The Winter Horses(47)

Kalinka turned the mare slowly and searched the heavens until she found what she was looking for.

“There. The seven stars that make up the Saucepan. And that’s Cassiopeia, which is always on the opposite side of … yes, there it is: the North Star. That sits right over the North Pole, and unlike the other stars, it does not appear to move. So as long as we know that, then we know this direction must be south.”

Taras yawned an infectious yawn that Kalinka found impossible not to copy. She’d never felt as tired as this before—not even when she’d run away from the botanical gardens in Dnepropetrovsk and hid in a closet for several weeks—but sleep was now her enemy. If they stopped and rested now, they’d surely be caught and killed.

“We’d better get going!” she yelled at the others. “There’s no time to waste. With any luck, we can make up some of the time we’ve lost.”

She banged her thighs against Börte’s rough flanks, and the mare broke into a gallop.

“It’s this way. I’m certain of it.”





THINGS WENT WRONG FOR Captain Grenzmann and his men soon after they set off in pursuit of Kalinka and the horses.

First, one of the BMW motorcycles suffered a flat tire, which meant a delay of almost an hour while Corporal Hagen carried out the repair; fortunately for the SS, there was a spare wheel on the back of each sidecar. Then, almost as soon as they set off again, the other motorcycle collided with a rock that was buried in the snow, and the rider bruised his chest against the outsized fuel tank, while Captain Grenzmann broke a tooth and cut his lip on the handle of the machine gun. The collision buckled the motorcycle’s front wheel, and they were obliged to change that one, too. The accident shook them up; it made them realize that the apparently featureless steppe was actually full of unpleasant surprises, and that not all of them were the Red Army.

The discovery close to the trail of a dead wolf was another surprise, and Grenzmann’s men were discomfited by Corporal Hagen’s suggestion that the wolf might have been killed by the horses and the dog acting as a team.

“It’s just like the Bremen Town musicians,” he said. “In the Brothers Grimm story.”

“I never heard such rubbish,” said Grenzmann. “It was just instinct, that’s all. The wolf attacked and they all reacted. Simple as that.”

In spite of the strengthening sun, the trail in the snow remained clear—clear enough to provide further discouragement for Grenzmann’s men, because after a while, they noticed that the child was no longer walking but riding, and riding a wild horse at that, which did not, they considered, bode well for their enterprise. They’d all seen the Przewalski’s horses at Askaniya-Nova and considered them wilder than most wild horses; they knew how aggressive and untamable they could be, and how fast—perhaps as fast on snow as a motorcycle. A few of the SS men had even come to admire the strong spirit of these horses with the same grudging respect they held for the Red Army.

“I never heard of a wild horse that would let someone ride it, just like that,” said Corporal Hagen. “Or one that would protect a child against a wolf. It just doesn’t make sense. From what little I know about horses, it can take months to tame one.”

“Can’t be done,” said the man seated in the corporal’s sidecar; his name was Donkels. “Not unless that someone was very special.”

“What do you know about horses?” sneered the captain.

“It’s weird, that’s what it is, sir,” insisted Hagen. “Uncanny. Most wild horses would kill themselves trying to throw someone off their backs. Or give you a pretty savage bite. Maybe even trample you to death. Like they trampled that wolf. And yet this child climbs up on one, just like that. As if it was the most natural thing in the world. Doesn’t make sense.”

“What do we know about this child anyway?” shouted the man driving the lead motorcycle. He had to shout because of the noise of the engine.

“We know all that we need to know,” said the captain from his sidecar. “As SS, we know all that’s important to know. And we know our duty, so let that be enough for you.” And he squeezed the trigger on the sidecar-mounted machine gun, letting off a few rounds at some crows just to show his men that he meant business.

The corporal nodded, but his sense that this was a mission doomed from the outset was not diminished by the captain’s smooth words, nor was anyone else’s sense of the same. And as the morning gave way to afternoon and still they had not caught up with their quarry, all of the men except the captain began to doubt the wisdom of going any farther. Now, soldiers are often superstitious people, and in spite of the young captain’s assurances, the three had started to arrive at the same conclusion: that the refugee child who had painted the strange pictures on the walls of the disused water tank had established a mysterious bond with the wild horses, of the kind that they’d all encountered in the myths and legends they’d read as boys. Hadn’t the great German hero Siegfried owned an almost magical steed whom no one had ever mounted, called Grani, sired from Sleipnir, who belonged to Odin himself and whom the god Baldr had ridden for nine long nights into Hel? Wasn’t it possible that these wild Przewalski’s horses were just a little bit like Grani and Sleipnir? And given that all of the SS soldiers had eaten the meat of these same horses, weren’t they courting disaster by going after their blood brother and sister?