taras wasn’t sure if the girl had been injured or not. Almost immediately after the danger was past, he came over to check that she was all right. Kalinka took his long, almost curved muzzle in her hands and hugged the dog’s head close to her body.
“Thank you,” she said as the dog licked her face fondly. “You were so brave, Taras.”
She stood up and hugged the bodies of both horses.
“You too, Temüjin. You saved my life. And you, Börte. Thank you so much. I told you that I couldn’t do this without you.” She let out a breath that was part relief and part fear, and shivered. “But for the three of you—well, I’ve a good idea how Little Red Riding Hood must have felt. I just wish I had a treat to give to you all.”
She glanced up at the moon. “Come on,” she said. “There’s no time to waste. Southeast is this way.”
THAT NIGHT, MAX PRAYED for it to snow to cover the tracks of Kalinka and the Przewalski’s horses, which led away from the old waterworks like a trail of bread crumbs, but no snow came—not so much as a flake. Max started to brush over the tracks, but this simply made their trail bigger and more obvious. He racked his brains for an idea as to how he might cover them effectively but none came. Finally, he decided that if he were asked about the tracks by Grenzmann, he would have to tell the German SS captain that the tracks had probably been made by deer or llamas; there were still a few around that the Germans had not killed and eaten.
If there wasn’t much that Max could do about concealing a suspicious-looking trail in the snow, there was something he could do about Kalinka’s “cave paintings,” and the old man reluctantly decided to clean the paintings off the walls of the water tank—just in case the captain turned up and put two and two together about what and perhaps who had been staying there. So as soon as he had given up trying to cover the trail of Kalinka and the horses, Max trudged back to his cottage to fetch a bucket, a broom, a brush and some soap flakes, and, returning immediately to the water tank, began to try to scrub the walls clean of evidence.